ZLM_FastEffects

Scoop.

Zero Like Me #170:
Deal #5: Fast Effects


Busy at Comic-Con! Details coming soon!

[Update: Ok, back and ready.]

Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 5 and deal 5 in panel 2. The cards referenced are Last Gasp, Spirit Flare, and Monstrous Growth. Do the math to discover our beast is actually just a squirrel with roid rage.

Fun Facts: This page was wrapped just days before Comic-Con! What an end to a hectic, hectic run (only to give way to the madness of Comic-Con, pun unintended). Just a moment to catch my breath before we get gunning on more stuff.

Baa: Comic-Con went great. My reports are here and here.

Ok, so we're going to take a quick break from comicsing to work on a quick(ish) project I've got to hit before I leave for Japan.

Not sure when I'll be able to get more comics done, since the other project has to take priority, but we're gunning it.

Reuxben

ZLM_Leapfog

  Any fast effects?

Zero Like Me #169:
Deal #4: Leapfog

Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 3, Deal 4 in panel 1. Today's main spell doesn't really exist in white, but enough white creatures and spells grant temporary flying, also known as "leap," for it to feel safely white, even if a lot of them require some blue mana involvement. The other spell, "Fog," which has some incredible art in M12, is used to prevent combat damage, which Garry obviously used to keep from getting slaughtered by this egg-laying mammal. The creature in the last panel is roughly based on Krosan Beast, which is basically just a squirrel jacked on theshroids.

Fun Facts: Zero is granted flying in the fourth panel by Nyao's Aeronaut's Leap spell, which again, doesn't quite exist purely as is in Magic, but it's based on the common "leap" ability of many white tricks, particularly the keenly named Kor Aeronaut.

Of course Aeronaut's Leap wouldn't be a particularly playable card in draft or constructed, but it serves the plot, and in any case you'd think any decent "real-world" white mage could easily whip out a leap-spell without even blinking, so I regret nothing. Nothing.

Also, I just learned that you can die from eating raw eggs...but let's just go with people in this Magic-based universe are generally tougher than in our world. That's fair, right? Sure it is.

Baa: I actually find Flying to be a bit of an annoying mechanic. On the other hand, I've always had a fondness for fear (now more appropriately retired for "intimdate") because it felt sneakier than Flying while still being fair in the sense that if they had artifacts or the correctly colored creatures, you were sunk, but otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing. I won my very first tournament I entered by drafting two or three Nezumi Cutthroats and just going to town on my opponent.

But in reality, only black mages can really appreciate the good old days of fear, I guess.

Reuxben

ZLM_Sap

Cards in hand?

Zero Like Me #168:
Deal #3: Sap

Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 6, Deal 3 in panel 5. Today's title is the nickname for Saprolings, which I guess come from these berry-looking things. The pipe Z's smoking is based on the pipe Yale gives you after you graduate. The scrolls reference something related to red mages, which will make sense eventually.

Fun Facts: That last panel was a bit of a tricky call--from the pencils, I knew I wanted some of the mystery creature's face to be visible, but ended up deciding less visibility would be better.

I'm not sure if I shouldn't have included a time-passage panel (like panel 5) to begin this page, to help indicate that time elapsed between this page and the previous one. Feeling torn about it.

Baa: My first deck was green, and I still love that color, but black's where it's at. In fact, I wrote one of my Yale admissions essays on the philosophy of black mana, as elucidated by the legendary Mark Rosewater. For my second Yale admissions essay, I wrote a response to Mark Roseater's motto, "restrictions breed creativity." Thus I credit MaRo with helping to get me into Yale. I was so thrilled to meet him last year at Comic-Con. I was fortunate to have gotten to interview him over the phone my Freshman Year for my Bulldog Blogs stint, it was the same day as the VQ was doing their 12 hour improv marathon, so we even got to talk about his Boston University days doing stand up and improv. He is so crazy cool.

Anyway, now I just need to meet Conan and then I'll have met everyone who got me into Yale!

Reuxben

ZLM_Upkeep

 Bad beats, bro.

Zero Like Me #167:
Deal #2:
Upkeep

Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 3, Deal 2 in panel 4. Garry McGruder's our featured guest star, who's aesthetic is inspired by the Budoka creatures from Champions of Kamigawa set.

Also, in case it isn't clear, "glhfdd" (how I tend to end my letters of support) means "good luck, have fun, don't die." "<3" means "less than three" or whatever...

Fun Facts: Ok, so for today's final version, we're trying borderless panels and completely digital inks. I think it's looking pretty solid, and I think I'll convert all pages to this model for the print edition. [Post-SDCC Update: borders for all!]

My goodness, it takes forever to produce these pages, though--it was hard enough doing strips! It's so easy to get carried away with details and stuff once we enter the digital phase of production. But I have to make these look as slick as possible for Comic-Con, and fortunately I don't have an editor breathing down my neck, so this is pretty all right, all things considered.

Baa: This comic's final draft took a while to post because I seriously messed up my insides--I ate some bad cheese, it seems, and it felt like my stomach was slowly being shredded on the inside by the craggy shards of a broken bottle for a couple days, rendering me unable to do art for any real length of time. It was agony. By day two I just couldn't handle it anymore--I'm not so lactose intolerant I can't handle a good chunk of dairy, so I was at a loss as to what could be the problem. We eventually figured out that Tums pills would do the trick and they did. Such a relief. At one point I was literally curled over, gripping my stomach trying to figure out how to trick myself into sleeping off the pain. But, Tums! Who knew! Hope I can still go to town on dairy, though. Love dairy.

Anyway, although we're a bit off schedule, Friday's page will be up as soon as I finish pencils with the finals to follow soon after, so yeah.

Reuxben

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