elitetrick

Super Puppy update

I've decided to hold off on posting further Super Puppy comics for the time being.  I only have 3 Patrons at the moment, and while I expect there to be more some day, I don't particularly care for how older posts are achieved or made viewable on Patreon, so I don't want to just go ahead and post all 120 issues (some 400-500 pages probably) and have them all go missed or unread by any new Patrons I get.

So, my current plan is to upload an entire new Super Puppy episode each time I g...

God Slayers - Page 24

I went through several versions of the dialogue for this one...  Hopefully the one I finally settled on is good enough.

Anyway, yay, more practice with backgrounds!

God Slayers - Page 23

Maybe I drew this part out too long, maybe not.  I dunno.  Oh well.  As much as I love the back and forth between Max and Kiva, the story must move on!

God Slayers - Page 22

So it turns out Max was going to have a part in the larger conflict all along.  It's almost as if I know what I'm doing.  Almost.

Max is SUPPOSED to be adorable.  However, I'm not yet consistent enough as an artist to draw him that well, so he often skirts the line between adorable and creepy.  You really should have seen him in that last panel before I decided to close his eyes.  Yikes.

Also his hair keeps changing lengths on this page.  I think afte...

God Slayers - Page 21

Oh Max... this character is so much fun.  Originally I imagined Max as the ultra annoying next door neighbor that Kiva was just using for his own gains, but as I kept writing and as I rewrote the story for the second draft, they became quirky best friends.

He's particularly fun for me to write because his entire personality is very different from the other characters.  Where Kiva and Kiera are both kind of calm, stoic and sarcastic a lot of the time, Max is just a genuine boun...

God Slayers - Page 20

Kiva finds himself in the middle of what I have started calling a "Maxnado."

Merry Christmas everyone, hopefully I'll see you all next year as I continue this crazy, crazy thing I've started!

God Slayers - Page 19

EEEE it's Max!

Riley Sketch

We haven't met this character yet in the comic, but it's one I'm really excited about introducing, so I did a quick sketch of her to warm up today.  I liked how it turned out, so I figured I'd share it with y'all!

Sorry for the delay!

Wednesday's comic got posted late on the main site.  That was my fault, sorry!

Usually what happens is I send the latest comic to my husband so he can upload it to the site, but I sent it to him extra early this week and then I simply forgot to send him the reminder to post it because I kept thinking yesterday was Thursday for some reason.

Just wanted to post this for transparency or something.  I should probably finally just break down and make a Twitter account for this comic...

God Slayers - Page 18

Chapter 2 kicks off by hinting at some of the major players in the Redtail Gang, Reese and Donno.  Who could they be, I wonder?

God Slayers - End Chapter 1

Kiva eventually goes to bed, but pulls a blanket over Kiera before settling in.

That will conclude Chapter 1!  The story will pick up right where it left off next week!

Thank you all again for your support and for reading along with the comic!

Twilight Solstice - 2018

It's easy for me to forget you guys haven't actually MET Max in the comic yet, but he will be making his debut very soon in the early part of Chapter 2.

In Kuserra, there's one day a year where the sun never quite comes up all the way above the mountains and buildings, so it's more of a prolonged day of twilight, celebrated as the Twilight Solstice.  It's customary to exchange gifts on this day with family and loved ones, in part due to the crepuscular nature of most of Kuserra's resident...

Super Puppy - Page 7

Aww, and the story ends with a magical table appearing out of nowhere and some sort of stool.

But yay, Super Puppy saved the day!  Kinda.  Nevermind that the Dog Catcher still got away with murder and the comic had no actual story or any stakes or tension or even really much of a climax.  Nevermind that Super Puppy was solely responsible for the creation of the evil villain or that he wound up with tons of ridiculous super powers while poor Caped Kitten has zero, aside from perh...

Chapter 1 - Feedback Poll

As I'm wrapping up Chapter 1, I'd like to start collecting your thoughts and feedback on the comic so far!  Asking people for open comments isn't always useful, so I created a form with some very specific, more targeted questions to help establish some very specific things I can start working to improve.

Please fill it out at your convenience, I'm going to leave it up basically forever because there will never be a time when gathering feedback on the whole of Chapter 1 stops being useful....

Super Puppy - Page 6

The villian finally introduces himself, but even the intrepid SP feels like the introduction was a bit delayed, vanquishing his foe instantly with a super bark!  Which is... yet another new power Super Puppy apparently has.

What's really interesting to me going through these old comics again is to see what mistakes I made, and the subsequent steps I made to correct them.  The younger me did really dumb things in drawing and writing and story-telling, but as I reread them and shared t...

Super Puppy - Page 5

Oh no! I've been forgetting to upload the rest of the highly anticipated conclusion for Super Puppy's debut issue!  I never settled on a schedule for it, and there's been the Holidays and travel and such -- it's free, don't sue me.

