Brock Beauchamp

Another alley!

Brock Beauchamp
April 16, 2012

Let me tell you, Karter loves his alleyways. How much of this comic has he spent in alleys? 1/2? It’s his preferred method of getting around (well, that and rooftops). In this preview, he’s sneaking into another alley, this time with his MP5 ready for action. Tomorrow when the full page is released, you’ll see why… Over the next few weeks, I’ll be updating often, sometimes twice a week. I have to finish this issue (24 pages) before the end of April, so I can format the issue and print it for SpringCon in May. It takes at least three... View Article

Hey, a new update!

Brock Beauchamp
April 12, 2012

It’s been awhile but I’m happy to say that for the foreseeable future, I’ll be back on track with Variables and updating more than ever. The next page should be ready by Tuesday, just like normal. This page was really hard to draw. My continued efforts to improve my background work are bearing fruit and the multiple perspective angles in the first panel were a challenge to draw correctly, as was getting the correct size on all the objects on the page. It’s really easy to draw the humans out of size perspective versus the cars and street or vice... View Article

It’s been awhile…

Brock Beauchamp
April 11, 2012

Whew. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to update Variables but over the next three weeks, expect to see updates coming fast and furious as I wrap up this issue before my fist convention in late May. My plan is to have the entire 24 page issue completed by the end of the month. I’ve been playing around with a new printer I bought, trying to put together some new prints (you may have seen some of them posted over at my Rocketpig Studio site), and just got back from a great New Orleans trip. I’ve always wanted to... View Article

Comic strip, revised

Brock Beauchamp
March 22, 2012

Instead of the typical page preview today, I’m going to talk about something a little different… One or two of you may remember that quite some time back (probably about a year ago, now), I started work on a comic strip featuring a bunch of talking animals. Why? Well, it’s partially because I love comic strips and, like most artists my age, I absolutely worship at the altar of Bill Watterson. The other reason is that I loathe talking animals. I hate furry comics. I think they’re one of the dumbest ideas pervading every corner of webcomicdom with their unfunny,... View Article

Plastic bullets

Brock Beauchamp
March 20, 2012

I’m really happy with this page, particularly the upper panel. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve been really focusing on making Variables backgrounds better and I think this page shows the payoff for some of that work. It’s still not perfect but it’s getting closer to where I want the book to be visually. This page was written about 20 times, five of them completely differently. Every time I looked at it, I wanted to tear my hair out and start over (so I did). While right now I merely grumble at it, this page has the potential to be ret-conned... View Article

Super lens flares

Brock Beauchamp
March 15, 2012

I’ve been playing with different lighting effects lately. Some work better than others but I’m going to keep plugging away. I may have mentioned it earlier but I loved Abrams’ Star Trek movie. Many people made fun of its lighting effects and crazy lens flares everywhere but I thought it added a cool dimension of super-clean-white sci-fi to the film, where everything off-screen was so bright and glow-y that the camera picked up trace elements of the shine. Obviously, Variables isn’t quite that bright but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try to incorporate certain elements of an exaggerated... View Article