Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrf.

New strip is up, FINALLY.

Still having minor issue with the site's ability to post things properly, but I think I've got it now. Any of you who were clicking around and noticed some wonkiness, I believe I've got it fixed.

Also, those of you who haven't added rcm_feed to your list, do so! :)

I love my rough work. Sketching these guys is my favorite part of the whole webcomic thing -- other than getting feedback from you guys.

This is a naked frame from Page 7; Gui looking fearsome and angry.

(HINT! Gui is funniest when he's mad, so we like to piss him off a lot.)

This page should be done by Sunday, and Page 3 goes up on Wednesday, as scheduled.

Oh, and anyone interested in doing a guest strip (or fan art) can do them whenever they have time. Nothing too amazing or specific; it just needs to be 800px wide. There's no deadline -- I just wouldn't mind seeing other artists' take on our dudes.

I didn't get the job I applied for, and that means I'm in a very serious bit of trouble here. I can't survive past the end of this month if I don't find something very quickly.

In the meantime, if anyone would like any commissions done, or if anyone has the generosity to donate, now's the time to do it.I could really use the help.

If anyone has a relatively easy tutorial on how to make navigation buttons for FIRST/PREVIOUS/NEXT/CURRENT using image links, I'm all ears. It's the one thing I can't figure out.

Thanks in advance.

Okay. So I'm having serious problems with ComicPress: it won't put the latest comic on the front page like it's supposed to, and my navigation buttons don't work. I've tried every trick in the book to get this working the way a normal webcomic is supposed to, but it simply will not work.

I know there are a bunch of you who do webcomics that are working just fine, and many of you are using ComicPress via WordPress to do it -- so please help me. I have gone over everything a million times, and I'm not an idiot, but it just doesn't want to work.

What am I doing wrong?

RCM #01 - Morning Rituals

http://hurfadurf.com/comic/?p=23

So, the RSS feed for River City Mechanical is rcm_feed. Bookmark it, yo!

Seeing as I haven't posted anything here for a while, and River City Mechanical debuts in 2 days, I thought I might give you guys a peek into a part of my process that I think is interesting.

In Photoshop*, you work in layers. My work always has 9 layers in it before it gets flattened and saved in *JPG format, in this stack order:

--Boxes & Title
--Text
--Speech Balloons
--Inks
--FG Colors
--Textures
--BG Colors
--Dark Matte
--White Matte

The reason for the "Dark Matte" layer is because almost half of Gui's model sheet is a very light color, so close to white that if I'm coloring him against a white background, I can barely see what I'm doing. So, to avoid having to go back and touch up the light bits, I put a dark color behind him (*under* the layer I'm coloring on), which makes the white pop out, like so:



The opposite is true for darker colors; when I'm painting with those, I turn off the dark matte and voila! Sharper colors, cleaner painting, and overall better work.

See you soon, kids.


*I do all of my work in Photoshop, except for the inking, which I do in Corel Painter using the Scratchboard tool.

For the comic --> http://hurfadurf.com/comic/

For the forum --> http://hurfadurf.com/forum/

These are just links to where they ARE, you understand. There's no actual content yet, but it's all set up and content-ready.

Go, me. :)

This is a freshly inked (and only minimally cleaned) panel from page 3. I thought you guys might like to see it, seeing as this is what I'm doing for 8-10 hours a day until the launch at the end of the month.

Stan, angry, throws his hat at his television. :)

See you soon, kids.

This is it. Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out. It took me a thousand years to figure it all out and get everything right, but all in all, I'm as pleased as I will ever be about my work.

The dimensions of it are a bit wonky, but it will fit on the cover of a book (more or less), and that's what's important. Besides, we can always form-fit the book to match the cover... couldn't we?

Peace out, kids. Come the weekend, it's all fan art, random commissions, and Stik (we miss you, Stik)!

So far I have had 2 people make donations to my art site, which isn't bad for a webcomic that technically doesn't exist yet.

As promised (and because it's important to acknowledge every single person who supports my work), I will be doing a piece for each of them as a token of appreciation. Each will receive a personalized piece of artwork that I won't claim will be a work of genius, but won't completely suck either (I hope).

Thank you to both of them, a thousand million times.

-----------

Also: No Stik this week, folks. Sorry, but I needed to get the RCM layouts done and put more work into the Cog Wars cover, and plus there was that whole living life... thing. I ran out of time.

We're in the home stretch now. The hair and fabric on this thing is kicking my ass, but I'll get it done by the end of next week, because I have to or I'll start hating it. :)

A redux of the original piece, to reflect more detail (eyebrows fixed!), and a better color scheme. I also inked it better, though I was looser with it than I was with Stan and Gui.

Not too much in the way of major changes. I just wanted to simplify things a little in terms of his anatomy, because it's one of the major things I was struggling with.

Last minute design changes. See if you can spot them all!