Cover for All-Stars: A Game of Low-Budget Superheroics

We’re almost to the end of Chapter 3! I had to slow down a bit and re-work the ending, I’m still making some pacing decisions about how I want this chapter to end and trying to keep the chapter below 40 pages total. There is a Cool Thing that I would like to do once the chapter has ended that is a bit different and would be posting instead of Fizzlebit storyline pages for a little while, to keep the Fizzlebit-mojo going and give me some extra time to spruce up some website stuff. First, I have to figure out how to have it posted without goofing up the comic navigation of Fizzlebit.

Meanwhile, in the magical land of Side Projectsâ„¢, the fine people of Hex Games have released another awesome game and I had the privilege of creating the cover! All-Stars is about the not-so-famous super heroes of Paradigm city and all the adventures you could be having as one! So it made complete sense to me that numerous low-budget heroes would line up in a random warehouse to have pulley-powered flying lessons. I requested the help of that handsome fellow that I married known as James Hornsby to create the All-Stars logo since I am still not as awesome at Illustrator or logo-makin’.

The Human Spork!

One of the background characters I put in the cover stood out to writer Steve Johnson and became a sample good-guy character, known as The Human Spork, who also appears in an interior illustration I did for the game. (The gender of The Human Spork remains a mystery, however.) Other really sweet interior art appears from frequent Hex artists Leighton Conner, Jeffery Johnson, and Joshua Burnett.  You can pick up a digital copy of All Stars at Hex Games’ website and play to your heart’s content.

Colored Roller Dery Girls fightin' a T-rex

I also came to realization a couple of weeks ago that I drew Roller Derby girls fighting a T-rex, but only did it in black and white. The illustration was screaming for some color, so I made a point of coloring it recently.Eventually, I hope to get some prints made of this, in large part because I want a printed copy for myself. I’m delighted at how well it turned out.

Back to drawing and fighting off sinus infections!!

Scribbly thumbnails with the occasional McTuffin or wrestling cat doodle scattered about.

So for the last few weeks, I’ve made the point to thumbnail via sketchbook. I had fallen into the habit of only laying out one page at a time, instead of thumbnailing several in sequence.

The problem with this is that it puts so much focus on that one page, which will disrupt the overall flow of the story. Since Fizzlebit is meant to be read as long-form story comic / graphic novel, it’s important that the previous page flows into the next page without feeling too awkward. By drawing the layouts for several pages on one sheet of paper at a small scale (but not necessarily the size of your thumb!), it makes it a lot easier to spot mistakes or layout problems before investing too much into the page.

The hole on his head is so he can dangle off things.

I still usually wind up moving panels about or scaling things down once I’ve scanned the thumbnails and have blown them up onto the digital page space. My thumbnails are still a little too sloppy to ink directly over them, so I still have some penciling to do but indecision of laying out the page is no longer an issue.

There’s still some Dancing Fizzlebit charms / earrings left from when I went to OMGcon. I’ve managed to figure out how to add them properly to Paypal, but still have to post them on a store website page so they can be bought. Here’s the illustration used to make the charms though!