Tony Cliff's Blog

Things have been busy, working on PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY. Since the last time I updated this blog, I’ve inked and lettered Chapter Five! Here’s what I’ve been posting over the last few months:

I’m posting all my updates over on Patreon for now, and I try to make these available to everyone, regardless of whether you’re a paying subscriber or not. (Personally, I subscribe to the ideal that Patreon is for people to financially support projects they like, you know, just like being… a… patron.) If you don’t like Patreon for whatever reason, I’m sorry, that’s fair!

… featuring some light philosophy on the practice of editing, some principles I gave myself for that practice, a cute photo of our kiddo doing work with me, and a quick ranking of all Taskmaster series.

Motivated by, umm, certain events in the news, I shared some peaceful flower photos in high-resolution, which you’re welcome to download and use for your personal enjoyment. There’s also a list of some of my then-favourite comfort viewing.

A look back at 2024, as well as a meditation on how hugely meaningful it can be to accomplish small tasks.

A real grab-bag of fun topics, including:

Krita! The free, open-source painting application. Come with me as I discover its automated flatting tools.

The changing software landscape — Will Smith launched a newsletter dedicated to navigating the miserable nature of modern software. I encourage everyone with even half an interest to adopt him as our guide through this swamp.

Specialized tools — do expensive tools make the craftsman? To what degree are they an indication of professionalism, or serious intent?

And two recommendations for soul-reviving viewing: Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood (which you’ve heard of) and Goodnight Oppy (which you might not have).

If you happen to be a Secret Reader — a member of the Patreon campaign for PRACTICAL DEFENCE — you’ve got access to the following absolute slices.

After thumbnailing Chapter Six, it became clear I’d need to make designs for the new characters that pop up in it. Here they are, with the stories behind them (including the fun detail that defines the two men, above)!

Most of the posts between last November and this February are focused on sharing complete inked pages from Chapter Five. This post additionally tackles the big question, “why is this book so long?” or, “why is this project taking forever?” Believe me, I wanted the answer as much as anyone, and it turned out to be surprisingly simple.

An absolute boatload of hot, fresh inked pages, including discussion of balancing shape and form with line and contour, experiments in watercolour, and trying to keep things loose… but not too loose. Plus, I started diving deep on the French Revolution, and share some of my resources and discoveries.

The most recent update is another grab-bag from the mind of someone who thinks too much while he nudges pixels around a screen all day, including…

A reminder that inspiration is mostly bunk,

The way in which Photoshop is like a piano,

An encouragement to root out the animator in your life and shove them into the light,

And some extended thoughts on the challenges with laying out text on a comic page, or “lettering.” I try to figure out which of the following two arrangements looks best, and why.

These are but four of the many posts that have gone up recently!

Go stick your head over there and dive into the rest! Look, I’m sorry they’re on Patreon and they’re not free, it’s just that I’m working on this super long project and it’s financially irresponsible and I don’t know what else to do about it!

I hope you’re all doing well out there. Be kind to one another! I’ll be back in a while with Chapter Five of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY!

This week, I accidentally drew a boring panel. Sorry. But look, look, we can fix it together!

I've been doing a new thing with my pencilling, where I take four to eight pages at a time, draw out all the panels, then really loosely block in the composition of each panel. Previously, I'd get one blank page, panel it, then block out the imagery, then finish up the pencils. Now, though — ha ha! — I've found a way to increase the number of times I iterate on a page! Yay me, old habits pushing their way back to the surface.

The results are making me happy. Even my lovely partner, S, a civilian who does not practice drawing or painting but does have a good eye, said, "your drawings have been looking really good lately." She never comments on my work, which makes it noteworthy when she does. Maybe this improvement is a result of dividing the tasks even further: splitting up the mental tasks of big-picture thinking (looking at the composition), and detail (posing, anatomy, drapery etc).

Who knows. Here's what I do know, though: this panel is boring (below).

