Becky Hawkins

The next page is coming! (And so is a Japan/Thailand sketchbook!)

Hi patrons,

It's been almost 3 weeks since I got back from Japan, but I'm still finishing up some watercolors and sketches from the trip, on top of my usual workload. Naomi took this picture of me in front of the...5th hotel room we stayed in, in 2.5 weeks? It was quite a whirlwind trip. Naomi and I were traveling with our friend La Carmina, who is a super-cool travel journalist. If you'd like to read a little about the trip, her first blog post is up 2018-10-06 23:09:07 +0000 UTC View Post

Book 1, page 79

Welcome back to SuperButch!

I took a few weeks off for a trip to Japan and Thailand--there will be a sketchbook PDF as soon as I get through all the scanning!--but we're planning to return to our weekly schedule.

Book One, Page 78

Barry here. Becky is super-busy, but she still managed to get this page done.

I'm especially fond of the last panel, which is the result of a bit of the back-and-forthing that leads to most of my favorite SuperButch panels. This is also the sort of angle - requiring a great deal of comfort with both perspective and with drawing buildings - that it's fun for me to write for Becky to draw, because I know she's much better at drawing that stuff than I am. :-)

Becky is just about to leave fo...

Book 1, Page 77

Becky and I both want to apologize for the less frequent updates lately. We feel bad about it and want to get back to weekly updates; unfortunately, that doesn't look likely to happen in August. 

Becky has been very busy with unavoidable life stuff, and with work that isn't as fun as SuperButch but does earn a living. And this month, she has an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime chance to take a trip to Japan! All of these things mean less time for SuperButch. But none of this is permanent, so w...

Book 1, Page 76

Becky: Oh good, after so many crowd scenes, here's an uncomplicated page to draw!
Also Becky: I must dig through last year's photos from Olympia and Seattle in order to create the ultimate seedy warehouse district!

PS Do you recognize Ruth from First Glance? :)

Book 1, Page 75

Becky here! The staging in Panel 4 was inspired by an ill-fated attempt to see what time it was while holding an open bottle of essential oil. :)

Book 1, Page 74

Three cheers for Barry's flamboyant word balloons!

Book 1, Page 73

Book 1, Page 72

Barry here! I really like this page. Panel 3, in particular, is one of my favorite panels in SuperButch so far - I just love Becky's drawing of Mona laughing. (I did call for that in the script, but it came out so much better than what was in my mind!) And I also love the wonderful depth of field that Becky works into that panel.

Thanks, as always, for supporting Becky as she draws SuperButch! It would be so hard to do a huge project like SuperButch without support from readers. It means a lot...

Book 1, Pages 70-71

Victory!
Thanks for your patience!
Weekly updates will resume shortly!
Good night!

The light at the end of the tunnel

Hi everyone! Becky here. I'm done with the double-page building-cutaway crowd scene!

I learned something about my process, too. Lately I'd been doing 99% of my artistic decision-making in the digital phase. By the time I was using actual pens on actual paper, I could focus on making expressive lines, rather than "what should this character's shoes look like."

I started to work on this 2-page spread the week before VanCAF, and was worried about falling behind schedule. I decided to print ...

Chugging along...

Hey everyone! Becky here. Barry and I had a great time at VanCAF last weekend, but as you can see, international comic conventions and finishing double-page-spread crowd scenes don't mix!

There were so many cute moments at VanCAF: watching people gift a copy of SuperButch to their friend/partner/sibling/person who was eyeing our table; sitting in the park with other cartoonists on Saturday evening, telling convention horror stories; stepping outside for a few minutes to watch a community brass...

Process - Pages 70 and 71

Hi, folks, Barry here! 

No new page this week, because pages 70 and 71 are a double-page spread - and it's a doozy, since I gave poor Becky about a zillion figures to draw. We'll post both pages together next week.

But to tide you over until next week, here are Becky's pencils for those two pages. (In the book, this will be printed sideways, and readers will have to turn the book 90 degrees to read it!)

Incidentally, Ruth and Babe are loosely based on two real-life women - 2018-05-18 08:50:27 +0000 UTC View Post

Book 1, Page 69

Barry here. 

As you may know, Becky does the art, and I do the lettering.  

I enjoy lettering, actually - it's an interesting challenge. 

