The Making Of 'Sbookies'

Earlier this week, to coincide with Halloween, I released a full page comic strip titled 'Sbookies', about Madge the witch and her cat Silverside. I'll say no more, you ought to check it out! There's a link just below this paragraph.

http://droeysdraws.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/halloween-treat-sbookies-by-droey.html

For those of you who have seen it, you'll be interested in this post. I put a lot of work into that comic strip to make sure it was made to decent standards, and do with that comes preparation of which today I'm sharing with you.

Script

Since the two designs I favoured were the witch and cat, later to be named as Madge and Silverside respectively, I wanted to make my strip focused on them. I wanted to create an in-between from the spooky Halloween genre and the slice of life style comedy, so for the story I focused only on subjects that we could experience outside of Halloween. I chose the 'Cat in a tree' trope and that habit of animals bringing in dead wildlife. This would lead to the creation of 'trees name' and 'Parrot'.

Sorry if the text is hard to read, since text was liable to change I used a pencil.

The script itself had to be kept simple, so that I would have no problem with making too many or too small panels. This challenged my writing skills, as while I am experienced in story writing, I haven't had to write such a short story up until this point, at least not one that consists of more than one character. You might notice some faint text where the original dialogue would be erased in order to keep any panels from being too wordy, while saying everything they needed to. I originally had it in mind that Madge would have formerly experimented on or even dated the Parrot that Silverside invites home, the idea being debunked for a simple hatred of repetition.

The other half of the script, again I apologize if it is hard to read

Concept Art

The front and side profile of Madge, as well as a sketch of the full strip

Madge was not first seen in 'Sbookies', for she is one of three designs that was actually shown on the blog around September. It was a week after her creation that I went full out and created more designs, which would include Silverside and the tree. You'll notice other creatures being designed, but for the same reasons are not featured in this strip, however could be seen in future.

The rought draft of the script, original sketch for Silverside and finalized sketch for the Tree.

For simplicity's sake, I stuck to one location, one background. I made a sketch of the background so that I could refer to it when drawing the comic. Every detail was intended to be in the exact same spot, from the stones in the wall to the clouds in the sky. I do regret that I drew them all in each panel, rather than just draw one background and edit in Photoshop, but I had plenty of time on my hands and was able to manage it (it would be the digital stage that took up the most time).

The previously mentioned background, with profiles for Silverside and concept art for the Parrot.

The digital process consisted of cleaning up the lines as best as possible, applying the text and colouring in the comic. Now of course I had to do art work that I could post on this blog as is routine, additionally there is a life outside the art blog I have to keep up with and thus I gradually became concerned that I wouldn't be able to finish this before my deadline! However with a couple of weeks to spare it was done.

Sketching the logo, first pannel and Madge's hat; with more monsters being brainstormed.

That's just about everything I can provide for the behind the scenes of 'Sbookies'. I hope you enjoyed the comic, but please don't expect masterpieces of that standard to be a incredibly common thing on this blog, give me time. However I am happy to continue 'Sbookies' in one way or another if you wish to see more of this spooky world. Let me know if you do and what you would like to see as their world expands. Maybe by next Halloween there could be more than just a few comics!