After I posted my previous two-page spread, I realized that I have now drawn over 100 pages of Steamroller Man comics! I’ve heard professional comic artists say that you have to get past your first 100 pages to find your style and your artistic groove. When I started this journey, 100 pages of comics seemed like an unreachable milestone! Looking back, I can certainly see a massive evolution in my art across those pages. So I’m going to allow myself a small moment of pride to celebrate this win, and look forward with anticipation to how my art might change over the next 100 pages!
So I’m happy to present, for your entertainment, what I believe is my 104th page of Steamroller Man, and hopefully one of many more to come!
Finally, Steamroller Man is free from M.A.R.S.H.M.A.L.L.O.W. but Night Knight gets knocked out by one of the cables from the back of the creature’s head! This layout came to me pretty easily, so maybe that thing about finding my artistic groove after 100 pages is correct! I knew I wanted three small panels on top to show Night Knight getting clocked and passing out, above a big panel for Steamroller Man’s dramatic re-emergence. I wanted the top tier panels to be squares, all the same size, and I was hoping that the remaining space on the page would be big enough to convey the impact I wanted. It worked out pretty well! It was fun to push the perspective on SRM’s anatomy to really fill the frame in the last panel. It took a few passes at this image for me to realize that it’s okay to distort the figure if it makes a bigger impact. Drawing in that way does not come naturally to me, so I hope this is a lesson that sticks with me from this point on.
I had fun making the sound effects on this page. The way I create them is to rough out the design, and then I import a somewhat-generic looking set of block letters that I’ve downloaded. From there, I manipulate these letters to exactly match what I roughed out. I find this method much faster than inking the letters individually. It was a challenge trying to come up with an onomatopoeia for the sound of a man with a giant metal roller head bursting out of a pile of marshmallows. It was a puzzle more confounding than the Zen koan “what is the sound of one hand clapping”! Eventually I landed on “SKBOOOOSH”.
Fortunately I found a free download of a digital marshmallow brush for Clip Studio Paint to help with this panel. I’m really happy with how cool it looks.
Leave a comment to let me know what you think of this page!
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Thanks for reading and subscribing, and as always, keep ROLLING!
Matt Schofield
One thought on “Issue Three, Page Twenty”
Nat Karmichael
Now you are going to have me distracted all day, Matthew, you bad man! 🙂