I COULDN’T HELP IT!!! I had to draw one last really awesome fight scene!!! I’m working on page 97 right now. I’m guessing the first volume of comic will end at about page 102.

Considering I was aiming for 50 pages originally, I’d say I did a God-awful job of planning. On the bright side, the comic is packed full of comedy and a crazy amount of action.

What went wrong? Well, I’m not sure I would use the word “wrong.” What caused me to drastically underestimate the length of the comic is the detail I placed into the fight scenes.

When I did the weekly webcomic, fight scenes would last about three weeks. That’s anywhere from one to two pages. Having an entire page to work with, the fight scenes exploded in complexity, detail, and length. The average fight scene now lasts close to eight pages. With about four major fight scenes, we’re at about 32 pages of combat. Plus, these fights have to be set up in a way that they progress the story, which requires more work.

In hindsight, I wish I broke the comic up into three 30+ page serials. If I find a publisher who is willing to make a big enough commitment to the MSPaint Comic, that may still happen. Going from 50 pages to over 100 will significantly increase the price of a full color comic book. I’m a little afraid to see how much damage was done. My last estimates of $10 a copy were based on a 80 page comic. That creates some incentive to split up te book, but I REALLY don’t want to do that.

Pending the review, editing, and publishing process, I’ll aim now for a summer release. Hopefully this year.

I finally got around to adding more art to the KTracy Network’s Art Gallery. In case you haven’t figured this out, I have my own network of websites and share certain functions between all of them to keep everything centralized (and to prevent my server from overloading). The user-end of that centralization is located in that bar at the very top of this and my other websites.

Anyway, to see my MSPaint artwork; including some never-before-seen work from testing I’ve done, the webcomic era, Volume I, AND EVEN VOLUME II; all you have to do is mouse over “Art Gallery” and click on “MSPaint Art.” Once there, you’ll find dozens of images I’ve drawn entirely or partially in MSPaint.

Or if you’re lazy, you can just click here.

An example of a frame drawn and colored by myself towards the end of the comic.

I’ll fill you in right now.  I have 8 pages left to draw on the MSPaint Comic before finishing.  Assuming I don’t elaborate on anything as I’m drawing it (causing it to be more than 8 more pages), the finished first volume The MSPaint Comic: Institution will run 100 pages long.

Now that the necessary update is out of the way, I thought it may be fun to share with you how exactly the MSPaint Comic is being made, and what exactly “8 more pages” really means.

Years ago, when the MSPaint Comic was a webcomic, I drew each frame one at a time.  However, as I learned the power of credit cards in obtaining monitors with enormous resolutions, I discovered I could draw entire pages at a time, rather than one frame at a time and then piecing those frames together on a page.  That process always killed me because I would spend hours, sometimes days, perfecting details that wouldn’t make it into the comic strip because I misjudged the resolution I needed or the final shape of the frame that was necessary.  Working with one page at a time ensures there will be no layout problems or conflicts.  As you may have seen in Pixels For Christmas, the end result is more professional than what you may remember in the webcomic.

Pixels for Christmas was also created at a much smaller resolution than Institution and I suspect much smaller than I probably used to create the webcomic.  Granted, I didn’t compress Pixels for Christmas to 792 pixels in width, either; which helped make things look a lot prettier if you get turned on by the pixels.

Anyway, there is a four-step process for creating a page in the comic.  The first, and most important, is creating the line drawings.  I do that entirely by myself since I appear to be the grand master of the MSPaint curve tool.  All the characters, clothes, actions, accessories, weapons, and their speech or thought bubbles are created in this first stage, but with only very limited color.

The second step is coloring, which is a shared responsibility between myself and Krista, my fiancee.  Krista handles the most basic and time-consuming coloring tasks.  In other words, if two people are standing next to each other, I give her a color code to go by and she does the rest, including shading.  Krista is also in charge of drawing most of the camouflage seen throughout the comic after page 50ish (when I decided to let her help me).  However, there are some scenes that I choose to color.  This is usually due to dynamic lighting effects or strange, but highly important details.  To give you an idea of how much time Krista is saving me, I’m currently working on page 93 and have colored approximately 15 pages between 50 and 93.  Krista is currently coloring page 76.  She started at around page 50 about 9 months ago.  Needless to say, the comic would not be complete in 2012 if it wasn’t for her help.

The third step in the process is drawing backgrounds.  Generally, this is done in a separate bitmap file using a copy of the colored drawing Krista did.  I’m drawing all the backgrounds myself, since there are details going into that work that I don’t think she fully understands because of my inability to express everything that’s happening in the comic and my more intimate knowledge of the settings in which the comic is being created.  The backgrounds are drawn over the characters Krista colored, and I copy paste the foreground bitmap Krista finished over the backgrounds I just created.

The fourth step are the special effects.  Believe it or not, I don’t do everything in MSPaint.  The power rods that resemble lightsabers are drawn in The GIMP.  I can’t get into the details of why that’s acceptable, but when you read the second volume, it should probably make more sense why not everything is pixelated.  In addition to special effects, the final editing on the pages is done in The GIMP.  What does this mean?  Well, it means getting the page ready for print, including color tests to make sure the backgrounds don’t clash too badly with the colors Krista used.  It also means setting up the spacer space.   That’s going to be particularly problematic from a cost perspective, though.  Since the MSPaint Comic was a webcomic, the comic strips and Pixels For Christmas always had a black border and black spacing between the frames.

Unfortunately, when printed, that requires what is called a page bleed.  All that means is that there is no white edge around each page.  Although it’s simple to understand, it can also be pretty damn expensive.  Currently, all the borders in the comic are a hot-pink color.  What they change into will depend greatly on the offer various printing services and prices presented to us.  Without a doubt, I would much prefer to keep the black background around.  However, if we’re talking about losing a full dollar or more per printed comic for the full bleed, I won’t let be added into the cost of the comic.

As it is, it’s rare to see an affordable, full-color 100 page comic by independent artists.  If I can cut a dollar or more off the price of each comic, I’ll do it without thinking twice.

When that’s done, the page is done.

Then everything begins finding its way into OpenOffice.org Writer, where the pages will be numbered, the bleeds installed, and the final PDF completed.  After an approval by a US Air Force security officer (a mere formality since I was an intelligence analyst and they have to make sure the Ghost of Teddy Roosevelt doesn’t reveal any state secrets), the MSPaint Comic can finally be printed and then sold to you and the friends you introduce to the pixelated madness.