Daily Comics 2024 Cover Process! (Patreon)

We couldn't nail down a model for figure drawing last night (apologies to my Art Nerd tier members! Next two weeks are booked, though!), so I spent the evening finally finishing the cover for the collection of the 2024 Daily Comics!

I started off with a list of ideas, based on some of the comics I included in the book. I wanted to do a sweet little drawing of the cats all over me in bed while I read...

... but the 10/23/24 original comic was sitting on top of a stack in front of me the whole time, with this last panel catching my attention...

... and I thought "that's way funnier," so I decided to recreate this scene instead.

I mocked it up digitally first, tweaking the lettering and values to death:

Sent this one to Erika and Lucy to get some feedback, and Lucy helped me come up with a better treatment for the title:

This is practically done, right? But no! As always, I never consider it a "real" drawing unless I draw it on paper, so I printed just the linework backwards on the back of my bristol board:

... and used a light box to draw it in pencil on the front side so I could ink it: 

Luke suggested that the sound effects might be overkill, so I drew them on a separate sheet and scanned them all in and meshed them digitally:

(I liked my digital treatment of the title better than the hand-drawn one, so I swapped them out!)

And then, I did the thing that I always do, which is:

... finish the whole thing traditionally and then realize it's too rough to use. Oh well, at least it'll look more finished for whoever wants to buy it later.

Luckily, toning the whole thing digitally from scratch takes a lot less time than it would have taken me to tweak all the marker strokes to look presentable.

And here's the final product! Today I'm checking out paper stocks at the local printer to see what they have, and finishing the back cover for the book, as well as leveling out all of the comics that will be going on the inside of the book. I've already chosen the ones I want and made a tiny mockup:

And have I shared the stickers here?? The stickers are IN and they look GORGEOUS!!

Hot tip, when you make sticker sheets: be mindful of the shape they leave when you peel 'em!

That was a fun surprise!

I know I said I'd get everything into the store on Wednesday, but it's looking like next week. I forgot how much work this stuff is!

Anyway, if I can get it all running earlier than that, you'll be the first to know, as always! And there will be freebies for you patrons, of course. :) You'll hear more from me soon!