www.Pod-Comic.com

What you read in the comic as about all there is to it.

I did okay in this strip.  The inking was a bit… rushed, but I think it all turned out okay.  I put a card-stock paper background behind all the line work to give it the look of the actual paper to visually break up all the white on the site.  I used a different background instead of the original paper to keep from seeing all those pesky blue lines from my pencil.  Some people really like the sketchy look beneath strong line work, and I am one of them, but only when it’s REALLY strong line work, and that I don’t have.  Really, I just think I’m too small-time for that art-wise.  The trouble is that my sketches weren’t drawn with the same skill and confidence as sketches drawn by stronger artists, and are therefore more distracting than helpful in the process.  

I’ve been pretty self-conscious lately art-wise.  I have only been drawing comics regularly again for 4.5 months, but I’m itchy.  I want to actively do something to take my art to the next level.  Something more than just “draw draw draw”, which is a cop-out answer anyway.  I know the trick is to keep drawing, but WHAT genius?  WHAT do I draw?  HOW do I draw to make it better?

As things stand right now, drawing-wise I should just keep doing what I’m doing, but I still desperately want to improve fast.  I think what I want to focus on are craftsmanship things.  Things that are relatively easy fixes that will at least make everything more smooth or professional looking.  Something I have been working on (which you will see more apparent in up-coming comics) is adding more spot-blacks.  (Large areas of all black)  I’m trying to stay away from the common pit-fall of most cartoonist to add large geometric “light shadow” spot-blacks that don’t actually exist in real life.  I think it’s kind of a cheap cop-out to give more pop to a panel, the trouble is… the trick works and makes things easier on the eyes in terms of readablity.  So should I use them more?  How?  Is there a high-road that I can somehow take?

Also, I’ve been considering my lettering.  I hear a lot lately that lettering in photoshop is a no no, but it’s been working fine for me.  The only side-effect of photoshop lettering that I can perceive are my speech bubbles.  they are thick and unevenly rimmed and their tails are not curved.  The question is (and I’d like a lot of audience response here if you please) is that effective and neat?  Or is it cheap and amateurish?

Lastly, I have something big in the works.  Next week’s post will be a very big deal I can assure you.  I’m bursting with excitement!

That’s all until next Monday.

=(OuT)=

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

It was perhaps the most single jarring moment of my life.  It was all I could think about all day.  For those of you who don’t know, I almost never remember my dreams.  Some times the closest I get to remembering whatever happened is a strange feeling the next day.  If the dream was sad, I feel kind of down that day, or vice versa if it was happy.  If I remember any details of any dream at all, I am fairly moved.  If the dream actually meant anything to me at all, I am very moved.

I was very moved that day.

The dream was very vivid.  We had a little girl who was about to enter her “tween” age.  She was the perfect mixture of me and Megan.  Brown hair and brown eyes.  Gigantic brown eyes.  I had a full beard (finally) because I guess that’s what dads have.  Her room looked strangely like mine growing up only her’s was subtly more “girly”.  The first things that struck me about her was that she felt comfortable with both of her parents to ask for both of us, or either of us.  It didn’t matter to her which one of us came.  When I was that age, I always wanted Mom.  Dad would have been fine for me, but after a nightmare I always felt vulnerable, and I was too young to know that I was allowed to be vulnerable with my Father.  But my daughter didn’t care.  She was equally comfortable with us.  

Also, she wanted affection immediately.  To her, nothing would chase the monsters away faster than a big hug, which is very much like me.  She was like me.  I don’t know how often I feel things in dreams, but I remember I could feel her squeeze me as tightly as she could.  I squeezed back, but careful not to hurt her.

When Megan is tired… she’s like a spent can of air or a reptile in the cold.  The woman works hard and for long long hours.  She is perfectly capable of getting up and doing whatever needs to be done, though, no matter how tired.  Just like any other real woman can.  But it takes a herculean effort for her to do so after she has been in bed for a considerable amount of time already.  That’s why I took the duty.  It’s easier for me and I want my hard working woman to rest.  What happened in this dream, though, is that Megan heard us in the other room and felt left out.  She wanted hugs and affection too and so she came to our daughter’s room and climbed into her bed with the two of us so we could have an awesome cuddle-fest.  Megan is warm and loving and affectionate, but not very tactile.  She is more likely to keep her comfy warm place in the bed than spring awake for a few hugs, but she did for our daughter.  Our daughter brought this change in her.  

