Bellyband WIP (Patreon)

Some of you mentioned not minding seeing more of the technical, not strictly horny parts of the process. So for what it's worth, here's some of the spoils of my efforts today. I started off sketching things on paper and totally lost the little Winton figure by the time I had been fussing with wiggles in Illustrator for hours(still might try to bring him back.)

Don't ask why it's so important to remake the bellyband for the new laser jet edition of my comics or why I even need a bellyband at all. I just do, it's an affliction. 😌And in case it wasn't clear, a bellyband is the term for this funny little strip of paper that I like to wrap around my physical comics. So...they look nice, and don't catch a cold.

I'm always drawn to this certain era of 1960s print design that revels in color layering. I think they do it pretty naturally by just putting ink on top of ink in a lithography process or what have you, but I have to fake it in Illustrator by deliberately overlapping colors or adding noise and imperfections in photoshop

Thankfully some of the earthiness comes through by printing it with the laserjet and also using an offwhite paper, as well as some natural kinda grainness or hot spots of color that happen with a printer like this.

I really loved this early version with the color showing through the text in blue but it's just kinda hard to read. I may attempt to bring it back in a subtler way, but as soon as something becomes too busy I tend to pull back really hard and simplify.

Happy Thursday!

Wint.