ZLM_Mulligan

I'd tap that (at the end of your turn).

Zero Like Me #166:
Deal #1:
Mulligan

Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 5, Deal 1 in panel 3. Ib's helm on the green mage. Zero's costume inspired by Puddnhead's Roofstalker Wight. Shout out to Polanski-clan creeps. Today's setting is the outskirts of Desert with the beginnings of a mysterious forest.

Fun Facts: This is my first time doing sequentials in about a year, so I have to admit I had a mix of anxiety and excitement about embarking on this, but here we go with our Magic-themed adventure! Every Friday we're going to get a new page, and by the end of it we'll have a little contained story, just like the Herald days.

So although I'm excited to be back, particularly on sequentials, most anxiety stemmed from the question of inking: do I ink this traditionally or digitally?

The last sequential I inked traditionally was over a year ago, before I owned a tablet. I've been digitally inking the past 50ish ZLMs anyway, so digital was definitely my inclination because of how clean and polished it can look right off the bat, while still being easy to further edit, the results of which you can see at left.

My worry with digital inking is that it's not really helping my artistic development, but I could argue either way on that, as I am definitely able to catch more errors on the digital pass.

Baa: Just to be sure I wanted to stick with digital, I decided to ink this traditionally as well, so at right is how it would have looked back in the Yale era. I think this is resounding proof I gotta stick with digital; digital lines are cleaner, crisper, and more easily manipulated, but at the cost of taking longer. Just gotta figure out how to get the ideal printing.

The traditional inks feel so clunky and the errors just get amplified. It's also so easy to get carried away and go overboard, which can only end badly if you're not careful. Maybe it's the paper, but I feel like the ink bleed is a little too much. I have a limited supply of Bristol board, but I'm reserving it for some other projects since it's more expensive. I can't print my page template on it anyway, so it'd be tough to get the pages to sync up.

The weird page formatting is present because I've matched Viz-publishing format (off a copy of Hikaru no Go) which has a big gutter on the spine-side of the page; you have to start your first page on the right side of the book, so the big spine-gutter is on the left. The idea is to collect these Magic pages together into a professional-looking minicomic and hand them out to some special someones.

Even if I permanently switch to digital inks, I still want to continue penciling traditionally, because I still have a lot of leveling up to do on that front and I won't be doing myself any favors by skipping this step, especially without a Cintiq. I tried doing a completely digital comic with no pencils once, and I dunno, I'm just not ready to go there yet...

All right, so next week, more Magic, plus some quite unrelated stuff.

Reuxben