In the bed together we all snuggled up as close as we could, and the feeling that overcame me could only be described as euphoria.  It felt like warm tingling waves of what I’ve heard described as “religious ecstasy”.  A perfect one-ness that both crippled and empowered me beyond possibility.

I woke up immediately after I felt it.

The first thing I felt was anger.  I hate my alarm.  Immediately after that I was startled by a horrible feeling of loss.  Terrible terrible loss.  Megan was at work already, and I was in the house alone.

I was all alone.

Worse than alone.  Something was missing.  All day long.  I wouldn’t fill whatever hole I felt.  I kept trying to tell myself that there was nothing ACTUALLY there to miss, but that didn’t help.  Nothing could shake my loss all day.

Megan and I called her Ivy.

Ivy Rose Dunston.

You ma notice that the strip is different.  I am trying something new with the format.  It’s all one image as opposed to three separate images that coincide with three separate pages.  It gives the whole thing a more “infinite canvas” feel, which I think is fairly neat.  You will also notice that the whole image is narrower.  I figured I would do that to save on space.  I upped the lettering size to compensate.  I also tried to have a cleaner lettering approach this time around.  I am toying with the idea of starting to hand-letter the comic.  So far I am way too chicken to do it, but I know that if I just make the commitment to doing that, I would work on it really hard and make something happen.  Whether or not that is something good is fairly beyond me.  Also, is it worth the time?  Will it save me time in the future?

Leave some comments and let me know.

In terms of drawing quality, I like this comic.  It’s not my BEST work necessarily (I still don’t do any Justice to Megan), but I like it.  That is almost exactly how my mind’s eye sees Ivy.  I think she has a fair enough resemblance to the two of us.  While I was drawing, I had to stop several times because I was getting a bit misty.  The expressions and body-language, I think, is very true to how I felt and how the situation was.  Every panel, in terms of expression and gesture, is dead-on to me.  I would draw a bit and then look at what I drew and… need a minute to regain my composure.

Those composure minutes aside, I penciled all three pages in one day.  I dilly-dallied for a bit of the morning after I dropped Megan off at work before getting to it, but once I got started I was as fired up as I could be to get the thing finished for Megan before I had to go pick her back up.  Three pages in one day.  That’s a personal record.  I don’t think I can do better than that.

Inking was also a one day event.  It took a little less time, but a LOT more out of me thus reminding my once again that sometimes I just HATE inking.  The trouble is I LOVE seeing the thing once it’s done being inked, and I have decided that I really appreciate the process of inking the paper it self much more than doing it with my tablet on my machine.  I think  it has more soul this way.  I think once I get better at inking, or perhaps find the magic tool that makes it become easier over night, that I will start to like the process as much as I like the penciling process,  but as it stands… inking remains a nuisance.

I ink with a bowl-nib pen that I dip in Speedball Super-Black ink.  I also use an assortment of microns and sharpies for backgrounds, hatching, and fine-detailed fiddly-bits.  I use to use 102 and 104 cow-quills as well, but if I treat the bowl-nib delicately enough, I can achieve everything that the row-quills can.  I have tried a brush, but so far I’m too chicken to do more than mindless experimentation with one.  I have a medium sized bamboo handled caligraphy brush and a Bob Ross liner brush.  I dip those in Higgins ink.

Anyhow, if anyone has tool ideas for me or tips on making inking less of a chore, PLEASE let me know via comments or email (adress in the “contact” page).

That’s all for this week.

See you next Monday!

-(-OuT-)-

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

Isn’t my niece cute?  She is an adorable pile of curly energy and she LOOOOVES me.  The sad part is that this love breaks our hearts when its time for me to go.  She’s gotten better about it lately, but really that hurts too.  She doesn’t love me anymore?

Also, there’s Ryan again.  He’s the one behind his daughter in panel 1.  Not a bad shot of him if I do say so myself.

This one was fun to draw.  You’d think the subject-matter would make me sad in process, but since the real gut-wrenching part took place off-camera it wasn’t so bad.  The panel where I am pseudo-holding Michelle is adorable to me.  I think I did a fair enough job drawing it.  I’m thinking about maybe doing it again for another project.  Or at least holding on to the image for later use.

Not a whole lot else to report.  Summer marches along in a lovely way.  Drumline stuff is happening more often now that their school season is ending.  We’ll probably see s’more comics in that department soon.  Other than that, I got nothing.

