Max Riffner

The Parlor

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Panel Pain: Preview

{Click above for the whole panel.}

I’m finally starting to get some work done on this page. My roughs had been done for the proposal since last week, but without much sleep, I was worried about quality when I sat down to ink them. Nervously, I booted up my Tiger Mac and opened up Illustrator. Moment of truth time.

Illustrator and the Wacom worked well. I, however, did not. I inked this panel five times.

Five times!

When I’m up against the wall like this, I dive into my inspiration books. Since it took five times, it took awhile to find the right inspiration, but find it I did in the black & white trade collection of Jack Staff. I was just really having problems with the backgrounds, specifically my walls. I was doing more of a Paul Pope thick brush scribble, which looked good but of course didn’t match the characters. Paul Grist, on the other hand, is able to accomplish those good, gritty backgrounds without much effort in Jack Staff and Kane, so I took some cues from his work.

Thank goodness for multiple undos. This is one of the major reasons I ink my work in Illustrator: the freedom to experiment is worth every penny I paid for the program.

The rest of the panels finally started to go faster. These pages have been hell on the confidence!

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