It'll get more interesting when it's all rendered and coloured, but on a foundational, compositional level? Boring. Too flat, the sense of scale is not interesting, it's not clear that we're supposed to see the dead Captain Lear at the apex of the bridge (that's the little blob in the middle of the foreground). I do like the way it feels when the walls and towers crowd the top of a panel — I think that's the right feeling — but otherwise this panel needs a reboot, which I only realized once I'd already spent some time drawing it.

It's actually so plain I'm mad that I let it get this far. I am trying to imagine what I was thinking when I first set out on this panel, but that is boring, too, so let's move on.

How?

1. ACCEPT THAT IT IS BORING

Step one is acceptance. I must accept that the drawing is boring, I may not know what to do about it yet, but I must embrace my feelings of disapproval. I know I can do better.

[ I wrote this intending for it to be facetious but upon re-reading it, no, actually, this is just correct. ]

2. DO THUMBNAILS TO FIND A SOLUTION

Step two? Let's see if we can do better. Thumbnail time (below).

You have to ask: am I trying to re-compose the imagery of the panel? Or do I want to take this space on the page and look at something different, i.e. "not do this panel?"

The story has the answers, so maybe I should tell you what's going on. Alexandra's mom, Katerina, and Nikos are all being escorted via carriage out of Vignelli's gates. The carriage is being driven by men allied with Vignelli. Stooges, really. They all anticipate that, outside the walls, they will be exposed to some sort of unknowable pirate terror, and are frightened. But the stooges want to collect Captain Lear's body from the bridge, and they have to dump Our Heroes out while they're at it, exiling them among the unknown terror.

In this panel, I need to re-establish that our characters are leaving the safety of the walls and show you that they are now exposed to the Mysterious Pirate Threat, though I am also showing you that there is no immediate, obvious threat, which maybe creates suspense. In the previous panel, I've shown you how our heroes react to what they're seeing (scared). In the panel after, I show you how the guys driving the carriage are reacting (also scared). In between, I want to show you what they're reacting to, which is, "being in this new place." I also want to remind you about Captain Lear's corpse.

So I could "shoot" from behind Our Heroes' heads, seeing what they see, but then Captain Lear would necessarily be small, on the bridge in the distance. I could zoom in on Lear, but if I do that I lose the sense of "space," of being "among" the environment. I could do two panels: a spacious one, then go tight on Lear, but then my spacious panel is necessarily smaller.

I could "shoot" it all from some birds-eye view or in profile, or isometrically, etc. etc. but I still end up with the problem of "Lear is too small."

I end up concluding that I do not want to show you something different, I just want to re-compose the imagery of the panel to be better. That is what I find in my thumbnail iterations. I end up dropping us down close to Lear, which makes him big in the image, so there's no chance we're losing him. This has the advantage of visually echoing a panel we've seen in Chapter Four, thus reinforcing the connection — the reader should quickly understand who this is, no confusion. I don't go too low, though, because I like seeing the ground plane, which says "our characters need to traverse this space," which is important for the tension and logistics of the scene. It helps the scene make sense.

That's a lot of writing to describe something that happens in a very short amount of time. It's quick to lean back, visualize, and rule out options, and quick, too, to iterate on some thumbnails.

3. ZOOM AND ENHANCE (AND PRINT)

I take my good thumbnail, capture it with my phone, open it in my image editor, and print it out at the same size as my panel (below).

I use an old HP laser printer and regular old 8.5x11 sheets of paper. The panels that I revise this way are rarely bigger than that. When they are, I just print them out on two sheets of paper and tape them together.

It used to be that I roughed out everything, cleaned up my roughs in Photoshop, then used my big inkjet printer to print those roughs out in blue ink. I can't do that here, because Canon doesn't make the ink for my printer anymore and, regardless, this way is much, much faster and I get to spend less time on a computer. If I had a photocopier, I'd be using that instead.

I enjoy how arts-and-crafts this process is.

4. TRANSFER THE ENLARGEMENT

Tape it onto the back of a new page, lean it against the window, and then it's tracing time (below).

