Alec Longstreth's Blog, page 10

Nine Days at Home

It has been a busy summer for me, with a lot of travel, and it's not over yet! At the end of my three weeks of teaching in San Francisco, Claire and Suzanne joined me and we had a good time doing some of our favorite things in San Francisco and visiting with old friends. Then we headed up to Seattle on a 24-hour train ride (in a sleeper car - something we've always wanted to do!). We spent time with family and attended the wedding of an old family friend, David Engelberg, out on Whidbey Island. It was a lot of fun, but after a month on the road I was eager to finally get home.

While on my trip I finished my 12th sketchbook (shown above). This was the "bulking dummy" that my printer sent me for Basewood - essentially a blank copy of the book. Just like Basewood it had really nice, thick paper which was a dream to draw on, but also like Basewood it was 9"x12" and weighed 3 pounds... I am looking forward to moving on to my next (smaller! lighter!) sketchbook.

Our new home was in a state of half-disarray when we returned. Claire had to move about half of our stuff over to the house (with the help of her family) while I was out of town, so lots of things were still in boxes and our house (built in 1925 with many various additions over the years) has projects aplenty.

I've spent most of the last nine days trying to catch up on my backlog of work whilst also unpacking boxes and trying to tackle small projects around the house. To complicate things, our cat Webby got out of the house for about 24 hours, which was incredibly stressful. Luckily she found her way back home, which was a massive relief. Over the weekend we moved in some furniture that Claire's mom gave us, including an upright piano which I am incredibly excited about.

Tomorrow morning I'm hitting the road again, to attend part one of a wedding celebration for my old pal Aaron Renier up in Vancouver B.C. Part two happens in Wisconsin the weekend after that, which Claire and Suzanne will be attending as well.

That will wrap up my crazy summer... so that my busy fall can begin! I'll be home for five days before heading out to Viborg, Denmark for a week of teaching at The Animation Workshop and then five days after that I head to SPX! Here's hoping I can catch my breath in October. Phew!

Homeowners!?!

Well, this morning Claire and I "bought" a house. More accurately, we gave all our savings and a bunch of our parents' and grandparents' money to an old lady in Texas and we now owe A LOT of money to our credit union. However you look at it, we now have keys that go to a house that we get to live in for many years to come, and that Suzanne will grow up in. It is very exciting.

It was about a six month process trying to convince our credit union that we are "real" people, even though Claire and I both freelance. Once we were finally prequalified, we spent a few weeks searching around Santa Fe with our realtors until we found a house that we really liked. It's closer to downtown than we currently are, so we can hopefully continue living here without a car, and we no longer have to cross the 6-lane traffic of St. Francis Street to get to the grocery store or our P.O. Box or the library, which is a relief.

I like long-term goals, so I'm actually pretty excited to have a 30 year mortgage to chip away at. Also, it's an older house (originally built in 1925, with many various additions) so there are going to be problems with the house as we live in it, but I'm excited about that too. It's stressful, but a good kind of motivating stress.

"Good stress" actually describes this summer pretty well for me. I just spent two weeks in Vermont teaching summer workshops at The Center for Cartoon Studies, we closed on the house today, tomorrow we're going to move most of the big stuff (including my pinball machine - oof!), and then on Sunday I leave for three weeks of teaching for the California College of the Arts MFA in Comics program in San Francisco. Claire and Suzanne will be joining me for the last few days of teaching and then we are all heading up to Seattle for a week to visit my family and for a big wedding - one of three weddings I am attending in August, in various parts of North America. Then in September I'm heading to Denmark for a week of teaching at The Animation Workshop and then a week later I head out to SPX. Things will hopefully start calming down a bit in October...

All of these things are amazing and I am so lucky and privileged to get to work for these great programs, and to travel to all these incredible places, but it is also pretty stressful being away from home (and from Claire and especially from Suzanne) so much this summer. It's crazy that we just bought this house and I'll only get to be in it for a few hours before I take off for a whole month.

