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Description
I wanted to create a comic for a message board I go to. Its rival site had somebody making a comic for it, so it made sense to do so. I decided to use the comic to make fun of certain happenings at the site, and decided that a weekly feature would be to make fun of the site's news (though news was a bit more frequent back then).

So, I got started. I first went and got some reference for Optimus Prime (the avatar of the current head-of-site), thought up a joke relating to the news, and it was time to draw. I'd say the easiest part was drawing the panel boxes. Everything else was a huge pain. I lack consistancy, and I can't draw my avatar from a direct frontal view. Drawing it took waaaay longer than I would've ever thought. I was pretty much ready to give up by the time I finished sketching it.

But I finished that part, and then came the next fun part: coloring it. I'm sure I had my colored pencils at this time, but previous experience with a scanner left me a bit weary of scanning a picture colored with pencils (the coloring was off). My only other choice was coloring it on the computer. Unfortunately, the only art program I had on the computer was MS Paint. In order to properly fill in the colors and not have a messy outline, I painstakingly traced the outlines with Paint's pencil option, and proceeded to fill in the rest with the proper colors. Big mistake on my part, since the Fill option only works on single colors and not slight variations, which is how the picture was scanned. It took a while before I figured out that saving it as a black and white picture eliminated all color except black, and saving it back as a color picture would enable me to fill in the colors a lot easily.

In the end, I vowed never to create art like that again. And though I had a few later comics planned for the site, I was very hesitant about doing them since the art took so long (I believe it took the majority of my weekend). The people at the site said I'd lose interest in making the comic, and I said that even if I did, I'd still have fun in the process. I was wrong. I grew uninterested, and I hated it the whole time. For a few days I was thinking about going ahead with another comic, even asking other people what they'd want to look like, but in the end, I just gave up on the idea. I'd really like to attempt a webcomic again, but I doubt I'll ever have the patience to try.

I suppose the worst part is that I wound up saving it as a .jpg image, which really ruined the picture more than it already was. A real shame, too, 'cause aside from the ugly frontal shot of my dragon, I think the comic is pretty decent. If it weren't for the artifacting, I might've actually considered this for the Gallery. I like the overall joke, and I like the Optimuses and shots of my dragon looking to the side.

A couple FYIs, as head-of-site, "Valk" has the power to ban people, which is what's happening in the 7th panel. The crime would be being one of the piraters of RPG Maker 2000. (Though I don't think the real-life Valk would be so quick to ban a person for that.) Also, the face of the pirater is the same joke face I drew that was afraid of what I'd draw it as. He was to be a sortof mascot for the comic. But of course, none of that ever came to pass.

The comic wound up getting mixed reviews. Some liked it, some thought I needed someone else to do the jokes, some thought I needed someone else to do the art. But this was my comic, and I was going to be the one to do it. Except I gave up, but if I didn't give up, I would've been the one to do it. Oh, and yes, the whole thing was entirely my idea.

EDIT: I used Gimp to fix mose of the cruddiness that saving this as a .jpg did to it. The blue is still a little distorted, on account that it messed with the lineart too much for me to deal with. There's still a bit of ugliness around some of the lineart, but overall it's a major improvement. The original version of the pic can still be found here in all its not goodness: [link]

Description
I wanted to create a comic for a message board I go to. Its rival site had somebody making a comic for it, so it made sense to do so. I decided to use the comic to make fun of certain happenings at the site, and decided that a weekly feature would be to make fun of the site's news (though news was a bit more frequent back then).

So, I got started. I first went and got some reference for Optimus Prime (the avatar of the current head-of-site), thought up a joke relating to the news, and it was time to draw. I'd say the easiest part was drawing the panel boxes. Everything else was a huge pain. I lack consistancy, and I can't draw my avatar from a direct frontal view. Drawing it took waaaay longer than I would've ever thought. I was pretty much ready to give up by the time I finished sketching it.

But I finished that part, and then came the next fun part: coloring it. I'm sure I had my colored pencils at this time, but previous experience with a scanner left me a bit weary of scanning a picture colored with pencils (the coloring was off). My only other choice was coloring it on the computer. Unfortunately, the only art program I had on the computer was MS Paint. In order to properly fill in the colors and not have a messy outline, I painstakingly traced the outlines with Paint's pencil option, and proceeded to fill in the rest with the proper colors. Big mistake on my part, since the Fill option only works on single colors and not slight variations, which is how the picture was scanned. It took a while before I figured out that saving it as a black and white picture eliminated all color except black, and saving it back as a color picture would enable me to fill in the colors a lot easily.

In the end, I vowed never to create art like that again. And though I had a few later comics planned for the site, I was very hesitant about doing them since the art took so long (I believe it took the majority of my weekend). The people at the site said I'd lose interest in making the comic, and I said that even if I did, I'd still have fun in the process. I was wrong. I grew uninterested, and I hated it the whole time. For a few days I was thinking about going ahead with another comic, even asking other people what they'd want to look like, but in the end, I just gave up on the idea. I'd really like to attempt a webcomic again, but I doubt I'll ever have the patience to try.

I suppose the worst part is that I wound up saving it as a .jpg image, which really ruined the picture more than it already was. A real shame, too, 'cause aside from the ugly frontal shot of my dragon, I think the comic is pretty decent. If it weren't for the artifacting, I might've actually considered this for the Gallery. I like the overall joke, and I like the Optimuses and shots of my dragon looking to the side.

A couple FYIs, as head-of-site, "Valk" has the power to ban people, which is what's happening in the 7th panel. The crime would be being one of the piraters of RPG Maker 2000. (Though I don't think the real-life Valk would be so quick to ban a person for that.) Also, the face of the pirater is the same joke face I drew that was afraid of what I'd draw it as. He was to be a sortof mascot for the comic. But of course, none of that ever came to pass.

The comic wound up getting mixed reviews. Some liked it, some thought I needed someone else to do the jokes, some thought I needed someone else to do the art. But this was my comic, and I was going to be the one to do it. Except I gave up, but if I didn't give up, I would've been the one to do it. Oh, and yes, the whole thing was entirely my idea.

EDIT: I used Gimp to fix mose of the cruddiness that saving this as a .jpg did to it. The blue is still a little distorted, on account that it messed with the lineart too much for me to deal with. There's still a bit of ugliness around some of the lineart, but overall it's a major improvement. The original version of the pic can still be found here in all its not goodness: [link]