I use a new sheet of paper because it's easier than erasing the old image on the first sheet. I put the revised panel near the top of the page so the scanner head doesn't have to go so far during the scanning process. This, I feel, is a considerate thing to do. In return my scanner gives me better scans, I just know it. Thank you, scanner!

5. LABEL THE PAGES SO YOU DON'T GET CONFUSED LATER

Gotta put a big "X" through that old, boring panel so that when I return to it in a month's time I don't start inking it. This hasn't happened yet, but I wouldn't put it past me.

Above, the full page on the left and the new sheet with the revised panel on the right.

Now I have a panel with good foreground-background scale contrast, and we have all our important elements (Lear, the carriage, and the wall). It communicates the idea of "Our Heroes are reemerging into this environment," and the wall still does that thing I like where it runs right up to the panel border, which I think feels subtly uncomfortable. I'm not going to pretend this is the world's loveliest comics panel, but it's much better than it was. Certainly worth the effort. And the colour/lighting will push it further, with the creepy green lighting reinforcing the unsettling atmosphere in the foreground, and the red torches behind the wall saying, "this is a very separate place, you are not in it anymore, good luck with all the spooky green mist."

6. CELEBRATE

Take the rest of the week off! You earned it.

I originally wrote this post as my weekly update for the Secret Readers who support the production of Practical Defence Against Piracy over on the Patreon platform. Join them, revel in this sort of nonsense, and help me focus on fixing boring panels!

Come for the hot fresh comics, stay for a personal coda to the Olympic Games!

Happy August, Dear Reader. If your summer has been lacking in a little Mediterranean Pirate Adventure, I'm happy to say that the first instalment of Chapter Four of Practical Defence Against Piracy is up, ready to read, right now.

Click here to dive in!

Plus, instead of doing what I've done with previous instalments — sharing chapters four-to-six pages at a time, each week — I'm uploading Chapter Four in fewer instalments. Probably two or three, depending on how the story breaks. This is because I don't like updating my websites, and serving the story in such small chunks doesn't benefit the reading experience, anyway.

Enjoy!

THE PILLARS OF HERCULES RETROSPECTIVE

Over the past few weeks, I've been sharing a retrospective look back at the third Delilah Dirk book, Delilah Dirk and the Pillars of Hercules. Think of it like a cross between a director's DVD commentary and Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, if you're familiar. It's been fun revisiting these books with the benefit of the little bit of objectivity that the passage of time has granted.

DD3 was a difficult book to finish — how do the results hold up? Should I frame it and put it on the wall or set it on fire and chuck it in the swamp? Are those my only two options?

Go find out!

… assuming you're a paid patron, that is. And in case you've missed the news, if you would like to become a patron, do not sign up using the iOS app. (It's safe to say: do not use the iOS app at all, if you can help it. It's just not a good or useful app.)

HORSE DRAWINGS

I'm pencilling Chapter Five right now, and Chapter Five involves drawing a LOT of horses. So I took a day to either procrastinate aggressively or conscientiously prepare myself for the challenge ahead, by drawing from a paused video replay of the Olympic Equestrian Cross Country event. (If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, the image carousel above might look strange for you.)

I love doing this type of drawing. It's a shame I don't make time to do more of it. I should, too, because while it felt indulgent at the time, drawing the horses in Chapter Five has since been much easier than I was anticipating.

I also love the Olympics, and I am sad that they're over. I get the same melancholy feeling after an Olympic Games that I do after returning home from a good vacation. Underneath… all this (gestures to self)… I think I am an idealist, and (regardless of my biases) I do secretly believe in the Olympics' notions of peace and international good will through sportsmanship.

And then there are the biases. Well, here's my mom, furthest to the right, running a 400m heat in the 1968 Summer Olympics, held in Mexico City:

She was an Olympian! She held the national record for the Women's 400m for several years. After her own athletic career, she spent her life helping youth work toward their own similar dreams. Plus, this year, the same Women's 400m preliminaries were held on what would have been her birthday.

You would think being in The Olympics is something she would have talked about… at all, ever… but she didn't. Not around me, at least. For the longest time, I never understood that, but I think I get it now.

