process – Page 4 – Lucy Bellwood

“Setting Realistic Goals” Talk @ Making Comics MOOC

So this is something of a new game for me: in a few weeks I’ll be speaking on a panel of creators as part of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) run by MakingComics.com. The CEO, Patrick Yurick, was actually at CCS the same summer I went through my Comics Conversion and started doing this stuff for living, so it’s pretty neat to see where the two of us have ended up after four years.

The course is free and open to the public, with a pretty minimal time commitment and a rockstar line-up of creators ready to talk about four key topics as each week of the course goes by. It’s like a panel discussion where you can log in and ask questions in real time. The course is perfect for those of you looking to launch a comic or learn more about the process of going from idea to finished product.

Here’s the flier for the week I’ll be participating:

Look at all those cool dudes! We’re gonna get technical up in this business — motivational techniques, time management, maintaining momentum oooooh yeahhhhh. However! To attend the talk you’ll need to register for the course (again: FREE) before this Saturday. If you’d like to learn more before you register, or take a gander at the other weeks’ guests, click here — there’s a great FAQ about how the MOOC is structured and run.

Hope to see you online April 9th! And be sure to register this weekend to participate.

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Friday Listening: A Happy Go Lucky Podcast

I had the immense pleasure of returning to the Happy Go Lucky Podcast this week to talk about my time away in the Grand Canyon. Our theme was “Escape” which led to a lot of talk about how we can create space for making things in our day-to-day routine without running away to the woods. Or maybe you’ve gotta run away to the woods. Or Ireland. There are lots of options on the table.

Anyway, tune in here for an hour of titillating discussion about the creative process and, as always, boats.

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Rock Ink Roll – Sneak Peek

Still cranking hard on my story for Rock Ink Roll with Shannon Campbell. Inked three pages yesterday, wrapping the other three by tonight. Off to tones and color tomorrow. Deadline: Monday.

So excited to submit this.

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Avatar Commission

After doing a series of lewd comics for the Portland Opera last year, resident opera historian Bob Kingston approached me with an intriguing avatar project. I’ve had a lot of fun incorporating all his hobbies and professional hats into this illustration over the past couple weeks. Can you guess what they all are?

Also: since I keep promising (and failing) to do some kind of in-depth process post, I thought I’d compromise by stringing together the various stages of this project into a single image. You can see the alterations throughout the design process below, from thumbnails to inks to washes to color! We toyed with the idea of including text, but eventually decided that the image worked better on its own.

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The Niftymancer Kickstarter Campaign & Symbolia Process Photos!

Hey everyone, long time no blog! I have a couple pressing items to throw out before I dive back into finishing these stories for Symbolia magazine. Niftymancer, the lane defense game I’ve been doing some animation work for, is entering the final hours of its Kickstarter fundraising campaign. There’s a chunk of change left to go, but with your help we can push it over the line! The game features character designs by Justin Hillgrove, of Imps and Monsters fame, and has been a ton of fun to work on. You can check out the characters I’ve been animating below:

In the land of comics, I’ve been hard at work on the finishing stages of my story for Symbolia Magazine. Here’s a quick bunch of photos from the two weeks I was away in California. Lots of inking, lots of toning, lots of lettering, and even a little color! All that’s left are the interactive elements and then this thing will be finished.

More news to come later this week, including an exciting announcement about the publication of Navy Ink, the tattoo-based story I posted a few months ago. In the meantime, check out Niftymancer on Kickstarter and enjoy the rest of the weeekend!

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The New Storefront is LIVE!

Hey everyone!

I’ve got a lot of art lined up to start posting here this week, but before we get to that I wanted to let you all know that my new storefront is officially online! This means True Believer is now available to the general public, t-shirts are up for pre-order (probably ready within the next two weeks), and all my other comics are back in stock. Ready to start loading up on goodies? Then point your browsers to

And since I can’t leave you with no art at all in this post, here’s a quick comic from yesterday about my fraught artistic process.

Stay tuned for more!

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True Believer: The Final Countdown!

Oh man, dudes. Things are heating up.

In the final few weeks before True Believer hits the printers, I’ll be coloring up a storm, making buttons, designing business cards, investigating screen printing, and also trying to format that other weird written thesis thing I was supposed to have written by now. Just kidding. I wrote it. Mostly. But that guy needs to go into LaTeX and boy howdy I do not know how to work that program yet. Still, baby steps.

I thought I’d drop a few images in here from the next stage in the process. You can see the whole beast on the wall here:

Which I will now proceed to color using this completely delightful Indigo I picked up at the art store this week.

Here are a few tests:

And here’s a page of ink lines printed at 10% grey with watercolor shading:

I’ll be scanning these in and merging them with the digitized line art to create the final images, which should look something like this:

I can’t tell you how excited I am to pull all this stuff together. The coloring will go much MUCH faster than the inking (thank God), so hopefully I’ll blow through 31 pages in the next week and get this thing printed! In the meantime, I’ve got a few illustrations to stick up in the coming days, as well as a requested post about my perspective on the art/writing divide in comics.

Stay tuned!

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The Growth of The Beast

In other news, I apparently can’t decide on which Instagram filter I like best.

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Progress Report

So, you guys may’ve noticed that things have been a little quiet here on the comics front. Fear not! Things are happening and this post will hopefully clear up a few questions about where my energy’s going these days and when you can expect to see some new sequential work.

I’m currently neck deep in my 34-page thesis comic (tentatively titled “True Believer”), which should be out in time for Stumptown this year. I wrapped up the pencils last week after a grueling page-a-day push through February, and am now taking the opportunity for a little downtime over Spring Break. I’ll begin inking in the next few days, then do color, layout, and printing in April. This is, of course, on top of full-time school commitments and a few freelance jobs, so there may be delays, but the progress in February was really encouraging. I’ll be posting some more pictures as I start inking so you can get a sense of what it’ll look like.

In the meantime, the blog will be featuring (surprise, surprise) more illustrations! I’m making the shift from my little Pentel Pocket Brush to the real deal Windsor & Newton Series 7 for this project, so I’m trying to do as much freelance work as possible with the W&N to get the feel of it.

Thanks for hanging in there, everyone! I’m getting really excited to share this new work with you. So excited, in fact, that I’ve taken to walking around like this:

And with that burst of absurdism, I bid you adieu.