Mar 29
Just for fun! 
Snoopy
Good practice.
Schulz developed a fast stroke that is hard to replicate without lots of practice. For him over time, drawing Peanuts became like writing shorthand.
It used to be that comics had really great colors. Big primary colors printed with halftone dots. A lot of the times the color dots were off register and would bleed outside the lines. That was so cool! In fact my wife and I agree that it made the comic better when the color was off register like that!
Nowadays I’ve noticed that colors are no longer printed that way. In fact colors lay real flat on the page now and seem to look dull in some cases. For instance this Peanuts Sunday cartoon just looks flat and lifeless.
© Universal Press
I did find something cool though. It seems that McDonalds still uses the old halftone print jobs on their Happy Meal bags! I think they look great by the way and so much more dynamic than that poor Peanuts strip. Good job McDonalds, I hope they keep it up!
© Mc Donalds
I would love to print an ICECUBES comic book this way!
© Mc Donlads
In this picture ICECUBES is definitely in good company! Although the comparison is clearly unfair… for them.
I just thought it was interesting to see how the first ICECUBES book was published compared to their first books.
Lucky you, unlike those other hard to find books, ICECUBES the comic strip Vol. 1 is still available! So why don’t you get your very own copy of the first ICECUBES book? Available exclusively on the Amazon Kindle. Just go to Amazon.com and type ICECUBES, or simply click here. You can also download it to your iPhone and PC!
Great news, the second book ICECUBES the comic strip Vol. 2 is coming out soon!
When drawing on the outer edge of your panel, it’s important to extend the drawing as if you were drawing the whole character. Even if parts will get cut off it is a good idea to draw them to get a feeling for where things are supposed to fall. For example in this drawing, Peckinpaw is off to the side and his shoulder is mostly cut off even though I drew the shoulder. Without the shoulder I wouldn’t know where to put his arms and hands. Also note that his left arm is drawn even though I won’t see it because of the book in front of it. That way I know exactly where to put his fingers.
I call this ‘backdrawing’ or drawing in the round.
click for larger image
