 About Apathy | Archive | Links | Forum | Apathy Sketchpad Pre-History | Making Of | Cast | About The Author The Making of Apathy: In answer to your first question, no, I don’t know how long it takes to make each comic strip. This is largely because I usually draw a frame or two, then do something else, then finish it off. Usually there’s about an hour from the start of this process to the end. In answer to your second question, I use the standard ball-mouse I got with my computer to draw them. In answer to your third question, I have absolutely no idea where my ideas come from. Often the set-up is from real life, but the jokes themselves just sort of happen. I think Jack probably has a better sense of humour than I do. Now, can I tell you how I make the strip, or are you going to keep butting in with questions? Good. In my computer’s “My Documents” folder is a file called ‘apathy scripts.txt’, which has about 25 scripts in it at the moment, all in a neat format that shows how wide each frame is, who says what, and where applicable what they're doing at the time, except for the scripts I wrote before devising the system. Not all of them will make it; some of them aren’t very funny, but they’re there in case I get desperate or suddenly see how to make them work. When I feel like drawing one, usually (for some reason) around midnight, I fire up Paint Shop Pro 7. I use Photoshop for most things, but I use Paint Shop for drawing Apathy, because it’s simpler to use, loads faster, and I this way won’t lose my settings every time I draw something else. The actual frames measure 175 pixels (or a multiple thereof for wider frames) by 250 pixels, though the outer border of each it cut off by the frame border, however the original drawing for each frame measures 700 pixels by 1000 pixels; four times larger than the entire finished comic. I draw the image this size because it allows me to be less careful and still get a good picture, and it also allows me to have antialiased lines with fills that neatly go right up to them, which is a total bitch to do if you work in low resolution from the start. The text is put onto a vector layer so I can move it around at will while I’m laying out the frame, then I start drawing. I never copy-paste frames to make subsequent ones, I think that looks lazy when the comic has such a loose, hand-drawn look, but I do use cut-paste, flip, rotate, and move blocks of image around. No point using a computer if you’re just going to use it as a pen and paper, is there? Then I colour it, merge the layers, and reduce it to the correct size. Then I just copy-paste it into a template I made about a month before the comic launched, which trims the frame, and adds frame borders, a copyright notice, my email address, and the logo. After that I upload it to KeenSpace and wait for Butch to automatically add it to the site when the right date rolls around. At the moment there’s a probably few days’ worth of comics uploaded that you can’t see because they haven’t been moved to the public area yet.      |
  
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