Blue Moon Blog

I’m tardy in posting this strip we did last August for Kid’s Zone magazine. This one focused on doing good deeds for those in need, so the star, Joey and his pals get together to raise money.

They get some good advice from someone who may look a tad familiar, though for the final art they had me add a top hat.

And here’s a sneak peek at the layout for page 2 (of 3). At this point I still worked the old-fashioned way, scribbling with a marker with a board on my lap. My process has since changed, which I’ll be sharing soon on this blog.

Read the whole comic (and those done previously) in our Prime Projects section, or at my Facebook page.

On this blog in April I posted about Jewish Robot Comics. For that installment, I needed to design a robot, the Sedertron 2000, who would be built by and interact with the star of the recurring strip, Joey. Sometimes I have a good idea of a design of character in my head before I begin to draw. Other times I’ll work it out at the old drawing board in the studio. But on most occasions faced with that fun challenge, I like to just doodle and play on the page while watching TV or sitting outside, to let the sketching take me places, especially when I’m not sure where I’m going or have just a vague, Will-o’-the-Wisp idea of a character design.

For this robot, I wanted him to be fun but formidable. My first stabs…

…were not on the right track. These looked not personable enough, or too scary. His head was looking like a toaster or insect or a Stormtrooper. Had to change gears:

Better in some ways, but too silly, clowny and simple. Then I began to hone in:

Yeah, that’s more like it! now to just complete the design for his full figure:

I also needed to come up with an old professor/teacher, who was quick and easy. He came out right away on paper exactly the way I saw him in my mind’s eye.

More details of the robot were refined as I worked on the layouts and pencils. My wife and I ended up coloring him differently than I’d originally intended, which was probably mostly red and grey. I like him better this way:

To read the full story check out our Major Works section, which also features other Jewish comics, and other assorted projects. And you can find more Fricke robots on this blog.

The title of this post may seem an unlikely combination of words, but what’s even more improbable is that in my work I’ve had cause to string them together more than once!

The latest three-page comic strip for Tzivos Hashem’s Kid’s Zone magazine gave me a chance to design and draw a crazy robot to help our pal, Joey learn about Passover. It all starts when he’s gotten a late start on his science project:

Next thing you know he’s whipping up a super-robot in his garage who might be able to compete on Iron Chef:

Read the rest of the story, and Joey’s other comics at our Prime Projects section of this site.

And click the link to see another image from our Gallery you might find in a google search for “Jewish Robot Comics.”

We’re now into our third year of a comics series for Kid’s Zone magazine which is becoming more and more fun as we do it. The scripts we’re getting are even more inventive and refined than earlier stories, taking advantage of what can be done with comics. In this Chanukah story, I got to draw an old talking tree and a talking candle. Fun!

Read the whole story (and the rest of the series) at our Major Works section of this site, and learn more details of the comics and creative process in previous posts.

All these comics I draw the old-fashioned way by hand, then they’re scanned and colored digitally. The line art is converted into paths and shapes with Adobe Illustrator (rather than Photoshop) so Mary can color away. One she’s done, I tweak the color here and there and do all the lettering and word balloons with a font based on my comics lettering style, which means it ends up looking just as if I did it all by hand. It also gives us more freedom and options in making changes to the art or dialogue. Even though we’ve streamlined the process to be quicker, cleaner and more effective, I’ll soon be experimenting to simplify the process further, about which I’ll write about here. Stay tuned!

The latest three-page comics story for the Jewish children’s magazine to which we regularly contribute is up and ready for reading at our Major Works section of this site.

This story focused on the creation story, as our hero, Joey is guided to the beginning of time and space by a prickly little ladybug, of all things. The ladybug was fun to design and draw, in part because she was a little impatient and prone to throw the occasional tantrum!

I also had a good time laying out their trip through the first seven days, which provided the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the full bleed off the edges of the pages, allowing the sequence open up and breathe. I don’t like to use those bleeds just because I can, but rather for greatest impact when the story gives me the chance.

We’ve completed another few installments of the comics stories we do for a Jewish kids magazine, a series which we’ve heard recently will continue for the foreseeable future, which is good news. Each story centers on certain Jewish holidays and the culture. One story focuses on the Four Sons of the Passover, which gave us a chance to go all super-heroic, thanks to the fun script by writer/editor Ella Broh. And another story features the star, Joey traveling the world for Shavuot to ask folks of other creeds and countries about the Torah.

It’s funny, as I work on these comics, what gets me most jazzed is not always the large splash panels and big action, but the smalls ways in which I can employ storytelling strategies that work only in comics. For this quick series of three panels (above) a tiny superhero transports Joey from a magical time-travel land back to his grandparents’ attic. Their return trip need to be treated differently than their way there, and while using as little space as possible. In a long horizontal strip and three tiny frames, I got Joey back where he belonged with simple, iconic images.

It’s also a treat to do these kids comics in the simple, bold fashion I prefer, rather than in a style that’s over-rendered in ink or color. To compliment the line art and for a look easy-on-the-eye, Mary and I stick with essentially flat color in this case. For other comics stories, I may use another look and approach entirely.

To read these latest editions, visit our Major Works section, open the Blue Moon Viewer, and click forward to “The Awesome Foursome!” Of course, you’re welcome to read the earlier stories, if you haven’t seen them before. Enjoy!

I’m delighted that we’re beginning our second year doing comics stories for the outstanding Tzivos Hashem Kids magazine. Over 300,000 copies of each issue (in English) are distributed world-wide, and tens of thousands more in a variety of additional languages are sold. This strip is one of our favorite regular projects. I’m so pleased that clients like Tzivos Hashem are choosing to use comics to communicate their important messages, in this case to interest kids (ages 8-13) in their Jewish heritage and religion, teach them about their background and where they come from, in a manner that is fun, informative and that will speak to them.

Comics are an effective and entertaining medium. Not only do comics stand out and grab attention due to their visual nature, but because they combine words with pictures it’s easier to convey sometimes complex actions and concepts to readers of all ages and backgrounds.

Today I’m working on layouts for the next installment, and though I can’t share those yet, I can show some art from a previous issue.

I begin work on each issue with a rough layout, breaking down the plot or adapting the story into comic book pages. These breakdowns are a few inches tall, kept small so I don’t focus on detail yet, but rather on panel and page composition and storytelling. It may be difficult to tell anything from my chicken-scratch, but trust me, I know what’s going on there, which may become more clear to others when compared side-by-side with the completed page.

I then proceed to larger layouts, working at print size. The  lower portion of the page was of particular interest to me, as I needed to show the hero, Joey, chasing a bunch of ice cream trucks through the city streets. Breaking these actions into a series of smaller panels, especially when followed by the larger title image, I found a fun and interesting juxtaposition. Instead of showing the whole city, which is suggested in snippets, we focus on the drama of Joey’s chase.

Between this layout stage, through the pencils and the final art stage, I changed the last panel to show better Joey’s reaction, as well as the the men beginning to unload the boxes from the trucks. This also builds suspense, as one has to turn the page to discover their destination.

The final pencils and inks are done at an enlarged size (124-140% depending on the project). Sometimes we have to finish these comics quickly on a tight deadline, and I’m feeding finished inked pages or sections to Mary, so she can scan and prepare them digitally to get started on coloring, while I pencil and ink more. Read all of the comics we’ve done so far for the magazine, and we’ll let you know here when the one on which I’m working now is available.