So until next Monday!

(((OuT)))

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

Not a whole lot really happened.  Actually, I lied.  Everything happened this week.  I made some pretty big strides towards something bigger, but I can say no more.  I’m writing it all down, and I’ll be posting it here as much and as quickly as I can. 

This is perhaps the happiest I have been with my art… ever.  Not to toot my own horn to much here, but I think I nailed this one pretty good.  Megan’s face and mine are still kind of off, but they’ve improved, and that’s just dandy for yours truly.

I apologize for the short blog and the horrible cop-out cliff-hanger “everything happened”, but the trouble is a lot went on in the story of my life recently and I desperately want to tell the story to you in a way that does it justice.  Unfortunately, that means waiting.  It appears as though the pace of my updates is no match for the pace of my life.  The simplest way to remedy this situation that I can think of is to update more often, but can I?

We shall see.

(((0|_|7)))

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

I saw the movie this passed week.  Twice.  I am finishing up this post at an extremely late/early hour because my wife and I unexpectedly discovered that my mother-in-law liked the original series.  She had seen one of the original movies (the lame one where whales save the day) and liked it as well and was curious as to how this movie would be.  Megan and I immediately mounted up and sped off at warp speeds to her house so that we might all share and bask in the glorious glow of sci-fi AWESOMENESS.  We got back from all of that kind of late.  That’s why this has taken me so long.  I Should have done more on this sooner.

Despite both the title and the strip, it was an awesome movie.  I loved it and suggest it to everyone.  I do mean EVERYONE.  It makes for a good action flick alone really.  

The joke and title come from thinking Picard could kick Kirk’s face in (and he can), thinking Kirk -the character- is kind of a douche, and thinking that X-wings and Tie-fighters are significantly cooler than shuttle-crafts and transporters.  Don’t get me wrong though, Star Trek will always be very very cool.  The original trek (though lead by Kirk) will also always be awesome as well.  It’s just that Picard and Star Wars (with a few exceptions) will always be marginally awesomer.

This is perhaps my favorite joke so far.  I don’t know why.  It just tickles me.  I guess its just that I got to make myself a “Mary-Sue” character and finally tell Kirk off and poke holes in his crew’s delusions of him.  Their reaction, to me, is priceless.  I’ll be patting myself on the back for this joke more later.

The art leaves something to be desired, but doesn’t it always?  Or don’t I always at least say that?  It’s not all that bad though.  I really like how Sulu turned out.  I guess I just wish I had the ability to do that style of sci-fi goodness like this guy.  That is a comic done by a dude named Tauhid.  The art and jokes are tremendous and I wish I was half the artist/joke-smith that this guy is.  Also the aesthetics of the universe he made there is every similar to the classic Trek aesthetics of the movie.  Essentially he regularly draws what it was I was shooting for.  

In an unrelated matter, that strip that I just linked to has been inactive for I don’t know how long.  I discovered it entirely by accident, but was so glad I did.  I burned through that archive only to discover, mid-storyline, that the dude was taking a break from it for real-life/work reasons.  Well the good news is, as of this passed week, that strip is back on and updating.  It makes me extremely excited and I hope you wall shoot over and give it a good read.

That’s all I can think of for now.

Until next Monday!

(((OuT)))

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

So it was mother’s day yesterday.  I felt the subject matter was more than appropriate.  My mom has always been very loving and very funny.  Being married and looking back on my parents I can see more and more how I am like my mother and how much she had an impact on such huge aspects of my life and personality.  Every time I realize this it makes me homesick.

The first panel is a reference to how much my mom likes cleanliness and how much…  I didn’t really.  I was a messy kid.  I still am, but I was too.

The second panel is very much my mom.  Her favorite section of the news-paper is the Obituary section.  She has a million and one stories, all of which she is strangely compelled to tell each of her kids, and every one of these stories ends with the words “and he/she died.”

Panel three is very much how I would torture her.  My mother is Argentine and takes her spanish pronunciations very seriously.  I don’t.  Not when it’s funnier to pronounce things wrong.  My pronunciation of the word “bird” is so maddening and mind boggling to my mother that she shares it with all of her Argentine friends and relatives.  They think it’s hilarious.

