Archive for ‘Blog’
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I know that we seem to have a tradition of pulling old villains back, but Valery is long and gone. She’s so gone that Tony never actually wrote her into the script. She’s so gone that Josh never got around to drawing her. She’s so gone she left before our comic began. That’s how gone she is.
So click to see the process enlarged… you won’t be disappointed.
As always more to come! I know, exciting stuff.
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Don’t ya love how Lenny could possibly take several brutal rounds of machine gun fury just to get taken down by his wife? Of course, you do… or else you wouldn’t have come back to our site to continually read the madness of past strips!
That being said, the images are ready for ya! And ready for you to click to enlarge them.
Still plenty of behind-the-scenes sorta sketches to come. So come back later, I super-duper swear there’s more to come.
So here are some roughs of the strip from this week, where Busy Bee and King Pin try and take it to Tuna. And see how amazingly successful they were? Yup… amazingly. The way we work is simple: Tony writes up a buncha strips way way way ahead of time, Josh draws them week to week, and Tony mixes it all together in Adobe Illustrator. Ta da!
Okay, so it’s not revolutionary or anything but still. Well, so much for explanations… here’s what you want: PICTURES!!
Oh right, click on them to make it larger. And more to come, as you’d expect.
In the vein of the last art post, here’s another 2-image progression for you to chew on from the strip “Tuna Surprises Valery.” I’m not sure if anyone out there caught it, but Josh is a sentimental kind of guy who wanted this panel to be reminiscent of the first strip where we introduced Valery the Weasel, “Lenny’s Wife.“ Check out that strip’s last panel to get an idea of how Valery’s style of manipulation leads to her ultimately downfall. Who said you couldn’t have Shakespearean tragedy in an online comic? Certainly not G.W.F. Hegel, that’s for sure. Anyway, click the images for larger versions!
And more comin’!
I’m really glad Josh sent these images along because you can really see his work progression: how he starts to develop the structure for images, solidifies those quick strokes and scribbles into details, and ultimately finalizes those details to the point where they can be inked. Not much to pontificate on this time around, the images really do speak for themselves… just watch as the line work gets cleaner and cleaner and Tuna gets more and more accusatory. You remember the strip “Tuna Surprises Valery,” don’tcha? (as usual, click on the images for a larger version)
More to come!
Here are a few pretty pictures of Malta and Pam matching wits in Tuna’s office from the strip Back At the Office. This is the first time these two characters have interacted with each other, and its always exciting to find an opportunity for characters to interact with Tuna’s trusty secretary Pamela. We get the impression that she actually allocates Tuna’s money to him in an expense account or something, mostly to spend on drinks around town. She can write them off later under Food/Entertainment in their business taxes. After reporting nonemployee compensation on their Form 1040, Schedule C, line 1, she can just move down to line 24a and report his travel expenses in full, then to line 24b and deduct 50% of the amount spent by Tuna on drinks, food, etc. In this way, it’s smart that Tuna keeps a tab at The 4/4 Standard and Sharky’s Steak & Stein: there’s no way Tuna would remember to carry and return receipts for his purchases, and Pamela can use those records to keep a monthly average running for his expenses, then adjust and reallocate his accounts quarterly, as required.
So uh… yeah. Here are the sketches…
More to come, of course.
Some really rough sketches from the strip Dig it! that we published a few weeks past to give you an idea of how Josh comes up with the elements of the strip. Writing dialog for Dead Beat was really fun, like putting together a puzzle: you had to think about what he was trying to convey to Tuna and further the story along, write it in the way a beatnik would’ve said it, then add as many death and/or zombie references in there as possible. Much later, Josh and I discovered that he was–in some ways–a meta-gimmicked villain, because outside of the fusion of beatnik/zombie/deadbeat dad we developed for him, he had already been beaten by Tuna and now just spends his time lazing around in jail.
We overthink these things. And yes, we know. Anyway, enough deliberation… click on any of the images for a massively massive version:
More more more to come!
Here, after my bit of explanatory prose, are some awesome sketches of the strip “Dig It!” and Tuna’s first steps in jail to meet my personal favorite villain, Dead Beat. In case you haven’t caught all of the gimmicks associated with Dead Beat, they are manyfold that reveal themselves throughout every strip he’s been in. Yes, we’re needlessly complicated enough to do that to you.
I always thought that the hand pose that Dead Beat used in the above panel was funny, sorta like he was in the middle of a bad slam poetry session.
Plenty more to come, guys and gals so be sure to sign up for the RSS!
Here are a few more sketches of the development of this recent strip, lots of blue lining, black lining, penciling, inking, sharpie-ing, drawing on sketch books, napkins, random pieces of paper and frenetically on whatever’s available whenever the mood hits Josh. We’ve thought up stuff for Tuna in cars, on trains, in theaters, in restaurants, walking around, in the cold, at night, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the park, in the middle of the night… the list is endless, and so are the sketches. Exactly why we’re going to keep posting. Click on any of them for a much larger version, guys and gals… and enjoy!
Okay, we were talking the other day about just how much stuff Josh has in his bag of either concept sketches, failed panels, or inks that would otherwise get thrown into the digital incinerator if we didn’t put them somewhere, so we thought “why not spend the downtime while developing the new strips to display some of the artwork?” Naturally, it was the greatest idea we’ve each had in a long time (and Tuna was the last one, although that was more or less 2 years ago… or something).
Anyway, here are some sketches of Josh slowly but surely developing Soul Food! Click any of the images for a much larger version!
Of course, plenty more coming… but yeah, also the strip. So stay tuned! Or attentive to the site/blog/e-comic.