Trying to place balloons and panels in a way that both makes readers naturally read the balloons in the right order (which is sometimes trickier than you'd think), plus trying to make the lettering placement attractive to the eye, plus trying to make the lettering placement carry the words with the right "rhythm." 

But a...

Book 1, Page 68

Book 1, Page 67

Hello again! Becky here. In between putting my watercolors up at World Cup Coffee, going to Denver for a comic convention, and finding a new housemate, I talked with Barry about SuperButch on a local radio show, "Words and Pictures" (listen here!)

After a couple of hectic weeks, we should be winding back up to our usual Tuesday-updating sch...

Book 1, Page 66

Book 1, Page 65

Hey! Barry here.

Becky showed you my scribbled layout for this page in the previous post. 

I should mention, though, that that isn't our typical procedure. More typically, I include some vague suggestions in the script - "close up shot of Lily" or something - and then Becky will make a layout incorporating my suggestions... or not, if she feels like going in a different direction. Then she shows me the layout, and that's my chance to make suggestions.

More often than not, I do...

Page 65 Process

Book 1, Page 64

Kansas is saying "Turtle Shell Hotel...Yes, there are rooms available...by the day or by the week..."  (She works in Turtle City's Japantown. Thank you to Naomi for the translation--that's so cool!)

Book 1, sneaking backwards for a sec

Hi patrons!

We took advantage of a momentary lapse in suspense in order to finish this page, which belongs in Issue Two (about 12 pages back). When you're writing a comic script, you need to think about where the page turns will be. They can add to the dramatic tension, or give away a huge visual surprise if you're not careful. At some point, Barry and I realized that SuperButch's big reveal would appear on a right-hand page, in print. Readers would get a glimpse of SuperButch before Mona got ...

Book 1, Page 63

Whew! I am happy with how that last panel turned out. I copied the doors and the wood moulding from some photos I took in Salem last summer. (Did I tell you about that comics road trip? I drove; Barry gave a talk/demo at the library; I wandered around photographing old buildings; and then we found the BEST cake!)

Speaking of photo reference, I had to google "What does smoking look like" SO many times in the last few weeks! I was almost ready to ink panel 5 when I realized I'd drawn Gloria Wins...

Book 1, Page 62

Book 1, Page 61

Hi Patrons! Barry here. Page 61.

In my original script, I had Lillian saying "Let's cut the bullcrap." But "bullcrap" clanged on Becky's ear, so she went searching for expressions meaning B.S., and found "banana oil." We both instantly loved that expression. A quick research dive to make sure the expression existed in the 1940s (it did! It originated in flapper culture in the 1920s), and the script was changed.

Also, I've both drawn my own comics, and done this comic with Becky handling ...

Meanwhile, far from Turtle City...

Hi patrons! This week's page is going to go up Wednesday, because I spent the weekend working on my first cartoon for The Nib!

The idea for this comic started--as SO few good things do--with a Facebook argument. Barry suggested I pitch the cartoon to The Nib, and within a week, I was sending in the final artwork!

This cartoon was made possible by having more "art days" away from my desk job, and having the brain-space to branch out and try new things. Thanks to all of you, I've recently ...

Book 1, Page 60

(You might have noticed we skipped a page number since last week. You didn't miss a page; we're just doing some re-numbering for future page-turn purposes when we print the comic on paper I'll explain later thanks again for supporting SuperButch!)

Book 1, Page 58

I won't say there's a reason this week's SuperButch update is late, but there is a layer group in the Photoshop file called "page layout fourth attempt." It was definitely a combined Becky-and-Barry effort!

Book 1, Page 57

This page involved a late-night India ink spill and an "oops where's the file" moment, so in this case I hope you have much more fun reading this page than I had making it! XD

Guess what: If you're a softball-level patron or higher, I'm working on a PDF of sketchbook pages to show you.

And to every Patron, we sincerely thank you--Your January pledges covered the table fee for FlameCon in Brooklyn in August! I've heard it's...

Book 1, Page 56

Welcome to Issue Three!

Issue 2 Cover!

Hey everyone. Becky here. We are super-proud to give you the first peek at the cover image for Issue Two! (You may recognize it as an image from page 54, but redrawn with SEVERAL rounds of artistic feedback from Barry. It was a bit frustrating at the time, but definitely worth it!) Now we just have to look back through pages 26-55, comb them for bloopers, and put the fancy printer at my day job to good use.

We'll have the SuperButch issues available online, as soon as time and website-tweaks p...