All of this is to say I might not update this blog for a while, because I'm going to be pretty busy this summer! I'm active on Twitter and blogging each week for my Isle of Elsi Patrons if you need some more Longstreth in your life. And if any friends are reading this and will be passing through Santa Fe any time soon - drop me a line! It looks like I'm going to be here for a while. :)

Draw Comics Faster

Recently I did an interview over at comicsverse.com that was conducted by Jake Grubman. In it, I talk a lot about how I'm trying to be "ruthlessly efficient" in my cartooning, ever since I finished Basewood. "Draw Comics Faster" has been sort of like my second motto (next to "Draw Comics EVERY Day") based on the great drawing shown above that Nate Beaty sent me when I was still slogging through Basewood. As my time constraints constrict around me (new dad!) it is important that I make the most out of every available minute of drawing time.

For Isle of Elsi I changed my process in a few simple ways that really helped speed things up:

I practiced drawing full figures very small (like all the way down to about 1/2") which allowed me to draw comfortably on a smaller page size. Isle of Elsi is drawn at 11" x 17" (57% less surface area than a Basewood page).
I bought a scanner that can scan an 11" x 17" page in one go (scanning Basewood was a nightmare, having to thread together 4-6 scans for each page).
The comic is in full color, so I can add value with a single click instead of spending countless hours crosshatching.
Instead of measuring and redrawing panel borders and lettering lines for each page, I drew a template for each of these items once, and then I lightbox them over and over again.
As discussed in the interview linked above, I drop all unnecessary backgrounds, which not only speeds things up, but has improved my cartooning considerably.

Even just those five steps have made the amount of time it takes me to complete a page from 10-40 hours on Basewood down to 2-15 hours on Isle of Elsi.

For Phase 7 I decided to try a new blueline technique that I had seen in a process post by Craig Thompson. The main reason for this was that I have always loved the energy and life that exists in my rough scripted pages, and I wanted to do a better job bringing that energy to the finished page. The idea was to transfer these rough drawings directly to my bristol board and then ink right on top of them, instead of just looking at the roughs and starting a new drawing from scratch, which always led to stiff drawings. Also, in places where the roughs were tight enough, this would allow me to skip penciling, thus considerably speeding things up.

I first tried this technique out on Phase 7 #021 and documented my process as I went, which I'll post below. You can click on any of the images to see them full size.

STEP 1: Create a Page Template

Since I like to draw bigger than the printed page, I usually start an issue by drafting a page template at 100% print size. I did this by taking the size of the book, dropping in the outer margins and then measuring my tier height and gutter widths. Then, in Adobe Illustrator, I scaled this up so that two of my three tiers fit on an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper in landscape orientation (the size that I am able to print - marked by the blue guidelines on the right here). I then laid in vector rectangles over the tiers and set the stroke to 25% magenta ink. I also laid in lettering lines which I set to 25% yellow ink. This saves a tremendous amount of time, because I don't have to measure and draw these elements. I lock these magenta panel border and yellow lettering line layers.

STEP 2: Place the Rough Art

Using FILE > PLACE... I drop in a scan of the rough art (a grayscale scan at 300dpi with adjusted levels in Photoshop, so that the lines are pretty dark) on a new layer. This should be placed under the magenta and yellow layers.

STEP 3: Color Shift the Rough Art

Next, with the rough art selected, I double click on the fill color below the toolbar. This brings up the color picker. In the CMYK fields, I enter 10% cyan (in the example I used 25% cyan but later found this to be too dark, and so lowered it to 10%). This will make the whole grayscale page print in very light cyan ink instead of black ink.

STEP 4: Scale Up the Cyan Rough Art

I then scale up the cyan art until the tier height on the rough approximately matches the magenta tiers. This is ready to export (see STEP 6).

STEP 5: Shift Pages as You Go

Since I am using a three-tiered page, I can only get the first two tiers on my sheet of 8.5" x 11". So there is some finagling where I have to slide the pages to either get the top two tiers on a sheet of paper, the bottom tier of one page and the top tier of the next page on a sheet of paper, or the bottom two tiers of a page on a sheet of paper. Once these are set they are ready to export (see STEP 6).

