Inks and Outs

I am now in, as it turns out, the long, laborious process of inking the twelve pages of the next Unstoppable Tuff-Girl episode. I'm averaging one page a day, or less than one panel an hour. It's a little slower going in these colder winter days and nights, with the drier air seeming to make the India ink evaporate quicker.


UTG #20001, page 3, panel 5
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")


UTG #20001, page 3, panel 5
India Ink and color pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")

I'm inking the borders and word balloons with a round nib quill pen. I figure that I need to know how large the balloons need be and design them into each panel layout. The balloons drawn into the panels at these stages comes with the additional benefit little areas that I need not draw and ink.

All other art is inked with a round lettering brush and black India ink. For good or bad, I avoid inking lines of the art with a ruler.

Also for good or bad, I hand letter anything that's not dialogue and narrative. I do realize that now days it's more common than not to do all this, the balloons and lettering, utilizing the power of the computer and versatility of the dozens of available typefaces. I can only answer back, "That's not what I'm doing."


UTG #20001, page 5, panel 1
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")


UTG #20001, page 5, panel 1
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")

The pencil art I drew rather loosely and sans many details, knowing that I would also be inking the pages myself, rather than handing them off in assembly-line manner to another artist. This was mostly a time saving plan, which, in that respect, worked well - at least at the pencil stage. Perhaps the inks are going slower than ideal due to the addition of details like backgrounds and environmental property.

Still, the inking from page to page seems to grow subtly more confident. There is also more dry-brush and rough quality to the later pages due to the ink evaporating quicker and my brush getting stiffer quicker in the dry winter days.


UTG #20001, page 6, panel 4
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
13.7 x 12.7 cm (5.4" x 5.0")


UTG #20001, page 6, panel 4
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
13.7 x 12.7 cm (5.4" x 5.0")

As I go through the pages mostly in series (page two was inked first, then page one, followed by the rest in proper order), I've made running changes in some of the character's designs. Tuff-Girl's mask now has downward points over her cheeks, and she has black go-go boots rather than more rugged motorcycle boots. Rip's henchmen have distinguishing color schemes for their Luchador masks. Eagle One's sleeves were corrected to extend past his wrists in all panels until he rolls them up in the last panel of page six.

The backgrounds, particularly the interiors of the Golden Cactus Casino, are an example of what I describe as nonsense-space. I picked this up poring over and studying Milt Caniff's Terry and the Pirates comic strip where he would always position the camera (the reader's point of view) in different places in the environment from panel to panel. Some times he would simply switch between wide, medium and close up shots. Other times, it would be as if the "camera" would be re-positioned and turned 90-degrees, so that in say four successive panels, he'd show the four different walls in a room. Of course this makes the visual read as interesting as the artist can conceive, but simultaneously, the artist is not restricted to keeping track of property, windows, etc. their relative positions and number. It's a slight of hand that suggests that with the same characters from panel to panel, so too is the location depicted behind them the same, but not necessarily anything architecturally accurate.