deadwinter

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #38

So this is an interesting week for minis.  I've got two more to share with you today, which means I'm up to minicomic #098 now, which means I have two more to go to get to my planned 100 minis.  I'm actually a bit nervous about hitting #100 because these minis have been fun and people have enjoyed them, but if I stop I'm worried people will stop paying attention, which may be a silly fear.  I have other things I need the time to work on, as long as I publicize those things it s...

Comic Report #85.2 - Over The Mountain

Hello again!  This week I made a bit more progress on this page.  I'm still bogged down with critical do-or-die work on my gamedev job which I am looking to wrap up before the end of this month so apologies for the slow progress on this page.  I've got a minicomic update to share today as well; I only have two more minis to go to hit my target of 100 minicomics, once that is done and once my gamedev helltasks are done I'll be able to work with no limiters, and that will also li...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #37

Hello again!  This week's minicomics batch is a bit of an odd one for reasons you may soon come to understand.  I've got two strips today, although it's more one-and-a-half strips, but it's basically two so you should still have a satisfying read today.  We're getting down to our final minicomics of this run so I've either got to commit to some of the ideas I've had written down or hold my peace until I get more time to come back to these.  Tangentially, I do have a plan f...

Comic Report #85.1 - Planning

Hello again!  I apologize for not having an update last week, but today I hope to show you why that was the case.  I'd mentioned in the previous partial update that I needed to cram a lot of Stuff onto this page to keep from having to spill onto another page and I think the solution I arrived at does the job just how I need it to.  There's a lot more than last time this page was shown so let's take it fresh from the top.

One of the big challenges of planning a dense page ...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #36

Hello again!  This has been a bit of a busy week for me, needing to focus on my gamedev day job work means I haven't made as much progress on the main comic as I'd like. I'll have a more substantial progress shot for next Friday, but for now I did manage to get two new minicomics drawn in between my other obligations.  This week's theme was ideas I've wanted to try for a while but never got to, and since we're in the last run of strips up to 100 it's now or, well... not "never", but...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #35

I've been juggling a lot of gamedev tasks throughout July so I haven't been able to keep up with making more minis as much as I'd like, but thankfully that's what the buffer was there for.  We're down to about a two week buffer now, but the end goal of 100 minis is in sight so I should be able to complete the full run uninterrupted.  Today I have one new mini to share, but I'm thinking if I can do three minis per week I can get up to #099 before my big work commitment really kicks i...

Comic Report #85 - Under Construction

Today I've got a bit of an interesting page to share.  Normally I try to share a sketch phase when it's more or less complete, but given that this is a short week and I have some interesting design problems to solve, I thought I'd share the in-progress shot and talk through my process in how I am laying out the page.  

Sometimes I find myself in this curious situation where I know what I want to convey with a page but it ends up being like a page-and-change worth of space to r...

Comic Report #84.2 - Writing On The Walls

Hello again!  I've got a textless page to share with you real quick.  I'd like to get it lettered and loaded so I'll be thrifty with my posting.

I gotta tell you, I'd dreaded painting that first panel for a while and it turned out to be as bad as I thought. It took me a whole day by itself and render it.  The curving perspective and the overhanging catwalk are one thing but I had to go and reference how I actually painted these newspaper printing machines to try and match...

Comic Report #84.1 - Special Game Demo Surprise

Hello hello!  This has been quite a busy week for me, I'd been given an all-access pass to GDC online this week courtesy of Pixelles Montreal so I've been taking in as much information as possible.  I've gotten some comic work done but a lot of this week was given to pursuing game development.  Oh, also!  As a special bonus, Jason and I have been working hard to put out an open studio build of our game in progress.  It's open to everyone to try so I will post the link...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #34

So while juggling other things this week I managed to get another minicomic finished, meaning this will be a one-mini update.  I can talk a bit about my plans for the minis to help make it more of a substantial update, though, so I'll start out with that.

I'd mentioned before but my plan was to make it to 100 minis before calling it "season one" or something and taking a break.  I like doing these minis but after 91 of them I feel like I'm running dry on ideas that are good an...