STEP 6: Art Board Export

In Illustrator, I set up a specific 11" x 8.5" art board that encompasses the area I want to print. I then go to FILE > EXPORT... set the file format to .TIF and then set the "Range" to only that art board (in this case, #3). I found a bug is CS6, where if anything is selected when you try to export, it will not export the layers properly. So make sure to click off to the side of all the assets before exporting.

STEP 7: Print From Photoshop

Open your exported .tif file in photoshop. It should show the magenta and yellow lines above the cyan rough art. Hit print, with no scaling.

STEP 8: Printing!

I did all of the printing for issue #21 on my wife's cheap little cannon inkjet printer. There were 43 pages of comics, but because only two tiers printed on each page, there were actually 88 print outs. I was able to do all of this without having to refill the ink, because everything is being printed in such low amounts (ie only 10% cyan). I printed directly onto Strathmore 300 series smooth bristol with no problems. Also, no black ink is used, so this cartridge will still work great for non-color printing.

STEP 9: Tighten Pencils

Here you can see the finished printed page. Although the rough art does not line up perfectly, it's close enough. I used a 90 degree triangle to draw in the vertical gutters and then was able to ink all of the panel borders. Next I inked all of the lettering, just adjusting on the fly (I have 1600 pages of comics under my belt, so this was not that hard for me, but others may wish to repencil their lettering). Then, if necessary I tighten up the blue drawing with pencil and then inked it. In many cases, there was no need to pencil anything, because as an autobio cartoonist I have drawn myself countless thousands of times - for instance in the panel shown here. In other, more complicated panels I needed to pencil a bit, which was no problem to see on the extremely light cyan ink.

STEP 10: Scan the Inked Page

Here you can see the first page of this issue, inked. This is SO MUCH FASTER than my previous way of working and I was able to crank this issue out much more quickly as a result. As you can see here, the cyan, yellow and magenta elements are very dim when scanned back in, so it is no trouble eliminating them with curves or levels in Photoshop. I scanned this in RGB so that you all could see the various Illustrator elements, but in my own workflow I scanned directly into grayscale, where these elements were extremely light.

STEP 11: Corrections

Lastly I clean up some of my inking mistakes (which there are usually a bit more, since I am often skipping the penciling!) and there you have it - two finished tiers! A little bit of Photoshop work easily threads the third tier onto this page and it's done. If you would like to see how these pages turned out, you can read an excerpt from this issue over on the new Phase 7 website.

STEP 12: MOVING FORWARD...

I used this new technique on Phase 7 #022 and will be using it on issue #023 as well. By doing three issues, I found a couple of places where this process could be improved. Before I begin drawing my next big 10(?)-issue epic, PHASE SIX, I am going to implement a few changes to this system:

Currently, there are many small issues where the rough art does not line up with the template. To fix this, I have printed out the template from STEP 1 very lightly (10% black) on scrap paper and I am using that to create the rough scripted pages. That way, when they are scanned back in and scaled up, it will fit perfectly into the magenta panel template.
I scripted Phase 7 #021 years ago, and at the time I was getting frustrated by how much time and energy that I poured into the rough art (about an hour a page) which was never seen by the reader. So, ironically, at the time I was trying to get myself to loosen up even more on the rough art, since I just had to redraw everything all over again anyway. This meant that many of the complicated panels were just phoned in at the rough stage, meaning that I had to then pencil them using this new method. Knowing that I will actually be using the roughs now, I will slow down and enjoy the rough scripting stage, knowing that a careful drawing there saves me time in the future. My hope is to completely eliminate the penciling stage of my process for PHASE 6.

I hope that some cartoonists out there find this information useful! I know many of you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking, "Why doesn't he just draw 100% digitally? No scanning! Easy to draw on top of roughs!" The truth is, I already spend so much time in front of my computer doing other work, the thought of drawing my comics there too really bums me out. I love the time I spend at my drawing table working with real ink on real paper.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions!

Phase Seven Comics has a NEW website!

For the last year or so I have been working in secret on a new website for Phase 7. Today it finally launched along with Phase 7 #022!

