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This is gonna be a heavy dialogue page. No complicated backgrounds (yay!). When it comes to these type of pages I often wonder if I should just copy paste the talking heads or redraw a new head for each panel….

Stage 2

Stage 2. It may look like I decided to go with the ol’ cut and paste idea with the talking heads but don’t be fooled. I’m just using the copies as references. The final faces will have alterations to them.

Figure lines. Not final.

Final character inks done. Now to work on backgrounds...

Background lines could be better but feeling lazy today......

Stage one. By the time I sit down in front of my laptop and digital tablet to draw the strip I already have a script written and a rough idea of how many panels are needed. Stage one, shown here, is basically where I draw the panels and rough in where the figures go. I have an idea of the camera angles in my head, but I still need to draw in a perspective grid in most of my panels to help me visualize the backgrounds and to have an idea of where the characters are in the scene. This stage looks like it should be a cakewalk, but in reality I spend a lot of time erasing and redoing stuff, even if its just scribbles and lines.

Stage two. I adjust character positions a bit, and try to get the proportions right in preparation for the next stage. I also try to get the backgrounds in place (the lines don’t have to be perfect yet)

Stage three is where I just focus on the characters and tighten up the lines. I don’t touch the background at all here. The character lines here are still not final (I call this the pencil stage, for reasons of my own). The ink stage is where I lay down the final lines for each figure. That’s where sh*t get’s serious.

Back in the old days when I first started doing webcomics this would be pretty much the second to last stage. The final stage would have just been to add a quick minimalist background and word balloons. The final work was usually pretty crude (by my modern standards) but at least the comic updated at a more frequent schedule. I didn’t start utilizing perspective grids and more refined line work till around 2004, during LoF’s short stint at Graphic Smash. That was when I decided to be a bit more professional with my approach to making comics.

So anyhow, there are still more stages to go before #376 is finished…..

Stage four I continue to just focus on the figures, saving the background for last. It is at this point that I lay what should be the final line work for the characters. To help me focus I remove the background (it’s not permanently deleted. Manga Studio EX, the software I use to digitally draw the comics, allows me to work in layers. The background is a separate layer from the characters and I simply make it invisible during this stage).

Stage five, I finally work on the backgrounds. Depending on the complexity, this can take me 2-3 hours to finish. There have been days it’s taken me longer, and other days where I give up halfway in frustration and leave it for another day because things don’t look right. One of the reasons I save this stage for last is so if I’m lazy and just want to post a strip I’ll find someway of bypassing the background. Word balloons have saved my butt quite a few times (If a strip seems a bit too wordy, it’s probably because I didn’t feel like drawing a part of the background and had to think up useless pieces of dialogue to fill the space).

I usually draw with the figures or word balloons in place so I’m not drawing sections that will later be hidden by the character’s bodies.

After this stage, all that is left are the word balloons and/or sound fx. I won’t post that stage here because it’s basically a finished strip by that point.

The next LoF comic will be posted on Jan 2nd. Some veteran readers might be a bit irked by the direction I take the series in 2012. I shall call it the year of experimentation…

So long Comicgenesis/Keenspace. You were a great friend for many years!

Found out this morning that Mcdonald’s free wifi service blocks out forbez.net (at least here in Canada). I wonder where else my domain is forbidden? And how does Mcdonald’s decide what sites to block out? Forbez.net is relatively new and, to my knowledge, never hosted anything over PG-13. Do they just block out sites they’ve never heard of?

On a semi-unrelated note, some of you who have posted comments here probably noticed that they need to be approved first(once they are approved all future comments by the same poster are approved automatically).

I do this because the site is bombarded by visiting spam-bots and not one day goes by where my inbox isn’t infiltrated by annoying posts like:

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If you browse through the archives you will notice some bookmark links under the comic. This allows one to, well, bookmark the last comic they were viewing so they can continue at a later time. Not really revolutionary… a ton of comics have implemented a similar feature for years. But for LoF it’s unprecedented!!

And yes, I realize the bookmark links look pretty basic. I’ll spruce them up later….

Not just IE but perhaps some other older browsers. I used a ton of newer CSS code to customize the look of this site (and I’m still not done).

Again, if something looks awkward let me know. And don’t be afraid to let me know if I overdid some elements (like the transparency).

Progress update:

- added background space image. Not sure how this looks on bigger monitors, though. Please let me know if it looks messed up.

-added title graphic featuring everyone’s favorite green-skinned mother.