Welcome to the city. It is as you would expect: full of thieves, wizards, devils, and dark alleys. I look forward to meeting some of those folks and walking some of those alleys.

This is my comic. The genre is RPG fantasy, the characters are talking animals. At this early stage it’s hard to say exactly what this is or will become in time. I can say this, speaking from a great deal of experience…this is one project that has lit my ass up bright as a bomb.

I’m putting this on a Monday and Friday update schedule for now. In time, given that I work a full time job and we have a toddler + one in the oven, I may reduce that to once per week. We’ll see.

Also please excuse the fact that the site isn’t 100% yet. I’ve never used WordPress before and I’m basically running the ComicPress theme right out of the box with a few stylesheet tweaks. I’ll probably do a lot more tweaking as I go.

Enjoy the comic and please drop a comment here and there. Feedback makes us creator-types feel pretty good, which makes us create more.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I noodled and doodled this comic for the past few months trying to come to a decision on format, story, setting. Most of it came very easily. I had the name picked out in 2006 and I knew it was going to be a riff on the classic FRPG genre that I cut my teeth on (starting with the D&D red box, Mentzer edition, c. 1984). But it wasn’t until just very, very recently (like a couple of weeks) that I settled on the opening storyline and characters and the fact that I would populate this fantasy city with anthropomorphic animal characters.

I don’t know if I’m a typical fan of the “funny animal” genre. I suppose just using that term pretty much establishes where I’m coming from. My entry to this approach to comics (not really a “genre”, is it?) was of course through a combination of classic cartoons like Warner Bros. and many of the old Hanna-Barbera characters, but also via certain comic books. Most notably was Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw (!). I discovered CCaHAZC purely by accident as a wee lad of maybe 14 years in a flea market 25-cent box. The owner of the market got discarded/unsold comics from local stores for cheap and sold them for a quarter each. I’d swindle my mother out of a couple of quarters each time we went there (we were sellers) and I just happened upon CC one day. For the next few months in that magical summer I hit that quarter box as often as possible and managed to put together a collection of the first 6 or 7 issues. I spent many, many hours re-reading them over and over.

Later I discovered Usagi Yojimbo and a few other titles but I don’t think it’s possible to over-state how magical and meaningful an impact CC had on me. Now I’m not doing superhero stuff at this point, but I’m wedding that great love of “funny animals” to my great love of old FRPGs and trying to produce a good, enjoyable, and hopefully sustainable comic series.

I tend to obsess over the form and format of the comics I make. In the past this was a matter of certain necessity, way back in the Stone Age days before there was the Digital Revolution. See, back then we had to make sure our stuff would fit nicely on a sheet of paper that could run through a photocopy machine or – if we were willing to go belly up on printing costs – on a standard comic page of some kind. We also had to make very serious decisions about color because back then color was major mojo. So for most of my life as an artist I’ve been in the black and white line art game, sticking with digest-friendly formats.

But the digital age changed all that. Today an artist can publish immediately, in color, in any size he wants. Cheap.

Of course I still think about printing. I love the feel of a good printed comic book in my hands and I certainly would like to see this comic printed up at some point. So I opted for a format that was both screen-friendly (landscape) and would translate well into print. If you take two pages of Zyn Dweomer and stack them vertically you end up with a perfect fit for a standard comic book page. Sweet.

Not that I didn’t obsess over it for a time. My friends at the Wizards of Ur sketch blog can attest to the fact that I went through several incarnations of this comic prior to launching it. But in the end I fell into this format very easily and very comfortably and I’m happy to report that I haven’t given the decision a second thought since.

Up next, some notes about the technical side of things. Geek speak!

So far most of the scenes are in dark places or at night so I’ve felt comfortable with simple black panel borders. But once I have a daylight shot I think that might change a little. I’m not sure.

I don’t know if other artists do it this way, but I tend to work out a lot of details right on the page as I go. I did a lot of prep work on this comic but it was mostly related to setting and story and not so much in the realm of visual designs. I did sketches of most of these characters prior to putting them on the pages but in some cases I wasn’t exactly certain how someone should look. Hurke was really easy. I had him pegged pretty much from the first sketch. Rin Rin Volar seems to be fairly easy (the purple cat). Strangely, Naola is challenging me. I think it’s because I’m trying to draw her as a practical, tough adventurer yet still a sexy character. Not t’n’a sexy, just naturally sexy. I’m not sure.

I guess that stuff will work itself out as I go. Already I’m more comfortable with her look. I was having some issues with drawing her from different angles, just trying to keep the consistency, but that’s starting to gel for me too.

