Is tracing cheating at comics? This is part of the first page-by-page timelapse commentary of an entire graphic novel, Cloud Town.

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There are spoilers so read ahead at your local library or favorite comic book retailer. Signed copies are available at my website and the following stores. If your comic book retailer wants to be added to this list, have them contact me via email and I'll send some signed bookplates their way.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Cloud Town Tuesday, the day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloud Town, and um, tell you about the process of making it. It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD. So if you're a comics fan, if you're a friend of mine, if you are an artist looking for insights into the comics process, here it is.

Let's go. Let's do it. Let's fast forward to where we dropped off last time. So yeah, right now you have to remember. I'm working on the end pages. Uh, those pages that go in the beginning and end of the book. It's an element that I love a lot, uh, in, in the hardback books that I had as a kid. But I also have almost no time.

Because, uh, after waiting for months, I finally get, like, Hey, we need this, if you want to do it. Like, I did not have to do it. They could have just put blank colored endpages in. They could have had the case on the hardcopy of the book be the same as the general cover. But I really, you know, I wanted the book [00:01:00] to have as many bells and whistles as possible.

I spent a lot of time on that case cover we talked about and now i'm working on the end pages and I have like I don't know a day maybe two to do six pages and i'm very i'm already sleepy Here I wanted to make it playful fun And oh man, this was a really fast one so you can see i'm really uh, really moving through it.

Um, You The first monster I drew was a trace of the monster that appears as an action figure. Not action figure, sorry. Scale model in the beginning of Cloud Town. And then I, um, and just right now pulling kind of random ideas from my imagination, um, trying to make them, quick and clear and fun and kind of cute.

You can see the little monster kind of kicking over a house. I thought that was very funny, so I went with that. Um, thought of something a little dragony, a little fishy. Um, at [00:02:00] this point, I realized that I am short on time to like, uh, reiterate and do different random creatures. Um, often when I do a monster, I'll sketch a lot of imaginary monsters until I hit one I like, but I am again, on deadline.

So I I opened Netflix and I started pulling up every different creature show they had and I fast forward and looked at different creatures as inspiration. So you can see I have a shrimp creature, polar bear creature, um, and I would try to combine stuff, so there's stuff inspired by goats, um, and in the next chunk of this I'll have even more animal inspired creatures.

Um, alright, I don't know. Did I record? How was that? In other news, I am going to have, um, I don't think the next one, but in a couple of episodes of Cloudtown Tuesday, I do have a video I recorded with my friend Kirt, my friend Alyssa. New [00:03:00] Patreon! What up, Alyssa? Um, everybody say hello to Alyssa Appleberry.

She is a current employee of Mission Comics, uh, tattoo artist, and, uh, cartoonist. She's done her first few zines. So, um, congratulations and keep up the good work and, uh, yeah. If anybody else is working on comics and zines just holler at us And I can't wait to see them. Okay. Bye
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ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to Cloud Town Tuesday, the

day where I share a page from my

graphic novel, Cloud Town, and um, tell

you about the process of making it.

It's like a, um, editor's

commentary on a DVD.

So if you're a comics fan, if

you're a friend of mine, if you

are an artist looking for insights

into the comics process, here

it is, let's go, let's do it.

Guys, uh, so this is the end page,

this should be a quicker one today.

So what you're seeing now is me drawing

and thinking about like a traditional

end page, ones I've liked in the past.

Sometimes I've really enjoyed ones

that are a simple seeming pattern,

uh, that have elements of whatever

story we're about to dive into.

End pages, if you're unfamiliar, are

just that last piece of paper in a

hardcover book that help glue the

cardboard case to the paper of the pages.

And they're often the place for flair,

especially in novels like "text" books.

They'll be a place where there's a

little bit of art and it's the closest

to, I always feel like, the fade in,

the opening kind of credits to a novel.

So after I got that kind of pattern

in there that I was playing with,

um, I thought, well, on the back of

Pen's hoodie, there's supposed to be

a patch that says "whatever forever,"

or at least that's how I imagined it.

Um, my partner used to

say "whatever forever."

A lot.

When, you know, things

didn't matter too much.

Uh, and I thought that was funny and cool.

So, I realized by the end of the

book that all of the scenes that

would have had Whatever Forever

on it, the hood was in the way.

So I was like, well, maybe I can

have a cool image of the front and

the back of each character on the

front and the back of the book.

Penn would have to be in the front

because in the back you'd have,

, Olive to show how much

she's changed with her kind of cool

intense jacket she gets at the end.

You can see the way I'm drawing

over and over and over again.

There's a reason like most

cartoonists and illustrators start

with a general shape and imagine it

and then add the add the details.

Because I always feel like I I am

trying to get away from the idea that

I'm like, kind of sculpting the thing.

Um, when I was young, I used to do,

my sister used to do more drawing and

painting and I used to do more clay stuff.

And the truth is that, um, my imagination

often works best by iterating and

like, Seeing what I see and then

adjusting, which means I spend a lot

more miles with my Apple pencil in

this case, then strictly necessary.

Um, but yeah, that was one idea,

but I had some time before I heard

they really want to end pages.

Um, By the time that happened, I

didn't love that idea too much.

I ended up settling because

again, I had almost no time left.

I only had maybe two

days to do six end pages.

Um, so I thought, What if we

kind of expanded the world?

Because we don't get to see a lot of

Hurricanes, a lot of the monsters.

And I thought of this almost like,

you know, like the Pokemon kind

of playing card idea where you

get to see a bunch of creatures.

So for this first end page, I

just kind of doodled the first

weird monsters that come to mind.

And when people buy copies of

my book, I doodle like the first

monster that comes to my mind.

And, uh, and these are the ones

that popped in my head for page one.

After that, um, I started getting a

little repetitive, so I had to get

creative, uh, in a different kind of way.

Uh, creative, um, creative

source of inspiration.

But that is something we will talk

about next week on Cloudtown Tuesday.

Uh, I am in a rush to go pedicab.

Um, so I gotta go back to my

day job, make some money, so I

can draw you guys more comics.

Thank you for being

here and helping me out.