Tag Archive: art preview

Sneaking around

Brock Beauchamp
April 18, 2012

Page layouts have been a real challenge for me lately. I mean, really a challenge. Most of the time, I rough out one or two thumbnail concepts, take the best from each, and start outlining the page. Within half an hour, I’m boxing out the page on a bristol board and a few minutes after that, I’m drawing the page. It hasn’t been happening like that for me lately. At any given point in the comic, I focus on one part of my creation process and push hard to improve it. Right now, it’s my layouts. I feel that my... View Article

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

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

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

Intro to the final scene

Brock Beauchamp
March 8, 2012

As I’ve mentioned earlier, the last scene is a long one. In these panels, Karter is getting ready to head out after getting the page from Henri and the last panel (one you can’t see yet) is one of my favorites so far in the book. Usually, I show black & white panels or fully rendered panels in my art previews; this week I did something a little different and I’m posting the flat colors instead. “Flats” are the first step of the coloring process; before I can go in and add shadows or highlights, I need to first lay... View Article