Comic:Steve and Mac
From CGWiki
- The aptly titled Steve and Mac follows the misadventures of one Steve and one Mac, the latter of which is the more idiotic, trouble-causing of the duo. Regular appearances by neighborhood hotties Jessica and Courtney (we're getting to Courtney, trust me...) and Fat Kid Victim Jimmy spice things up a bit, as Mac continues to find new and unusual ways to get himself into trouble.
| Steve and Mac | |
|---|---|
| Artist: | K.L. Sanchez |
| Writer: | Philip Seals and K.L. Sanchez |
| Characters: | Steve and Mac of course, with regular appearances by Jimmy the Neighbor Kid, Steve's girl Jessica, and Courtney. |
| Updates: | 11 Eastern Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays beginning in July 2006. |
| Began: | September 20, 2005 |
| Ended: | Hopefully never. |
| Art style: | Comic |
| Rating: | Web-Mature |
| Website | Website |
Contents |
About the Comic
If you think Steve and Mac has a plot... guess again.
Oftentimes the whole point of any particular storyline is random, yet controlled mayhem, governed with all the attention of a twelve-year-old with A.D.D. And more often than not, everything revolves around Mac's inherent propensity for getting himself into all kinds of trouble... and Steve's invariable frustration.
But then, you could always just read the comic. Everything you need to know's in there.
But Steve and Mac isn't for everyone... indeed, I'd venture to say the humor is along the lines of a Dave Chappelle or Richard Pryor... basically, if you can't handle a little bit of sex jokes, race jokes, and other, edgier types of humor, you probably shouldn't read the comic or you'll just get offended. It's not rated Mature for no good reason.
In fact, she has a little something to say about you types:
(* see footnote)
As for technical issues, the comic is black and white, always 750 pixels wide, and typically in PNG format. So if you use Internet Explorer and the comics don't render right... tough luck. You should be using Firefox anyway. The website is also best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution, largely because of the width of the comics. It's also div-tag heavy and doesn't use tables for formatting, so that's yet another reason it might not look right on IE. Kevin also uses Paintshop and Sharpies to make the comics, enjoys long chats in close company, and is very single. *wink*
Storylines
It wouldn't be Steve and Mac without plenty of loosely-knit storylines, and here we have about a dozen of 'em. Listed here for summary reference, the titles can sometimes give a clue into what the storyline's about, at other times you may have to just read the storyline, as the arc defies explanation...
- Get a job! Start date
Mac... get a job!
- Life with Mac Start date
What Steve has to deal with every day of his life...
- Faux Pas is Mac's Middle Name Start date
See Mac talk. See Mac put his foot in his mouth. Following an uncomfortable moment regarding Steve's online "friend", an investigation into the matter uncovers the truth, new characters... and some violence directed at Mac. Not that he didn't deserve it.
- Mac Is As Mac Does Start date
More Macinated randomness.
- Superzero Start date
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... not Mac, that's for sure.
- Francine Start date
Case of mistaken identity... or case of misunderstimated intelligence? You decide.
- Night of the Living Mac Start date
Mac thirsts... for braaaaiiiins.
- It's an invasion! Start date
Of extraterrestial proportions! Film at eleven!
- Life with Mac Redux Start date
More of the same. Or different.
- It Came From the Kitchen Sink Start date
...And they came to conquer the world!
- Look Who's Job Hunting Now Start date
Jess? Getting a job? And more!
- Adventures in Game Land Start date
Or perhaps Misadventures would be more appropriate.
- Conquering Aliens Start date
Invasion... of the Mac.
- H. R. Whippinstuff Start date
And it begins...
- A Very Mac Christmas Start date
It's beginning to look a lot like Macsmass...
- Lover's Quarrel Start date
Sunny times in paradise?
Meet the Cast
Vitals: Full name Stephen Lee Smith. Yes, like the football player. 5'10", and a lean 170. Graduated high school, currently a construction foreman. Dark eyes and minimalist dress beget a laidback attitude towards life.
Vitals: Full name Keenan "Mac" Rowe. 5'10", and a scrawny 145. Graduated high school (the high school regrets it), currently unemployed. Unkempt hair and stylishly offensive dresswear beget an overall clueless approach to life.
