Valentine’s Day 2009

I finished my Valentine’s Day card a couple of days ahead of schedule this year, a first! This gave me time to write out all my emails in advance (this is the most time-consuming part of the process, really) and save them as drafts in Gmail so I could send them all at once on Valentine’s Day. I quite enjoyed this.

I did end up making the card according to my middle-of-the-night inspiration, with two versions of me (love and fear) facing off.

The figures came out a lot better than I’d expected. I sketched them out in pencil first, then did the cartoon outlines on tracing paper. The faces didn’t come out right the first time so I redid them on tracing paper. I scanned the tracings in (had to rescale Fear’s head several times to make it look right) and colored everything on Photoshop. Later I also changed Crusader’s torso to add more back fat, having looked at myself in the mirror in that position. 🙂 I don’t mind that Fear is skinnier; it makes sense to me that Fear might be leaner!

I’m also happy with how the title text came out. The font is very minimal and modern; I like how its spareness against the black background gives a Lost title-like eerieness to the cover. When I went back and looked over all my previous editions, I was very amused to see that each one has had a hot pink title. I don’t know whether over the years I’ve just gotten so used to choosing hot pink, I don’t think about it anymore, or whether it really does just feel right every time I do it.

What bothers me about the card, though, is the shading — both on the figures and in the background. It’s so amateurish and awful; the card is small enough that it looks better with the shading than without, but I just can’t seem to shade worth a lick. It drives me crazy every time I try. I’ve already been working on shading, but now I’m resolving to try even harder to learn how to shade so that it doesn’t look artificial and ugly.

What makes me most happy about the card is the response I’ve gotten from people about it. Several friends said that every year the Crusader is the best thing about the day, and that is deeply, deeply gratifying. I started these comics to bring more love to people’s Valentine’s Day, and it seems like that purpose, at least, is being served.