* * * * * www.phasesevencomics.com * * * * *

This all came about because the comics page of this site was becoming a bit unwieldy, to say the least. There were twenty-one issues of Phase 7, six books, fifteen 24-Hour Comics, and eight other miscellaneous comics projects. It was turning into quite a long scroll! And I still plan on trying to get to issue of #100 of Phase 7 before I die, so this page was only going to get longer and longer.

The new site is much better organized, with three main sections: 1) the minicomics section has ordering information and excerpts for all of my comics that are currently in print. 2) the books section has a dedicated page for each of my Phase 7 collections which includes new video previews and ordering information for print and eBook editions. 3) the archive section has all out-of-print issues of Phase 7 available to read online for free. I built a new scrolling interface with much larger images, so hopefully that is much easier to read.

Lastly, there is a page for Phase Eight Publishing, which is a new imprint of Phase Seven Comics that I use to publish other people's work. So far, I've quietly been using this imprint to publish Claire's Terrible Movie Nights zine, but this year I will start publishing a few books (including a collection of the first five issues of Claire's zine!) which will be listed on that page.

Meanwhile, the comics page on this site will continue to host my 24-Hour Comics and other miscellaneous comics experiments. Nate Beaty wrote an awesome snippet of code that automatically provides a forwarding link to anyone who turns up with an old Phase 7 link on that page, so hopefully that will avoid too much confusion and fix any potentially broken links.

Obviously, the new Phase Seven Comics site is BRAND NEW. So please, if you have a moment, take a click around and let me know if you find any spelling mistakes or broken links! Thanks!!!

Good Times

This Spring semester I took a self-imposed, unpaid paternity leave from my teaching job at the California College of the Arts Comics MFA program. I'm really glad I did, because it has been great giving my undivided attention to Claire during her recovery from the birth, and to my daughter Suzanne during these first few months of her life. It has been amazing watching Suzanne slowing coming "online" - going from a little lump that can't do anything to a real, live baby that is grabbing things, looking around, smiling and cooing.

During this quiet, family time, there were two great releases that I have been enjoying immensely. Weezer's 10th studio album (and 4th self-titled album, now known as "The White Album") was released on April 1st and I have been listening to it ever since. Of course, I'm completely biased, but it is one of their best albums ever. I feel like they really walked through fire with EWBAITE and now they can do anything. Listening to it for the first time reminded me of listening to The Blue Album early on. It's got a fun, upbeat pop vibe while still rocking hard, and it wears its Beach Boys influence proudly on its sleeve. The new track "L.A. Girlz" is one of my all-time favorite weezer songs, from any era. I wish I could send it back in time to myself when I was depressed and lonely, living in L.A. in 2002. Anyway, you can listen to the whole album for free on YouTube, or you can buy it anywhere music is sold. Highly recommended.

Also in early April, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens came out on Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital and Claire and I had an absolute blast going through all of the bonus features about the creation of this latest installment of the Star Wars saga. I've already watched the movie again once and will probably do so a few more times before summer gets here. If you've got this movie in your home, keep an eye out for Yolo Ziff!

New trailers were also released for the Star Wars spin-off movie Rogue One which comes out this December AND for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I'm really excited about both of these films, so that has put a little bounce in my step.

During this time I have been working on lots of projects: Phase 7 #022, which should be out this summer, Isle of Elsi which updates every Thursday, I built a new illustration portfolio site and I'm also building a new website for Phase Seven Comics, because the comics page of this site is getting a bit unwieldy. There's some other top-secret projects I have been working on too, but it's too early to talk about them yet...

As April comes to a close, my teaching duties are slowly starting to ramp up again, with faculty meetings and course prep work. I will be teaching two weeks of summer workshops at The Center for Cartoon Studies from June 20th - July 1st. There is still some space available if you would like to come learn about comics in Vermont this summer with me and Jon Chad. Then from July 11th - 29th I will be teaching five days a week in San Francisco at The California College of the Arts Comics MFA program. I've also got a few weddings to attend in August, so it is going to be quite the busy summer! All the more reason it has been great to stay so close to home these past few months.

MoCCA 2016!