Vitals: Full name Jessica Shaniqua Jackson. 4'11", and a healthy [CENSORED] pounds. Graduated high school, currently working a dead-end job like everyone else. A natural size 42 EE, if you're wondering. Dark eyes and tomboyish dress meet with girlish fashion sense, befitting a well-adjusted, unpretentious approach to living.
Vitals: Full name Courtney Nicole Vazquez. 5'3", and a lean [GIRLSDONTTALKWEIGHTOMG] pounds. Graduated high school, Bachelor's in English studies from UTEP. A prosthetic 48 F, if you're curious. Bright eyes and snappy, upscale, revealing dress hint at certain insecurities while testifying to her income bracket.
Vitals: 4'8", and a decidedly unhealthy 190.
Of course that's not all, either... there are many other colorful characters (both literally and figuratively...) in the world of Steve and Mac.
- Granma - Jessica's grandma, of course, who according to some sources, has a certain resemblance to Aunt Jemima...
- Billy - Jessica's brother and all-around nuisance. Although he hasn't had more than a cameo appearance here and there, one can only assume he shall return some day...
- Chris - You remember him. The goth. Mac hit on him. He hit on Mac. Mac subsequently needed band-aids. | Vitals: 6'5", and a skinny 170. Graduated high school with honors. A natural 28 A.
- Gina - Jessica's female friend. Frequently invites Jess over to hang out. | Vitals: 6'4", and a lean 160. Star high school basketball player, but who couldn't make the UTEP squad. Working part-time on a bachelor's in Physical Therapy/Athletic Training. A natural 30 B.
- Abu & Muhammed - Terrorists on a Plane!
- Jack - Who could resist a green elephant?
Behind the Scenes
...In the office.
And in this corner, we have the heavyweight of a writer (both literally and figuratively...) in Philip Seals. But that's all right, because he's cool in every way imaginable.
But that aside, Philip is largely the heart and soul of this comic. Without him, it wouldn't exist, nor would it ever have come to fruition, since he's the one who blackmailed Kevin into being the art monkey for the stupid thing. Many of the characters, storylines, and jokes are creations of his twisted mind, and although Kevin does help out from time to time with storylines and characters and finishing up things, Philip's still the one who does all the good, noteworthy stuff.
And obviously, Kevin has a very low opinion of his himself. BUT AT ANY RATE... that is the order of things. Philip writes, cracks the whip, and the Texican obeys.
- Kevin, on Philip.
I'm Philip, more aptly known to the internet as Zero_Hawk. Steve and Mac is essentially an outlet for my frustration with the world, along with my sense of humor. To be blunt, I'm an asshole, I'm intelligent, and I'm rarely serious. Them's the perfect digs for a person like me. I thought of the comic one day when I was bored, out shopping with my aunt. Well, really I was just standing there while she rummaged forever. The thought of the Casual Friday strip, and the subsequent strips from that storyline were really what got me started on the idea. And Kevin became the art monkey as a result.
I'm also a hardcore gamer at heart. Love me some vidja gamesh.
- Philip, on Philip.
And in the other corner, we have who is very laughably called the artist for the comic, Kevin Sanchez. With a set of markers, printer paper, a scanner, and some crude CGing skills, he makes everything that you see for the comic and the website that's image-related, and occasionally writes for the comic, too. And although he does have a certain of input on the comic, he still considers it less part his creation as much as an extension of the monster Philip's created.
Biographically speaking, he grew up in a small, small town in the middle of Texas, not far from Aggieland (that's Bryan/College Station to the uninitiated) - which happens to be where he was born in '84 - graduated school near the top, and was largely a loner for his entire educational period... both by choice and by circumstance. A short, somewhat pudgy little man, the Texican can normally be seen in his natural habitat either working at a local convenience store or typing away on the computer in his room. And while he's been drawing off and on and writing since early childhood, he neither is nor claims to be any kind of professional artist, or any good at it. He simply doesn't draw that much, people. His fort� is in fact writing - although his particular skill level at that is also debatable - and can be proved through the fact that he's soon to have a book published... that is, if certain technical issues can be worked out. He also plays a little guitar in his spare time and writes some music, although none of it is again neither good nor groundbreaking. No, Kevin is but a lonely man with a lot of creative energy, little experience, excessive modesty, and a whole lot of I Don't Give a Damn What You Think. And yet, that's what makes him what he is.
