Got this done tonight. Some of the work was behind the scenes; I rewrote the verse. This was written over seven years ago and it no longer felt right. Wasn't easy but I think it works and it works better than the original. Sometimes it is hard working on a 'script' that was done so long ago. I don't always remember the entire intent. I have to trust to the work. Seeing and reading this whole thing when it's done will be a revelation I'm sure. And there will be editing, oh yes, precious, there will.

 Got some time to work on this tonight. Had an idea for Silas that wouldn't totally obscure the background but which would also bring him right up to the camera and make him front and center. The mural is still visible, the best detail is as well. The text will overlay Silas' t-shirt and hoodie. I need to do some more graffiti for the right hand side but all in all, I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out. Did some extra windows, changed a few colors around. Track is almost done.

 Finally got a chance to work on the next and possibly last page of this track. Initially, I was planning on doing either some direct vectorizing of a reference photo or doing a lot of tracing as it's a complex background. Then I decided to just draw it freehand, letting things be wonky. As I went along, I added less and less detail, trying to think of things more as shapes, as paint strokes and less as lines and details. Thing came together a lot more quickly. I do admit to some very rough tracing of the fire escape as it was just too damned complex. Just had enough time to get all the layers transferred, vectorized and an initial color pass done. Then I slapped on the full Tamino painting and adjusted it for perspective. There is no way I could have done this half as well in the 'old days' of pencil and t-square (though I did use a t-square a little on the sketch). I just hope I've left enough room for all the other graffiti that has to go in here, Silas and his text. Well, we'll see. Somehow, I'll manage.

 

And done. Not a lot of changes, just some color shifts. Martin Landau has a very interesting face. There's a little more line work in this than I'd like but his face kind of requires it. I think I captures the worried face of Commander Koenig pretty well.

 Haven't had a chance to work on anything as I've just been too damned busy. Actually used a sick day today because I've been so tired. As such, played about with this. I have a version that's not slanted, but I like the feeling of tension it brings to the piece. Will sit on this a little while longer to see how I finally feel.

 Thursdays are always busy. A 'day off,' which is anything but. I have to do the grocery shopping, the podcast, the laundry, sometimes mow the lawn. Then, I might get time to work on some art. I know the last stanza of the current track on the comic is going to take some extra work, so I decided to take a short break and do a quickie portrait. I got fairly far along on this Commander Koenig until I sensed a need to stop and come back fresh. I can already see some things that aren't working but a lot of it does. This is all freehand, no grid or anything, which is why it's a little off. The nose is too long for one thing but it still looks like him. There's currently too many lines on the face and not enough interest in the eyes. What I do like is how the background is working. So, more work later, when I have time.

 And I got them done. Lazed around a lot today, too which was part of the plan. But as long as I got my sound editing and these pages done,  I figure I come out ahead. They work well together, I think and have a little sense of movement and scale. One more stanza to go in this track.

 Got a little done today, the final figures for the four pages. Only really have to do the text, which I can get done tomorrow. Will lay them out together at that point. I think there's some nice 'animation' here.

 Haven't had a lot of time to draw this last week, but I did manage this tonight. I sketched the Silas for the next page as well. Will likely finish those before doing the text.

 Got some work done on these today thought not as much as I might like. Got all the background elements done which includes the bricks and drips for each page. Took reference photos and managed to get the Silas figure done for the first of the four. His sizing really should put the mural in perspective and I like how it's working out. Four pages, four lines. I think there's one more stanza after this and the first track of Act 3 will be done.

I suppose it doesn't look like much, since I already finished Silas' painting, but getting this split into four pages, evenly spaced from the top was a bit of work. There will be a suggestion of bricks in the background but they need to be thinner than the brush I've been using. There also need to be props and some overspray so the image doesn't look too perfect, or perhaps just some drips. Something. I also have to decide how big this is, how big to make Silas in comparison. And he has to sign it. So still a ways to go, but then four pages will be added to the stack.
 

 Got this far today, after doing the grocery shopping, mowing the lawn and doing the podcast. Might get some more in, but this is the background for the next four pages. Well, the painting ON the background. And then there's Silas to model, draw and render as well as the text. Things are moving, which is good, still a lot to do.

