Today, I’m going to share with you a few teaser pages from the second episode of Sunnyville Stories. This episode is titled “Multiball Madness” and it was finished in the summer of 2010. I didn’t get it printed up though until December. Here’s a brief rundown of the episode – Rusty Duncan crosses the path of the local rich girl Rose Von Straussen and her brother, Konrad Von Straussen. (Check out the entry on the Von Straussen family for more details.) She promptly challenges him to a pinball game…or she’ll tell everyone in town that Rusty’s a chicken.
The pilot episode for Sunnyville Stories was a much warmer one than the second episode. Rusty was welcomed with open arms by Sam and quickly befriended the town’s children thanks to her. This installment of our story is meant to be the pizzicato of a symphony, the second act of a play, or like Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back – everything quickly goes to hell for Rusty Duncan. He’s just made new friends but the teasing from Rose threatens his fledgling status. But enough about that. How about we take a look at some comics pages?
This is the cover I eventually settled on for the second episode. This was originally done in colored ink and gouache but the background wash didn’t come out right – I had to touch up the background digitally with Photoshop. Anyway, I think it’s a pretty effective cover – it grabs your attention, it establishes the main character and it’s definitely funny!
Here we have a beautiful establishing shot. I really like the use of aerial perspective in this panel. The dark shapes in the foreground (foilage) and the faint outlines of the mountains in the back establish distance and depth on the page. For distant objects, I use either a .35mm Rapidoraph or a Hunt 107 nib, both of which give a thin line. I used a round number 5 brush for not only masking in those blacks in the foreground, but also for making those shapes with the leaves. There’s a lot of neat stuff you can do with a brush that can’t be done with a pen…but that’s a whole other blog post.
This story picks up a few weeks after the first episode. We see that Rusty is getting settled into the town and now that he’s going to school. He and Sam are coming home from school today. Again, I’m making use of aerial perspective here in the foreground to establish depth. Many landscape painters made effective use of that technique. One in particular was the French Impressionist and landscape painter, Claude Monet (1840-1926). His work in fact reminds me a bit of the plants and bushes I put in the foreground of my landscapes.
Sam’s comment on the previous page was a lead-in here to the old joke on this page. For the uninitiated, the joke goes how do you divide a small number of apples among many people. The answer is to make applesauce. Rusty though takes Sam’s jab personally. It definitely fits into his desire to be accepted – here, he takes Sam’s joke as her “rejecting” him as a person. Sam, being a nurturer, is always ready to reassure her friend.
I used a Hunt 101 nib for the first time in that top right panel. That is one wacky nib.
That does it for this week’s blog entry. I’ll have three more pages next Saturday up as a teaser. In the meantime, you can buy your very own copy of Sunnyville Stories episode 2 from Indy Planet and while you’re there, grab a copy of Sunnyville episode 3. You’ll be glad you did. Subscribe to my RSS feed or email. If you have any questions or comments, post them here. I’ll be happy to field them.
See you all next week!
