The New "Chapter 1" Page!

Hey guys, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the story of Rifto unfold as much as we have. Since Rifto is a serial comic (meaning each release builds upon the previous one) it’s important to know how everything began. That’s why we wanted to tell you about our “Chapter 1” page on the blog. 

Click the "Chapter 1" tab on the menu
to read Rifto in chronological order.

The “Chapter 1” page lets you, the viewer, read the comics in chronological order; from Rifto’s crash on Dalstar to present. So, if you've been feeling a little lost, have no fear the “Chapter 1” page is here. Go check it out and visit it often to see if any new comics have been added.

As always, thanks for reading!

Thanksgiving Special (Making Of)

  For the past week or so Stefan and I have been considering the idea of writing and illustrating a "Thanksgiving Special" edition for this blog. Earlier this week we had thrown around a few ideas for an original holiday story but didn't finalize anything. However, as we marched on through this week it seemed like time was getting away from us; before we knew it Wednesday had arrived and we still didn't have a finished Thanksgiving story . In fact, all we had was a single piece of paper, upon which were two sketches of "The Thanksgiving Pilgrim" and his team.

  Wednesday morning I came to Stefan and suggested we knuckle down and complete the Thanksgiving edition... by Thanksgiving (the next day). He replied, "Well, if we're gonna do it, we're gonna have to do it today." With that we started off on what turned out to be a quite rewarding task.

PHASE 1: Writing & Illustrations

  We knew that this comic had to be much longer than the regular installments we post. But all we really had to start with conceptually was that it should be like a holiday legend. Sort of a Santa Claus and his Reindeer rather than a pageant-style holiday story. We also came up with the idea of a bat serving as The Pilgrim's guide. So, with those ideas in mind, I started writing the story and drafting the illustrations. Before the clock struck noon, phase one was complete. Then came the hard part...

 

PHASE 2: Digital Remastering

  Stefan and I took turns recreating images on his computer, thinking that our other Adobe enabled machine was already occupied. Upon discovering it wasn't, Stefan conceived the brilliant idea to divide and conquer. So, I went and put one half of the comic through phase two while Stefan finished the other. I'd like to take a moment to clarify that this comic, (Even with it's extensive length) would not normally have taken as long as it did. However, the drawings that we came up with for this strip were in many cases more detailed than usual. Even so, we pushed on.

PHASE 3: Adding Color

  Around 7:00pm we had finally completed phase two. It was now time to colorize. Praise God that this process was nowhere near as time consuming as the former. All the frames were fully colored in what seemed like a blink of an eye.

PHASE 4 & FINAL PHASE: Text Boxes & Layout

  It was now dark out and text boxes still needed to be added, which actually took even longer than the coloring phase. Nevertheless, phase four was over before I knew it and all that was left was compiling the frames into an artboard that would fit the blog. At this point it was nearly 1:00am so I quickly put the comic through a temporary version of the final phase. I went to bed feeling pretty good about making what we believe to be one of our coolest comics yet.

  Thursday morning had arrived. We made some final modifications and before we left for our family thanksgiving celebration, our new Thanksgiving Special was published. It was a bit of a challenge creating and recreating 11 frames in one day. But like I mentioned earlier, it was rewarding to see such a fun idea go from concpet to comic. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have. Happy holidays to all of you!

Thanks for reading!

Better, Brighter and Better!

So far, Rifto Comics have been (at their best), glorified doodles. However, what started as a fun sort of joke between it's creators, has now developed into a foundation for many creative plot lines. As a result, we (the authors) have decided to match the story's new-found potential with a graphic style that will hopefully be equally enjoyable. With that being said, please allow us to clarify, all the artwork styles and characters will retain the cartoon like feel that have thus far, defined the series. We will be upgrading the quality of all comics that are published via this blog, to full color images. We will do this effectively by recreating each comic in the computer. Rest assured, we'll be using techniques that keep any loss of the "hand drawn" look to a minimum. We know you'll enjoy these new comics just as much as the old ones, if not more. So without further ado, here's is a snippet of the all new, full color version of the very first Rifto comic in the revised series (It's still under construction.) 

Everything about these new comics is going to be clearer, brighter, more colorful and more intentional (without losing the random humor that make them so fun of course).

Thanks for reading!