On this page, we see Caped Kitten has been abducted by the Fingermen, because a sidekick's primary job in any good super hero comic is to endlessly be a Damsel in Distress.  Fortunately, the army of dangerous Fingermen is defeated instantly by yet another ...

God Slayers - Page 17

This page will conclude the story's introduction!  We've met Kiva and Kiera, we've been introduced to the city, and we've learned some basic information about the concepts of Vim and gods.  And we've only just scratched the surface.

Chapter 2 will start after a short chapter break, and we'll meet Max!  I really hope you'll like him.  :3

I also just want to thank you all for your love and support so far, this comic has been so much fun to draw and write, and it is real...

God Slayers - Page 16

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Super Puppy - Page 4

I'm just gonna go ahead and post this, there's not much to say about it.  It was as lazily done as it looks.

I think I had decided issue 1 needed to be an arbitrary number of pages and that I had to fill them all before I could conclude the story, but I was getting tired of this one not being done.

I remember drawing this while laying on the bed in my room after school, so dinner might have been ready as well.

Super Puppy - Page 3

This villian was another of Michael's ideas.  The Hand That Feeds You.  See, on the previous page, Super Puppy severed it from his owner with his laser vision, then it... grew eyes, and a mouth, and sentience, and an entire army of disembodied fingers with stick legs... all in the space of 4 panels without anyone noticing.  Incredible.

Aside from the original silly concept for the villian pitched by Michael, I really had no idea what to do with the character or why it was evil o...

God Slayers - Page 15

It was fun writing this page.

Super Puppy - Page 2

Every good hero needs a good origin story, right?  Well you better believe Super Puppy is no exception to THAT rule!

Here we see Spot and Fuzzy going about their daily lives as a regular cat and dog.  They can't speak, as they are regular pets, but luckily they appear to be telepathic.

Then they are hit by a meteor, that, rather than crushing them into oblivion, grants them instant super powers and... um... instant superhero costumes, already emblazoned with their new superhero...

Super Puppy - Page 1

So, this comic opens with a scene where the nefarious Dog Catcher (It says DC on his hat, get it?  That's how you know he's the Dog Catcher.  Because it says DC.  There's literally no other way to know.) enacts his nefarious plan of... maybe... applying for a job?  And then murdering the person who reviewed his resume and was about to offer him a position?  I'm not sure I was ever quite clear on what the application was for, and this plot never actually goes anywhere. &n...

Super Puppy - Cover

I'm still toying with some ideas for HOW I want to share Super Puppy.  I thought about scanning full issues and compiling them into a pdf so they could be read like a book, but going through it again, there are times where I'm just rolling on the floor laughing at my old childish self, and I kinda want to give a running commentary throughout because there are things I remember about each page that have otherwise been lost to time.  I'll try that for now.

I already made a huge monster...

God Slayers - Page 14

Kiera using their native tongue when addressing her brother.  For those who are curious, she's just commenting that it's too high.

God Slayers - Page 13

This page probably took me longer to draw than any other.  It was born from the need to really challenge myself.  I need more practice with backgrounds and perspectives, but to save time I usually use quick shortcuts to achieve the look I want on most pages.  Still, from time to time, I DO want to work on a page like this where I can really focus on the background to sorta push the environmental aesthetic I want to show.  Hopefully, this page also sells the idea that they are...

Super Puppy - Front Cover

I want to tell you a story about little Trick when he was but a wee lad.

This was fifth or perhaps sixth grade.  I was 9, 10 or perhaps 11 years old.  My best friend (Michael) at the time was heavy into Marvel comics, and despite his best efforts to get me interested in them, I was far, far more interested in Legos, Sonic, Earthworm Jim and the other video games available on my Sega Genesis.

Still, as I spent most days in class doodling over my assignments anyway, I started to ...

I just lost 20 hours of work.

So... working on Chapter 2 this week, I wanted to insert a page in-between page 24 and 25 after already having pre-drawn a bunch of sketches through page 30.  This mussed with my number scheme for a bit and my organization structure got all muddy for a moment before I went in and fixed it.  In my confusion, I saved the newest sketch for Page 27 as Page 26 in the wrong folder, and didn't realize it until today.  The finished page 26 was unfortunately too new for me to have backed i...

God Slayers - Page 12

Really happy with how the water (slime?) turned out on this page.

The Use of Foreign Language in Writing

The idea of writing a story using a foreign language as a device within that story has intrigued me for a very long time.  When I was younger, I majored in English, and I used to be a grammar nazi, mercilessly pointing out the misspellings and misplaced commas of every chat message that ever came my way.  As I've grown older, -- and thanks largely to the fact that fighting against the online cataclysm of grammatical dereliction proved ultimately futile -- my perspective on language in ...