Panel four is especially funny because it has happened, but not to me.  My mother has caught two of my older brother’s with “girly” magazines.  Let it be known that my mother is as sharp as a tack and very very quick.  She made my brother’s PAY in the best of motherly fashion.  With love… and horrible embarrassment.

The last panel is self-explanatory.

The act of drawing my mother nearly destroyed me mentally.  I had no photo-reference and my memory is…  male and college-aged.  Luckily I found some pictures of her sitting around the house and I was able to make, what I think, is a fairly true representation of both what my mother looks like and how she dresses.  I’m fairly happy with it.  You can tell from those drawings where I get my curly hair from.  My mom hates it on her, but LOVES it on me.  Go figure.

That’s all for this week.
See you next Monday

(((OuT)))

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

Exam time cometh and goeth all the same.  After all the hectic hubbub I am left with a sense of calm.  Perhaps TOO calm.  I am now content to simply sit on my couch and nap the summer away.  The trouble with this is that I actually had things I wanted to get done this summer, and now I don’t particularly want to do any of it.  I had several paintings I wanted to make for this webcomic, but after spending several days in front of my painting class’s final assignment…  I’m satisfied to never look at another brush again.  I wanted to build an actual website for this comic as well, but after staring at my final web-design project for several days…  Well, you get the idea.

I’m not too worried.  I’m sure that after one day passes I will find myself in a horrible boredom that only painting, web-designing, and comic-making will cure me.  Until then I should say that I have a lovely collection of “Transmetropolitan” trade paper-backs keeping me company.  If any of you out there are unfamiliar with this title, please go and look it up right away.  It’s written by Warren Ellis and published by Vertigo.  I am currently on book 8.  It is a filthy read, but glorious for it.  Also, a little known fact, Patrick Stewart is actually a big fan of this comic.  He wrote the introduction to one of the trades.

Awesome.

IN OTHER NEWS…
Wanna hear a funny story?  Because I want to tell you one.

About a year or more ago Megan’s car broke down randomly.  It had a fresh oil-change, full coolant, and a full tank of gas.  It simply decided to stall out once we were passing through an inter-section.  On momentum we were able to pull into a side street and park safely.  We had it towed less than 5 blocks to our trusty mechanic whom we (in all honesty) adore.  Why do we adore him?  Well for one we called him and told him the problem and he came to us.  HE came to US.  Once on the scene he called a tow-truck guy that he knew personally and had us towed to his shop.  The tow…  was free.  I checked our bill.  It wasn’t on there.  Turns out there was a strange problem with some computer chippy thingy (why yes, that is a technical term) and it was a quick fix and the car is fine.  Our Mechanic and his sons took care of it and all was well. 

Zoom ahead to last friday.  The thing is stalling out again at red-lights for no apparent reason.  It always cranks back up though.  With exams and Megan’s work schedule being what it is we luckily don’t really need two cars for a while so we decide to take it in to the shop before it becomes a bigger problem.  Once there we tell our Mechanic’s sons (who are now our full-time mechanics since their dad has retired) the problem.  They had been slammed by customers that week and had no room for us on their lot.

“Sounds like that problem you had last time,” they tell us.  ”As long as it’s starting back up okay, it should last until Monday.  Can you bring it then?”

No problem.

We leave and go back about our business.  Saturday rolls around and I drive Megan to work in the morning, run some errands, and get ready to take photos for the comic when the thing… dies.  

No big deal, I think to myself.  I’ll just re-crank it and…  I’ll just re-crank…  Okay, let’s try this again…  One more time to make sure…

I made sure another 5 times.

Luckily I had my folks’ Triple A trial membership card and I had a tow-truck out in record time.  While it was pulling my car into the shop I walked up to my mechanic.

“What seems to be the trouble?” he asked.

“Well, remember that problem that we said could wait until Monday?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, we lied.”

We shared a chuckle and he went to the car.  He asked for the keys and I almost handed them over.  First I had to pull my house key off of the ring to make sure I could get to my OTHER car keys.  Unfortunately this over-drove my brain power.  I took my house-key off of the ring and put it in my mechanic’s outstretched hand while I placed the car keys back in my pocket.

He looked at the key in his hand and then looked at me and sighed.  I informed him that “I do that because I’m smart,” and quickly rectified the situation.

He then promptly stuck the keys in the ignition and surprise SURPRISE, the car starts without a problem.