Comic Report #84 - Crossing Threads

Hello!  Last week I'd started working on this new page but I didn't get enough done to share with you yet, so this week I have a lot more of the comic done and have moved through the sketch phase into the inked and ready to paint phase.  There is a fair bit to post about, though, so I'll get right to that.

In this current arc of the story I have two major threads that are somewhat intertwining.  The first thread, which I think has become fairly well-anticipated by long-ti...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #33

Hello!  It honestly feels like it's been a full week since my last update but it's currently the 9th and according to the timestamps I put up a new page on the 4th, so this makes sense.  I decided to spend this week making minicomics, since I'd been deprioritizing them to do other things and sorta burned my buffer lower than I'd like.  I did a mini a day for the four days between the 4th and now, which I suppose is why it feels like it's been longer than it actually has.  ...

Comic Report #83.3 - There!

Hello again!  I got a textless page finished and ready for you to read tonight.  I'll be quick with this one since its only 3am and I'd like to get it wrapped and posted without ruining my bedtime.

Normally when I draw pages I go out of my way not to copypaste anything, I feel it makes it more organic and its always worth the effort.  On this page, however, I didn't want to be up all night matching tile positions and scale so I just copied the screen image of the mahjong ...

Comic Report #83.2 - Almost There

Hello again!  This has been a bit of a toasty week so I hope you've gotten through it alright.  I made a bit of progress on both the main comic and I got a whole bunch of game art colorized as well.    This will probably be the last Friday update for this comic page, since I feel like I can get this wrapped up this weekend, or possibly tonight, so we'll see what I can do!

When I was hacking through this page this week I ended up sorta skipping the background on ...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #32

This week I wanted to fit a proper amount of minicomics into my schedule, so I got two of them done around my other work.  I'm creeping up on the end of this run, I figure right around 90 is when I'm gonna pull out my ender ideas.  In the meantime, here's this week's batch of strips:

#085: Here's another strip with the Dinner Boys.  They originated as like this random shot of tow...

Comic Report #83.1 - The Setup

Hello!  I've got a good bit of work to share this week!  Most of it was gamedev work, though, so I'm a bit light in the pockets on main comic progress to compensate.  I've hit a big gamedev goal, though, so I can put more focus on this page for this coming week.  For now, though, a bit about my progress up to today!

Painting might take me the most amount of time but inking is the most meticulous part of my process for me to push through, so having just the inks and f...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #31

Okay so!  I'm slowly making my way to 100 minicomics, and this week I have one to share but I think it's a really funny one so it should carry the value of two or three other minis.  I put some time into making a major advance in my gamedev work which I will me writing about shortly.  Right now, though, I'm going to share this extremely good mini with you.

#084: Dr. Pfeiffer has ...

Comic Report #83 - Passing Notes

Hello again!  Thank you for your patience with last week's report, I've had a fairly busy weekend but I got a couple things accomplished for today that I'm happy to share with you.  I should have three articles in total today: one for the main comic, one for minicomics and one for some exciting gamedev progress news!  For now though let's just jump in with the next main comic page!

So Monday's introduction in the previous page took a few people by surprise, I was happy th...

Bye Week, With Apologies

Hello!  This week was a partial update week, with the new comic page going up the other day. I ended up having an important family obligation this weekend, and I needed to cram some commission artwork in before I become unavailable later tonight, so I regret I haven't had time to make anything shareable for today between the new page and now.  I have another minicomic in the works but it is at its sketch phase at the moment, and rather than crunch it out I'm going to leave it for wh...

Comic Report #82.3 - Oh Man

Hello!  I've got a textless page prepared for you. It's almost 4am so I am gonna keep this one brief, but this is the first fully-painted non-Photoshop page from the whole comic!  Very nice!

