This morning I put the final touches to the coloring and lettering of Lady Phantom Issue Two…
…and discovered that I had inadvertently missed an entire panel! When putting down a layer black borders on the ink, I accidentally filled in and convered one panel of page 23, and by the time I got around to colour it I didn’t notice my mistake.
It wasn’t until I was making the file for printing that I discovered a speech bubble sitting in the blackness, and so I had to quickly flat and colour it to match the rest of the page.
Hopefully, everything is now in order and the printer won’t serve the file back.
Making this issue has been a ride, and not a very pleasant one at that! I drew several of the pages for this issue over two years ago, and it showed. Trying to fix poor lines with ink isn’t my strong side, and in the midst of inking I suffered an eye injury.
The show had to go on, and my inking suffered for it…which in turn made flatting a challenge and a bit. As I went into renderinh, I desperately wanted to redraw at least half a dozen pages. Preferably more.
But, now that the colours are down I’m happier. Not as happy as I want to be, but I can at least and it out to you all without being totally ashamed…
…even though it’s four months late.
Lesson learned.
As I move forward with Issue Three, I will take all this with me and do a little extra work on the lines. A stitch in time saves nine, they say – and that certainly applies to comic book creation as well as clothes maintenance.
Now comes two weeks of preparations for the annual Swedish Comic Book Festival, which celebrates its 20th Anniversary.
If you are in our near Stockholm on the weekend of April 6th, come say hi and take a look at Issue Two in person!