Turtle Soup process

Hey folks!

There's a short slideshow of some Turtle Soup process work on the Anthology Project's tumblr here.

And remember, you can always preorder the book by checking out the link in yesterday's post.

Turtle Soup

This is the first half of Turtle Soup, my comic for the upcoming second volume of The Anthology Project. The book will be out in the spring, so if you want to finish the story (which take a SHOCKING TWIST on page 7), you'll have to pick it up. I'll remind you when the release date is closer.

Here are some layouts and things:

Kali did my title text and spent a solid chunk of time helping me nail down the color, which is always difficult and frustrating for me and less so for her.

I was working for awhile on a story called Good Work, which didn't pan out and simply ate up a lot of my time for this comic. As a result, this thing is a little more rushed than I would've liked -- I was redrawing bad panels into the eleventh hour, when the whole thing could've used another pass at the layout stage. I will say that the second half is much better, both in drawing and storytelling, so pick up the book next year. I think it'll be at all the main conventions, so that'll be super easy for you. There is some amazing work in that book, so far as I've seen.

Turtle Soup 4

I'm starting to re-thumbnail my story in an effort to pair it down a pag or two, and I figured it was about time to nail down my background characters. I needed about twenty, a mix of humans and monsters, basically just a scrum of tough guys. I wanted to have them all down before I did my second round of thumbnails so I could keep them all consistent shot to shot.

Page four has the basic layout of the armory and the seating chart (far right). In placing them at tables, some small narratives cropped up even among these nonsense characters who have no lines and no real action in the story. It was a funny little organic thing. Three and nine found love after their warring armies destroyed each other. Seven is making peace with her long-vanquished foes, eleven and twelve. Just stuff like that.

Page three has the mostly final designs for the smith and the boy, who are the two main characters.

Again, The Anthology Project Kickstarter page is here, if you are so inclined. A pledge of $30 gets the book when it comes out and if you want to give more than that, there several tiers of prizes beyond that.

Turtle Soup 3

Getting into the two main characters, the blacksmith and the squire, from Turtle Soup. I don't really like to leave design choices up to the last minute on a project, but I sort of have to on this since the deadline is creeping up on me. As soon as I got my head around a design even loosely, I had to move on to the next thing. I probably won't have finalized designs for either of these characters until I'm drawing in panels. It's a little scary, but it also insures I don't overthink things.

Turtle Soup 2

Some more background character work for Turtle Soup.

Since none of the background characters have any importance to the plot (not really, at least) and they exist purely for flavor, doing these sketches is basically just pouring my brain onto the paper. I'm not really thinking about much or looking at much reference (sometimes for uniforms and clothing), but it's more or less stream of conscious.

I am beginning to think that I am the true weirdo here.

Turtle Soup 1

I am working on a short comic for the second volume of The Anthology Project, along with a lot of really talented people. My story is called Turtle Soup and is about eating too much soup (sort of).

Here are some drawings of some guys that may or may not be in the story. I don't want to give away too much.


The story has two main characters and a lot of people in the periphery. The four-armed bigface you see on pages three, four, and five is one of the main characters, though those are all pretty wrong. I was working on a different story for awhile and that ate up a lot of my time and I drew a few designs (corpses and princes) for that story which were a shame to scrap. I'm trying to incorporate a few of my favorites into the background of this one. This thing will be done by the middle of November, so hold onto your butts because I'm going to try to keep you all updated on it as it goes. It's going to be a lot of fun to draw since I populated it entirely with weirdos and monsters and maniacs.

Here are some panel layouts. There are a few more pages to get tagged onto the end, and then I'm hoping to cull the story down to maybe 10-12 pages total. I have a couple more passes of thumbnails before I get into the real drawings.

I don't draw a lot of comics, but they're pretty fun.