This weekend I am heading to New York City for the 2016 MoCCA Arts Fest, a show I have been tabling at since 2005. It will be my first comics show in more than a year so I am very excited to get back out there.

It's going to be a busy weekend! MoCCA is now run by The Society of Illustrators and in conjunction with MoCCA this year, they also have an exhibit up in one of their galleries called The Center for Cartoon Studies: Ten Years of Fellowship which runs from February 23 - April 30. I've got some rare Basewood originals up in the exhibit along with work by the other amazing CCS Fellows. There will be an party for the exhibit on Friday April 1 at 8pm, which is open to the public. I will be there with bells on!

As part of the CCS exhibit, I drew a brand new, 12-page minicomic called "Location, Location, Location" which every single person who comes to MoCCA will get a copy of... for FREE! It's about the difference between trying to draw comics in New York City (which I did for four years) and trying to draw comics in Vermont (which I also did for four years).

Saturday and Sunday I will be at the MoCCA Fest, exhibiting at Table E-176 along with Greg Means of Tugboat Press. I will have copies of my new Weezer Fan collection and Basewood, along with issues of Phase 7 and Drop Target Zine. If you are in New York City this weekend, please swing by!

On Sunday at 3:30pm in the Helvetica Room I will be moderating the Center for Cartoon Studies: Ten Years of Fellowship panel, which will include fellows: T. Edward Bak, Julie Delporte, Chris Wright, Sophie Yanow, Connor Willumsen and Max de Radiguès.

Coincidentally, weezer will also be in New York City this weekend, promoting their new album which comes out on April 1. They've got appearances lined up on the Today Show and on Jimmy Kimmel. I won't be able to catch any of these, but it will be cool to know they are in the area. If you see me with my headphones on behind my table at MoCCA, you'll know what I'm listening to!

Anyway, LOTS of cool stuff happening in New York this weekend! I hope to see some of you out there!!!

Huntsville, Here I Come!

Tomorrow I'm heading over to Huntsville, Texas to teach a comics workshop for the graphic novel class at Sam Houston State University.

Afterwards I'll be giving a talk about the creation of my book Basewood, which will be open to the public. The local bookstore will have some copies of Basewoood for sale, which I will be signing. If you are in the area, it will be at 4:00pm on Monday, March 14th in Evans 105. Maybe I'll see some of you there!

Thanks to CCS and SHSU Professor Michael Demson for helping to organize this event!

Weezer Fan: Phase 7 #017-#019 is now available!

I'm pleased to announce that the latest collection of Phase 7, Weezer Fan, is now available! Here's the description of the book:

Alec Longstreth documents his lifelong obsession with his favorite band, weezer. Follow Alec as he listens to The Blue Album on the radio, joins the fan club, sees them live on the Pinkerton tour, meets the band and eventually gets to work for them drawing tour posters!

There are three new ways to read this comic:

1) Now that the minicomics have sold out for #017-#019, all three issues can now be read for FREE in the Phase 7 Online Archives.

2) You can buy a print edition of the book on Lulu.com where I offer 25% off the cover price. That's only $9 plus shipping! It will be available on Amazon.com in a few weeks.

Here is a video preview of the book, if you would like to see what it looks like. Weezer-inspired music by Andy Hentz!

3) If you prefer eBooks, you can also download a DRM-free PDF version of the collection over on Gumroad for $1.99+ (pay what you want).

I will have copies of this new book for sale at the MoCCA Arts Fest April 2nd and 3rd in New York City!

2016 Blogging

I am not surprised to see that it has been a whole month since my last entry on this blog. I have many cool entries planned, but these days I am finding it very hard to find the time to write them up. Mostly, this is because what little time I do have for writing is being set aside to put together two blog entries a week for my Isle of Elsi Backer Blog on Patreon. Patrons who pledge $2 a month have access to these posts which range from book reviews to quick progress updates to to lengthy posts about my comics making process.

The other reason is that I often only have one hand free. I had an idea for a blog post the other day and I didn't want to lose it, so I ended up pecking the whole thing out on my iPhone and posting them as a series of tweets. I always thought it was weird when people broke up larger writing in smaller chunks on twitter, because it seems like it would be so easy for much of it to be taken out of context, but I guess I am one of those people now. Anyway, here it is all together for posterity:

Today I finished inking the panel borders and lettering for the new 13-pager in Phase 7 #022. I started this task when Suzanne was born.

