What a journey it has been so far in getting the comic out each month. When I started the comic, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do in terms of producing the comic. The writing wasn't a concern, but how I was going to draw it was a bit of a problem.
At the time I launched the comic in April of 2018, I had a Dell Inspiron Computer from 2008 running Windows Vista and just a mouse (no stylus), but I figured that was what I had to work with, so I better make it work; and I did...for the most part.
Through out my comic, issues 1 to 29, they were always a mix of digital and hand drawn. For the first few issues I did a pencil on paper breakdown and inked and colored it using the ArcSoft PhotoStudio program and lettered it with that program as well.
But I soon learned that I had a hard time getting things the way I wanted them inking digitally, so starting with issue # 5, I did something different. I just used a black ink ball point Bic pen and drew the issue directly on paper and then fixed and edited it digitally. However, there were a few problems with that, sometimes the ink wasn't spread evenly and that was very prone to smudges or spots on the paper and I was spending too much time correcting those errors. I only did this for numbers 5 and 6.
Starting with issue 7 through 29, I penciled them on paper and then inked them on paper was well, using Sharpie Ultra Fine point markers, sometimes in later issues I would use Razor Point markers from Pilot, these were my markers of choice for inking when I used to do posters for my brother years ago.
Starting with issue # 8, through now I started doing the lettering using the PhotoScape program.
Things went along quite nicely for several years, but then we got to early May of 2021 and the monitor on my old laptop stopped working. Luckily for me it has a port where I could hook up another monitor and I was able to keep working, but I knew my time with that laptop would be ending soon.
In early June 2021 my laptop/monitor set up didn't want to work. I came home on a Friday night ready to finish my work on issue # 29, but I couldn't do anything. After about 45 minutes of messing with it, I was able to get it working, but knew that was it. I ordered new Dell Inspiron computer and then spent the weekend setting it up. (I did end up finishing # 29 on the old laptop)
I had to make quite a few adjustments to be able to do what I wanted, but knew also that I needed to evolve with my comic and decided to go completely digital. I ordered an M708 Graphics Tablet from Ugee and I downloaded the Kitra art program and started to learn that. Here's the first thing I created on there:
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