VRIIIP
All right, enough with the theatrics. Hi, I'm Kevin, and I'm an alcoholic.
SMACK
I mean, webcomic artist and author. (ow) This's probably the point now where you wanna read more about me, my interests, and whatnot... and that's just about what you're gonna get.
But first, where to start... interests? Certainly I have a variety of interests... maybe too many. And too disparate. Not only do I enjoy a good action movie a la Predator and Matrix (geet to da choppaaa!), I love chick flicks like Deliver Us From Eva and sci-fi brainteasers like the Dune miniseries, Star Trek, and Star Wars. I also love anime (Inuyasha being my most favoritest of all times), which exlains the heavy influence of anime/manga/chibi in my art style. Musically I'm just as diverse too, with a love for everything from Nas and N.W.A. to Ministry and Pantera, and am known to wear my hair very long and pepper my computer and TV with stuffed animals... I also wear sandals, baggy clothes, am half white and half Mexican, have a particular attraction towards black chicks, and grow my nails longer than most women do.
Yes, I am that wierd. I should let it be known that even my wierdness has limits, though... for example, even though I do like furry art and have been known to produce a good deal of furry art myself, I am not a diehard "furry" as you'd call it, and if I ever met one in real life, I would run. Far Away. In the other direction, no less. And never look back.
Because few things are as creepy as a two-hundred-pound fat man in a bunny suit. *shudder*
Ahem... you're getting quite a lesson on me. In any case, what else you might want to know about me, is that although I can be really talkative online, offline I'm a really quiet guy - very reserved - and spend more of my time absorbed in my own thoughts or daydreaming than anything else... though working the register at a convenience store has helped me get into the habit of chatting a little easier.
Whether this is a good thing for the future of mankind has yet to be seen... *ominous music*
...Wait, what? Pictures? III HAAAVE NOOOO PIIIICS!
Well, yes I do, but I'm camera shy. I don't like the way they turn out... so ha ha on you!
- Kevin, on Kevin.
...In the trailers.
"The history of Steve and Mac..."
In the beginning, there was no Steve and Mac... only two characters who sprang forth from the depths of Philip's twisted mind. He didn't even have names for these two, in fact using our own names with the characters to distinguish them as he regailed me with tales of debauchery and criminal misdeeds.
To be honest, at first I didn't want to have anything to do with this new comic of his. Even when he asked me to do the art, I instead encouraged him to develop his art skills, hoping that instead of being a partner on his new project, I could just sit back and enjoy it as a fan. Because if there's anything I'd learned from our previous attempt at a webcomic, The Bagel Revolution, it's that I sucked at committing to it long-term, and at this whole art thing.
But Philip would not be deterred. After a few attempts at creating what he may laughably call "art", he finally coerced me into being his art monkey. The cheeky little bastard he is. And so it was that I became the artist of Steve and Mac.
Strange how fate works.
Of course, after first getting out the general idea we wanted to work with, he then had to create a look for these characters. Because stick figures just wouldn't do. And then came the sketches, a gaggle of styles and designs ranging from leather-wearing pimps to spiked-hair geeks. But from these sketches eventually came the designs for Steve and Mac, and once they were thrown together and tested out, we knew we'd found our leads. It was simply perfect - Mac's overt aloofness depicted through his scruffy, no-eyed look - Steve's constant frustration brought out in that scowl and thick goatee.
...How'd I come across the designs for Steve and Mac, you ask? Why, I'll tell you. Steve, well... Steve was simple. Sleeveless tee, sandals, jeans, wild hair and goatee. Standard attire for construction workers and wannabe guitar gods everywhere (myself included...). Mac was a different story... I'd always had a thing about characters without eyes, see, so I decided to try out a sketch of one the day I was practicing. And since Mac was supposed to be like the ultimate slacker douchebag, I drew him on the couch, kicking up his leg, watching TV. And the hair, of course, fell over his face. Voila.
Some redraws later and the hair developed a porcupine feel to it, with the five spikes and cowlick in the center. And I did sayeth it was good. And so it was.