So since she neither can nor would toot her own starter's pistol, I will do it here, and wish her a belated birthday, too. I hope you enjoyed the Olympics, and if you didn't, couldn't, or wouldn't have wanted to, I hope at least its ideals have a place in your life somewhere.

— TC

The newest chapter of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY will be here soon, complete and ready to sweep you away to the Mediterranean of the 19th century.

All Alexandra Nichols wanted was to get home to England in time for her birthday, where she would blossom into the bold adventurer of her imagination. Instead, to hide from the threat of pirates on the open seas, her parents have detoured to a small Ionian island. As Chapter Three came to a close, Alexandra was enduring a birthday celebration held by the town’s vacuous ruler, the Provveditore Vignelli. As she was discovering the precise depth and breadth of his despicable character, a mysterious ship appeared in the harbour, shrouded in an unnatural mist, flying a pirate flag. What are their intentions? We are about to find out.

PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY is an epic graphic novel adventure about one defiant young girl’s journey of self-discovery as her eyes are opened to the bewildering, often-contradictory ways in which adults navigate the world. It is shared online as it is completed, chapter-by-chapter. The first three chapters are available in their entirety, and the fourth will join them soon.

If you’re following this blog, you’ll know when the pages go up. You’re also welcome to keep in touch via Mastodon, Instagram, or Bluesky.

You’re also welcome to become a free member of this project’s Patreon campaign, or you can become a paying member, support the work that goes into this project, and you can read Chapter Four right now.

Practical Defence Against Piracy has been nominated for a Will Eisner Award, in the category of “Best Digital Comic!”

This is the second time Practical Defence has been nominated for an Eisner, and continues to be an honour for which I am extremely grateful.

If you’re able to vote (and if you’re a comics industry professional, this includes you), the voting process starts here. Obviously a vote for Practical Defence would be appreciated, but I can see the competition is stiff. Congratulations to all my fellow nominees!

As ever, a heartfelt thank you to Practical Defence’s Patron Readers. Their support, encouragement, and implicit permission makes it possible to continue this work. I hope some day to be able to sing their praises from a podium on a stage!

Practical Defence Against Piracy is a work-in-progress graphic novel / webcomic. Set on a fictional Mediterranean island in the late 18th century, it is a story about growing friendships, expert swordsmanship, corrupt leadership, and terrifying pirate ships.

Read the comic from the beginning here, or follow this blog and its RSS feed for updates. As of this writing, Secret Patron Readers are seeing brand new pages from Chapter Four as they are completed. If you’d like to read ahead, support this project, and see all manner of behind-the-scenes material, consider becoming a Secret Reader!

Last week, an eerie mist rolled into the harbour. It washed over HMS Cordelia and through its hatches, and cruel iron grappling hooks took hold of the gunwales. What is happening in the fair town of Archipoli?

On an entirely unrelated note, happy International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day to all who observe! I hope I’ve been able to add a little bit of piratey menace to your day.

(These pages look their best and are easier to page through on DelilahDirk.com.)

This is the conclusion of Chapter Three! What does the arrival of this ominous new ship mean for the town of Archipoli? Will Alexandra be able to find her mother? Will she be able to apologize? And what will become of the crew of the Cordelia? These are all questions for Chapter Four, which is (as of this writing) currently being illustrated.

If you’d like to know when Chapter Four is available to read…

Sign up for the infrequent newsletter! Seriously, I send it maybe a handful of times per year, and I don’t do anything else with your email address.

Subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog!

Follow along on Tumblr,

or on Mastodon,

or Instagram,

or become a patron! Not only will you see the finished pages first, but you’ll receive weekly updates from every stage of the process and when pirates return to threaten our poor town, you’ll rest assured in knowing you had a hand in making it happen!

See you soon! 🏴‍☠️

I’m proud to offer you this comic free from ads and cookies and the usual trash cluttering up our good, sweet internet these days. If you’re able to help support this endeavour, consider joining the Patreon, and become the wind in Alexandra’s sails. You’ll find weekly updates, the stupidest goofs, behind-the-scenes stuff, roughs and pencils and inks (oh my), the finished pages show up there first, and more! Thank you to this chapter’s generous patrons.

