Brock Beauchamp

Art preview: explaining the situation

Brock Beauchamp
May 13, 2011

When I was looking over the rest of the script two days ago in preparation to begin work on page 13, I knew the story was switching gears again but I didn’t realize just how quickly it moved after this point. In the next page, the big “plot twist” happens that sets the Variables universe in motion. Up until this point, everyone who knew about these people with strange powers was keeping quiet about it, trying to figure out what to do about it or how to benefit from these people. Now someone is going to make the first move.... View Article

Storytelling: where to start?

Brock Beauchamp
May 11, 2011

When first developing Variables, it was a small self-contained story that took place from 2006-2008. I’d like to tell more about it but that arc is actually one of the crucial storylines that will be explored down the road so the details will have to stay under wraps for quite awhile longer while work on 1992 is completed (so, maybe in… 2013?). We’ll get to it down the road but as you’ll read in this article, choosing where to start can be just as difficult as writing the story itself. As the world of Variables started expanding and I began... View Article

Candice & Isabel Arguing

Brock Beauchamp
May 9, 2011

Isabel has had enough with this case and Candice is losing her temper as well. In case you haven’t noticed, the two detectives don’t like the case much. They think it’s a waste of the department’s time, though Candice feels more of an obligation to see it through than Isabel does. Lately, I’ve been trying to add more backgrounds to the pages and I think they’re turning out nicer than many of the earlier pages where I focused solely on foreground characters. There are still some issues with the layout on some of these pages but I’m happy with where... View Article

Project Wonderful & page 11 preview

Brock Beauchamp
May 6, 2011

Over the past few days, I’ve been playing with Project Wonderful, an advertising and publishing system used extensively in the webcomic world. It’s a neat system and far less expensive than many of the “traditional” (can we even use that word when referring to the web?) advertising systems available to site owners. Instead of budgeting money on a daily basis and offering up a bid limit (like Google Adwords), it allows you to pick individual sites and bid on specific ads. The upside to this is that there are always deals waiting to be had and you can swoop in... View Article

The obnoxious suburbanite

Brock Beauchamp
April 29, 2011

Here’s the preview for page ten, which deals with more of Candice and Isabel working with the annoying woman whose house was burglarized by the mysterious intruder. Everyone is getting a little pissy on this page: the woman wants her precious stuff back, Isabel hates the case and the victims, and Candice just wants to finish it and move on to something more interesting. Be sure to check back on Monday to see the fully colored and scripted page! As you can see, the new website has gone live. It’s still a work-in-progress and I’m getting a lot of feedback... View Article

New website coming

Brock Beauchamp
April 27, 2011

I’ve become disenchanted with the current site over the past two months and now I’m doing something about it. When I first started this comic site, I put together what I thought was the closest thing to a finalized product I could imagine. It wasn’t nearly good enough and I spent the next month tweaking it until I had the information I wanted on the site, presented in a manner that everyone could easily navigate. By the time I was finished, the template was nothing like I started and there were design flaws that continued to bother me for several... View Article