I've gotten a few questions about how I draw these strips. Fair enough, as I'm always willing to help out.

The process for each starts out with a rough sketch I make on Bristol Paper with my trusty Caran d'Ache medium dark pencil. That's Where I lay out each of the elements. After the pencils are done, I usually ink them using a fountain pen I originally got in high school. Sure, there are other pens out there, but this one has a nib that has really grown to fit my style, and I've grown really attached to how it looks.

Once I've got the sketch drawn and inked, I then transfer the elements one by one into a copy of ZSoft Paint. I know that there are "better" packages out there, but I just like the styles I can get out of ZSoft, even if it means having to run it in an emulator since it doesn't like my 1.6G P4.

I do each frame one row at a time since the fill pattern that ZSoft uses doesn't do gradients quite right. Once things look the way I like, I then start work on our hero. That's where ZSoft really shines for me. There's a special tool that lets me swap 200% zoom for normal to allow me to get the subtle elements and expressions I'm looking for. The Slug is a character of few words, so I have to let his expression and body language really do the talking. Sometimes I'll make a mistake and have to spend an hour carefully rebuilding that part.

When I'm satisfied that each frame looks right, I then load them into my copy of Adobe FrameMaker. I then adjust the sizing before finally publishing the graphic to the site.

Granted, my wife wasn't very happy about me spending close to $800US on my copy of FrameMaker, but it I find that it really helps get the job done.

From there it's a simple operation to post up the image to Keenspace and let the magic begin again.