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

It felt like a task that would never get done, but now it IS done, because I put in anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour on it EVERY DAY.

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

As an adult, this is how everything gets done - inking a comic, writing a story, coloring a graphic novel, reading a book, etc. etc.

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

I don’t have the luxury of sitting down for hours on end, day after day and plowing through an entire project. I don’t know anyone who does.

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

If you want to finish and release comics regularly (the only real way to improve) you need to chip away at them. DRAW COMICS *EVERY* DAY.

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

All those small chunks of 15 minutes add up to the hours and hours and hours that are required to draw even the simplest comic.

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

I was worried, when Suzanne was born, that I would never be able to draw comics again. But I’ve been drawing comics EVERY day!

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

At the rate I’m going, I should be done with this comic by this summer, and I hope to still put out two issues of Phase 7 this year.

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

If *I* can do it, YOU can do it! I don’t care if you’re tired, or you had a long day at work, or you’re busy - it’s 2016 - EVERYONE is busy!

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

Set aside at least 15 minutes to draw comics EVERY day. I think you’ll be surprised what you can accomplish!!! </rant>

— Alec Longstreth (@AlecLongstreth) February 25, 2016

Given my new parenting duties, it seems like this might be the new norm for a while. So I guess check out my Twitter account or sign up for my Patreon if you miss my writing... (Seems unlikely, but hey! you never know...) Hopefully in a few months, when Suzanne starts getting a bit more sleep, I'll be able to tackle the backlog of entries for this blog - I've got some cool stuff planned!

Back to Work

Well, Claire and I have survived our first two weeks as new parents. It has been amazing, watching Suzanne change and grow. I guess she put on a whole pound last week? Crazy! Sorry I don't have anything more profound to say about this experience, but I am really tired right now... We have been getting about 4 hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks, so my brain is not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment.

It's strange being a freelancer because my "paternity leave" could technically last as long as I want it to... the only problem is that when I'm not working, I'm also not making any money. So on Monday, which is also somehow February 1st, I'm going to get back to work on a few projects. I'll still be spending a lot of my time taking care of Suzanne (and Claire while she continues to recover) but I'm going to try and start getting a few hours of work done each day, instead of just a few minutes, which is all I've been able to manage these past two weeks.

Speaking of working... a week or so ago I grabbed my ruler off of the little cardboard rack that is attached to my drawing board and it cracked in two. There is a rubber band that goes across my ruler to prevent it from falling off the rack, and I guess each time I have grabbed it, it pivots on that point, causing a bit of tension. After doing this who knows how many thousands of times, the ruler finally snapped at that exact point - precisely at the 7 1/8" mark.

I stole this ruler from my best friend Gabe in 2000, when we were both theatre majors at Oberlin College. Gabe was a year above me and had already taken the set design class, and thus had been required to buy an architectural scale ruler. When it was my turn to take the class Gabe lent me his ruler, which I never returned. To be fair, Gabe never asked for it back because he was mostly involved in acting and directing, whereas I focused on set construction and design and went on to use this ruler to draft hundreds of technical drawings.

I used this same ruler to mark out my first page of comics, after reading Understanding Comics for the first time and I have used it to rule out just about every other of the 1500+ pages of comics I have drawn since.

Maybe it's just my tired mind, but it somehow seems significant that this ruler snapped right as I was slogging through the hardest stretch of "Draw Comics EVERY Day" I've had since I dedicated my life to comics in 2002. I am very proud of the fact that I made it through these last two weeks without missing a day. Even if it was just 15 minutes in my sketchbook, I kept drawing comics.

I replaced Gabe's ruler with the exact model made by the same manufacturer, except that it is made out of solid aluminum. Just as it is 1,000 times stronger than the plastic ruler, so is my resolve to continue drawing comics EVERY day. Mark my words, I'll use this ruler to measure out the panel borders on Phase 7 #100 someday!