Melon and Lime Comics – MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This post has came a little later than we usually post, but that’s because IT’S CHRIIIISTMAS! Myself and Liam both celebrate this holiday and as a comic, I wanted to create a Christmas card inspired piece, but one that was inspired by the ones American families take, that just make you cringe.

I decided this comic would be a surprise for Liam, as I wanted to make it for him more than anyone else, as this was initially just comics between me and him but has become more open to the public so that they can also relate, as we have posted them on social media. But for Christmas, I wanted to make something special for him, but could also be posted on our Instagram.

So, I have created a cringey Christmas card style comic, which includes all members of our little family, Liam, myself, Arya, Tilly and Wednesday, and I have positioned each of the characters in the composition similar to an image I had found.

I believe the inspiration for this piece had actually come from a photo of Will Ferrel, search ‘Will Ferrell photo’ on google and you will see the image I’m referencing, who in no way looked festive, but I believe it is where the idea for the style had come from.

As this is a festive piece, I had designed the comic in two ways, one with the usual black and white colour palette, and one with a pop of red for the Christmas jumpers and collars the characters and animals are wearing.

I do love this design as it is very much us and our little family. I feel like it is a good way to celebrate the holidays through our comics, no matter what you celebrate. Although we don’t send out cards, I feel if we did, they would be like this. If I could change anything, I would possibly make the background less dark so that Wednesday would be more visible, however, I partially like the idea of him being as black as the night.

If you enjoy this comic and would like to see more of our work, feel free to have a look at our Instagram page @MelonandLimeComics. We hope you enjoy and we wish you a very Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays, from our family to yours!

Melon and Lime Comics – The Dishes.

This week’s comic is based on one of Liam’s habits when he comes around to my house. As he eats inhumanly fast, he will always finish his food before me and whilst I’m still eating, he will get up and take his plate to the sink and wash it. Yes, it is nice that he washes up after himself, but no! He should be the guest when he comes to my home, and I should be the one washing the plates! And I would do if he allowed me time to actually finish my own food on my own plate.

dishes

I didn’t really enjoy creating this week’s comic, mostly because I have so much other work that needs to be completed for other projects, and I felt we were pushing for ideas. As we are creating comics on a weekly basis, I do feel that sometimes we will struggle for ideas, ones that we have not already done or ones that other comic artists haven’t already done themselves (that we know of).

I am glad that we came to this concept, as it is a reoccurring quirk in our relationship, and we do feel that others might be able to relate as well. But I do feel I could and should have done better in some of the frames.

As I am currently stressed with the other projects I have going on at the moment, when creating this comic, I had the mindset that I just needed to get the piece done and out of the way, so that I could get back and focus on my other work. So, because of this, I feel I didn’t put my best into it, I felt I very much had the ‘it’ll do’ mindset, and I am disappointed in myself that I didn’t do more and go back in to refine it.

I feel this could potentially be a reoccurring problem when working on multiple projects at once, but in the future, I will try to get rid of the ‘it’ll do’ mindset and put the right amount of effort into our comics. If I’m not happy with a piece in the future, I may hold off on posting it for a week, so that I can refine it further, bettering the quality and standard of it. However, if I do choose to do this, I do not want to fall into the trap of continuously doing it, or worrying too much about every piece, whether it is good enough to post etc so this will be something I have to think about if the issues of this week reoccur.

If you do by any chance enjoy this comic and would like to see more, please feel free to have a look at our Instagram @MelonandLimeComics, we appreciate any likes or follows that we get! I have also made a couple of blog posts about some of the newer comics, so if you would like to know more about the thought processes behind them, and how they have come to life, feel free to check those out too. Thank you!

Melon and Lime Comics – Pizza Conspiracies

In this week’s comic, me and Liam were having a conversation about the price and sizes of pizza, in which he had told me that the price of a 10″ pizza was the equivalent to half of a 14″. At this moment, I had not read him properly, (this was a conversation over text) and thought that he was saying that a 10″ and 14″ pizza had the same area, so because he was so adamant when I was telling him he was wrong, I did the math and was getting frustrated, until I reread his message where he had said HALF of a 14″ pizza was the equivalent of a 10″.

So, already frustrated with the conversation, especially having to do math for no reason, I wanted the conversation to just end and swap to something new. But Liam had other points to still discuss, as he felt (and I agreed with, but the laws of math were not on our side) that surely a 10″ pizza should be half of a 20″ pizza. Which started him explaining his conspiracies that the pizza companies are against us, a couple of days later, this being the subject of our new comic.

In this piece, I have shown our conversation in the present time, showing Liam’s enthusiasm and my lack of interest to the subject. In the second frame, I have then shown the both of us as elderly characters, the kitten Wednesday is still in my lap 60 years later, but is older. In my mind, he will outlive the both of us and this is not up for debate! And 60 years from now, I still see Liam bringing this subject back up in conversation, and myself still being sick of the subject, but in this time, he is even more adamant that the pizza companies are against us, as he has more elderly man rage (‘get off my lawn’ whilst waving his walking stick at children type of energy).

