I Played With My Toy’s. The Toy Was A Car.
My Toy Go’s Fast And Fast And Fast And Fast.
I just want to take a minute to thank all you ICECUBES fans for still tuning in after a rather longish hiatus. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new chapter in the adventures of Peckinpaw, Freeze, Eggman, Nooky and the others. For this to work I have made some changes to the format of the strip. Since you are probably watching on a phone, ICECUBES is now in beautiful Vertical Vision©! The website is undergoing some radical changes too. I hope you will like the new experience and if you do, please consider supporting the strip. You can do so by simply clicking on the ads you see on the website. That really helps!
Leroy Brown
When I’m planning out my strips I try to draw the characters in different poses to see which ones work best. It’s a good idea to try things out before drawing the strip and to experiment. Often times I come up with unusual results and that goes into the strip. The funnier the better! 🙂
Be sure to take the poll! This coming week will be the last week. If you want a third comic on Fridays remember to support ‘ICECUBES’ by clicking on our sponsors!
I like how these pencils look. Sometimes the pencils look better than the finished ink job. I hate when that happens! Oh well, you decide.
Notice how I always extend the drawing beyond the panel in order to get a balanced feeling. You can click on the image to get a better look.
The finished comic strip is here.


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. 🙂

Here is a picture of my collection of metal drawing nibs. I have gathered these throughout the years and although I only use a very specific type for drawing and lettering, I like keeping them. The ones I use on the strip are in the little plastic box in the foreground. The techniques I use to draw are very old fashioned to some. Although I do use a tablet for doing commercial work, the plastic ‘sliding’ feeling of drawing on a tablet won’t work for the strip. I like the feel of drawing on paper and inking with nibs.
This is the new cover I did for ComixTalk.com. Go check out the site, lots of great stuff about webcomics. Big thanks to Xaviar Xerexes.
‘Blocking’ just means blocking out how the action gets laid out on the page. In this case I was trying to work out the way Peckinpaw tripped and fell by making the gesture and movement read well in the limited amount of space of the 13″ x 4″ strip. Some artists call this the storyboarding stage.
It’s real important to do this before you start drawing the real strip or else you will be erasing and restarting a lot. I always try to avoid a lot of erasing because it can introduce smudges that are hard to get rid of. It can also mess up the surface of the paper making it harder to ink.
You can see click on the final published strip here.

One thought on “ICECUBES the comic strip #303”
Leroy Brown
Thanks for reading ICECUBES the comic strip! I hope you enjoy the new format. Let me know how it reads on your device. I try real hard to keep the ads PC friendly so let me know if anything is jarring. Please click on the ads if you can or become a subscriber for only $1.