He tells me that sort of thing happens all the time and he’ll take a look at it and call us when he knows something.  I thank him and call my friend, Logan, to beg for a ride and for camera assistance.  Turns out that the dude lives right across the street from the shop.  The conversation went something like this:

“Dude, are you at that All Points place?  Look across the street.  See the dude in his door-way making uncomfortable stares at you?  That’s me.”

I ran across the busy 5-lane street and met up with Logan.  It was there that I realized that I had left my camera in the car.  Logan was a good sport and drove me back to the shop where I ran up to my mechanic and told him I had left something in the car.

“Because you’re smart?” he asked.

“Yeah, because I’m smart.”

Ah yes, another photo-comic.  Are y’all liking these?  Because I really dig ‘em.  Special thanks to my friend Logan (Weapon X) for acting as the most righteous photographer of this comic.  He was a big help in more ways than one and in very short notice.  You will most likely see more of his handy-work here If I can trick him into it.

Next Monday there will be another hand-drawn strip.  In fact, with all the painting I’ve been doing, I may even ink parts of it with a brush for a change.  We’ll see how that turns out.  In the mean time, loyal readers and fellow Desperadoes, take care of yourselves.

{({OuT})}

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

It’s exam time folks.  You know what that means.  Late nights.  Long hours.  That smell.  I think the smell is called fear.  This exam time is a little different for me though.  This one includes printing all of my projects and mounting them on mat-board.  I’ll be submitting this heavy clump of material for judgement where 3 professors decide whether or not I am worth their time.  I know I am, and 2 out of the three of them are equally aware of this fact as well so I’m not worried… but I am.  I guess I just don’t want to count my chickens.  On the plus side, summer is fast approaching.  As I write this I am nearly out of the woods.  After Tuesday of this coming week, I will be more than half done with all work for the semester, and there will be a long summer ahead.  Stress, though there may be, life is good.

It’s short, what can I say?  This week has been rough.  I have gone cross-eyed after staring at nothing but black mats and X-acto blades for days.  That and I painted 5 individual paintings, which was actually cool.  All told, I pulled 2 all-nighters this weekend.  

The strip has a noticeable gray-scale of sorts and some rudimentary shading.  I would have done more and gone for the gusto in terms of polish and craft (especially considering it’s so small), but time is short and I need sleep.  I hope you like the experiment though.

That’s all for this week, next week I’ll try and inundate you all with some excess material to make up for this week’s lack.

until then…

_OuT_

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-

The comic is true.  That conversation happened.  She will not be my advisor much longer.  I found out recently that my Design professor (the bald-headed guy from a few strips back) is also an advisor.  He remembers my name.  And after only one semester too.

The conversation that is missing above went as follows (paraphrasing):

Her: How many credit hours are you taking now?
Me: 18. (The maximum)
Her: Why are you doing THAT?
Me: So I can get out of here in a year.
Her: I got news for you.  You’re gonna be here 2 more years.
Me: Not if I keep taking the maximum hours.  One summer, one fall, one spring and I’m done.
Her: But the classes aren’t scheduled that way.  The way they are offered, it doesn’t matter how many hours you take.  You still have 4 semesters left.  And none of the design classes you need are offered in the summer.

Me:…

Her: So like I said…

Me: Two. More. Years…

Her fault or not, I could have slugged her. 

This strip was a fair amount easier to draw than some of my other strips lately.  It was particularly easier to ink.  I enjoyed it and felt like it was sort of a break.  I think this is mostly because there are only two human characters, and one of them I almost completely invented visually.  The only thing true to life in her character is the way she dresses.  

IN OTHER NEWS
I made a charming discovery lately.  There is a small cadre of delightful folk here in NC that have formed a very loose webcomics collective.  They are called the North Carolina Web Comics Coffee Clatch (NCWCCC).  I met with some members briefly this passed Sunday and they seem like nice folk.  It is composed of mostly comic writers and a few artists (as far as I could tell), but between them there was a pile of knowledge about the craft.  One of the founding members of the Clatch does a comic that has been running for 10 years. It is called Clan of the Cats.  Upon first inspection the art looks nice, but I haven’t read it a whole lot yet (I JUST discovered it), but I’ll be giving it a look.  In the mean-time, you can all check out other members on the site at www.ncwccc.com.

That’s all I got for this week.
If I remember more I’ll let y’all know here.

Until then Share and Enjoy! 

Gabriel Dunston
-PookeyG-