Had a very productive weekend and have now finished 6 pages of the 8-page 'Training Day' storyline. It was hot, but I got the new fan, so that provided some relief. Today the sunlight is bone-white and heavy on the skin, and it's only 8am. It's going to be a very hot one.

Here is the half-finished version of page 1:

I'd added some figures since the last time. This train is based on real trains in Melbourne, where the story is set. I've simplified them a little. I inked in many of the lines using my pen of choice, the Mon Ami Plus Pen 3000, a cheap plastic pen with water-based ink from Korea. I like this pen despite its many negative points, and will blog about it next time. I don't generally ink in black spaces; I add all black areas in GIMP, the graphics software I use. (It's freeware and pretty good, too!)

Then, I erased as much of the pencil as I could. On hot days more of the pencil seems to stay on the paper than on cold day. I scanned it into GIMP. The first thing I do is select the 'destaturate' function, which takes away all colours but black and white. That leaves me with nice clean black lines, good for printing. Then I colour the parts that need colouring. I use the 'bucket fill' function, and 'paintbrush' set to 'dissolve'. ('Dissolve' means the paintbrush only paints one colour, rather than many. I only want black for my lines, no shades of grey.) Colouring this image took a while, and I can even now see a couple of flaws so I will have to go back to it today:

I added two panels from my first attempt at pencilling the page, and reversed them using GIMP. Go back to part 1 of this diary to see those panels. By the way, trains in rush hour are usually not this empty, unless you are way out in the suburbs! The suburb we are setting this story in is a fictional one, but is based on a real suburb.

I used a ruler in the first panel, and no ruler in the other three. Generally I follow the advice to use a ruler when pencilling, then ink freehand. Unruled lines seem to have more warmth and attractivness to me. That warmth is something that comics' main competitors, movies and video games, don't have. (They could have it if they wanted, but they don't). I think it is one of comics' strengths. My favourite comics to read tend to have that quality.

The lettering is not done by me. When the page is finished, I hit the 'newsprint' function on GIMP, which makes the greys stipple dots, just like a newspaper photo. Then I send it to Jason, who letters it using Adobe Illustrator. For an example of how a lettered page looks, please go to The Sixsmiths and have a look at one of the webcomics. Some of those webcomics will appear in the book, too. We haven't decided which ones, yet!

My eyes were quite tired at the end of the day. I must remember to rest them frequently while I am drawing or computer-ing. It's sometimes hard to remember to do that, as the work can be quite absorbing.

I should get the last two pages done today. Both of them contain images of trains, so will take a bit longer than average.