#truenuffcomic

The realities of being a dad are setting in. The daily draw goal has turned back into “draw when I can” but I do think the initial drawing everyday has put drawing back in the front of my mind - really enjoying it when I get a chance to draw.

All dadness aside there have been a few new TrueNuff Comic strips over the last little while. I created a Patreon campaign for anyone who wants to support the comic and get cool perks. You can read more about it at TrueNuff Blog. If you like the comic strips get on the TN Comic Mailing List to have new comics sent to you auto-magically.

J.Rai & I have been making new TrueNuff Radio podcast episodes every 1-2 weeks on our lunch hours if you want to listen to something weird. Since the volume is a faster pace then TrueNuff.tv I won’t be reblogging each episode here so head over to the TN Radio site and subscribe somehow if you want to stay updated.

...and as always there are new TrueNuff.tv sketches comedy videos in development and we will be launching a Patreon campaign in the near future for that project too.

I don’t want to jinx it but we’re 2 weeks into the new year and I’ve managed to draw every day. Some days more than others but a draw’s a draw. I’ve uploaded my daily draws to a new Tumblr that chronicles my drawing adventure (there may be TrueNuff Comic visual spoilers, sorry - I’m not sorry).

My wife and I had a son a month ago and we also are currently in the middle of moving from an apartment to a townhouse so we have been hella busy but I’m still finding time to draw. Turns out we all just do whatever we want to do. If you find time to watch TV erryday you can find time to do other stuff too like exercise or crush goals you just need to get out there and fucking do it.

The only new year resolution-ish thing I want to do in 2016 is to draw everyday.

I picked the goal of “draw everyday” bcuz it's a different goal from “make stuff everyday”. I’m already pretty okay at making stuff regularly. I make stuff for fun, for a living and heck I even made a baby last year - making stuff is one of my core things and I won’t stop but I have fallen off the drawing bandwagon.

I used to keep yearly sketch books and while I was packing my stuff up to move looked at the last one I drew in and it was dated 2005. That’s over 10 years of not drawing regularly and studying to get better. I have drawn a few cartoons and TrueNuff comics in the last decade but a sketch along with a daily drawing habit book puts you on a pace to see real improvements and I feel like I need to get back to it.

So the only goal for 2016 is to draw every day. It can be a comic strip, it can be a random sketch on paper, or it could even be finger drawing on an iPad. I don’t give a shit as long as I draw every fucking day.

I might document the daily drawing at Deviant Art but I also might not may just spam them up on this Tumblr, we’ll see.

Due to life stuff I don’t always have the luxury to throw down a solid work session. Sometimes I only get a half hour here and there to work on stuff. Recently I've been picking away at TrueNuff Comic strips in my mornings before work and given the production nature of a comic strip it lends itself well to working in chunks.

Here's last week’s TrueNuff Comic strip in it’s various phases of drawing:

Rough Sketch - I work out roughly where shit goes. I’ll cut and move dialog around if a panel is too text heavy. The writers and I can’t always imagine how the text gets laid while we’re writing and I don’t really want to write that way anyway.

Pencils - I used to draw the pencils on paper with actual pencil but now it's all done virtually by drawing on a Wacom tablet with Photsohop. I try to work out details here. I'll also sketch the background on a separate layer (not shown).

Inks - I try to throw down smooth lines in Photoshop using a Wacom drawing tablet. I still need lots of practice here. I need to focus on the pressure and line width and just need more practice basically. Again I used to do this inking step on paper but now it's just done with the Wacom/Photoshop. Sometimes I cheat and draw with shapes in Photoshop if the scene calls for it - vectors are just a modern ruler, dammit!

Colors - I color the comic in Photoshop with flat colors and use the dodge & burn tools for some soft shading. I want to step up my coloring skills but right now this way is “cheap” to produce and that seems to be important with something regular like a webcomic.

You can see the final comic at the site and if you’re interested in more behind-the-scenes TrueNuff Comic stuff check out the Behind the Panels sub-forum.