The format is working for me. I was worried about that. I experimented with strips and with “manga” formatted pages but the landscape half-comic page is really doing the trick for me.

Still tooling along with a Monday and Friday schedule, so hopefully that will stick for a while.

I added a ShoutMix box on the sidebar. I know the individual posts have a comments option, but I like having the Shoutbox always on the main page. I’m considering disabling the regular WordPress comments option on all pages so any comments will go to the Shoutbox. If anyone thinks that’s a stupid idea just give me a…well…you know. A shout.

Another change that will eventually come is an ad banner at the top. As soon as I get enough posts up to qualify for a Project Wonderful banner I’m getting one. That was a goal from the first day. The logo will change to one that I actually like a lot better (pictured below). The current logo is cool, but I just dig the badassedness of this one and it should fit nicely to the left of any banner ad that graces the top of the page.

Page views are on the rise. I guess that means some of you are reading the comic. Allow me to take this opportunity to say thank you. I think most artists will agree when I say that feedback is like a boost of energy. When we don’t get any, we begin to wonder if what we’re doing is even worth it. When we get feedback we feel like what we’re doing is worth it. And that feels pretty godsbedamned good.

Well, I’m totally focused on doing this comic. It’s a blast and I’m holding that schedule like a starving weasel holds a pizza cheese Combo.

I do have some plans for the site other than just maintaining the Mon/Fri update schedule. Since it’s late and I’m sleepy I’ll share a bit.

First, I want to throw up some kind of character profile thingie. Probably very simple, just some headshots of all the named characters that have appeared so far and a few words about them. I won’t reveal much in the descriptions because I’ve decided I like letting things come out naturally in the story. Maybe I’ll pepper it with a few tidbits here and there (like the fact that Rin Rin Volar grew up dirt poor and learned a sort of rural, cheap form of magic).

Eventually I want to create a more immersive “world” page. But even though I have extensive notes on the setting I feel like it would be more prudent and satisfying to wait until the setting has been fleshed out in the context of the unfolding story. So a world overview page might be a while coming.

RPG. Yes indeed. This comic is inspired a great deal by classic fantasy roleplaying games such as good ole D&D, so I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t create a Zyn Dweomer RPG. I do actually dabble in RPG design, you know. But, as with the world page, an RPG will be a while in the making. Let’s see if I can get to page 100 first, then I’ll talk dice and character classes.

Contest: Page eighteen has a quote from a famous movie (as best as I can remember the quote). First person to post the name of the movie on the Shoutbox gets a free sketch of any character of their choice (not just related to my comics). Rock on.

Well, things are going great. In the past I’ve lost steam before this point, usually because I dive into epic projects without really knowing them. Kind of like jumping into long term relationships with people you don’t know that well. I’ve been married for @ 18 years, so I got that part covered. Just the comics I’ve had trouble with.

But no more. We’re tooling along at a brisk 2-pages-per-week pace and I’m not looking back. The comic is only growing in my mind, maturing into a real world full of real people. I hope to reveal that page-by-page and week-by-week.

One big challenge coming up is the impending birth of my daughter. I’m incredibly excited about this event in my life. From a comics perspective, it will be daunting to keep the update schedule unchanged while changing diapers and working a full time job. But from the outset of Zyn Dweomer I said the schedule might change at that point. I will try to avoid it, though.

Times are tough, they say. And they are right.

Due to some problems at home I need to free up some time to make a little extra cash. So, as bad as I hate to do it, I have to reduce my posting frequency to weekly. From now on Zyn Dweomer will update on Monday’s.

And it will rock.

I’m changing the update day to Wednesdays due to certain home life logistical concerns.

This Wednesday…what happens to the clientele of Bojo’s when they fight and throw bombs in the house?

Just thought I’d share a bit of my process. Sometime I’d like to put together a more in-depth post but this is just to show basically what the sucker looks like before being finished.

You’ll note that I don’t name my layers, usually. A page of ZD ends up with between 15 and 40 layers…the only ones that get named are balloons and borders. When I did the first handful of pages I was naming them “panel 1 inks” and so on, but eventually it just seemed pointless to me.

In a nutshell: I draw a blue layer (not sure why blue…guess its a carryover from paper art) where all the very rough sketching goes. If I need to refine a sketch I do it on this layer. If not, I create a new layer and start inking. I tend to ink each panel on a different layer. When I go to colors each panel ends up with the following layers: Inks, background color/art, basic flat colors, multiplied colors for shadows, and a layer on top of it all for highlights. Very meat-and-potatoes.