deadwinter

Comic Report #59 - Icing on the Cake

Hello again! I'm real excited to post about this page so this week's work report is a big of fun for me, so I'm gonna just jump right into it!

Here's a quick recap of events up to this point: the page previous to this one was the conclusion of a bigger fight scene, which came as the surprise end of a stealth mission, which itself began because Lizzie was given a job by deputy mayor Martinez to find out who killed Sheriff Tanner.  Eavesdropping  on her customers in the Jade Gar...

Comic Report #58.2 - Aftermath

Here's the textless version of this page.  Unlike previous pages I do actually have text to write in before I put it on the website. There's really just the two bottom panels different from yesterday's post so I'll go through those quick before getting this page wrapped up.

The penultimate panel I designed with a kind of quiet stillness, like Lizzie is kinda just laying there for the first time in a long time, without needing to run or hurry or be anywhere. I really like how this o...

Comic Report #58.1 - Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Here is this week's progress report on the next comic page.  I didn't quite get it all the way finished this week but I am close enough to the end that I can safely say the page will be ready by the end of this weekend. I'll try to make this update quick and get back to the drawing board.

For whatever reason inking this page took longer than I thought it would, despite the page layout being a few close-up cropped face shots.  I think it was just the really specific angles I wa...

Comic Report #58 - Big Rock Finish

Hello again! This week I've got a lot of stuff to share, but I'll start off with a look at the next comic page.  These past few pages have been coming along quicker than normal, I don't know if it's just due to having them all planned out or them being tightly-cropped action shots, but I'm really happy to have an eight or so page action sequence not end up taking eight or so months.  I've managed to keep the pace up through to the end, and I think I managed to hit all the points I w...

Comic Report # 57.1 - The Quick & The Red

Okay so something's gotten into me with this action scene and I'm just knocking pages out real quick trying to keep the pace up.  Here are the finished textless pages for the next two updates- they're going to be textless anyways but you get to see them both at once.  I swear I'm not on some macho workaholic binge, I have plans to go out and enjoy New Years with my friends, so I'll get right to the write-up 

The first page: I'm real happy with how all the dust and lightin...

Comic Report #57 - Double Header

Hello and happy holidays! This week's work report is something special, I think I'd mentioned earlier that the next update I wanted to do something I've never done before and today I'm happy to reveal that that special something is "work on two pages at the same time".  I think I can get both pages finished either by the new year or first thing in the next year, but today I'll post a bit about why I want to do two pages all of a sudden and how I'm planning to handle presenting them.

Comic Report #56.1 - Tension

Real quick turnaround, here is the textless version of the next page.  I say "textless" even though there's no dialogue on this page, I on-purpose omitted a "hmmh" from Marv in the bottom left panel that I'm going to add after this goes up before posting the page online.

This page is all about stillness and tension, but I didn't want to just draw characters standing stone-still for a bunch of panels, I wanted to capture the energy of stillness in between the panels. Two of the ways...

Comic Report #56 - A Real "Quick Draw"

So on Wednesday night I put up the most recent comic page.  Usually my schedule is I work all week and take Thursdays off as my resting day, and then type up what I did on the Friday after, so after I put up the textless version of the last page I was like, man, what am I gonna do for my Friday work report?  I don't like not having something for you on Fridays, I take this Patreon very seriously so yesterday I sat down and in some kind of fugue state knocked out the pencils to the n...

Comic Report #55.1 - Quick Turnaround

So I got this page painted up quicker than I thought, if I can keep up this pace I can get us to the big page 600 animation within 2020! I really want to get this page lettered and up on the site ASAP so like I always say for these textless pages, I'm gonna make it quick.

Lately I've been really happy with how my painting has turned out. I don't do it as often as I should but I was rereading my comic the other day and I noticed that I've grown to use a lot less grimy painting than I use...

Comic Report #55 - Enter Marv

This week I've got the ink phase of the next comic page to share with you.  After a few dense action pages this one is a bit of breathing space before the tail end of this action sequence, which is just fine by me.  I always try to be conscious of the pace or density of a given comic arc so it doesn't become overwhelming to slog through, and I think giving the story a moment to breathe before moving into the final boss encounter is a good thing.

