For those readers who just have to know, yes, each of Clive’s Twitter bursts in today’s strip actually are less than the maximum 140 characters. Clive can’t make a move without telling all his cyber-buds about it in agonizing detail. Remind you of any people on Twitter that you know? See you next Tuesday.
A Heroic Gesture
Today’s episode is appropriately titled “A Heroic Gesture” or perhaps it could have been “Watch Out For That Tree!”. But since the latter title belongs to another more famous cartoon aerialist who is also prone to mishaps during flight, I could not use it. Assuming that Clive will eventually get unstuck from his current rotten tree trunk residence, it will be interesting to see if he has better navigational luck in finding Monroe and Bentley. Somehow I doubt it.
I really enjoyed doing this particular strip. It reminded me of Saturday morning TV when I use to watch the Lone Ranger. With a cloud of dust and a hardy hi ho silver away, the daring and resourceful mask rider of the plains raced to the rescue. I picture Clive as being that heroic figure, except that he’s more like Drip-a-long Daffy in that he’s more gesture and less results. See you on Thursday.
Mixed Media
I hope you are enjoying reading Bug Pudding. I get questions about the creative process which usually inspire these behind the scenes blog posts. My current production process is a mix of media. I typically sketch characters and poses on paper with a pencil.
I then scan the various rough sketches into my computer and do my layout work in Sketch Book Pro. It allows me to rework the roughs as required, scale, rotate, flip the drawings and use layers to overlap characters to achieve a desired layout.
Next, I save the layout to a PNG formatted file with a transparent background so that all I see is the line art. I’m then ready to “ink” in Illustrator.
I work in a really large format using as much screen desktop as possible. This is great for getting in all the details. Above is a shot of a single panel that has been inked and digitally colored. The inking and lettering is done in Illustrator, the digital coloring is done in Photoshop and then the final art and text are reassembled as a composite back in Illustrator.
Here is a view of a full strip in its final form prior to being saved to size for publishing on the web site. I hope you enjoyed a brief glimpse at how the Pudding comes to life.