Molly 18

©THE DAILY O'COLLEGIAN

Originally published April 2nd, 2010.

Molly is quite vocal about her emotions so of course stress would make her hysterical. I think next week she'll be getting a study partner, and I will subsequently be introducing a semi-regular character. Stay tuned.

-Emily

Molly 17

©THE DAILY O'COLLEGIAN

Originally published March 26th, 2010.

This is me all the time. All. The. Time.

-Emily (daydreaming of sleep)

Molly 16

©THE DAILY O'COLLEGIAN

Originally published March 26th, 2010.

I used my new refillable-ink pens on this comic! I was previously using pigment liners and they worked OK, but the refillable ones are supposed to be the best. So thank you Mom for getting them for me! I definitely need to practice with them though, it wasn't a smooth first outing. A big problem is the paper I'm using (plain printer paper) which worked OK with the pigment liners, which are quick drying, but doesn't work so well with the ink pens. I'm casting about for a new (affordable) paper to use in future.

I'm thinking I should have had an establishing shot as the first panel. Oh well, i suppose it works OK without. Sometimes I forget the basic rules of composing comics. Also I tried something a bit new with this, using a light gray in the second panel (its actually black w/the opacity turned down). I'm writing this entry before this comic is printed in the newspaper so I don't know how it will look printed. Stay tuned. (ETA: Looked fine lol)

In other news, I finally got smart and made a comic template (lines, title, and sig) so I can just transfer the inked sketches into. Maybe it will speed things up a bit? We'll see.

-Emily (getting busy busy busy again)

Molly 15

©THE DAILY O'COLLEGIAN

Originally published March 22nd, 2010.

Well Spring Break is over, so that means returning to class, homework, and comics.

Since I know you all care about my comic making process and stuff I'll tell you about this one. So my friends went to St Louis Wednesday-Saturday for a little vacation and Tuesday night I realized that I needed to have this comic finished because I wouldn't have time when i got back to get it done before the deadline. (For those of you who don't know, for anything to get printed in the newspaper, it has to be submitted the day before (obviously) so my deadline days are Sunday and Thursday by about midday. I like to have them done the night before that so I don't have to worry about remembering to email the comic on time). So there I am Tuesday night, no comic ready at all, so I put aside everything else, pull out a sheet of paper and get to drawing.

I still have not got my comic process streamlined enough to not have any snags. Somehow when I got the file into Photoshop and arranged it in the correct 4 panel format, it was like twice as big as it was supposed to be. Normally, I clean up the drawing in Photoshop, then add the lines and dialog onto a separate layer. Both layers get separately exported as gifs into Illustrator. Since the drawing was twice as big as normal, the lines and text (which are a constant size/width) all seemed twice as small. So I just exported the drawing, made it all nice in Illustrator and brought that file back into Photoshop as a pdf. Illustrator's LiveTrace function seemed to work better the larger the lines are, because the bigger the image, the better it looks when its shrunk. I'm finally figuring out that leaving it big, LiveTracing it, then shrinking it is the way to go.

So ANYway... very long story short. My comic process is by no means a smooth-sailing ship. I have basic steps that I try to follow but sometimes I gotta be flexible and just roll with whatever happens or else I'd never get anything done.

BTW, this comic from initial concept to final comic took 4 1/2 hours. It's the first one I did from start to finish in one sitting so that's my first true estimate of work time for these. Penciling it and cleaning up the LiveTrace are what take the longest. Only practice and repetition will cut the work time down.

Emily (apologetic about the long post)

Bonus Comic

Here's a bonus comic for all you faithful readers. Didn't I promise some bonus stuff?? And didn't I also promise that it wouldn't be all that awesome?? Well anyway, here ya go, an unprinted Molly comic.

This is actually the second comic I did of Molly but it wasn't printed because it's basically identical to the first strip (here). It didn't get beyond the initial inking stage so this is the rough un-LiveTraced version. See why I LiveTrace these?

Anyway, next week the O'Colly resumes printing so Monday there will be a brand new comic! I think I'm falling into a nice groove with these now so go out and pick up a newspaper (if you're at OSU) or return here Monday evening!

-Emily (having a great Spring Break)

A Day in the Life

In the absence of a Molly comic, I've decided to post some different comics this week, just other comics that I've done in my free time.

A while back I did some hourly comics, which is basically where I do a quick comic every hour of something that happened to me for an entire day. I'm posting it here as a sort of "About the Artist" thing because this is pretty accurate depiction of my day in that I spend 90% on the computer. Also since Molly's character design is pretty much how I draw myself, it's sort of relevant to Molly right?

Here is the link: http://twitpic.com/18sus6

Emily (kickin' back and lovin it)

Molly 14

©THE DAILY O'COLLEGIAN

Originally published March 12th, 2010.

I really liked this comic and its perhaps because I actually had a decent amount of time to work on it. Came out nice I thought. And for once, LiveTrace didn't totally destroy it. I think it is how I scan it and transfer the images in Photoshop that makes the difference.

Anywho, again this is pretty much true to life. I love Boston (the city) but don't really care for baseball yet I have a Boston Red Sox hat. I've decided that the hat represents Boston itself (B for Boston!) and not just the baseball team so its OK for me to wear it. ...Yes I'm a total poser.

Also noticed that I totally forgot my signature on this. Somewhere between Photoshop and Illustrator it got lost I guess. Kinda really annoys me, but I noticed it too late to fix it for the newspaper print.

Next week is Spring Break, so no comic. Maybe I will post some extras? I dunno I will see.

Emily (ready for a BREAK for SPRING)

Molly 13

©THE DAILY O'COLLEGIAN

Originally published March 8th, 2010.

I've been getting really bad about posting these on time. Sorry!

Anyway, I really hated the execution of this comic. Liked the idea (Fun fact, this actually happened to me, my friend Michael frequently dresses like this and so every time I see someone dressed like that on campus, I immediately assume its him) but it just did not turn out as I wanted. I'm still fighting Illustrator to get these to look right the first time and not after hours of fixing. Its getting so that it actually takes longer to fix it than to actually draw it.

-Emily (done with projects and finally getting some relaxing time)

Molly 12

©THE DAILY O'COLLEGIAN

Originally published March 5th, 2010.

This was a filler comic I did a couple weeks ago, back when I was drawing them actual size. It really showed when I was cleaning it up in Photoshop and Illustrator, the lines were messy and blurry with no reduction to cover up the little errors. I also did this really late at night and didn't really care to make the lines perfect. Hopefully I'll be able to delegate more time for future comics.

Oh and this totally happens to me all the time. I get way too into books some times and I love it.

-Emily (wanting to read a good book)