While Lizzie is in the thick of...

Extra Post: The Merch Problem

Happy post-Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it this month!  Since I've been away traveling to be with family most of this week and seeing as how it's Black Friday I figured it'd make for a cute post to talk a bit about the aspect of independent comic making that I've long struggled with: how to make merch people want.  I'll post a bit about things I've done in the past other than books and talk about what I'm gonna try to do going into 2020, so let's hop to it!

Making comic...

Comic Report #54.3 - Finally!

Hello again!  Here is the finished textless page for your enjoyment!  I really want to get this knocked out so I'm gonna be quick with the explanation tonight so I can get back to work.

I mentioned before how I wanted to animate that second panel, but in this preview it isn't animated.  The reason I didn't get that going yet is because I want to put the dialog balloons in first before I start rigging the animation.  The reason for this is, when I animate in Photoshop...

Comic Report #54.2 - Almost There

This week I finally have a comic progress shot for you.  My life's been upside-down moving house the past few updates but I've been plugging away at the comic when I can so I thank you sincerely for your patience.    After typing up this article I'll be getting right back to work, and I expect to have this comic finished before Sunday rolls around- I'm excited to get it posted because I have a few cool things I want to work on once it's done, including setting up the page ...

Coder's Corner: The Symbiosis of Engine & Code

[Hello!  I've been packing and moving my home all weekend so this week's update is from Jason, providing you an update on the coding side of our game project!]

It's been a long time since I've written anything related to the game, mostly because I've been swamped with all these other tasks at hand.  There's not much I can do about that except to work through them until opportunities open up to work on the game again, especially when we are extremely close to having a demo read...

Comic Report #54.1 - Over The Mountain

This week has been a rough one for me, I've been working on preparing for a big move to a new apartment, and this coming week I have to actually execute that move.  I wanted to make meaningful progress on the comic, though, so I got it to the halfway point before all the work is downhill again.  Like the last page, drawing and inking was the hardest part about this one, and when I can sit down and paint freely again I should be able to knock this page out in a week, if the last page...

Comic Report #54 - The Turnaround

This week is more comics as we draw this action sequence towards its resolution.  This is another big multi-panel layout with mostly walled backgrounds or bursty action backgrounds to paint so I expect like the previous page once I get through the inking phase the painting should go by rather quickly.  There's a lot going on in this page so I've got a lot to post about, so I'll get right to it!

One of the recurring elements of the comic has been the recurring pain in Lizzie's ...

Comic Report #53.2 - A Quick Turnaround

Here is the customary textless page art before I write dialogue and post it.  I ended up getting this painted way faster than I originally planned, which was already planned as being really quick.  I think the primary reason is just how much of the backgrounds were impact frames; painting depth takes a lot of time but half the page is just whooshes and impacts, which I could knock out in moments.  Maybe the number of panels was offset by the size of each one, with more of them ...

Comic Report #53.1 - The Mid Stage

This weekend I had to do some traveling, so this week I just got the inking and flatting for the comic done.  This was the hardest, most labor-intensive part of the comic, though, so the rest should be cruising downhill on a rocket sled; I expect to have this page finished for next week's Patreon update.  Since the page ended up on this pristine sort of mid-phase inked-but-not-painted stage this week I thought I'd talk about how I structure my comics, to try to make my process as st...

Comic Report #53 - The Turning Point

I've got to take a trip out of town this weekend so I wanted to get this week's workshop update posted before I head out the door.  This week I worked on the next comic page and it's been a doozy to piece together, so I've got a lot to type up about it!

This page is the part of the arc where the fighting comes to a climax, so I need to fit a lot of action into the one page.  When I started the fight scene I had basically an entire page devoted to one attack, the slide tackle m...

Comic Report #52.2 - Impact

As promised, here's the textless version of the next page.  There honestly isn't going to be a whole lot of text but I gotta put these up to keep with the tradition.  There's a couple little details I put in from last time on my final detail pass that I'll talk up real quick before I jump in and draw up the word bubble.

The first panel, I flip-flopped on if I wanted to put a sound effect there for the lockup break carrying over from the previous page.  Instead of a vertic...