Practical Defence Against Piracy is the fourth book in the Delilah Dirk series of adventure graphic novels. I’m sharing it, chapter-by-chapter, as I finish it. There is no release date for a traditional book-book… yet. To keep up-to-date, subscribe to the RSS or join the infrequent newsletter.

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Alexandra stares into the darkness of a bottomless pit, and something strange is happening in the harbour.

Next week’s instalment will be early because September 19th is International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day! I wonder how that could possibly be relevant to our interests.

(These pages look their best and are easier to page through on DelilahDirk.com.)

I’m proud to offer you this comic free from ads and cookies and the usual trash cluttering up our good, sweet internet these days. If you’re able to help support this endeavour, consider joining the Patreon, and become the wind in Alexandra’s sails. You’ll find weekly updates, the stupidest goofs, behind-the-scenes stuff, roughs and pencils and inks (oh my), the finished pages show up there first, and more! Thank you to this chapter’s generous patrons.

Practical Defence Against Piracy is the fourth book in the Delilah Dirk series of adventure graphic novels. I’m sharing it, chapter-by-chapter, as I finish it. There is no release date for a traditional book-book… yet. To keep up-to-date, subscribe to the RSS or join the infrequent newsletter.

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Faced with Vignelli’s incomprehensible stupidity and/or ignorance, Alexandra crafts the only plausible explanation for his behaviour.

(These pages look their best and are easier to page through on DelilahDirk.com.)

I’m proud to offer you this comic free from ads and cookies and the usual trash cluttering up our good, sweet internet these days. If you’re able to help support this endeavour, consider joining the Patreon, and become the wind in Alexandra’s sails. You’ll find weekly updates, the stupidest goofs, behind-the-scenes stuff, roughs and pencils and inks (oh my), the finished pages show up there first, and more! Thank you to this chapter’s generous patrons.

Practical Defence Against Piracy is the fourth book in the Delilah Dirk series of adventure graphic novels. I’m sharing it, chapter-by-chapter, as I finish it. There is no release date for a traditional book-book… yet. To keep up-to-date, subscribe to the RSS or join the infrequent newsletter.

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This week: Alexandra doesn’t exactly find her mother, and a competition to see who does not dance the most.

(These pages look their best and are easier to page through on DelilahDirk.com.)

I’m proud to offer you this comic free from ads and cookies and the usual trash cluttering up our good, sweet internet these days. If you’re able to help support this endeavour, consider joining the Patreon, and become the wind in Alexandra’s sails. You’ll find weekly updates, the stupidest goofs, behind-the-scenes stuff, roughs and pencils and inks (oh my), the finished pages show up there first, and more! Thank you to this chapter’s generous patrons.

Practical Defence Against Piracy is the fourth book in the Delilah Dirk series of adventure graphic novels. I’m sharing it, chapter-by-chapter, as I finish it. There is no release date for a traditional book-book… yet. To keep up-to-date, subscribe to the RSS or join the infrequent newsletter.

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This week, Alexandra struggles under competing miseries: the impending dance, and her need to apologize to her mother.

(These pages look their best and are easier to page through on DelilahDirk.com.)

I’m proud to offer you this comic free from ads and cookies and the usual trash cluttering up our good, sweet internet these days. If you’re able to help support this endeavour, consider joining the Patreon, and become the wind in Alexandra’s sails. You’ll find weekly updates, the stupidest goofs, behind-the-scenes stuff, roughs and pencils and inks (oh my), the finished pages show up there first, and more! Thank you to this chapter’s generous patrons.

Practical Defence Against Piracy is the fourth book in the Delilah Dirk series of adventure graphic novels. I’m sharing it, chapter-by-chapter, as I finish it. There is no release date for a traditional book-book… yet. To keep up-to-date, subscribe to the RSS or join the infrequent newsletter.

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