Classic Sporkman Revisited

Welcome to what I’ve taken to calling “Classic Sporkman Revisited.”  The original versions of what I frequently referred to as “Chibi Sporkman” were hastily drawn and it frequently showed, particularly in the thick and sloppy ink.  Additionally, I found myself somewhat limited in the size of the comic by both the requirements of the newspaper page and the resolutions of most monitors in 2004.  This led to comics where word balloons crowded into the panels and took up far too much room, covering up much of the original artwork.  These word balloons also had incredibly inconsistent lettering, bouncing around between several different fonts and even being hand-lettered for a time.  Finally, the strips were all in black and white, particularly to accommodate the newspaper, but also because it was faster to pump out strips if I didn’t have to spend time coloring.

For all these reasons (and probably more), I’m revisiting every Sporkman strip, starting from the beginning.  This involves a few different steps.  First, I find the original artwork from 2004/2005, preferably the pencils if at all possible.  I then re-ink the comic digitally, as I do on everything now.  This results in cleaner, far more attractive artwork.  These new inks are dropped into my standard comic strip template, which is much wider than the original strips.  I then color and letter as I normally do these days, resulting in an old comic that looks brand spanking new.

Throughout the process, I’m changing as little as possible.  The new digital inks are 98% faithful to the original line-work from 2004/2005, and the only dialog I’ve changed while lettering has been to fix typos.  Additionally, every strip is being dated as accurately as possible, usually by checking my own signature and dating on the original artwork.  All in all, this should be a fun project to toy with when I start to feel the burn elsewhere.  I hope you like it as much as I do!