Still, even with their appearances down, something else was missing... names, of course. We'd already established by this point that we'd name the comic after the main characters, but what to name them eluded us for a time. Philip tossed around a few names - Mac being one of them - and automatically I liked it - it was so appropriate. Then he tossed out "Steve", and since Mac struck me as the type to say "Steve-o", thus Steve became... uh... Steve's name. And Steve and Mac was born.
After that, there was nothing left to do but start writing scripts and developing templates for Paintshop. Done in a quasi-storyline type frame, we were allowed the freedom to be random and yet at the same time maintain a serial element, so that if we wanted to, we could branch off into long, deep storylines, or keep it at short and random when wanted. After some scripts were written, a website went up, and then came tweaking, and almost a year later... here we are.
"Cultivating the Characters..."
Behind each of the characters is certainly an interesting story... and while the general backstories of Steve and Mac's creations I've just told you, there's still many more interesting things to know about the other characters...
Jimmy, for instance, was created when Philip wanted Mac to have a fat kid to pick on. It was some twisted little fantasy of his to have Mac torture this little tyke with paintball guns and other assorted antics, and so it was laid on me to draw this kid and make him a regular. Beginning with reference pics of the fat kid from the Simpsons (you may know him as the laughing punk), I sketched out a few drawings, and basically drew an anonymous characters with an oversized belly and no neck. And so Jimmy was born.
From there other characters came about... beginning with the goth kid. Back in the original days of creating the comic, we wanted to have an androgynous goth boy whom Mac would regularly mistake for a girl. I hit the sketch paper while I was trying to design Steve and Mac, and in one session I'd created the character known as Goth Kid. While the idea was sound and the character distinct enough, Goth Kid has sadly been underused of late... but not to worry! He will soon make a return.
Other major characters created from there include Billy, Jessica, and their Grandma. I'm sure it's obvious where Granma's influences came from - Philip ran an Aunt Jemima joke, and so I simply drew her large, short, and in a bandana. Voila! The lovable Granma is born. Billy was another easy affair - a black kid with attitude problems, the best way it seemed to me to bring that out was by giving him an afro (Randy Moss style, baby), shorts, and a jersey. A little much to wear during summer? Yes. But it gave him exactly the look I was going for.
With Jessica though there's a different story behind her... originally there was no Jessica, just a name used in the joke about the fake cyber girlfriend. Philip had originally written that strip out without much of an idea where to go from there. And so naturally, I asked myself "what if there was a Jessica?" and ran with the idea from there. Several of her attributes were drawn from several people I've known and my own whimsical ideas - the ponytail, the shortness, etc. At first she was going to be basically the object of several racist-yet-still-somehow-innocent antics on Mac's part, but eventually she grew on me as a character. Personality wise, she's really unlike anyone I've known, and probably one of the most original characters I've created, or helped create. Thus she became more of a staple, until one day I decided that she and Steve would make a good couple. And there was born the Look Who's Job Hunting Now storyline. Certain attributes of hers have also developed over time, most importantly of all her hair... I stumbled across the modern look while experimenting with hairstyles and clothing during one of my (exceedingly) rare sketching sessions. The result is a uniquely recognizable appearance.
And last but not least, there's Courtney, apple of Mac's eye and no doubt the holder of a restraining order against him. Her existence came about simply enough - we needed a random, one-off character for a quick joke at Mac's expense. But as I sketched her out for the first time I thought that she would make a good recurring character, someone whom Mac could more regularly bug rather than making a series of girls one after the other. As such the Courtney character was born, and eventually integrated into the comic. While she's been used as little more than cannon fodder for Mac so far, trust us when we say, she'll eventually have a larger role in the comic's future.
- Kevin
(Stay tuned for more...)
...On the set.
"The Making of Steve and Mac..."
- By Kev
Being an appreciative reader of webcomics, I'm certain that I'm not the only one who's ever wondered how a particular comic is produced, from the pencils up.
Therefore, I'll bring you, the interested reader, a step-by-step walkthrough of the production of any given episode of Steve and Mac.
