Miss Leech and The Yard, a cozy mystery comic strip, about Inspector Stride, a policeman who only wants to do his job, and Miss Leech, a particularly annoying old woman who sees crime-solving as a competitive sport. (You might call it Miss Marple from Inspector Slack's pov.)
I created this strip in college, for a class. I had so much fun with that assignment, that I did three strips instead of one. And I wrote a bunch of scripts for more comics.
I'll be posting this on Tuesdays, but I haven't decided whether it will be once a month, or twice a month. It's not going to be every week. I don't know if I'll have the energy to come up with a bunch of new scripts while doing everything else.
I'll start this September 4, but first I have to do some tests of the format.
The original format was not blog friendly. It was designed for amateur press magazines printed on letter-sized paper: a 2" by 8" four-panel strip fit nicely in that format. But they don't fit in a blog so well. Even the classic 3-panel newspaper cartoon can be hard to read online -- and they usually require a special comics-oriented layout.
I'm not going to change the blog for the strip, so I'll have to redesign the strip for the blog.
Everything I've already written are four beat jokes, and require four panels. Which is okay, because I think a two by two format will work.
So below is a quick test. Kind of a "blue pencil" sketch...
Yeah, it's ugly.
I'm actually not sure how much I'll clean up the logo -- I'll do some, but I like the sketchiness. But the actual art here is just a quick hand trace of the first cartoon, with different dialog inserted to test a couple of fonts. (Comic Sans, Apple Casual and... I don't remember.)
Cartoon dialog is usually done in all caps, and I used to hand draw it in. I may do that yet, though I will probably fiddle with some other fonts too.
See you in the funny papers.
Progress report for "A Round of Words in 80 Days Meets The Clarion Write-a-Thon"
Sunday Day 28 - Ep29 final, and the artwork for Monday's Episode 25
Monday Day 29 - Wrote but didn't finish anything. (Also did some upcoming blog posts)
Tuesday Day 30 - Eps 8-11; added four earlier chapters to the ebook, which didn't need much editing, so I am tempted to not count it.... but right now I need to count the easy with the hard.
This is my monthly migraine-prone time. I don't necessarily have migraines, but I am slower and groggier this time of month. (But also more excitable and distractable.) Must remember to calculate this into my schedules in future.
I got less than a week to meet the Write-a-thon goals, gotta get a move on!
5 comments:
Absolutely loved the humor, the format, fonts notwithstanding, and the accountability. Draw on!
That's awesome.
I'm going through my own drawing classes right now, to get good enough to put together something. Though that might be years from now.
I can't wait to see what you post.
Thanks! You know, even rough cartooning is fun. I said I wanted to make the serial like a comic strip, well, I guess if I'm going to do that, I might as well do the strip too!
Loved the format, Camille! I don't know where you get all of your energy but just know I so enjoy your blog, always something worth reading. A delight!
Karen
Thanks, Karen!
A lot of the energy comes from the fact that I have been at this for a long long time. (I won't tell you how long ago I took that class, but I will tell you that we were using Press Type letters and peel and stick half-tones on illustration stock.)
So I have a lot of material, (like the Miss Leech stuff) in my trunk. Yes, I'll have to do final drawings on it -- some I don't even have sketches. But I don't have to come up with an idea for the strip each month or anything.
And on Sunday I'll be announcing that I will do a different book for the fall/winter serial after all. And that's a book I've already got done. That will make it easier to throw myself into the other things I need to get done.
It's called leverage! And if my age doesn't give me leverage on anything else, it at least gives me a pile of accumulated stuff to use.
Post a Comment