Welcome to ACES WEEKLY Volume 28, Week Seven!

As all of you subscribers know, one of our regular Aces of Aces Weekly - Jok, of Dungeons and Burglars - has kindly donated several full pages of original art to our monthly, exclusive-to-subscribers, free prize draws!  Here, as I promised in my emailing to you, is a word from the man himself, describing his technique in producing them : 

' From being young, I hated "erasing pencils"... Wait, what is that?  Let me describe it :-)  There are several steps involved in producing a page of comic art. I always begin with a very simple layout - a ' thumbnail ' - of a page, which will help me with the script interpretation ; the overall composition of the pages/panels/baloons ; and the balance of blacks on the page.  It also helps with the storytelling - which is the most important element in any strip in maintaining the flow of the narrative.  As soon as I´m happy with the rough layouts ( as happy as any artist with a deadline can be! ) I proceed with a pencil drawing of the actual art page, which then will need to be drawn over in black ink.  In circumstances in which this pencilled page might be drawn in regular black lead pencil, all traces of the pencil construction underneath the inking would have to be erased in order not to muddy the image of the final black inks when scanned.  Using red or blue pencils avoids having to do this.  Why?  Because the scanning of the final art can be fixed to allow those colours not to photograph - to be invisible - while the black of the inking can register cleanly. When I was younger and ignorant of this valuable knowledge, I'd often damage my art, or the surface of the paper it was drawn on, in trying to scrub away to perfection its black lead pencil base.  Anyway, this is the reason why I use color pencils on boards.  They also make original art pages look warmer, which is a cool side effect, I think.'  

We agree, Jok... : )

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