How to – Page 7 – ICECUBES the comic strip.

Eggman Sketches.

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Leroy Brown

Sketches from a recent comic featuring Eggman in the shower. I like to do loose sketches beforehand to work out any potential problems with composition or expressions. You can see the finished comic by clicking here.

From Scraps To Scripts.

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Leroy Brown

Writing a comic strip is fun and it can also be challenging. Coming up with new stuff on a constant basis is sometimes tougher than you might think. Charles Shulz said that it was difficult to explain to people that staring out the window in a daze was when he did his hardest work. He also said he had to use every idea that popped into his mind, because of the overwhelming demand of a daily strip.

Ideas occur at any time and rarely are they fully fledged so it’s a good habit to write them down right away. Of course that can happen anywhere and sometimes you don’t have your laptop or even a notepad handy! Here’s proof that I’ll write on anything just to make sure I don’t forget that idea- even if it’s not a great one! 😉

Here’s the finished strip:

Pencil sketches.

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Leroy Brown

Some pencil sketches for strip # 089. Featured in ICECUBES the comic strip Vol. 2 for the Kindle! Be on the lookout! 🙂

see the published strip here

Color matters! Peanuts vs. McDonalds.

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Leroy Brown

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. The colors are drab and dull. Its quite upsetting actually to see a once great comic strip like Peanuts reduced to looking second rate. Whoever colored this did an awful job. But that’s not the only problem. The colors are extremely flat and are perfectly within the lines, how deadening is that? Sometimes too much technology just kills something great.

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!
I would love to print an ICECUBES comic book this way! 🙂

Nooky.

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Leroy Brown

A pencil sketch from last week’s comic strip. I was working out the hand position. Did you know that your thumb faces outwards when you do an overhead backhand? 🙂