Der-shing Helmer

MI Stuff- Dom

This won't be in the comic I don't think (there might be an allusion in Ch 4) but, yeah, Mike's... roommate. Dom is a grad student at the same university where Mike was an adjunct professor for a while. Mike is horrifically embarrassed to be seen with him, not just because of the 10+ year age difference but because Dom partakes in the liberal arts. They had a weird live-in arrangement for about 3 years, involving both money and casual sex, until Mike fired him. Firing is a lot easier than...

MI310 Preview/ Process notes

Just a little preview of tomorrow's update~ Colors are not final at all, more like me doing my thing trying to find the final balance.

Generally for "new" colors (like, I just made a scene change) I will make an image in my head that I can't exactly match irl, but I will generally have enough info to know when I'm off. Then I will do a hellish underpainting (above) and adjust it until it is there enough. For example here I can tell it's way too saturated, not yellow accented enough,...

Thank you/ Shoptalk- The Spreadsheet of Madness

Just a mid-month thank you and general reminder that I sent out all of the $10+ Patron emails just now. Usually this gets done within the first week of the month... I wanted to thank you again for your patience this month as I have been spending a good 3-4 hours a day since March 1st doing the move and some necessary physical renovations to the place. All commissions and such will be fulfilled on time, but I dislike being so off-schedule so I am just calling myself out here, haha...

A...

While I'm here

From early 2014, before I had launched/ relaunched anything lol.

(The other hard part of having a comic on hiatus, regardless of the reason, is that fans will get very angry if they see you working on anything else. You would not believe how many angry emails I got every week, reminding me of what an asshole I was, ay yi yi)

TM Stuff- how to rewrite your entire goddamn chapter and not kill yourself

This is a post-mortem of Chapter 4, mostly a technical discussion on the difficulties of doing a complete rewrite spread out over the course of several years. It's probably going to be pretty long. I will also be straight-up explaining the plot points, which some people may not like since it is a bit of a direct approach, but if you don't mind it then lets go~

My general process for comics is: nebulous idea --> general notion of plot temperature/ info I want to share -...

TM Stuff: Chapter 2 illustrations

Big versions under the download

These were some illustrations I've just been sitting on for a few years, I'm not sure I've shared them at larger size before. In lieu of a fresh wallpaper this month (I am in a heavy time crunch due to recent move/ renovations and trying to focus on updating), I'm sharing these high-res images instead. I still really like them! Just have no other place for them to go.

I have some from Chapter 1 which I can share later with the Ch 4 recap stuff,...

TM Stuff: Worldbuilding/ History and People

Rightclick for readable version.

Since this background info is still fairly valid, no point in not sharing it! These were originally from a thing that I was going to do but then I did not do. The same info is in the Meekipedia but it's easier to read here, I think.

Gonna post some unused Chapter 2 illustrations in a second.

Thank you for your support!

Hi everyone,

Happy March :] I am imposing on your inbox to say thank you so much for reading and supporting my work. Last month you funded 11/10 comic updates (extra comics, woo), and thanks to hitting the next milestone, I'll be aiming for 13/12 for this one (though 14 would be nicer)!

What do we have in store for Patrons this month? Well... first, Chapter 5 of The Meek will be launching sometime mid-month. I'll be posting a recap of events since it has been several years si...

Meek Stuff- Chapter 5 preview

Just a small preview/ mockup of the next Meek chapter cover. Compositionally the general rule is to avoid centering stuff but... fuck it~

MI Stuff- ...

Sometimes I think "I have the best readers," but then someone comments like this and it all goes down the drain

February 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

TM Ch4: original thumbs (full PDF)

Here are the original "thumbnails" (they are not actually thumbnails) (they were blue/ mechanical pencil sketches on halves of 8x11 paper) for the chapter, done back in 2007. ALMOST TEN YEARS AGO, scream. This was one of my least favorite chapters, which I realized pretty much halfway through. I hated the new characters in this chapter, I hated the overly slapstick writing and overload of exposition, there was an unnecessary baby, the ending was flat as hell, etc. All of the elements I wanted we...

SiH- development stuff

Something a little different... some turnarounds I did for a future reboot of Snowball (the first two issues of which, btw, were unlocked by Patrons and are available here (v1) and here (v2). 2 years ago I was deciding between working on this project or working on a different one, and I ended up going with the second one, which is Mare Intern...

TM Ch1 bonus comic

PDF to download is attached!

Whew! The past two days have been crazy... got sick, ran around like crazy trying to wrestle a new living place in our very competitive area (success), and most importantly, completely forgot to upload this yesterday so I am doing it now hahaaasdlkfa;

Anyway, this was part of the bonus material in an ancient printing of Chapter 1. It's meant to foreshadow some stuff in Chapter 10 (but it's since been rewritten to Chapter 7 so you'll be seeing it s...

Happy depressing Valentines Day

iTried.jpg

TM441 Preview

Still workin' on this, but here's a stealth mountain* for you

MI Stuff- Development pt 2

Development pt 1 is here

Oh boy.