The hardest part I guess is finding a place to start... once I do, the rest should be gravy. In the simplest of terms, the very beginning of any given strip is in the script. Me and Philip have a system set up where scripts are written and stored in text files, which I then use when drawing and making the comic. Arranged by panel and laden with sound effects and movie script-like dialogue lines, they actually have very little visual cues in them and let me be very general and exploratory with the art itself. This is a big reason why it's not a pain writing scripts with Philip - he gives me all the artistic freedom I need. ;)
Armed with a script, I generally read it over once or twice and get a good idea of what it's gonna look like when finished. Now, the obvious part is to get started on it. Grabbing my favorite blue pencil and a sheet of printer paper (yes, standard printer paper and Crayola colored pencils... tools of the gods), I then start sketching at the first panel and working onward. Any artist should be familiar with this process; bubbles if needed to sort out the body and limbs' positioning, then darkening the lines before I go to inking. As a note of interest, it's not normal for me to use stick figures and bubble people when setting up the characters to draw... more of the exception than the rule. Yes, I'm just wierd like that.
Here's an example picture of a background, all in blue pencils so you can see what a typical sketch looks like before I go to inks:
The frame's colors were rebalanced so the lines are visible - in reality they're much MUCH fainter. It's important to note that this background isn't and won't be inked because all of the linework will be generated completely with vector graphics.
As you can see, there's not really many stray lines. That's because generally what I start with is what I finish with, and the first draft is typically the last. More on that later... the next stage is, well, inks. And by inks I really mean Sharpies, 'cause that's what I use... Wal-Mart bought Sharpies. Carefully I go over the blue lines, occasionally using little cues I add in the pencils to help me.
A note on these "cues": sometimes I'll have some lines that went too far wide, like, say, an arm being way too fat or a leg just being off. I'll draw the new one over it, and mark the one I want with a little arrow. Not too complicated, and often hard to see, but most of the time I remember which line I want anyway.
Anyway, back to the inking: I generally like to use as fresh a Sharpie as I can so that the lines are darker and crisper, although there are certain balances I tend to prefer depending on the frame I'm drawing. For example... brand new Sharpies have very, very fine lines. I like these for smaller, more compact frames. A slightly-worn-in one has a little fatter line, but still crisp. I like these better on more spaced-out frames, because on compact ones, it just gets painstaking to keep everything clear. Worn-out Sharpies have fuzzy, inconsistent lines... I try to use them only for filling in large spaces with black. I don't do this too often though, because I prefer to just use the Flood tool in Paintshop and fill it in that way. More on that later.
At any rate, inking is even quicker and simpler than pencils, since it's basically line tracing. Here's an example of an inked frame, freshly scanned and unmodified:
As you can see, the lines are all pretty much the same as in the pencils. Not much change at all. This's what I meant by the first draft generally being the last.
Now, I keep doing this for each frame until the entire strip is inked. Time until this point is typically in the half hour to one hour period... comics with more panels can take up to twice as much time, three hours tops for comics that flirt with the Infinite Canvas line.
Here's the part now where I get to tell you how I organize each strip when drawing it.
Each frame of the comic is drawn on its own separate sheet of printer paper. That means that for a three-panel comic, there'll be three pages at the least for the primary character layer (where you'd have, say, Mac and Steve chatting in the main focus). Other pages that may be drawn will include: backgrounds (drawn on their own separate sheet and to the angle of the featured panel they'll be in), and characters and special-effects layers (background characters that'll be fuzzed out, and/or main characters that'll also be fuzzed out or have special effects laid on them, like a wave effect). There's more... the astute reader knows that there are two variations of panels in Steve and Mac: the vertical one, and the horizontal one. There are several subtle variations on those thereof, but let's keep it simple for now... the point is, vertical and horizontal.
Each frame is drawn to a specific orientation. Let's say it's a three-panel strip... each frame is drawn with the page turned vertically, letter style. When I scan, they'll all be vertical, and when I'm done CGing and coloring them, they'll all be aligned and oriented so that all I have to do is add a border, shrink, and place them in the template. Voila, built-in frame sizing. If it's a four-panel strip, each frame is drawn with the sheet turned horizontally, portrait-style. This means that I can take two sheets and make a row, then do that again for the second row.
I can also mix and match at will with the frames drawn on separate sheets like this. This will also be explained in even further detail in the section on coloring and CGing.
