My Process

 I've been meaning to do this for some time.  I'd like to share with you my current process for creating fights in Green Tower City.  This will hopefully explain why it sometimes takes me SO long to complete some of these battles, but also how, in the long run, I will one day be cranking out fight after fight after fight, possibly dozens per day, until all ten years of my timeline is completely illustrated with BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of drawings.  (Well, maybe not that many, but I love to throw in a Carl Sagan quote whenever the opportunity arises.)

I start with a hand made drawing of an isolated pose.  Sometimes it is an individual pose of just one character, sometimes it is an "action pose" between two characters.  In recent years, I have been exclusively using two of my favorite girls: Beth and Harmony.  

Reasons for this are as follows:

1:  I love these characters. 

2: They are very basic designs.  No footwear, no stockings.   Just panties and ponytails.  (The importance of this will become clear soon) 

3:  These two have a LONG running feud throughout most of the ten year timeline and it has always been my intention that the final battle in the timeline will be an EPIC fight to the death between them, but only after many MANY bouts in a variety of different locations. 

So here's how I am currently doing this.  I will illustrate this process using one of my favorite pose templates. 

First, I make the drawing.  The initial drawing is always done by hand, on paper, with colored pencil and felt tip pen. This particular drawing I added background, but most of the time now I don't do that unless I am working on a commissioned piece.  I also do not add blood or bruising.  (More on that later)

I scan the drawing into my computer.  This is how it first appears.  

I then put the original physical drawing into a sheet protector and file it away into a 3 Ring binder. 

I title it and place it in it's respective folder in the "Workshop" section on my computer. I won't get into that right now, but I assure you it is all VERY organized.  In fact, organization has become one of the MAIN factors in this concept moving forward, and I have it pretty well locked down.   The poses are titled by move, and then sometimes broken down into various sub categories.  This particular pose is titled Victory Foot on Loser On Back 3.  (All of which is self explanatory, I think.) 

Next comes the most time consuming part of the process.  I open the pose up in Paintshop and "Green Screen" it.  While doing this I also re-outline it and touch the drawing up a bit with paintshop.  I try not to overdo it, because I want the essence of my final product to still look more or less like pencil drawings, but I have found that I can do MUCH better detail work on my computer than I can on a piece of paper.  For one thing, my eyes aren't as great as they used to be, and on my computer I can blow these images WAY up and really get into finer details.  

At this point I can drop this particular pose into any one of a number of pre-made background sets. I do this using Office Publisher.  I can remove all the "green screen" from the picture with one click.  It isn't perfect, but it works pretty well.

Here's a few different backdrops I can use.  Most of these consist of several different interchangeable and or adjustable elements. 

Here Beth has defeated Harmony at Daisy Duke's.

Here Beth has defeated Harmony in a bedroom fight in Ishmael's little loft apartment above Daisy Duke's. 

Here Beth has defeated Harmony at Catfight Cavern.

Here Beth has defeated Harmony at one of my personal favorite venues "The Bloody Mattress."  This particular background consists of 3 separate elements.  The ground and crowd silhouettes is one.  The cage is another, and then the mattress, of which I have several different angles, styles, and level of bloodiness. (depending on which fight of the day it is.  The Bloody Mattress begins each days bouts with a fresh mattress, which is soaked in blood and all manner of bodily fluids by the final fight of the day.) 

Now comes my favorite part, completing the "panel."  I do this by opening this piece back up in Paintshop, and adding little details, like indents in the mattress.  (I really like doing this for some reason) 

Adding blood and bruising.  I REALLY love doing this for some reason.

And then at last I will add sound effects and/ or dialogue.  (I actually find this part kind of tedious, but the end result finalizes the panel and is therefore quite rewarding.) 

And that's my process.  It only took me several hours to make this one panel.  The end.  

Oh wait, no there's more.  

So much more. 

First, let's go back to the original Green Screened action panel. 

This is fine for Beth defeating Harmony, but what if I want to make a fight story with any one of my OTHER 200 (and counting) characters?  Well, let me show you. 

Step one is to paint out their panties and hair.  I do this with standard red.  (The color choice was more or less arbitrary, but I think it looks cool.)  I also copy the file, and make two versions, one for each character. I leave the title intact, but add A and B at the end, respectively. The most important aspect of this is to NOT change the size of either drawing, or crop anything out.  (This is actually the most recent improvement on my process, and although it added a bunch of extra work initially, the final payout is going to be HUGE, as you will see.)

The first version is Victory Foot On Loser On Back 3 base A:

The next version is titled Victory Foot On Loser On Back 3 base B.  

 (The "base" in the title refers to their lack of footwear.)

Then I copy each of these, and change the word "base" in the title to "foot socks"

 I copy and paste them again, this time titling them "Calf socks"

 Next is knee socks:

Then Thigh Highs:

And finally "Tights."  These will be used mostly to create fighting ballerinas.  Lori is the first ballerina to enter the city and begin trying her hand at a professional fighting career, but later in the timeline there will be a proliferation of Fighting Ballerinas, some of whom will team up, while others will be enemies.  When I get there these templates will be indispensable, though the ballerina poses will require an extra step to add the panties and slippers.  

