A Reunion

There was a time in my life where I was working on several comic style projects, as part of an online community (maybe I'll share those projects on here some day).  But that has probably been 4 or 5 years ago now, and I really haven't done much comic-making since.  My leisure activities have shifted pretty drastically since coming to Carthage and I just never find myself wanting to sit down, away from the exciting social landscape, and just draw/design.

But a couple of events recently have gotten me interested once again in creating a comic.  First, I took a course this past fall titled Intro to Visual Communication.  While the class itself was not that thrilling, the software we used in it, Adobe Illustrator, had some interesting functionality that I thought lended itself perfectly to comic-making.  Second, my girlfriend recently disclosed a secret love for comic books of her own.  How fortuitous!  She encouraged me to come with her to a local comic book shop, Heroes & Dreams, where I found a Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, a character I loved growing up.  Reading these comics fired up my interest in creating my own.  Third, already anticipating trying to get back into making comics, I asked for a personal scanner for Christmas.  Ask and you shall receive.

Excluding some of the original Mushroom Man comics I drew in elementary and middle school I had never really made a comic by hand.  There is enough media on the web to make entirely digital comics, which is the realm I preferred throughout high school.  And knowing that I am not a very gifted drawer, the task of returning to that medium was a daunting one.  Still, with my new scanner and new knowledge of Adobe Illustrator, I at least wanted to try.

It didn't take me long to think of what that comic should be.  My old standby, Mushroom Man.  Fairly easy to draw and with an existing base of characters to work from, it made perfect sense.  So, I recently worked on and completed a sample page of the newest rendition of Mushroom Man.  It can be seen below:

The lines are not very clean and there are things about it I wish were better, but I also think the unpolished look helps give it some style and character.  And because I am not aiming to do this professionally, producing some sort of output is more important than the added effort cleaning it up would take.

My intent with this project is not to create a "serious" comic as I depicted in the sample page.  Rather, I want to create a humorous comic, much like the other comics featured in Carthage College's newspaper, The Current.  So, my next goal is to script out and create a funny strip--and I'll do my best to document the process on here as I go.