Comic Report #52.1 - Halfway There

This week I got the inks done on the next page and made it past the halfway mark for painting interior values.  There's a few fun things to post about this week so I'll jump right into it.

I was initially worried that the number of panels and characters would make this page take a long time but I've hit a rhythm with this work and I can just render what I need to more quickly.  I know exactly where my light sources are and I'm hitting my value contrasts right off the bat- in o...

Tiers and Discord Updates

Hello again!  As a follow-up to my previous post, I've gone ahead and made changes to the Patreon tiers.  All $1 tier patrons are now Founding Supporters, and will not lose access to any content on this site.  If you are able to and you'd like to move to a new $2 comic tier the option is official now, and if you prefer not to then that's totally fine as well, no access will be changed or denied to $1 patrons.

Also, to make keeping track of updates a bit easier I've create...

Housekeeping & Transparency

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while, so tonight I'm gonna sit down and just do it.  When I started this Patreon however many years ago I designed a lot of its goals and text stuff with a split between comics and gamedev in mind. I'd also adjusted some of the tier names to account for a time in Patreon's history where they were limiting small donation amounts, and I wanted to make sure my posts were open to all people.  It's been a while and I think a lot of the in...

Comic Report #52 - Actions Speaking Loudly

This was a busy week for me.  Long story short is I have to find a new housing situation soon and I've got a bit of a fire lit under me to shore up some cash to take care of moving, so I opened up art commissions (which can be found here if you're interested in that:  https://twitter.com/deadwintercomic/status/1171540294426218496 )  I worked on a couple commissions, but then I...

Comic Report #51.2 - Parting Shots

Hello! Here is the textless version of this page.  It's a bit late at night and I'd like to get the page posted before I sleep so I'll keep the write-up short.  When I work on these pages, painting them in the manner that I do, it can be difficult to feel like I'm making progress until I hit the very end of the page.  When there's big stretches of solid greys and unpainted characters it can feel like there's so much more work to do but when you get to the very end, and I can pu...

Comic Report #51.1 - Clash!

Continuing momentum on finishing comic pages, I've got inks and partial painting done on the current page.  Gamedev-wise we're in a phase of implementation and testing so I've been tinkering with numbers here and there getting new elements working but all of my art time has been focused on comics so things are moving along briskly.  As seems to be the case lately, I expect I can have this page finished by Monday evening as I work through the weekend, but for now I'll give you my pro...

Comic Report #51 - Body Movin'

Continuing forward with my comics initiative, here's the sketch phase of the next comic page.  One of the elements I want to maintain throughout these pages is having the action choreography be trackable- like for example, the end of the last page has the sword girl swinging her right hand horizontally around, ending with the blade to the right, so at the start of this page I have her cutting back forward again from right to left, with Lizzie dodging out of the way.  I have her pose...

Comic Report #50.2 - Let The Art Speak For Itself

Here is the textless final art for this page.  Honestly this is basically most of the page itself, the only dialogue I need to put in is in the first two panels, so I'll be brief and get back to that.

One of the challenges I've always had working in really painterly greyscale has been making sure my figures pop against the background.  I don't really have colors or bright/dull saturation contrast to help make things pop, so I need to do everything in greys.  Some scenes r...

Comic Report #50.1 - Lights, Cameras, Action

This week I worked on inking and painting the next page.  Normally I only ink my main subjects in a panel and leave the backgrounds empty to free paint later, but since these are action pages the majority of each shot is main subjects so I ended up doing a lot of inking.  Compared to the pencil phase one of the motion details I wanted to convey- the hat guy taking a mop javelin to the face and falling backwards over three panels- reads a lot better now that it's inked and prepped to...

Comic Report #50 - A Sneaky Surprise Attack

The other week I said I wanted to try to do more comics more quickly now that the bulk of my gamedev obligations are more or less fulfilled moving towards our next milestone so this week that's precisely what I did.  I want to keep up momentum moving into an action sequence so I'm gonna try to do the best I can to keep things moving; since the comic hasn't had a proper action scene in a while today I get to talk about a bunch of fun details so today's post will be all about that!

W...