Recently I watched Interview with a Vampire in it’s entirety and it was hilarious. Don’t get me wrong – I have crazy mad respect for Anne Rice, she’s still the only author I have ever come across that can make me vomit with her words – and I mean this as a compliment not a criticism. I was reading William S Burrough’s in my mid-teens and the visceral descriptions of gangrenous heroin usage didn’t make me bat and eye but Anne Rice writing about her vampires feeding? That sent me flying to the bathroom twice. RESPECT.
Maybe that’s why I find the need to relentlessly make fun of vampires. I don’t know… but Glen is more than happy to indulge me in this. So here he is all floofy and fluffed burning shit down just like in the movie (and I presume book?)
Meanwhile we see Depressed Teddy in the background getting a little mixed up in it all for that adorably disturbing touch as if having a fire bug in the foreground wasn’t enough.
Of course while I drew this Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire was blaring through my head.
The Making of Glen
I don’t even know how long I spent on this week’s comic. I lost count of the hours. Apparently drawing fire with absolutely no experience or instruction is obscenely difficult. And conflicting because I want it to look real… but this is a comic and nothing else looks real sooo…. What is my problem? I DON’T KNOW.
Suffice to say I started out with this little attempt all on my own. It’s cute. And I think the idea of fire is pretty good here. It’s basically just a “for effect” pen in different colors. Not bad… but it does sort of also look like crate paper blowing on a fan…
Then I looked it up on YouTube and wow – were those tutorials shit. The first one told me to just do the same thing but add some blurring effects. Somehow it came out looking weirdly like a big smudgy pastel blob which was super disappointing at I spent about 300 unnecessary steps making it. Pushed all sorts of weird buttons…. Still don’t know what half of them were supposed to do.
And then I watched another tutorial – with no sound – which was fun. That one told me I should draw the flame free hand in vaguely squiggly blobs, overlay different lighter colors of vaguely squiggly blobs, and blur the crap out of it manually rather than with a filter as the first suggested. The first time I tried this it came out PERFECT. And then I wasn’t able to do it again…
Meanwhile I came across additional struggles when I decided to draw Depressed Teddy. I really want to add him to more comics doing a Harold and Maude sort of gag in the background – mocking scenes of suicide for attention… I hope people get the humor in this or at least the reference! Else it comes off as odd. That being said it’s not easy drawing a teddy bear and AGAIN I find myself wanting it to look more realistic…. Whhhhyyyy…. I don’t know. Maybe I am going somewhere with this drawing thing and it isn’t normal comics? God forbid I start drawing everything in 3D. Please send help.