I think I really underestimated the backgrounds on this page coming into it.  In other pages I have characters taking up most of the panels and I just had some walls to paint, but on this page it's all in first-person so it's basically all just perspective location shots, and those mi...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #30

I've said before but I'm targeting 100 minicomic before I can settle down with this side project and call that Season One or similar.  I've got a couple more jokes up my sleeve but I also have some other projects I need to focus on, so as we get closer to the 90 range we're coming up on the conclusion of this project.  I think people have been enjoying these strips, as I've had a lot of fun expanding on the comic world in ways I never could with the main comic.  For now, though...

Comic Report #82.2 - Slow & Steady

Hello again!  This week I started work on painting the page, getting used to the new toolset.  I think working in Clip Studio Paint can end up making my art look a bit more fluid than it did in Photoshop, which I'm excited about.  I also think I can get this page finished by Monday, so keep an eye out for that.

Adapting from Photoshop to CSP, I find a lot of my old workflow ports over.  The way I like to work is drawing my inks and then painting in a flat midtone gre...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #29

Since I got my new computer built and running I figured the best way to ease into working on it would be to make some minis.  These are easy to do and use Clip Studio Paint, so it was a good way to get all my settings calibrated.  I don't remember exactly what all my tablet shortcuts were, so my way of figuring it out was to just draw like normal and when I need to do something or bring up a tool I'd see where my fingers just naturally gravitate to and go, aha!  That's my space...

Comic Report #82.1 - Dawn of a New Era

Hello again!  So this week's update is kind of exciting, but this is the first update of a main comic page that hasn't been done in Photoshop.  Last Saturday I put together, Sunday I enjoyed my birthday, and Monday I got an adapter to plug my 11-year-old tablet into the new GPU.  A funny story about that: the tablet I use is a gen 1 Cintiq 21UX, which isn't supported anymore, so when I was backing up files from my old computer to bring to the new one I looked at the very bottom...

Comic Report #82 - A Familiar Face

Hello again, long time no see!  Since I put up the last comic Wednesday night into Thursday morning, I got about 80% of the sketch phase done, which is a bit rougher than I usually like to share, but these partial-phase posts are nice to kinda reveal how I tend to block things in.  For now, though, let's get into today's update!

When I'm plotting comics I try to keep the flow of time in mind in my layouts.  Pages can generally be assumed to be a contained moment of time, ...

Comic Report #81 - Service with a Smile

Hello!  I got this page painted and ready to go before this week is up.  I'm doing up the lettering to get it online quick so I'll keep the post short.

One of the details I want to try to convey during the lettering phase of this comic is the background music playing in the background.  It's carrying on the reference to a mixtape playlist from a few pages back, and I wanted to retain that element in the scene, but I didn't want it to make too much of a mess behind the wor...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #28

Hello again!  This weekend I spent a bit of time laying down not doing anything, but I also spent the rest of the week working on small tasks and minicomics; I'll have more main-comic progress this week now that I'm through the vaccine hangover, but for now I've got a couple little strips to share.  

This week I tried something fun, I asked members of the Dead Winter Discord community (which you can join here: d...

Dead Winter Minicomics Batch #27

So I got some more minis done this week. I was hoping to get a bit more done but I started an idea that involved drawing a lot of characters per-panel and I didn't quite get it there in time, so today I got two for you, they're both fairly goofy so I hope you enjoy.

#074: This one ended up being funny because I started it, then I got the idea for the next one and put it on hold, then wrote and ...

Comic Report #80 - Persuasive Argument

Hello again!  I'm reporting in this week fresh off my vaccine dose, so if this and the following article run a little short please understand.  This week I worked to try to get as much stuff prepared as I could before I expected to feel not-so-great, and the first thing I did was tr to knock out the pencils for the next page.  I'm planning to focus on a bunch of minicomics this week since it's low-impact and I think I can do it while impaired somewhat, but this hospital scene p...

Comic Report #79.2 - Back Again

Oh hello, it's me again.  I've got the textless page up a bit faster than I thought I would.

When I give characters their red effect, I like to make sure there's a white detail as well.  Monday was the first character to have this with his white glasses reflections, and then I added it to Lizzie's bandanna with the Union Jack and, later, her Jolly Roger.  For Alice her white effect is the shine on her hair clips, to kinda give them some gloss and depth.  It's a small...