Page 2 Inks

And here’s our good friend, mister White. In the upcoming ~10 pages, you will learn a lot more about White, why he’s here, and what is happening to Blake. It feels good to get to explain the foundation of this series, even though most of the big mysteries won’t be revealed for years (if ever). The first issue largely consisted of “Hey, here are people. This is what is happening to them” and because there were so many characters, I didn’t have a lot of time to do much more than that. In this issue, that will change. A big portion of the issue is about White, the Monroe family, and the basis for the Variables universe (at least, what is known of it at this point, which isn’t much).

I have mentioned previously that my new coloring technique (and rededication to higher inking quality) is taking more time than the pages I completed for issue one. Thankfully, I think I developed a new process that should take my flatting time (flatting is the technique used to lay down a solid base color, basically the first step of coloring) from 3-4 hours down to 2-3 hours. At the minimum, it should shave off at least half an hour off each page and could save up to an entire hour per page. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, it quickly adds up when each page takes me over 15 hours to complete from start to finish. It takes me from the point of barely being able to finish a page a week to possibly being able to work at the pace of last issue, which was roughly 1 + 1/3 pages per week.

I haven’t done much in the past week but I think I’ll be able to take advantage of this new process (and my increased free time) to get ahead on Variables. When this happens, I will begin interspersing extra pages when my backlog of pages reaches a comfort point so hopefully within two weeks, I will occasionally be able to post a second page. Instead of building a buffer, I think this is the smart thing to do as it allows me to complete the second issue before the end of the year. Since there are conventions in late October and early November, that additional content could help quite a bit.

Anyway, that’s all for today. Be sure to check back on Monday for the completed page.

Share this page: