I do just want to jump in with some “behind the scenes” commentary.
This strip actually took about two hours to do, even with the cut and paste elements from previous days, for one simple reason. Being relatively new to doing a strip with PhotoImpact, I did everything the hard way.
The background and both characters were placed by hand in each individual panel (I think you can see some gaps and shifted positions). Then I had to type the dialogue over top of the background (which was often difficult to see), draw the speech balloons around the dialogue, make sure they fit, and then the really hard part. I then had to go in and manually erase the portions of the background within the speech balloons. When I got down to the tip of the tails, I sometimes had to go pixel by pixel. If I screwed up and went outside the bounds of the balloon (which happened often) I would have to Control-Z the whole balloon and start over. Then, when I was done, I couldn’t re-use the background image in another panel (unless like panel 3 above I re-used the balloon with it, which usually looked strange).
It was a pain. It’s also the reason why backgrounds (especially elaborate ones) were almost never used in my earliest strips. Unless I had a really strong reason to have action in front of a background it just wasn’t worth the added effort.
In intervening years I created what I call “solid” speech balloons which carry their white background around with them and can be resized without having to actually erase anything. I also got much better at duplication. Except for the custom balloons in panel 1 and 2, I could probably do this strip in about 15 minutes today. This makes it easier for me to do the backgrounds, but since the minimalist style of the strip has become one of its trademarks, I usually don’t bother.
I do just want to jump in with some “behind the scenes” commentary.
This strip actually took about two hours to do, even with the cut and paste elements from previous days, for one simple reason. Being relatively new to doing a strip with PhotoImpact, I did everything the hard way.
The background and both characters were placed by hand in each individual panel (I think you can see some gaps and shifted positions). Then I had to type the dialogue over top of the background (which was often difficult to see), draw the speech balloons around the dialogue, make sure they fit, and then the really hard part. I then had to go in and manually erase the portions of the background within the speech balloons. When I got down to the tip of the tails, I sometimes had to go pixel by pixel. If I screwed up and went outside the bounds of the balloon (which happened often) I would have to Control-Z the whole balloon and start over. Then, when I was done, I couldn’t re-use the background image in another panel (unless like panel 3 above I re-used the balloon with it, which usually looked strange).
It was a pain. It’s also the reason why backgrounds (especially elaborate ones) were almost never used in my earliest strips. Unless I had a really strong reason to have action in front of a background it just wasn’t worth the added effort.
In intervening years I created what I call “solid” speech balloons which carry their white background around with them and can be resized without having to actually erase anything. I also got much better at duplication. Except for the custom balloons in panel 1 and 2, I could probably do this strip in about 15 minutes today. This makes it easier for me to do the backgrounds, but since the minimalist style of the strip has become one of its trademarks, I usually don’t bother.
Just wanted to drop in and offer that idea.