Welcome back, readers. Before we get onto the meat of this blog post, I have some notes to share with all of you.
First, the Sunnyville Stories mailing list is hereby suspended until January 2019. I am starting to feel the strain of trying to do so many things at once. I am questioning why I’m doing both the mailing list and blog together. Second, Tiffany & Corey will continue; whether or not my webcomic will go on after 2019 is unknown. Third, don’t forget to check out the Toys Collectibles & Curiosities Exposition in Moorhead Center Mall on Saturday December 8 in Moorhead, Minnesota. I will be there selling comics and art. Anyway, let’s get on with this.
Work is progressing well on Dominic & Claire. As of this writing, the first of the two main stories has been finished. I worked on it all last week and finished the final page this morning. I went over everything with black India ink applied with a Speedball 512 nib.
After the lines were done and pencils erased, I started masking in black areas with India ink like I usually do. It took ages for everything to dry. Once I did, I started to apply color with design markers supplemented by colored pencils.
I’d also like to share something else I want to do for future comics with Dominic & Claire – should I pursue this creation any further.
See this fellow? This is…me! The idea I had was to depict myself, Max West, in Dominic’s town as a red fox living on Dominic’s street. The concept is that Mr. West is a freelance illustrator known for wearing Japanese clothes like happi coats, hanten (pictured above, a thick traditional Japanese jacket worn in colder weather) and hachimaki (Japanese headbands). When not in his house drawing, Mr. West (me) is out and about drawing in a sketchbook with a pencil or pen.
This idea had two sources. First, it’s a development gag from Sunnyville Stories. My original idea was to have myself as a red fox introducing each story and telling what was going to happen before the focus shifted over to Rusty and friends. My red fox alter ego would be sitting either outside or indoors, painting a landscape, noticing the reader and greeting them as I introduced the story.
The second source was the manga Dr. Slump by Akira Toriyama, a series that ran from 1980 to 1984 by publisher Shueisha. While Toriyama is world famous for his better known manga Dragonball, the series Dr. Slump made him famous in Japan. In the aforementioned manga, Toriyama caricatured himself as either a bird or a robot wearing a gas mask. I had been reading the Dr. Slump manga and burst out laughing quite a few times. The idea of having myself in the story came from there and I worked up some sketches. The rest is history.
That’s it for now. I’ll share more photos and artwork of the Dominic & Claire comics I’m doing tomorrow so stay tuned!