 Got this part of the next four pages done. Doesn't look like much now, though it's already something like 33 layers. This is only part of the background as it's meant to look like something Silas painted. There will be alley stuff underneath this, I still have to paint Tamino atop it then Silas and the lyrics. Funny, I've been dreading dealing with Silas' own work for a long time as I wasn't sure what style it would take, what it would look like, how it would be different from other graffiti and then I just did it. Here's hoping it works.

 Getting started on the next set of pages for the comic, I want it to look like Silas is painting that spread I just recreated from Tamino. The colors will change a lot as usual but I wanted the strokes to show and will likely throw some drips in there somewhere. The one thing that will change a lot is that Tamino will not be a ghost figure. This will spread over four pages just like the original. If I can't reference my work, who can?

 And done. It wasn't so hard as I thought it might be though I didn't realize til I was about 80% through that I'd zoomed in the background a bit on the original. Oh, well, not going to change it now. Doesn't really matter. I still like this image very much and it's still my favorite spread of that comic. I would like to get it printed someday and now I can. It makes me happy.

 On Facebook today, a 'memory' popped up. Seven years ago, I was working on page two of "The City Silent." Seven years ago. Page two. I am not on a speedy track. But that's ok. I decided that, instead of posting the 'memory,' and what I had to say at that time, I'd post the finished page two, the current finished page and an image of my books. Had to fake some of the books; couldn't find my copies of "Fite!" which is disturbing as I don't know where they would have gone. And there is no hard copy of "Fite Comics Shorts." So I just shoved their cover images on top of a photo of the physical books of "Biography," "Harlon," and "The City Dreams of Tamino the Cat." It's a reminder to me that I have accomplished something and that I can and will finish "City Silent," even if it's not tomorrow. I need to do these things every so often. It's good for me.

 What the hell is wrong with me? I'm referencing my favorite spread of Tamino, the prequel, sorta, to City Silent. While it's been fine so far to simply draw over the original scans of the elements of those pages, I've always wanted to be able to make a print from that spread but have never got around to stitching the pages together to be able to do it. For some reason, I decided to do so tonight. Since I have all the original elements, I thought it would be easier to just vectorize the original scans, which were made at 300 dpi and go from there. And only now do I see the limitations to that program. The top image is a screen shot of the original drawing, livetraced in AI back when I used it. The bottom one is the best I could get it in SuperVectorizer. I was a bit disappointed. Might be that I simply don't know how to fine tune the results from that program as its smoothing of my work has become part of the process as I make comics now. The bottom image was just too muddy and I couldn't deal. Problem was, the originals scans are all cut into four parts to spread over four pages. What's worse, I cut sections out of the drawings corresponding the space between said pages. What to do? Take each section of the outlines, which AD has decided must all now be totally separate bits with their own separate layers, copy them over and try and stitch them together by hand. That ended up looking like this:

The top one shows me partially along but you can see where the splits are. To make these as seamless as possible, I had to zoom in really, really closely. While a pain in the ass, it honestly wasn't all that bad. And when done, I WAS able to merge all the stuff together into one, big outline so I didn't have to have four different layers with who knows how many sub layers...well, sort of. Regardless, this is where I'm at now:

It worked out pretty well, and the lines for the buildings, because they're so much more squared off, look fine as they are, so I won't have to be messing with those. The entire panoramic background is one big piece. I'll recolor the whole thing and then think about how I can make a print out of this. I might tweak the colors somewhat as the old version was a bit monochromatic. All in all, even though there's no real reason for me to do this, I'm pleased with the results. I'm just glad that I can still work those files. Someday, I won't be able to any more.

 And I got a chance to finally finish this as well. Took a lot of tweaking, a third version and, in the end, I went back to one of the previous ones as I liked it better. I think there's a kind of old Dutch portrait feeling to this. Joe Wilkinson, a very dry, British comic is also a very brown personality, right down to the brown suit he always wears. I think he's really funny, personally and he almost always has this kind of dull, disaffected expression which is what I was trying to capture. It wasn't easy.

 Finally got a day off so I could finish this page (and watch this week's podcast movie). Each page is often a puzzle or a problem to be solved and this one was no exception. That being said, it wasn't that hard to solve and I'm pretty happy with the way it turns out. Silas has to start taking a stand and believing in his work so I tried to make him feel more confident and broad in his moves. Before, the only time he showed that was when he was angry. So here's a few more expressions. It's hard when your main character can't talk and has a bill. 