...Which just so happens to be next! At this point, I'm ready for scanning, which I do. I have the scanner set for letter-sized paper, and a certain set of resolutions that I don't remember, but as far as SMac goes, it's not really all that important. It's just high enough to get me to a ludicrous resolution. Therefore I just slide the page in, set it, scan, and go. For each strip I create a folder, and all the frames will go in this folder, along with the general template for the comic, which I copy and rename to the number of the comic in its own folder. This way each comic's relevant parts are kept in one place.
After each frame is scanned in, I close the scanning wizard, and fire up Paintshop. First things first, I open up one or all the frames (depends on what I feel like doing at the time), and proceed to clean them up and prepare them for CGing. This is much simpler than it sounds, or how I might make it sound. Here I just select the Eyedropper tool, left click on one of the blue pencils lines to select a blue color for the primary color, and set the secondary color (right click) to a pure white (RGB value 255 255 255). Setting tolerance to 75, I double-right-click and clear out all the blue to white. This also generally changes all the off-whites to pure white. Sometimes this isn't enough though, and I'll have to select another blue color with left mouse if I see stray specks. That usually takes care of all the blue lines left. Now I need to darken all the black lines... here I select a grayish color (these are usually on the "antialiased" parts of the lines on like curves or something), and set the replacing color to a flat black (rgb 0 0 0, right mouse). Double-right-click again, and the blacks are blacker. Now I hover the mouse around the lines one more time until I find a black that isn't pure black (like, say, 0 15 13), and select that with left mouse. And I do it again.
Lots of words used to explain it, but it doesn't take long. Now all I have is pure white and pure black, and my flood fill tool won't act wonky on me.
Note: The mouse cursor won't be visible, but it's there, underneath the floating toolbox tooltip... tool... thing... yeahhh...
Here's me picking a blue:
Here's me after clearing it:
Cleaner, but nowhere near clean. And finding another blue:
And fixing the black:
Here's an example of what it looks like once I've cleaned it up:
The next part is also pretty simple, but it can take time. Here I fill in all the colors with the flood fill tool, setting the tolerance to 0 mostly and keeping it on "RGB Value" match mode. All that fancy talk basically means that, the tool will replace all colors that match the RGB Value of the color that I click on, within a certain tolerance of the value it's replacing. And that basically means that the higher the number, the more colors it'll replace that're like the color I'm clicking on. It's actually possible that if you set the value too high or just high enough, you can fill, say, the entire comic itself with black when you only mean to fill a certain area. It's pretty sensitive.
The actual coloring is pretty mundane... um... ...actually. I just pick the colors I want and fill, no big deal. It just takes time to catch all the little holes and spots that need colors.
Here's a screenshot of me filling some of Steve's hair:
The tool itself in Paintshop 6.x is a little bucket with a crosshair at the tip. It does get a little fancy, though. There are some things, like pants and shirts, that I'll want to lay down a color with a texture. Here I just set the texture tool on one of the colors to one of the textures provided, or sometimes, one I make myself if the desired effect isn't there in the list.
It's easier to show with this than tell, so here's a pic:
In Paintshop, that's where the Texture tool's located (circled area). The other area is an example of what that fill looks like. Those colors weren't used in the actual final version of the strip and are just an example.
Sometimes I mix gradients in, or fill the area first with one color, then the other with the texture combined for a darker, or just more pronounced effect. It all simply depends.
In this pic you can see where I've set two colors, put the second on gradient, and have a texture selected:
That one shows you how I fill in the walls. This process is repeated over and over until my poor fingers and joints get sick of clicking and I get tired of fixing little mistakes and trying to hit tiny little holes. Or until I'm done CGing all the frames. Either/or. At any rate, any given frame needs characters, and a background.
Here you see me juggling the background in one window, and the characters in the other:
For backgrounds, I take the frame on a layer, and run it through a Gaussian Blur from the Effects menu. I put the thingy on four (whatever the efect level thing is called, I forget the name), and click go. It blurs the shit out of it, giving it a very soft feel.
Anyway, now I just take the characters, copy their layer, and paste it as a new layer over the background layer. Or vice-versa, pasting the background under the characters, either way, it's instant Completed Frame.
See?
