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I thought I would take this time to include a brief blog about the process I use to bring you new Moth & Ethan strips every week. Right or wrong, love it or hate it, every artist has a method and technique that they are comfortable with or are constantly honing to produce their craft. This is one of mine:
I use a 11" x 17" 100 lb. Accent Opaque Digital bristol board with a smooth finish.
I buy this in large packs at Arvey or Xpedx.
This laminated template gives me a rough guide for placing the panels.
I made the template so I wouldn’t have to measure every time.
I sketch in the cartoons and concept dialogue with a 0.5mm mechanical pencil.
I don’t usually render the drawings any more than this since the characters are pretty simple and familiar to me.
Inking the cartoons and letters with a variety of pens, including brush markers, Sharpies, Rollerball, and felt-tip pens. And "yes", I ink from right to left since I am left-handed.
Older classic Moth & Ethan strips were inked with brush and India ink. Brush markers, while less sophisticated or opaque, are also not as messy.
Quick clean-up with kneaded artist erasers.
Some artists avoid this kind of clean-up by inking over a light table on a separate sheet, or just inking digitally.
Move from the drawing table to the computer workstation.
I am currently running a new generation Mac Mini, to which I’ve connected a 12″ Wacom Cintiq, and new Brother large-format scanner, both of which are tremendous time-savers.
Scan the inked drawings at 300dpi in Black & White.
Black & White or Greyscale images scan faster and make it easier to adjust the levels.
I crop and rotate the scanned images in Photoshop, then save them as memorable PSD files. The Brightness & Contrast usually has to be adjusted. I also change the flat Background to a Layer and set it to Multiply. After that, I convert the image from Greyscale to RGB, and add two more layers beneath that line layer.
This is also the point where I digitally clean up the inks and fix mistakes or make changes – a common occurrence..
Finally, I add the background and foreground colors on the separate layers, and Merge the Visible Layers together before saving the PNG file at a reasonable screen resolution.
Selection tools, Paint Bucket, and Brushes are all used to fill in the colors. I also have a color palette specifically for Moth & Ethan and a few of the other characters.
That’s about it! Hope you weren’t too bored and I hope it doesn’t take away the “magic”. Feel free to ask more detailed questions via e-mail or in the comments section below.
Special 1 year Anniversary guest blog post by Connie Chandler
As an English as a New Language (ENL) teacher, it seems obvious that the story of Noah’s Ark is a prime opportunity to introduce 100 new vocabulary words for animals. What went on the boat? Aardvarks, Bats, Centipedes, Zebras, and everything in the middle. With graphic clip art, photos, stuffed animals, and trips to the zoo, the learning possibilities are endless, and by the time class is over, there will be 15 more international people who can list all the species of the animal kingdom in multiple languages! Well, that plan might be a bit grander than reality, but you get the idea.
But as much fun as it could be to teach a lesson on lions, tigers, and bears, that isn’t really the point of Genesis 6, is it? I am so thankful that God chose to protect all the animals from dying in the flood… but I am even more thankful that he spared a family of humans. See, animals are beautiful and interesting and useful and inspiring, but they were not made to walk and talk with God through a garden in the cool of the day. They weren’t the ones he made in his image, for his purpose, to his glory. We are. And as often as humanity has made a mess of things throughout history, God – in his crazy love and mercy – keeps rescuing us, calling us back, and redeeming us.
In Genesis 6:18, God says he will establish his covenant, not with the animals, but with Noah. If Noah trusted God and obeyed him – if he built the ark according to God’s plans and put his family inside – then they would be saved, protected, preserved… they would live. Sound like something else you might have heard? We don’t need an ark, but we do need Jesus, and the power of his death and resurrection. We need to be covered by him and live by his grace to receive forgiveness, salvation, and true life.
God loves the animals with feathers, fins, and four feet, but he didn’t step down from his throne in heaven to put on scales or fur… he put on human flesh and died as a man to save and redeem and restore relationship with you and me.
Read more from Connie at Life is Sweet.
Special 1 year Anniversary guest blog post by Kevan Chandler
There have been two floods in the history of man that have covered the whole Earth. Cleansing waters poured out and drenched the world in its darkest hours.
The first came from the sky, rain – a curious thing that no one had ever heard of before. God told a righteous man, Noah, to get ready. Noah built a boat, and was mocked for his vision. What’s rain, anyway? An old wives tale, I say! A bedtime story to scare the kids! Water from the sky? Ridiculous! Next, they’ll say the moon is made of cheese! What’s cheese? But the world was falling apart, sin was rampant, and the Lord said he would fix it. So, fix it, he did. He opened up the heavens and let the rain fall. The earth, they say, even opened up to release geysers, which was new as well. Water was coming from everywhere and it wasn’t slowing down. God filled the world like a bathtub and then drained it – a fresh start, a new world without all that sin. Let’s try again, starting over with good ol’ Noah and his kids. Surely, things will go better this time! But it was only a matter of days before the righteous got carried away with drink, and everything went back to a big mess. And so it went on for a while
longer – a few hundred years, in fact – until word got around that a savior was coming to clean up again and make everything right. And one day, he came.
Jesus of Nazareth showed up and said he was the Son of God. He showed it too, not just in miracles, but in his attitude and wisdom. Some believed and others didn’t. After all, last time God fixed things, he made a much bigger scene, and this Jesus was so meek and mild. If judgement and salvation – if a flood – was to come from a man, it would be a warrior, right? Jesus was no hero, no gladiator. He wasn’t even that handsome. The press didn’t care about this carpenter and his fishermen buddies. But he was who he claimed to be, and he showed the world what it should look like, and it reacted by killing him. And here is the second flood – as we reflect in this Easter season – that when he died, Christ’s side was pierced and there came forth an
outpouring of blood and water. It was in his death that the second, and the final, cleansing flood was poured out upon humanity. Our sins washed away, a chance to start again. No longer dependent on a somewhat righteous man, prone to fall, but it is God himself through whom this new life comes. It’s not just a rinse, but an entirely fresh beginning, and it is good.
