Back in the late 1990s I was exploring the illustrative possibilities of my newly purchased Power Mac 7300. I put a lot of time and effort chasing down what meager information I could via a dial-up modem; picking the brains of the technicians at the service bureau where I worked at the time, and a lot of trial and error. I was obsessed with the possibilities of marrying hand drawn art with digital colors and vector elements. My efforts were not a pursuit unique to me — other illustrators were busily developing digital approaches to their art. I was trying to build my own set of skills using every program I had including Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and CorelDraw which I had on an old PC.
I also wanted to make a comic with panels and word balloons which I had only previously made half-hearted attempts. My work was usually spot illustrations that accompanied an article or editorial in newspapers. Words and pictures that told a story is something I really wanted to try!My main goal was to sell the notion of publishing a mini-comic as an advertising piece to my boss at the time. It would be mailed to his list of customers which were mostly advertising and design firms. As far as I saw it, somebody else was going to pay to print and mail a promotional piece for me!
Nice, right?
Well, it never happened. The boss paid for an advertisement in a printing trade publication, and that was as far as it went. He didn’t receive an avalanche of e-mailed interest so he got cold feet.
Oh, well. I learned a lot and enjoyed doing it.
Below is a thumbnail grid of There’s No Escape From a Deadline as it finally appeared when it was published to the late, lamented website CO2 Comics.
Click on a thumbnail for a larger, more legible view.