Now after all this talking I'm finally ready to finish up the frame. I Greyscale the whole thing in the Colors menu, merge the layers, and resize the panel to a specific height or width that I've predetermined works for SMac. In this case we're talking vertical, so I resize the Height to 315 pixels and let the auto-adjuster take care of the rest. For horizontal frames, it's a height of 282. Now I go to the Image menu and the Add Borders tool. Keeping the Symmetrical box checked, I set the border widths to 2 pixels, and click Go, making sure first that my secondary color is black. Now I have one ready-sized, bordered-up, greyscaled frame all ready to go. I use Save As... and select PNG from the dropdown, and save the frame as its own image, in case I have to come back to it later (it happens). Now I take the completed frame, copy it, and paste it into the Canvas layer in the template file for this number comic, placing it up in the corner, center, side, or wherever it needs to go. In this case, corner.
See?
I repeat this process at the end of every frame's completion until I have the comic all fully assembled and ready for text.
And here's what that looks like:
Finally, after all that work, I'm ready for the text and bubbles. This is actually the intensive part if Philip gives me a shitload of text to work with. >.<
It's still simple enough, though... I just copy whole lines of text out of the text file (this is what makes it easy, the lack of typing involved ;) ), and paste them into the text field of the Text tool. All the text I create as Vector, which you can see down in the picture below as the selected radio button. Before I go into making the text too, I make sure that the secondary color is Black, and the Primary color is blank (transparent). This's because I don't want bordered text, since it's so much harder to read.
Now, with the text entered, I take the time to set what words I want bold, italics, or otherwise, and set the alignment mode to Center (or Left or Right, depending on what my needs are). All these things are pointed out in the picture below. Note: which words I want bolded or italicized are generally pre-defined with markers in the scripts file beforehand. That or I'll take liberties with the lines.
Now I hit Okay and place the text where I want it in the strip. Lather, rinse, repeat until all the text is in place.
Now this is the intensive part: text bubbles.
Here I set the Primary color to an off-black, and the filling color (Secondary color) to a pure white. I select the Shapes tool, pick the bubble or rectangle I want, make sure it's got a border width of 2, antialising, and Vector all selected, and draw the bubbles where I need them. There are times, too, when bubbles will stretch out from a bubble, to a linking pipe, and then to the ending bubble. For all those I start first with drawing rectangles for them, since they'll need to be at the bottom anyway. So, starting with rectangles, I work my way up until all the bubbles are laid in place where they need to be.
The only problem is... they're all on top of the text! A problem, but only a minor one. I select all the bubbles and drag them underneath the text bars in the Layers pallette, effectively putting everything where it needs to be. Fine adjustment comes next, where I align all the text inside their bubbles until they fit comfortably. I might also need to resize some bubbles or redraw them if I don't like the shape, which I do sometimes.
The only thing left to do now is connect all the linking pipes. This's the part I'm not too fond of. I have to select each rectangle and go into Node Edit mode in the Vector Tools mode, reshape each one so they curve and whatnot, and then get them all aligned. Now I need to select the balloons they're attached to and go into Node Edit more again, and Break them open at certain points, and then set the lines afterward so you have the illusion of one big, flowing shape.
Here's what it looks like just after I've shaped a pipe and Broken a circle:
Repeat for every single time that a linker box is touching a balloon. By this point my hands are so badly wanting a break, but I'm still not done yet.
After all the frames are in place, all the text and bubbles laid, the background of the entire comic set to a gradient (I have a separate layer for that, so it's easy enough to simply fill it after cropping the template down to size), now I just have to export it. I save the entire file as a PNG file of the comic's number in its folder, and then copy that in Powerdesk to the website's comics folder, change the filename to the proper Comicgenesis format, and FTP it to the website.
NOW. I'm done.
There are obviously many more things that I do the comics, such as dumping motion blurs or other special effects onto other layers, but once you get the idea of how I make each frame and strip and put them together, you can see how I really just juggle them around on their own layers.
That's all I have for now, though. Not the most streamlined of processes I imagine, but it does get the job done. Note that I didn't leave images for many of the little steps in there, so if you want to duplicate it at all, you'll just have to work it out on your own. All this image creation and uploading is cumbersome. @_@
- Kevin
...In the box office.
"Guest comics..."
Kevin goes on a rash of guest comic production quite regularly, and is stacking up quite a repository of guest comics and fan art that's been made for other folks' comics.
