Blog

SpringCon 2011

Brock Beauchamp
May 25, 2011

Over the weekend, Rachel and I popped into SpringCon for a few minutes to see what is the Twins Cities’ largest (non-indie, since I haven’t seen MIX yet) comic convention. I brought along a few promo cards and thought I’d see who was attending and just introduce myself. I was surprised by just how few webcomickers were in attendance. None of the “major” or even “mid-major” comics were there and the only person I immediately recognized was Fes from the Webcomics Beacon, a podcast I follow on a regular basis. Instead, I saw row after row of small press print... View Article

Introducing the faceless men

Brock Beauchamp
May 23, 2011

I’m really happy with this page and think it’s probably the best page I’ve done so far in the issue. As I’m hitting the home stretch of the first issue, I’m starting to lock down the stylistic differences I will introduce in the second issue. One of them is more advanced lettering styles that I’m starting to dabble with on this page. Up to this point, I’ve barely been cracking the surface of Illustrator’s power and now that I’m getting a little faster at drawing and coloring, it’s time to feed that time back into other avenues of comic creation.... View Article

Don’t tase me, bro

Brock Beauchamp
May 20, 2011

After all these weeks, we’re finally approaching the cover scene of the first issue. Blake is back home at this point and the bad guys found out about his accident in Canada and want to take a closer look at the boy. This arc carries through until the end of the issue and you get a better idea of what parties will become involved in this situation before everything (up to this point) is explained in the second issue. I’ve been taking longer to draw each page and while that’s preventing me from getting ANY kind of page buffer in... View Article

Issue 2, elbow pain, & my first con

Brock Beauchamp
May 18, 2011

For the first time in three months, I dusted off my outline for Variables 1992 and took a look at what is going to happen in the second issue. Though it’s still three months off, Rachel and I will have a lot of scripting, editing, and plot revisions to go (fight) through. I have a general idea of what will happen page-to-page, though much of that could change now that I’m over halfway through the first issue. More on the second issue as it comes together. As I’ve said earlier, the first few pages of Variables are establishing pages. With... View Article

Candice & Isabel, listening to the story

Brock Beauchamp
May 16, 2011

Another Monday, another page! In this page, you’ll see that Candice and Isabel are getting a little of the backstory of the break-in, as told by Mrs. Dumont. In this house, we have another case of the burglar walking around barefoot and leaving prints, this time in the kitchen. On top of that, something strange was done with the silverware… After this page, we switch back to Blake, where the Variables story really kicks into gear. It’s been fun drawing the detectives for these past few pages but it’s time to get the series going full-steam ahead and the Blake... View Article

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

Book Blog: The Hunger Games

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May 4, 2011

It’s the first Wednesday of May, and it’s time for my First Wednesday of the Month Guest Book Blog Post. BAM! Try to make an acronym out of that! First, let me say that I spend most of my time engaged in legal writing and it’s a real pleasure to be able to write with contractions occasionally. Next, let me say that I unapologetically love the young adult Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. This is not a unique position since it won about a billion awards (hyperbole!). But they were mostly young adult awards and not-so-young-adults might not know... 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

Investigatin’

Brock Beauchamp
April 25, 2011

It’s another Monday morning, which means if I haven’t been slacking over the past week, a new page of Variables gets posted. Here’s page nine and we’re back to Isabel and Candice while they investigate the next break-in and deal with another snotty white Atlanta suburbanite. One of the things I liked least about the first several pages of Variables was the lack of interesting facial expressions. I never wanted this book to become too cartoony but many of the expressions on previous pages just fell flat. They were boring. In this page, I tried to loosen that up a... View Article

Another bathroom!

Brock Beauchamp
April 22, 2011

It seemed that just a few pages ago, we were looking at someone’s bathroom. After a brief interlude with Blake and his father, I couldn’t resist so we’re back at a NEW bathroom scene! At great as that sounds, it only lasts one page so don’t get too excited. This is the first page I’ve done from start to finish since I took the small hiatus and that break seems to have helped. The pencils are better, the backgrounds are better, and the characters are MUCH better. I’m pretty happy with it and I’m excited to see it colored and... View Article