Jeremy: That’s the final page of our chapter, folks. We’re going on hiatus for a bit, but when we return, it will be with an entire chapter! Please read this blog post for more details! We’ll put up something with a good bit more information soon. Thanks for sticking with us through this roller coaster of emotions!

Jeff: If you want to review this storyline (or if you haven’t read it all, remember that just like unseen reruns, IT’S NEW TO YOU!), jump back to this strip. Or for those of you that bought our book, you can head on over to this strip to see where things picked up after the book left off!

Jeremy: Did the keys just get tossed?

Jeff: Boy, howdy, yes. Those keys totally got tossed, man. Oh, and don’t forget! Season finale next week! Invite your friends over to have a viewing reading party! If we’re lucky – and instantly very, very famous – we might be able to get Chris Hardwick or Ryan Seacrest to do a recap show beforehand!

We’re just two comics away from our “season finale”, after which we’re going to go on a bit of an extended hiatus. Please rest assured, though, that we WILL be back! I am already hip-deep in writing out our next season, which will not only take the band to places they’ve never been before, but also take you – our readers – back to past events that have only been hinted at thus far. It’s exciting, but it’s also a bit scary for us, because it does mean we’ll be leaving behind our post-every-Thursday philosophy that we’ve been trying to hold onto since the strip’s inception. The plan is for us to first put together 24 pages of some of the tightest-written material that we’ve yet created, and then once we have it all down, post 3 pages a week for roughly 2 months. Then we’ll probably go on another break while we work up the next chapter.

Why are we doing this? There are quite a few reasons, including time crunches and lifestyle adjustments, but mostly it comes down to us wanting to not only produce the best possible content we can, but also to provide it for you in a method that makes it much more conducive to reading and following. And as we’re closing the book on our longest-running single storyline at the moment, we want the next one to be lean, mean, and sparklin’ with sheen!

So, stay tuned! This season is ending with a bang!

Jeremy: I’m going to stay out of this. It’s clear that Bal is pissed.

Jeff: In case you’re confused, it might be worth the time to refresh your memory on the last few strips. I suggest starting here.

Jeremy: It was cool drawing Daphne in this strip. I liked creating her look of taken-aback-ness in panel 2 when being handed the briefcase, as well as the happy reaction she has to the open gift. I like her.

Jeff: She’s friggin’ adorable, man. Particularly there in panel 4. Too bad all that cute is gonna fly in the face of someone else…

Jeff: For an in-depth look at the process of how we create comics together, check out these two blog posts: The Script, Pencils. Then come on back here for the conclusion:

Jeremy: So, after I have my pencils prepared in Photoshop, I set those layers to a lower opacity (around 40%), so I can see just enough detail, but not so much that they interfere with my inks. The inks go on a new layer above the pencils, and I select a brush for inking called “Organic”, which is part of an excellent set of Photoshop brushes created by Frenden. Using a WACOM tablet in conjunction with Photoshop allows me to draw digitally, and the built-in pressure sensitivity allows my lines to change from thin to thick, depending on the amount of pressure I apply to the surface of my tablet with the WACOM stylus. For inking, I prefer to begin with thick outlines of the characters, and then fill in inner details with a thinner brush.

When I finish inking, I hide the pencil layers, and then I fill in flat colors in a new layer under the inks, by either “painting” them in, or making selections with the magic wand tool or lasso tool, followed by filling those areas with the paint bucket. In a new layer above flats (under the inks layer), I shade with darker colors. For a more detailed description of this process, please see this post about creating art for our first collected print volume.

After I am happy with all the colors and inks, I add tails to the dialog balloons, and save the comic as a flat jpeg. Then I upload it to our site and create the post. That’s pretty much it! If you have any questions about more of the the art creation process, please feel free to post in our comments below, and I will be more than happy to give detailed answers!

1. Panel Layout and Lettering: Given Jeff’s direction of 2×3 panel layout, I start with my basic template, which consists of 6 equally sized panels (2 rows of 3). Then I type in all the dialog for the panels, and surround the letters with word balloons or caption boxes. This helps me get a better idea of how much room I have for art. I believe this process is backwards from other artists, who may start with drawing out the comic in a thumbnail or rough format first, then pencil, and add lettering last, filling spaces leftover that isn’t taken up by art. I can’t describe why I like doing lettering first, but it just feels right to me. So, based on seeing the lettering, I start getting a mental image of where the characters and pieces of the scene will go, which also corresponds with any visual direction Jeff gave in the script. This allows me to decide which panels will be wider/bigger, and which will be smaller. Once I get a feel for that I start…
2. Rough Sketching: You can see a ghost of this in red and blue under the black/gray pencils above. I draw and size these rough shapes and lines in Photoshop (I do everything digitally in Photoshop, using my WACOM tablet for drawing). Once I have a good feel for the rough layout of these shapes, I move dialog balloons around accordingly to get the best visual placement, and move my panel borders to get the closest-to-final position possible. After this roughing is done, I start…
3. Pencils: This is what you see in black/grey. I use my rough shapes and lines as guides in a layer underneath the “pencils” layer, with the opacity turned down, so that my pencil details are the most visible. Sometimes, this involves a lot of hitting “Undo”, drawing over and over again until I get the details I want in the layer. Some finer details I save for inks, which you will see in the finished page next week. A good example of this is the sound board in panel 5. Right now, it is just a bunch of lines to indicate the placement of where the knobs and channel strips will go. To save time, I will likely just ink those right in. It is all a matter of what I feel confident in just “winging” when it comes to inks. My tastes and feelings change on this, on a week-to-week basis.

I hope you all are enjoying this look behind the scenes of Ouro Bros. As Jeff described last week, I am playing a bit of catch up, as my life has been really nuts recently. Please feel free to leave comments with any other questions you may have about the art process, and I will be happy to answer them! Thanks for reading this week!

Jeff: Yeah! …What he said.

First, though, our strips start out as a Google Doc. I write out the action and dialog as you see above, panel-by-panel. A couple of notes:

• “LoS-ers”: Not long after we came up with the “Lake of Serpents” moniker, I realized that I could either keep calling them “the gang” or “the OBs and friends”, or I could use our band name’s acronym to its obvious advantage.
• “OS”: This stands for “Off Screen”. I tend to write things as if I’m watching them on TV or in a movie. Occasionally, I’ll refer to the “camera” panning along or zooming into the action.
• “Layout: 2X3”: If we have a chance to do something wild and crazy with the overall layout, I’ll mention it here. This time around, we’re doing a fairly standard 2 rows, 3 panels each format.

Anyway, feel free to ask us anything in the comments below. I’d never want to see sausage being made, but hopefully seeing this comic come together will be interesting to all of you!

Jeff: Decided to try something a little different with this strip. I really hope it makes sense to everyone!

Jeremy: And another satisfied Ultimate Ukuleles customer exits the store in panel one. It’s almost like she’s finished with her role in Ultimate Ukuleles for the time being. As if she might have spent some time there. Adding some local color, perhaps?

Jeff: This brings to an end our collaboration with fabulous colorist Ginger Dee. She’s done far more than throw Crayolas at the screen for us; she really collaborated with us, asking questions about the emotions behind these strips. Questions about the motivations. Questions about the backgrounds. Endless, endless questions… Haha, I kid, I kid, Gin! Really, it’s been fantastic working with her, and hope we get the chance to do so again sometime in the future.

Jeremy: It was also nice to take a break from coloring and get someone else’s perspective. We were really lucky that Gin was willing to play around in our world for a bit. Thank you, Gin!