I shouldn’t laugh. Really. Poor Leo. Just on the verge of getting all the kids to safety, when “Boop!”*
But man, that last panel.
Congratulations and well-done, mela! Even if this whole strip was just to get a frazzled Eleanor, it was a resounding success. I love it! Thank you again!
*By the way, we went back to the original “The Adventures of Lyssa and the Pirates” to get that “Boop!” image. If you’re gonna do it, do it right, and mela did it proud!
Actually, if she had gotten him a book with pictures of kittens, I’m sure it would have improved his mood considerably.
Eleanor wouldn’t think ‘the control room is on fire’ is worth mentioning if it had worked to *her* advantage.
You’re so right, Pops. That’s our Eleanor.
“Fire? Control room? Totally slipped my mind, darling. Be a love and clean it up, won’t you?”
I had to refrain from commenting on the other pages, but of course I’ve been curious to see what the comments would be. I’m glad you got a kick out of this little shaggy dog story. The only constant in my writing is things never going the way the characters would like, haha.
Stephanie, you’re adorable, but drawing your hair is my personal nightmare whether it’s in my art style or (crudely attempting) GK’s art style. GOSH.
I love how you mess with your (and my) characters,though I do feel sorry for them sometimes.
And Stephanie’s hair can be a nightmare, even with the thousands of times I’ve drawn her.
I still think I did a better job with it in the old days.
I followed your link to the old days — always a fun trip — and Stephanie’s hair really is a masterpiece. I blew it up some (not like *that*, I just enlarged it) to study the hatching, and got to wondering what size the original art is and whether you do panels separately or all on one sheet and all sorts of mechanical behind-the-scenes stuff.
Hey, Pops? Good questions all.
I work on a 14 x 17 sheet of smooth Bristol board. The strip dimensions are 10″ x 15″. Pretty much everything you see is within that. Sometimes I’ll do a stock background in a strip, then transfer characters drawn from another page.
I’m very old school. I mostly use the computer to clean up and fix my many mistakes.
Cool beans! I like old school. My daughter-in-law gave away all her physical art supplies as soon as she graduated from art school and works entirely with electrons ever since, which utterly mystifies me. I look forward to retiring so I can get ink on my fingers again….
On your fingers,on the floor, smeared on to carefully drawn artwork…
You’ve been spying on me…..
Steph’s hair looks pretty good to me, melaredblu–don’t sell yourself short. 🙂
I agree. Steph’s hair is still tricky for me, even after all these years.
Charlie, any news on upcoming installments? Or more Japan vacation photos?
If you have physical art do you sell the originals?
I’m kind of a packrat. I have almost all my original art going back to all of “Blue Moon: The Adventures of Lysa and the Pirates.”
To tell the truth, I never thought about selling it.
It’s NOT a Christmas miracle, same comic.
Hey, nothing can happen until the control room gets put back together. Charlie may as well go to Japan while we wait for parts.
With the chip shortage that might be a while.
Charles, my good man! Any pertinent prognostication regarding the appearance of the presently stalled installment?
I’m glad you asked, Pops.
I was finally able to draw again. I finished about 2/3 of a strip, but it looks terrible.
Doesn’t matter, since my new Epson scanner won’t scan to disc because it thinks it has a paper jam.
It doesn’t. What a paper jam has to do with scanning to a disc is beyond me.
And, even if I had time off enough to go scan it, I couldn’t letter it. The original program I used for word balloons decided that that file (which I’ve used hundreds of times) no longer exists.
Fine, I just opened Word and made a new word balloon file. But it won’t paste into GIMP anymore. Guess I used up all my Copy/Pastes in the literally thousands of times I’ve done this before.
Bottom line: I’ll have to draw a new comic, find the time to scan it, get melaredblu to letter it (because all this works for other people), and post.
February, maybe?
Oh, yuck.
I’ve recently had that level of problem with computers/Autocad/Windows/Acrobat/printers myself. Deeply frustrating; if I didn’t have obligations to clients I would have pitched the whole thing in the trash and retired. (I did dump Autocad for an off-brand that works just as well for a fraction of the price.)
Thank you for pushing through and finding work-arounds. And thanks to melaredblu and anyone else who offers concrete help. Do please post a call for assistance (technical, spiritual, or financial) anytime you hit a roadblock; you never know what your readers might be able to offer. I think you have access to my email address if you need it.