Dear Readers,
Insane Forest was always intended to be an experiment in potty humor and tastelessness — an outlet for ideas too disgusting, bloody, or outrageous to fit into my other comic series. For now, that experiment has come to a close. I am putting Insane Forest on hiatus for the foreseeable future. I want to thank all of you who stuck with Insane Forest these past eight months. There is always a possibility that I will return to this comic strip in the future, and if I do I will surely announce it here and on my Suburban Fairy Tales site, which is updated with new strips three days a week. Thanks again and see you over at Suburban Fairy Tales!
-Francis Bonnet
A lot of people asked about the way I color Insane Forest. It isn’t really anything special, but I’ll share the process with you.
I do the pencils and inks by hand and then scan them into the computer at 600 DPI. From there I bring the artwork into Photoshop so I can add the color. People think the strip is colored using real watercolor (which is the effect I’m going for), but in reality I actually use the Watercolor Wash Brush, which is located in the brush presets in Photoshop.
Here’s what the comic looks like inked, before color is added.
I start coloring the strip directly on the computer using my Wacom Intuos tablet. I find it easier and faster to use a tablet than coloring it with a mouse. The color is done in its own Photoshop layer behind the ink layer. I do this so that the color won’t show on top of the inks.
This is the color by itself, with the ink layer hidden.
It takes about 20 minutes to color in a strip. I purposefully color it loosely because I like the look, and it’s also quick. The final result can be seen below.
The complete comic strip.
I work about four weeks ahead of what appears online. Since Insane Forest is only a weekly strip (for now) it’s pretty easy to stay ahead of schedule.
Just letting all my loyal readers know that I will be appearing at Eternal Con, a pop culture and comic book expo, this Saturday, June 16 at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York.
I’ll be there all day to promote my other, more family-friendly comic strip, Suburban Fairy Tales. I’ll be selling Suburban Fairy Tales books and giving away free sketches with every purchase. Although I won’t be actively promoting Insane Forest at Eternal Con, if you’re a fan of the strip stop by the Suburban Fairy Tales booth and request an Insane Forest sketch.
For more information about Eternal Con, check out the Eternal Con website.
Seems the Insane Forest site has been filtering any and all comments to spam — even my own! I didn’t realize it until just now, but it had something to do with the spam filter I had installed onto WordPress. I apologize if anyone has been trying to post comments on some of my comics/blog posts and they haven’t been showing up. It should be fixed now (I hope)!
When I started Insane Forest I thought that Ugly Duckling would be the perfect character to bring over from my other series, Suburban Fairy Tales. Well, since I recently decided to work on both series simultaneously, Ugly Duckling will remain as a character exclusive to Suburban Fairy Tales — which means he’ll never show up in Insane Forest.
I’m not interested in doing any crossovers, and having the same character appear in two of my ongoing series will just get confusing. I will be removing Ugly Duckling from the cast picture on the top banner of this site in the coming weeks and replace him with another character who I plan on having join the cast instead.
Yes, that’s right, a new character will be joining the cast of Insane Forest! I won’t reveal what animal it is yet, but he’ll be showing up in the cast photo soon. Stay tuned for more info!