Once again, the focus in the exercise was to produce something simple and well done, and so I picked a simple situation from an activity I’ve engaged in more recently: running to get fit. It’s come to be one of my most hated sports. And so I began.

First the two panels on an A4 size sheet, which was simple enough. I took a sheet of Royal Bond printing paper for this part, this was mainly to get an idea of the spacing and the proportions. This isn’t the first time I’m making simple action-reaction comic strips like this, however, the ones I make end up being too overcomplicated or ambitious, or they lack focus. A lot of pages on Instagram follow a simple format, very few of them are limited to just two panels but you will have the occasional two panel posts.

The idea for this one is pretty simple. I start running in the park and quit 2 seconds later. It could be for a number of reasons why I did it, I could’ve gotten bored or just I realised there are more important things to do or I’m lazy, so it is ambiguous enough to be relatable to a fairly large audience.

Next I imported the images on Photoshop, and yes I can imagine being called lazy for this as well, but Photoshop allows me to keep the process clean and simple. I first drew the outline for the background and then added a rough sketch of my character on top. I guess the style in the background derives a lot from a lot of the simple strips I’d see in my newspaper every morning like Peanuts and Hi and Lois.

I then made sure the background worked for the second panel as well.

I then coloured the background. Very simple, and minimal shading. Honestly, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the colours, but the composition actually looked decent by the end of it.

I then rendered the character and applied the background to the second panel.

I then completed the artwork for both panels.

I actually considered this for some time, and decided to add a speech bubble in the second panel to indicate it’s the end and not an interval before the character starts running again.

I then added titles to each panel and then the strip as a whole. This concluded the exercise and I was quite happy with how it turned out, despite it being messy in a lot of places. I also took this opportunity to get the layers organised, something I rarely do, but I figured I might as well turn it into a habit. This attempt being the 100th time or so.

And not soon after I realised I’d missed something quite crucial so I made that correction too.