House of Hard Knox: epilogue (Patreon)

Th’ End! Though not without some drama. First of all, I had a semi-difficult time coming up with a scenario I liked (as well as thought I could execute in a 3 month time frame which is what I try to give myself to do a 32-36 pg book. once I figured out the kinks (literal and figurative), I roughed out the pages. At this stage I really should’ve stopped and figured out the dialogue and word balloon placement but being the impatient undisciplined type, I tend to want my dessert first, so I do the drawings upfront then zoom right into the finished inking, which is the most fun part for me and I  save the dialogue for the end, Marvel-style), which is a hard slog at first before I get into it. Anyway, I was finishing up the final touches on the art at a really quick pace (though not stopping to back up my data) and closed out the project to mess around with creating some digital brushes to help with adding body hair to the drawings. I go to reopen the file with the story and it’s nowhere to be found! The cruel hand of fate! My heathen ways finally caught up to me? I was truly mortified and began a futile attempt at retrieving any recently deleted files. I love the Procreate app for doing my stories. It and the apple  pencil have revolutionized digital art BUT procreate has an annoying interface where the de-select feature is placed right next to the delete button. So if you’re deleting files and you don’t hit de-select, you very well may accidentally delete the next file you close out of or click on. And iPad doesn’t have the capacity for a trash can feature so once you acci delete a file it’s usually gone forever.  I was distraught for a few days over it. All that work gone. But then something happened. I only give myself a day or two to feel despondent over life’s bullshit then I try to move on as quickly as possible. So once resigned to the fact that the original story was gone, a new idea hit me for a replacement Hard Knox story. The plot came easily, unlike the previous story, and I could envision it clearly in my head. I quickly began roughing out the pages, I decided this story would go back to the full page spreads of the first Hard Knox book, “School of Hard Knox” , more reminiscent of Tom of Finlan’s full page Kake comics and that this story could work with minimal dialogue. The pictures alone would do the heavy lifting. I finished loosely roughing out the book, then began inking. I was determined to finish it by my self imposed July first deadline. Well, no need to try and be suspenseful since if you’ve read the Hard Knox story over the last month of installment, you know that I miraculously found the file of the story I’d been working on and finished it in time to post last month. The upshot is, now I have a third Hard Knox story that is at the halfway point  and hope to finish and post after the final chapter of “Boo and th’ Bruthahood” is finally up in mid-August. I think it’ll be fun but after that, I’m going to leave Hard Knox alone for a while and devote some time to the runner up in the previous poll, Alpha Dawg! Stay tuned!