Ice Breaker -- A T.A.I.L.S. Comic

These comic strips are simple, have just a few facts, and hopefully a little chuckle. They take an unbelievably long time to make. The topic is assigned to me, in this case: Arctic. Okay, with a subject that broad, what do I include? First, I read everything I could find about scientists in the arctic. No ideas. Then someone donated to me about 100 back issues of National Geographic! Hallay-loo-yah! What a goldmine! This comic strip is inspired by a true scientific expedition. Then from start to finish it took about 8 hours to complete. This will appear in an upcoming issue of Boy's Quest magazine.

T.A.I.L.S. #49: The Field of Glass

Below is my most recent completed T.A.I.L.S. comic. Apart from the fact that it is mice and a turtle making these discoveries, the science in the story is true.



Each T.A.I.L.S. comic is followed by one page of knots instruction. I was told by Boy's Quest that I could do whatever I wanted with the comic as long as it led up to one page of knots instruction. I look at them as the advertisements that bring you this comic.
Here's the knots page for T.A.I.L.S. #50, which I had not completed until now.

T.A.I.L.S. #50: Sand Storm

If you've been reading my posts lately, you know I've been getting a lot of inspiration and enjoyment by doing the Art by Committee challenges from James Gurney's website. As a creative exersize, I've been trying to weave them into a single story. Some of them just don't fit. I'm wondering if I'll be able to continue, since they may add too many disparate elements to a single story. We'll see!

For now, the challenge for this week seemed to fit perfectly as part of an upcoming T.A.I.L.S. comic. Here's the challenge we were given this week.

T.A.I.L.S. Comics #42: "Let's Get Truckin'!"

I try to make my T.A.I.L.S. comics flow together in multi-part stories. This isn't always easy since the themes are dictated to me. For instance, the basketball issue was followed by the "trucks" issue. Then will come "Caves & Caverns" followed by "Cars". How will I do it? Stay tuned to find out!

T.A.I.L.S. Comics #41: "Basket Case"

I’ve spent the last two weeks drawing like mad trying to complete the next four episodes of T.A.I.L.S. I finished up today! Each episode is four pages. It takes quite a while for me to draw 16 pages. Each summer I try to draw a full year ahead so that the deadlines aren’t sneaking up on me during the school year.

Each episode is usually three pages of comics and the last page is knot instruction. Here is T.A.I.L.S. #41: “Basket Case”, which will appear in the February ‘08 issue of Boy’s Quest.

T.A.I.LS. Update

I’m trying to improve the lettering in my comics. I’m doing them by hand now with an Ames lettering guide. I invested in two expensive ink pens, Rotring Artpens. These are the kind Stan Sakai uses in Usagi Yojimbo.

One obstacle in getting work done for me is space! We were in tight quarters before with four kids. Then we had a baby and he took over the house! My daughter is going to college in the fall and said she wouldn’t mind if I used her room to draw in while she’s gone. She’s an artist to so we’ve fixed her room up as kind of a studio.

That may seem funny, but to me it is all part of “clearing the runway for take-off”. It’s tough to use the dining room table and then have to shove everything away so we can eat dinner!