013 - Zip!
Xade on Dec. 2, 2020
Poor Thadius of Slightly Damned!, guess that's what she gets for rocking out on Xade. I'm afraid this is the last we will see of our esteemed guest. Thanks for visiting my rocky gal buddy.
Every time I see that last panel I snicker. I did such a great job on him there. The tongue stuck out (yes he has one) just makes the whole thing real.
I did have another 3 panel planned but I couldnt figure out how to get the pacing right with such small panels without spilling over. My editor suggested chopping it up, leaving it at the dazed Zeep and expanding the tradnert reaction. After browsing my 3 panel templates and not liking them I thought about 4 panels and it just fell into place. I adjusted what I drew to the new layout and quickly finished. Now it ends on a good gag.
magicalmisfits at 7:45AM, Dec. 5, 2020
I wish I could do lettering like that. And your line work is gorgeous. Keep going
Xade at 11:06AM, Dec. 5, 2020
PS, if you do decide to take the plunge and learn illustrator hit me up if you run into trouble. I can help ease you into it, even if we have to do live chatting.
Xade at 10:49AM, Dec. 5, 2020
I did forget to mention that the word Growlution in the title is a custom font that I made in fontforge. The program broke right after exporting all the images in preparation for fontself, an adobe plugin. My friend and I worked very hard on it and I am pleased with how it turned out. I'm working on it in my free time between comics. Speaking of lettering, I might do a custom text font after Growlution.tff is done. I've been seriously considering it. FS makes the spacing between letters correct in seconds. I should have bought it to begin with instead of wasting time with fontforge but *shrug*
Xade at 10:42AM, Dec. 5, 2020
Thank you Ron, coming from you that is a very high compliment. But honestly, it's not just me. Illustrator is just that awesome. I can only imagine how awesome you would be if you switched to it. The lettering in "Zip!" and "WHAM!" is badaboom from Blamobot.com, which our friend Joff introduced us to ages ago with pottymouth font. Illustrator, being vector based, allows you to give any object a mesh, or grid, that you can warp 'til your heart's content. Yes, other programs have vector art like Photoshop's pen tool, but illustrator concentrates on just vectors, with pixel art support so Adobe came up with some super nifty things like clipping masks that will allow you to draw outside the lines, so to speak, vthen clipp off the rest. I have double borders so that the inside edge of the 10 pix border doesn't get clipped off. It goes by the actual line, not the thickness. ... hmm, I just figured out a new way to use clipping masks and they'll save me tons of time too!
Hogan at 1:14PM, Dec. 3, 2020
For the lack of face, Zeep has an amazingly dazed expression XD
Xade at 2:37PM, Dec. 3, 2020
thank you, I worked really hard on it. Choosing a character with eyestalks is a truly fun challenge that I once tried with Zand of IoX but went digital due to my injury before I could really explore his character. With Zeep, I toyed with giving him a face in his concept stage but I just wasn't happy with the results. I played spore a while before and thought, what about eyestalks? Everything clicked into place and Zeep was born---err formed. That's my current favorite panel and makes me snicker every time I see it. Using it as my banner was a natural choice.