The Ouro Bros and the Neverending Tour

Jeff: Swim, Elle, swim!

Before I let Jeremy talk a bit about the actual process of creating some of the artwork for the strip, I wanted to give all of you an update on the Kickstarter project. Not only have we met our original $1,000 goal, we’ve more than doubled it! The extra funds allow us to upgrade the paper that the book is going to be printed on, and we’re pretty darn excited about that. At the time I’m writing this, we’re actually about midway between $2,000 and $2,500, which prompted us to announce a few stretch goals. If a few more people pitch in, and we hit the $2,500 mark, we’ll be producing a limited run of character buttons and bookmarks for the strip. Anyone who pledges $20 or more will get in on that action. If we manage to make it all the way to $3,000 before the campaign ends, we’re going to be getting the Elle mini-comic (“Sound and Fury”) printed as a separate treat! That storyline was always designed to look and feel like a comic book; if we hit that stretch goal, it will actually be one!

Also, we noticed that the “Engineer” and “Producer” rewards went pretty quickly. Both of these allow the backer to make an appearance in the comic, and we’re stoked that people are that excited about joining our universe! Since we can’t really offer any more of those types of rewards, we put our creative minds together and came up with a couple of alternatives:

• Pledge of $100 – “Share the Roster” – Your (or your band’s) name gets put on the marquee of a venue for an upcoming strip. The Bros will even make some mention of you and/or your band (we promise that, if it’s anyone other than Elle, it will probably be a friendly mention!).
• Pledge of $120 – “Gimme a Beat” – Getting your name mentioned just once not enough for you? What if Bal permanently named one of his drums after you? Pledge at this level, and it will happen! You get to be a part of the band! …Granted, a part that regularly gets pounded upon, but still.

If you’re interested in either of these – or any of our other rewards – please check out the Kickstarter page and lend us a hand! You guys have been terrific, and we reallyappreciate your support! Now, Jeremy, why don’t you talk a bit about what we see up top, there?

Jeremy: As many of you may already know, I draw the comic completely in Photoshop, using a WACOM Intuos tablet to translate my movements and pen pressure to the digital canvas. The first thing I do is rough it all out with a custom brush that mimics pencil. I forget where I downloaded it, but Thom Pratt from the fantasy/steampunk adventure comic Shadowbinders is the person who told me about the pencil brush, and I have been happily using it ever since! Thanks, Thom!

Step 2 is inks. Earlier this year, I bought this killer Photoshop custom brush presets pack created by Ray Frenden, that I use to do my digital inks (buy the presets here! They’re an absolute steal, and I love them!). I particularly like using the “Organic” preset, with a few tweaks to brush angle. Using black as my brush color (values are R: 0, G: 0, B: 0), I create heavier, width-varying lines around the outsides of my drawings, and thinner lines to do detailing in the inside areas.

In Step 3, I lay down flat colors. In this specific instance, I created a general background gradient (lighter blue to darker blue) to represent the watery atmosphere color that I would build up to completion with details later. This simple background treatment also allowed me to fill in Elle with flat colors that would look good with the atmosphere. In Photoshop, I color flats one layer beneath the Inks, as I like keeping my line art and my colors separated.

In Step 4, I do shading and/or highlighting. For this image, I used a few different soft-edged brushes with varying opacity and pressure settings to add darker shades and highlights to Elle, the coffee cup, and the water. I created this in several layers between the Flats and the Inks layer. I am sure you all may be starting to get the idea of what this particular image is a representation, and we will show you how we used this art in creating some unique material for the printed book in next Thursday’s update!

<<UPDATED 6/3/2013: Link to Kickstarter campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1797824930/the-ouro-bros-and-the-neverending-tour-the-book. Thank you!!! >>

Jeremy: In lieu of our normal Thursday comic update, we thought we would fill you in on the big news – We are attempting to get a book made! And our vehicle, as you have seen through the above video presentation, is Kickstarter! This book will collect the entire online strip collection of the Ouro Bros to date, which is everything from this strip to this strip. That is 3 full years of Ouro Bros comics that we are trying to make into one printed volume, that will also contain some extra art, additional commentary by us creator types, and more!

We have happily published to the internet these past 3 years, as it is a great medium to connect us to all of you, and open up discussion through comments, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets. But, at the root of it all, it has been a burning desire of our hearts to one day have these comic strips in a book that we could hold in our hands, flip the pages, smell the paper, the whole printed experience, and we hope that some of you feel the same way! The Kickstarter campaign has many great rewards for contributors, from something as simple and meaningful as having your name printed in the Thank You section of the book, the printed book signed by both of us (including reward levels with personalized drawings by me!), to an actual character in the continuing comic storyline based on your likeness! And a whole lot more in between!

The Kickstarter campaign goes live this Monday, June 3, and we will not be shy about letting all of you know. Watch your twitters and your facebooks for notifications! To be perfectly honest, we want to get this book printed, and the only way we can do it is with your help. Please consider pledging to our Kickstarter campaign this Monday, June 3, 2013. There is literally something in it for everyone!

Jeff: Naturally, we could never have gotten to this point without a whole lot of support already from you, our readers and friends. You’ve come along with us through quite a lot, and we thank you so much for joining us this far. But, lest this sound like we’re saying goodbye or something like that: Fear not! We’re taking a little bit of a break from the strips for the next few weeks so we can really focus some energy on producing this book, and we’ll continue to post weekly to give you updates on the campaign and our progress. Hopefully, we’ll be able to throw out some sneak peeks of some of the new material we’re producing exclusively for the book. But even better than that, our Favorite Foursome will be back near the end of June with brand new material.

And, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise then, too, as we’re planning on shifting away from newspaper-sized strips to larger ones! We’ve heard some of your frustration that the story is too slow-moving, particularly for a weekly strip, so we’re hoping to be able to pack a little bit more into each update, moving forward.

So, if you’ve ever taken a liking to our little project here at The Ouro Bros, then please, share our Kickstarter campaign video with all your friends to help us get this book off the ground, stay tuned to see what we’ll be putting into it, then get ready for brand new (and larger!) adventures with the Ouro Bros in late June!