I was happy to work on this piece, as I feel I have tried to play around with backgrounds and scenery more. In the background of the second frame, I have drawn a fireplace with photos and ornaments scattered across the mantlepiece, for this, I had taken inspiration from my Grandmas home, which was similar to this setup, but I have exaggerated some of the elements. I had also added in rocking chairs, which myself and Liam have already agreed that we are purchasing as soon as we live together, we really are already old at heart, and behind them, I have also added in a zimmer frame for myself, then a walking stick hanging on the arm of Liam’s chair.

Although I was very happy with the background, it did seem to become slightly problematic when it had come to adding in the text. To overcome this problem, I had selected all of the layers for the background, then copied the selection as merged, then pasted them back into place. Now with the one layer, I had dimmed down the opacity, enough so that it was still visible, but still allowed the text to stand out. To help a little more, in a separate layer underneath the text, I used a watercolour brush in photoshop, (as it would give a softer approach, as to a quite harsh highlight of the text) then I started to build up a white base to make more contrast between the background and text.

If you like this comic and would like to see more, please have a look at our Instagram @MelonandLimeComics. We appreciate any and every like or follow we get. Thank you!

Melon and Lime Comics – Meet Arya!

Following from last weeks comic, ‘Meeting Tilly’, we had wanted to introduce our other cat, Arya.

When coming up with a concept for this comic, we had so many different stories about Arya and her typical habits, so instead of just focusing on one story (as we had done for Tilly) we decided to incorporate all of our ideas into one, working in a similar style as to the comic we had created based on mine and Liam’s ‘Artist Quirks’ when that subject was trending amongst the artist community on Instagram.

arya

Although I did not have many technical difficulties with this comic, I believe because they were all designed on one page and opposed to designing the frames one by one which would be on a bigger scale, looking at the piece now, I do think I should have made the text within the frames bigger, so that they could be more readable. So this will be something that I will consider more in future comics.

If you enjoy this comic and would like to see more of our work, feel free to have a look at our Instagram page @MelonandLimeComics. We hope you enjoy!

Melon and Lime Comics – Meet Tilly!

Back again with a new comic!

This one is about Liam’s cat named Tilly, who I have practically adopted since first ever meeting her, seeing that she OBVIOUSLY loves me more!

Me and Liam were talking about the comics and how Wednesday (my kitten) has been a main character in most of the comics so far, but Liam also has two other cats that live in his room, who I also class as my children, so we wanted to introduce these characters into our comics too. This week we decided to start with Tilly.

Tilly is the type of cat that you have to be patient with, she pretty much hates everyone, including me when we first met (she’d just run and hide from me), but once she got to know me better, and I learned more about her tendencies, she let me cuddle her (at her specific times only) and has ended up sleeping on me most nights.

Liam and Tilly, on the other hand, have more of a love-hate relationship, I guess because he has to live with her all the time, and I’m just blinded by heart goggles, but she tends to do things that anger him more, such as jumping onto his PC, knocking things over, etc, but I seem to be more patient with her, which is why I believe she loves me more, other than the fact I feed her meat.

So, me and Liam had wanted to express this relationship and introduce Tilly into our comics, and to our audience, expressing her personality as best as we could.

I did have similar struggles when it came to producing these comics as I had last week, (i.e. my computer running slower, especially when it came to colouring) but since I knew this would be an issue again, I was somewhat more prepared, in the sense that I knew what was to come, so I would say that I got slightly less stressed than I had in the previous week.

If you are enjoying our comics and would like to see more, please check out our Instagram @Melonandlimecomics. We do hope to make and post at least one comic per week. We hope you enjoy!

Melon and Lime Comics – The Routine

One week later and we’re still going, are you amazed? I’m amazed!

This comic is based on my love for my new kitten Wednesday. My partner made a comment that we were basically the same, just constantly eating and sleeping, so he had suggested that be the bases for our next comic, so HERE WE ARE!

routine-f5

I did have struggles with this piece, not necessarily with the content, but more with the process of creating it, I found it took waaaaaaay too long to create this piece, as my photoshop file would have too many glitches or would buffer a lot, especially when I was trying to colour. Ideally I think this piece should have taken 20 minutes per frame at maximum, but instead, it had taken me 5 hours to finish the whole piece. I was not pleased in the slightest.

I don’t know if this had meant that the file was too large, or whether I need a new computer, but I don’t believe I could have done much else to make the document smaller, and I probably have attachment issues to my laptop, I’m scared to get rid of it and get a new one, which I probably should do, but probably won’t, not until its very much dead.

So, this may be a recurring issue in weeks to come, when I work on the comics once again. Soooo, FUN TIMES AHEAD!