Read more from Kevan at Half-Broken Busy.
This past Tuesday my wife and I had the opportunity to watch our oldest son perform in his first Thanksgiving school program. Very cute. He recited his lines perfectly. I videotaped the whole thing. It brought back a lot of memories of holiday pageants gone by. I only wish I had captured some golden moment to send to America’s Funniest Home Videos.
It got me to thinking about how different it would be if a turkey directed a Thanksgiving play. I wonder if it would be titled, “T-Day Massacre: The Revenge”, or something like that. Hence the cartoon above.
Hope everyone has a moderately gluttonous Turkey Day Weekend. Find everything to be thankful for.
ex·act (ig-zakt) v. to call for, demand, or require.
change (cheynj) n. a transformation or modification; alteration.
Isn’t the English language funny? I love it. Words that sound the same, or are even spelled the same, can mean different things, and can sometimes be used as nouns or verbs or adjectives, etc. This allows for the existence of playful puns and wonderful wordplay, the meat and potatoes of Moth & Ethan strips. At the same time, this causes it to be a difficult language to learn, let alone translate accurately for a broad audience.
What adds to the confusion even more is that every single person in the world, who is capable of communication, interprets everything through his or her own unique filter. They bring to the place of understanding, not just their knowledge or education, but also their discernment, personality, historic and ethnic background, emotional baggage, and simply their mood at any given moment. Two people can listen to the exact same phase and take away two completely different meanings. Multiply this by hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions, and you’ve basically got the Tower of Babel all over again. It’s amazing and frustrating at the same time.
So what’s my point? My point is that exacting change does not look the same for everyone. Four years ago, a media darling from Illinois was hired for the most influential job on the planet by running on a campaign of “Change”. People were ready for it and he knew what they wanted to hear. Most voters knew nothing about him, but he was in the right place at the right time, and nothing else mattered.
Today we know better. Today we know where he comes from and whom he emulates. We know he has no regard for the sanctity of human life. We know he has no concept of true social justice. We’ve seen what his idea of change looks like, and it is frightening.
Does this mean I support his opposition this election year? No. I am just as wary of a slick business-savvy man who has been whole-heartedly duped by an obviously false religion. However, I do know that his monetary wealth gives me very little concern. Why? Because there always has been and always will be a gap between the rich and the poor. No form of government or socio-economic system has been able to bridge it yet. Even if The Church was doing all that is is supposed to do, there would still be that rift in society. Even Jesus admitted that “the poor you will always have with you” (Mark 14:7). It may not be right or fair or something we even want to understand, but let’s not act like it is a new problem that can be easily solved, especially without getting to the roots of the issues.
Now I have a confession to make. I don’t vote. I know that makes me a terrible citizen, a rotten patriot, and an ungrateful human being. I also know that there are plenty of other “rights” that I choose not to take advantage of. Just because we have the right to do something, doesn’t mean that we are obligated or even have the responsibility to do it.
I further know that we are only responsible for the decisions that we make, and what’s more, we will be held accountable for those decisions and affiliations that we adhere to, despite our petty justifications. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to put all your hopes and expectations for the future on one person, who you don’t know and could never begin to discern where their heart is? Is it worth it to lambaste an opponent and broadcast their faults on the social networking site of your choice at the risk of driving a wedge between yourself and anyone who holds a different view? Is it worth it to lose all credibility, tarnish your testimony, and pigeonhole yourself with the extreme wing over a political party affiliation? Is it worth it when you look ahead in time and picture yourself before the Judgment Seat of Christ, naked and prostrate, with no excuses to hold on to?
When you go to the polls, will you “chose the lesser of two evils” or “cover your eyes and hold your nose”? Guess what. The lesser of two evils is still evil, and going in half-cocked and largely uninformed is as bad as making an informed decision for the wrong choice. Or are you the kind to vote quietly, then leave and sound off for the next four years about how you were right all along? I hope that you are the one who will be praying constantly that God will grant mercy on our fallen world until He comes again, and trust that He is in control, regardless of the outcome.
Take a look at this passage. Here Jesus is being questioned by spies from the local religious leaders who were trying to entrap him:
“Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
He saw through their duplicity and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” – Luke 20:22-25 (NIV)
“Give to God what is God’s.” What is “God’s”? Um… everything. I was going to say “everything else”, but that’s not even true. Everything. All of it. Even what we give to the government. It’s still God’s. He is still on the Throne. He is still in charge. He is still the ruler over all. He still sees what we cannot, and may never see. He still cares for us. We are precious to Him. The candidates are precious to Him. We all break His heart when we make bad decisions, but He still calls us unto Himself. Will you acknowledge His authority over your life and your possessions? Will you live every day like He is the Lord of your existence?
The Great Commission tells us to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel”. It doesn’t say, “Surround yourself with comforts and trust someone else to make good decisions for the benefit of the world.” Politicians can’t save the world. Government can’t save the world. They apparently can’t even do the jobs they were created to do. There is no hope for this world aside from Jesus, and it is our responsibility to proclaim that.
I’m not telling you not to vote. By all means, obey your convictions. But don’t turn a blind eye to facts, and don’t allow pride to creep in and sway you. Don’t put so much value and emphasis on temporal national citizenship that you lose sight of your eternal heavenly citizenship (Philippians 3:20).
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. – Romans 13:1-7 (NIV)
