Poor Malutki. You might notice some slight adjustments to character design here. You also might not. ;) Also, I tried something with the colors. The background is built up of analogous hues, centered on purple, and the characters are in a monochromatic scheme. I think this ends up giving the characters greater cohesion and…Read more
Masha’s recent run-in with a starving Belarusian refugee left her conflicted…but now it looks like she’s made a decision. Well, she tried to, anyway. For the backgrounds, I tried something new–the oil paint tool in MangaStudio. I was afraid of this tool for a long time. It just didn’t seem like something I could finesse…Read more
Looks like Rudek has a soft spot for the old Badger, after all. Or maybe there’s more going on here than it seems. So, with this comic, after putting a lot of effort into adjusting the levels, saturation, contrast, and colors, I’m still not satisfied with the way it reads, tonally speaking.I tried planning out…Read more
This is a moment that I guess the whole comic has sort of been building toward… it is called “Rudek and the Bear” after all :) Wanted to try a “white on white” kind of background. You know, the artistic challenge of making a snowy landscape where the sky and the ground are both…Read more
So collectivization plus the onset of the great depression is not a great combination. I wanted the right style of farm architecture, the right model of Fordson tractor, and even the right cut for a “decommissioned” White Army field cap. But during my research-slash-procrastination, I found myself reaching that magical point that many artists know–close…Read more
Oh dear. I’ll give Masha this at least–she has the imagination of a true bureaucrat. I wanted to push to the limit the pencilled backgrounds and go for a real storybook illustration vibe. I drew a truck that I later discovered was anachronistic and had to start panel 2 over again. Finally I decided to…Read more
I’m trying out subtitles on this comic. In previous episodes featuring Belarusian, readers were likely to ask for translation. There are a couple different ways to handle that, but I figured I would see what it looked like to do movie-style subtitles. What are your thoughts? Is it intrusive? I’m not sure.
Rudek? …. Rudek? The trouble with PTSD is you never know what can trigger it. The question is, what aren’t we seeing in panel 5? Continuing with my experimentations on the background art here. I tried watercolors, and didn’t quite get the effect I wanted. I like the texture, but the values and notan are…Read more
I don’t know why Masha bothered to hide the hole in the store-room floor…Bzik doesn’t seem to be very observant. So, anyway, in this one, I tried to better merge the use of pencils with the digital aspects of the artwork. So, the figures are all inked digitally, to make sure they stand out in…Read more
I’m a little behind schedule here–but it’s because I’m putting together a little something :)