That storehouse of comics can be found in the media section of the Steve and Mac website, at the link below:
There are also a variety of promotional and bonus materials in the Media section, including personal avatars and wallpapers.
Trivia
Did you know...
� ...that artist KL Sanchez was literally born an Aggie, at St. Joseph's in Bryan, Texas?
� ...that writer Philip Seals is one of the world's few men who don't care for sports.
� ...that artist Kevin and writer Philip are musicians without current affiliations to active bands? Philip sings, while Kevin can play bass and rhythm guitar, and dabbles in sampling. Sadly, neither has acceptable recording equipment, nor acceptable electronics (Kevin requires a vocoder and drum machine, yo). Kevin produces his own music privately under the name Dead to Rights.
� ...that artist KL Sanchez has been an artist in the most technical of terms ever since he was a child, but was never serious about it until two years ago. He's taught himself everything he knows through trial and error and through observation and study.
� ...that artist KL Sanchez has been involved with no less than six comics during his short career? Of the six, two came to a definite end, three are active, and one was aborted.
� ...that artist KL Sanchez is an author? In addition to doing all the writing for the comics Born Fuzzy, Strangely Normal, Charlie Sev, and partially writing for Steve and Mac and Comicarotica, he has a children's book that is yet to be published, and a multitude of projects that are sitting on the backburner... no less than five potential projects for the future. He also has written various fanfictions and short stories since 2003.
� ...that Kevin is an author that almost wasn't? Until 2003, he had tried two other projects in an attempt to write a book, but aborted both of them, deciding they were, well, crap. During Christmas break 2002, however, his brother worked with him on a fanfiction, and his writing career got off to a dubious start.
� ...that Philip does his best work when drunk or otherwise inebriated? He also has a tendency to suddenly become gay when intoxicated. It's true, ask his friends.
� ...that Philip often has rambling rants wherein he becomes an old man in his eighties, reliving the Great War.
� ...that Kevin almost wasn't born? He was nearly miscarried while still in the womb for unknown reasons.
Trivia
� The comic for November 22, 2005 was inspired by an actual sign read on a gas pump.
� The comic for December 3, 2005 was inspired by true events.
� The comic for July 3, 2006 was inspired by true events.
� In the backgrounds of certain comics featuring hanging pictures or paintings, the pictures often change from comic to comic, and panel to panel.
� Steve and Mac has long been influenced by, and featuring variations on gags from popular TV shows, movies, and pop culture in general. Of perhaps the more obscure ones, the "Ben Dover" gag was inspired by Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
� Artist KL Sanchez doesn't believe truly in the infinite canvas theory of comicmaking, but on occasion has produced comics that go well beyond the boundaries of length for traditional print comics.
� The character "Jack the Green Elephant" wasn't originally meant to be a recurring character. However, he has become so.
� The comic for October 9, 2006 was originally not scripted, and was only written towards the end of the story arc to fill in a space during the week.
� The comic for October 18, 2006 features a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. "Et t�, Courtn�" is a parody of Caesar's famous last words, "Et t�, Brut�?"
� The storylines "Conquering Aliens" and "H.R. Whippinstuff" were written entirely by Kevin. Philip only gave the title "Conquering Aliens" to said storyline and had no further input.
� The artist Kevin is a Texans, Cowboys, and A&M Aggies fan. Steve is a Texans fan, Jess is a Cowboys fan, and both are Aggies, although the last fact has not yet been revealed in the comic.
� The comic for November 1, 2006 has Mac sitting on the couch watching TV. On the screen is a picture of the famous "12th Man in the Mist" photo, when the original 12th Man kickoff team walkon leader was standing in the midst of a mist before a kickoff. This is a subtle way of affirming Aggie status within the household.
� The comic is sprinkled with numerous Jimmy Hoffa references. The comics for the 22nd of July, 2006... November 27, 2006... and September 18th, 2006... they all contain references. Coincidence? Only time will tell.
� In the beginnings of the comic, Steve's goatee mysteriously disappears and reappears at times.
- Adopt a Panda Rated Web 14 image courtesy of the Adopt a Panda Service. The image is copyrighted by the original artist but is free to use publicly given due credit - I THE ARTIST OF STEVE AND MAC DID NOT CREATE THIS IMAGE. The real artist can be reached here, should you wish to chat with her.
