perfectly good door! right there! waiting for you!

I foolishly thought that this was the debut of the brick-pattern trick in the first panel, but on further researching I found it goes all the way back to #178. What I came to learn is that it’s entirely possible to give texture to a surface you’re drawing by simply doing bits and pieces of that texture here and there, then letting the brain fill in the rest. That way I can have, for instance, a brick wall without having to draw each brick. It’s hugely time-saving and it gives some variety to comics that are otherwise set in a vague, abstract whiteness. (Like most of the first year.)

I’m fairly certain I learned this from the work of Mike Mignola, who is like this black-belt-level-40 Master of Texture. That guy throws down a line and a couple of dots and hey presto, it’s an ancient, rough-hewn stone wall. [November 16, 2011]

5 thoughts on “perfectly good door! right there! waiting for you!

  1. well this really has nothing to do with your comics… if you still dont know what to go as for the halloween party i think you should go as kip!!! that would be pretty sweet. haha

  2. what annoys me is game designers who paint a door on the wall that looks like all the other doors you can go through but for some reason this particular door will not even let you try opening it and wont give you a reason why. All i ask is “its locked”.

  3. You should see the door at my work. It’s an airlock with 2 doors leading intot he store. They’re not marked so people mill around int he airlock for 15 secords indecisively trying to figure out which to use. We used to have signs up but some corporate yahoo thought they looked tacky. It’s pretty funny watching them hesitantly going from door to door.

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