 A little progress. I work too much and absolutely hate my job. So moving ahead can be harder than I'd wish. Still, it sometimes helps the art. I moved the characters from the left side to the middle, stretched them out a bit and I like it better. Still not sure how I'm going to get the text in but I'll figure it out.

 Well, no reason to just sit on my ass now, is there? Started work on 192 before calling it a night. I wanted some more figure work, and not just 2s or 3s. Also went for some more dramatic poses here to help convey what's going on with the lyrics. Speaking of which, I hope I left room for them. The drawing is based on four photos I took for reference tonight, warped a little to fit the space. A good start, I think.

 I liked this page too much to just toss it aside. So I repurposed it to fit in later. Cheap add to the page count, though I guess the work had been done, just earlier. Moving on.

 This is not a great view of what I've been working on but it's hard to get it in view any other way. So the whole opening sequence of this track was out of whack. Silas' progression through the city made no sense as the image in the second page above was a close-up of his hand spray painting and then the next is him in the subway. While I liked the page, I had to drop it and draw something else. After that, I was ok for a couple pages but when Tamino's image shows up, for some dumb reason, I didn't see the flow was backwards as the first image was of his head, then his torso then his feet, which not only 'reads' backwards, the images have no flow at all. So, I had to redo the text on the third to last and last pages, which wasn't so bad, considering how I work. Mentally, I kept trying to shuffle things around until I finally had to fill both monitors with the pages so I could make sure they were now going to be in the right order and no text would be missing. Here's a larger version of the new page:

So now I can move on, which will require a complete re-draw of the four panel spread that was originally at the end of Tamino, something I really need to get a print of one of these days.

 It won't seem like it but I did a bunch of new work on this today. It's very subtle things. It mostly works, but there's still, to me, some little something that isn't working. Or it's working better than I think it is and I need to step away for a bit. I think it almost looks like Stanley Kubrick instead. We'll see.

 We now interrupt your usual comics progress with another diversion into portraiture. I've been wanting to do another portrait for awhile but hadn't found anyone that inspired me. Was watching some video of British comedian Joe Wilkinson, who I've done before, and I saw a moment that felt like utterly typical Joe to me. The struggle with this one is to keep it as simple as possible while retaining the likeness. I think I'm a good way there but there's a subtlety that's eluding me so far. That's ok, these things should require work and observation. They look simple yet it takes a lot of editing to get to where I want.

 Houston, we have a problem. I've been looking at the pages for this track and it's been slowly dawning on me that the images are just in the wrong order. The flow doesn't make sense. At first, I thought I could fix this by simply changing the what text was on which page. But that won't work as it turns out I was too clever for my own boots and did visual representations of some of the lyrics so they can't be so easily divorced from their page. The last two pages, which have Tamino in them, make no sense in the order they're being shown in. This whole track has been a mess, though I like it visually. After messing about with text, I finally realized that the best move would be to make a new page to shove between the existing 184 and 185. Which are:

BUT...the page of spray cans makes no visual sense as is, so will have to be moved to the end of the sequence just before Tamino shows up as, well, it makes sense to show Silas painting and then WHAT he's painting. So the track has been a mess. And I'm fixing it so I can move on. When done, I think it will flow a hell of a lot better, so it's worth it. My process doesn't always work which is why I highly recommend no one use it but me.

 This page came together very quickly indeed. Which makes me suspicious. Then again, isn't this what artists work for and towards? So we can get to the point where we don't have to think and struggle but can just MAKE? And still we don't trust ourselves or our process. But I declare this done and am happy I got a page out while listening to some cool music. It helps that I'm using an image from a previous comic, sure. Not every page has to be some complex thing. And this particular track is meant to feel very loose, new and different. So. Finished. Because I said so.

 Haven't had time to do much of anything lately. Always seems to be something else in the way. But before work, after having mown the lawn, done the laundry and assembled the new vacuum cleaner (not as involved as it sounds), I managed to get this colored. Finally. Soon, off to work. Too. Damned. Busy.

 Thursdays are always busy. Besides it being podcast day, there's the grocery shopping to be done and the laundry. When my partner comes home we like to watch an episode of something together (currently it's "The Expanse," which is really, really good). And then there's time for this. I got some drawing done, realized what it was I wanted Silas to be painting, did the lettering. No color tonight. That being said, I think it's ok and won't be too hard to finish. Famous last words. Just not sure WHEN. Because work, which I hate.