Well you can right click for a bigger version of this image. Let me just say, this is probably the most difficult character design I have ever done in my life, and it's coupled with one of the larger rewrites I've ever done as well. All of these images are from 2014... the scene was:  I had been self-employed for about 4 months, had just turned down a (frankly) shit...

Thank you for your support!

Hi guys,

Just want to say thank you for your support in Jan (and all those other non-Jan months too)!

I'm going to start doing these check-ins addressed to all Patrons at the start of the month, just to keep you informed and also to share commissions! Since I keep forgetting to do that most months. Posted above are some commissions from Jan that I had permission to share publicly :]

Second, you may have noticed the schedule slipped a bit last month :[__] I think I m...

MI Stuff- Old wallpaper

I totally forgot about this, I drew it in early 2014 while getting in the mood to set the visual style. It was also pointless as a wallpaper since it was the first piece of "finished" MI art I had made, and it had no context to anyone but me XD I'm amused to see that Mike hadn't lost his eyebrows yet, haha... anyways, I still kinda like it.

Hi

It's newFriend (and me trying out some new brushes, haha). The "boomerang" part at the top of the crest is... inflatable? I'm trying to think of a similar structure in extant animals, but... aliens... haha. Anyway, it's a social signal, in the way that our facial expressions are to other humans. Fully engorged usually means interest, attentiveness, lack of guile, etc. Here it's shown "deflated," which around other individuals has a meaning too, but by itself doesn't really mean anything (sort of...

January 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

TM437 Walkthrough/ shoptalk

Thought I'd do a little walkthrough of my typical process for scenes like this...

First step is to always get your head straight for what you want your colors/ panel to communicate. This will depend on a lot of stuff, such as personal style, your comic's defined style (for example I don't use things like speedlines or emotional textures on TM so those are non-options), etc. You'll also want to figure out what you want to push in a technical way, and plan for it... for examp...

TM Thumbnail Preview/ shoptalk

I don't even know how many times I've written and rewritten this chapter... I'm looking forward to sharing the PDF of the original version so you can see how much it has changed!

Here is the sort of stuff I think about when I'm doing my thumbnails (a subject I will never shut up about since it is the most important part of the process)

• paneling is tied to pacing: the faster your eyes read through panels, the faster the pacing will feel. This is also impacted by the amount of...
  2016-01-18 07:24:17 +0000 UTC View Post

Shoptalk- Brush organization in Photoshop

Sorry for posting so much! But thought I'd share a little mini-project I had from last week, which was to better manage my brush presets in Photoshop. Ever since I did this my life has been much less stressful, haha...

If you're like me, you're picking up brushes from all around the internet (one of my favorite sources is Eyecager's curated free brush page, DigitalBrushes). If you're also like me, you have a ton of b...

MI Stuff- Interlude 2 and other notes

WELL

Here's an assortment of stuff related to Interlude 2, some of it is from early 2014! So weird to think that was almost 2 years ago. And some of it is from late 2015, like, 2 days before I needed to draw it in the comic lol. Some stuff:

• Mike's room: I was surprised by how much readers picked up on, to be honest. Not just the stuff that was there, but the stuff that wasn't there. You can see my notes in the pic, I suppose... I left this drawing until about the day before ...
  2016-01-11 09:10:42 +0000 UTC View Post

Smallish update/ TM435 Prev

Was gonna post a larger "wow it is 2016" sort of post, but that kind of deflated... I try to keep my personal life off the radar in the spirit of Nobody Likes A Whiner, but lately have been dealing with some side effects from a new pill I'm taking (to replace the infamous one that gave me lupus for 2 months). Seems like every time I try to correct one problem, I get a new one in it's place. It's supposed to level out at some point but I'm not sure when, and as usual I'm getting punched right in ...

Dags Wallpaper .PSD

My giant horrible sloppy file attached for you guys, haha XD

Just an explanation of the process: I was using this tutorial as a base for my fur rendering, and some other notes I read here and there about how to approach textures in general. When doing more involved stuff like this, it helps to do a silhouette first, do some base ...

Dagre Wallpaper~

Hi guys,

Here's the new wallpaper, all zipped up for you in a variety of sizes :] I've been brushing up (ha) on my brushes and wanted to try fur rendering; not sure if I'm quite where I want to be yet, but it's definitely better than I was doing before.

And, as usual, the .psd is up for $5 patrons if you like looking at sort of thing!

I'll be updating Patreon soon with a New Year announcement...

December 2015 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

MI Stuff- ??

One of the first sketches when I was imagining the new character's reveal. This is probably the character I have done the most iterations of in my life, ever. Originally the silhouette was supposed to pull itself out of a series of jammed-together rocks like a tooth falling out of a mouth, but over the course of a year and a half that scene was rewritten many times to the more simple silhouette tracking from a distance (which, as you may have noticed, is a recurring/ favorite trope of mine, and ...