Each of these templates is saved in that particular pose folder.  I can now use any one of them to make a variety of different fighting characters, who can then be mixed and matched.  How I do this is as follows:

I create a publisher file for each pose, which is then titled with the specific name of the pose.  It starts with a green screen background. 

Then I plug in the version of the pose template that I want. For an example here I will use "Thigh Highs"

Next I add the colors I want.  These color swatches are, like the original pose, drawn on paper with colored pencil.  I admit I do touch them up slightly in paintshop, but 90% of what you are seeing in these panels is still pencil on paper.  I save copies of the corresponding colors for each character in her own personal folder. (which also contains her profile info, her fight record, and her "Pose Portfolio" divided into 2 basic parts: Individual Poses and Action Poses

Nicole has two basic colors:  Black and Black Nylon.  A copy of these color swatches exist in her personal files, so I don't have to hunt them up and also, for characters who use more varied colors, I can keep their consistency perfect across all their poses. 

I move the color swatches over their respective spots, then drop them under the template (but not under the green background)

Once I have sandwiched the color swatches between the background and the pose template. I remove the red portions, leaving only the color swatches.  

Then I save the file as a JPG in the character's respective folder, open it with Paintshop again, and complete the final touches.  It takes longer for more complex looking characters, but I find this process to be very enjoyable busy work. I was making templates for hair styles, but I found that it is easier (and actually pretty fun) to just paint in the character's respective hairstyle, and I can do this from the basic ponytail look without much difficulty. I've even learned a few paintshop brushing techniques to make these portions still look like colored pencil on paper.

The Key to this, and something I only recently figured out, is to NOT resize, move or crop this image in ANY way.  As long as I resist that urge, this pose can then be instantly matched up with ANY other character who has the B version of the pose.  

Nicole defeats Harmony.  (In ANY venue I have a background for)

Or Nicole defeats Lori the Fighting Ballerina

Or Harmony defeats Lori

Or Harmony finally defeats her arch nemesis Beth!

Now I know what you might be thinking.  "Wow how monotonous!  The same pose over and over."

But it isn't.  I have hundreds of poses.  And I make new ones all the time. Eventually there will be thousands of different poses.  Will every character have every single pose in her portfolio?  Probably not, but I do intend to have a core of my favorite characters who do have MOST of them.  

There are also, of course, characters who show up talking shit on their first appearance in the city, and get killed immediately.  I only need to do a handful of poses for those dumb bitches, such as Yasmine, who challenged Nicole to a Birthday Girl Death Match on her 18th birthday, and got brutally killed by the veteran brawler. 

You also may be thinking I only like white girls.  Also not true.  I am working on adding templates for POC characters, but it will take time.  

Ebony is my resident "Black Girl" who, having a basic panty and hair design will serve as my base character for other black girls who I will be introducing very soon. 

And there are some resident "Brown Girls" as well.  Maria will most likely be the base Brown Girl character. 

She is a little tougher because I didn't give her a ponytail, but I may create a new "Latino" character just for this purpose.  This will require an immense amount of work, as I will have to redraw all their poses, but I can do so by tracing my original drawings and just coloring the skin in with different shades.  I am planning to do several such stories by the end of this year. 

I have already begun to create some poses (based on Ebony poses) for Kendra, who is fighting Suzie by request from one of my Patreon donors. 

If this all just seems like a RIDICULOUS amount of work, well, it is, but is is a labor of love.  I thoroughly enjoy working on these things, and now that I have several different aspects I can work with, I never get bored, because I do sometimes get tired of drawing, or writing, or working on the templates, but I'm pretty much ALWAYS in a mood to do one of those things. 

And the templates I can work on anywhere anytime, as long as I have my laptop with me.  I can work on them in my downtime at work (which I have a lot of just by the nature of my job) I can do them at home while watching my favorite shows, while smoking weed, listening to podcasts, smoking weed, listening to music, smoking weed, or even while enjoying a few cocktails on a Saturday night. This is pretty much what I do instead of playing video games or "hanging out with people."  Neither of which are things I really like doing too much. 

And the reason I am sharing all of my process with you, is because I have this crazy idea that maybe someone else would like to try it.  By the end of the year I plan to have a streamlined, easy to navigate version of my "workshop" available for anyone who would like to try making their own Green Tower City fight stories. 

One last thing before I close this rather long winded blog.  You may be wondering why I don't just break down and use one of the many existing 3D computer programs.  Its simple.  I don't like the look of it really, and there are hundreds, of not thousands of people producing art that way already, and though there are definitely skill levels involved, and some folks truly do produce some STUNNING artwork with those programs, to me they all kind of still look the same. 

I like this process because I came up with it myself, through years of trial and error, and though I know I am not even CLOSE to being the best artist out there doing catfight stuff, my drawings and stories are at least unique.