The first step is a rough “thumbnail” version of the page. This establishes the panels, basic character placement, and first draft of the dialogue.

Moving to the Bristol board on which the comic will be inked, I draw the inking guidelines in pencil. This includes all the artwork and the lettering. At this stage I also make the final decisions about the artwork and finalize the dialogue. I draw the lines for lettering using an Ames Lettering Guide, a tool which I would highly encourage other cartoonists to check out.

In the inking stage, I first go over the panel borders with a simple Sharpie pen. Next the lettering and balloon borders are traced with fine-line art markers (0.3mm for the letters and 0.7mm for the balloons). The artwork is then inked with a Hunt 100 crowquill pen and sumi ink. I also put in some of the spot blacks at this point, using permanent markers.

Now it’s time for the tedious part. The inked artwork is scanned in and edited in Photoshop. At this stage I remove blemishes and mistakes, add spot blacks as needed, and paint in the gray tones. Once it’s finished, it goes up here for you to look at.

I started working this way beginning with Issue 8 (although for that issue I wasn’t using the painted gray tones yet). Prior to that issue the artwork was penciled on paper but inked digitally. I switched to physical inking in part to reduce the amount of computer time required for each page–and then, of course, started doing this digitally-painted graytone thing that takes almost as long. Oh well.

So that’s how it’s done, buoys and gulls.

All twelve (12) months of the upcoming orbital cycle are included, each illustrated with beautiful color Sunrise artwork. This includes the covers of issues 2-10 and three exclusive, original illustrations. The covers have been “remastered” to fit into the calendar shape, with new artwork seamlessly filling in the margins. The three extra images are all original to the calendar, and are full-fledged color artwork, not just old concepts from my sketchbook. Here is an enticing preview if you still don’t believe me:

For small, blurry color previews of this and the rest of the calendar, please check out the listing on Lulu. The other new illustrations are a beauty shot of the Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and one with Dr. Norton.

So do take a look. Drop hints about it, buy it for a friend, buy it for an enemy (and turn him into a friend?), buy it for yourself. Look you’re planning to be alive next year, right? You’ll need somewhere to write important notes like “Call Joe” and “Beware impending apocalypse.” So why not buy this one and relive airship adventures all year?

Check it out, captain.

Some of you, however, would probably prefer to wait and pick up a bigger anthology which would contain issues 1-10. (I’m guessing Issue 10 will probably be complete around this time next year.) Which would you prefer to buy? Two smaller editions, with the first one coming out soon, or one large edition which won’t be ready for months?

Additionally, I’m curious to know what kinds of special features you’d like to see. I already have planned to have short essays about each issue, schematics of the ship, and the existing pages of the unpublished Issue 7, “The Bargain.” If there’s anything else you’d like to see in such a book, let me know.

On a final note, I might also consider posters or even shirts if there’s any interest in such things. I want to sell you things, so don’t hesitate in suggesting something that you might like to buy.

If you’d just prefer to keep reading the comic for free, that’s cool too. Thanks for sticking around!

As you’ve probably guessed, The Dreyfus is not concerned with exciting adventures in space. It is, like most issues of Sunrise, concerned with people moping around and getting testy. So stay tuned for that thrilling stuff.

This is the second April Fools’ joke I’ve done for Sunrise, the previous one being the Star Trek parody in 2009. (I beat J.J. Abrams’s parody by two months!)

Since this was such a big hit, I’m considering the possibility of some sort of non-canonical crossover novelty issue sometime in the future… it might be fun!

Oh, and for those of you interested in collecting Zarkdom minutiae, the war with the Gress is actually a canonical detail from an yet-unrealized Zirconius script.

In the meantime, you can see the “trailer” or check out Chapter 1 if you’ve not seen it before.

Continue reading on the main blog, because posting images doesn’t work on here for some reason!