iPHONE!

September 1st, 2008 by Tyler

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CARTOON.    For anyone who’s interested, I’ll be speaking at the “Word Under the Street” Festival at the Queer Comics forum.  The forum will also have Patrick Fillion from the pervy Class Comics, and The Village’s Ken Boesem  (Sept 28th, 3pm in the main Library, downstairs).                       So, I wrote this in early June and originally used a Blackberry instead of the iPHONE, having never heard of such a thing at the time.  Two weeks later, when the iPhone was released, Myles’ namesake let me know he was in a lawn-chair at 6 am in front of the apple store to be the first to get one.  I changed the strip’s Blackberry to an iPHONE, and the comic became a slice of life, especially since “Myles” hangs onto his real iPHONE like a fat kid with a cookie.                             A few days after this, the two of us are at Wreck Beach.  Basking in the sun, in the company of friends… and “Myles” watching South Park on his iPHONE.  I tenderly, sorrowfully stroke his head and sez to him, I sez, “Myles, why don’t you put that devil-device down and enjoy the moment?”  ”What moment?” he sez.  ”Exactly…”sez I… 

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4 Responses to “iPHONE!”

  1. on 02 Sep 2008 at 2:56 am1 caleb

    nice comic! at work everyone is parading around with their iphones, and exclaiming how wonderful they are…. genuinely annoying.

    anyways, out of curiosity how do you illustrate your comic?

  2. on 03 Sep 2008 at 8:57 pm2 Tyler

    I start out by writing a script and, from that, working out how many panels it’ll take to tell the story. The script is hopefully written a good week or three before anything else, so I can give it time to marinate and develop, and I usually end up cutting back heavily on what I’ve originally written.

    From that, I sketch out a rough draft to figger how the characters and word balloons should be placed, and who needs how much space. As time’s gone on, this part has gone much faster, with less second-guessing involved..

    Then, I get out the good paper and the ruler. This’s where it can get sticky for me, as I try it for real. After I’ve recreated my rough draft in pencil, I’ll ink it , usually using gobs of white-out, as things go astray pretty often.

    Next, I’ll scan the whole thing and use the computer to colour in the spaces, a lot like paint-by-numbers. Then, using photoshop, shade the figues and background, and clean up any rough edges.

    Off to the offices of Xtra-West I truck with a CD of the cartoon clutched in my hand, and a week later it’ll be in Vancouver and Toronto.

    From beginning to end, a cartoon’ll take 12-16 hours, depending on what I’m trying to do, and how often I screw up. Ones like “iPHONE” are fairly straightforward, with few panels and fast colouring, while “Dreams of 2.5 Children” took me about 3 afternoons. Though I’ve gotten faster, I’m still surprised how much time is involved. Love every minute though - a fun gig that I’m lucky to have…

  3. on 04 Sep 2008 at 5:17 am3 caleb

    wow thanks! I never thought about how much work went into a comic strip, so thank you for enlightening me :)

    have you considered illustrating your comic entirely in photoshop?(or perhaps just your inking in stage to eliminate the awkward white out). it has a learning curve but in the end it may speed up your process? having a wacom tablet especially helps a lot. that might help. (http://www.wacom.com/productinfo/)

    “Love every minute though - a fun gig that I’m lucky to have…” I can tell!! it really shows in your work.

    -caleb

  4. on 13 Sep 2008 at 4:32 am4 vince

    nice, gonna be a regular read for me now ;)

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