Girrrl!!! Chapter 4!!!

At long last, the fourth chapter of Caitlin's and my comic Girrrl!!! is UP. Our last post was in May. I would like to take a moment to explain why it took so long and also the process we go through to create a new chapter.

STEP 1
Caitlin writes the chapter, emails it to me.

STEP 2
I give her any feedback I may have, email it back.

STEP 3
She makes edits, sends it to me. (Sometimes we repeat steps 2 and 3 a few more times).

STEP 4
I sketch out the comic, photograph it, upload the photos, and email them to Caitlin.

STEP 5
Caitlin gives me feedback, sends it to me, I edit. (We repeat steps 4 and 5 a few more times).

STEP 6
I ink the comic! It takes an hour to an hour and a half per page.

STEP 7
I scan and edit the comic, add text and clean up any rough sketchy lines or mistakes I made while inking. This requires a scanner and photoshop. When I was in Ithaca, I snuck onto Ithaca College's campus (a 40 minute bus ride from my house) to use their technology, as I own neither a scanner nor photoshop. IC had a scanner in the library that I could use to scan onto my flash drive. After that, I would head to the only computer lab on campus that didn't require an IC user name and password. I would plug in my flash drive and access their photoshop program for all of my editing needs. I would store all of my files on my flash drive, take the bus 40 minutes home, upload them to my home computer, and send them to Caitlin.

STEP 8
If Caitlin has any edits to suggest, I repeat step 7. If she doesn't, she puts it on the website and people read it!!! Hooray!

SO June was spectacularly busy for me, and IC was closed for the summer. July I spent on a farm off the grid in Vermont. August I spent working and IC was still closed for the summer. When IC opened for the Fall semester, I was getting ready to go to Mexico and move to Boston. I spent September in Mexico and Guatemala. In October, I moved to Boston and all of my abundant free time went towards getting a job and finding a new source of free photoshop (sneaking into Tufts? Northeastern? The public libraries don't have it). Then I got two jobs and all of my free time went towards working two jobs.

Now it is November and I am in the throws of NaNoWriMo, BUT I managed to finish inking this bad boy. Turns out one of my housemates has a scanner, and Caitlin, brilliant woman that she is, had a rockin' good idea: download a free program that does the same things photoshop does, but it would be free and I could use it from my own computer. We did some research and discovered Chocoflop which sounds like a store brand breakfast cereal but is in fact an image editing program. It is confusing. It is temperamental. But it is mine and I don't have to take a bus 40 minutes to use it! Expect more frequent Girrrl!!! updates from now on.