Month: November 2024

I’m back… again! The website got compromised and I had to start from scratch, so I took the opportunity to build it back better than it was. While it was really annoying to go through this, considering how things were basically duct taped together outta hope and desperation before, it ended up being a blessing in disguise as this forced me to start over with a clean slate. Annoyingly this nonsense kinda put me on a holding pattern for comics/posts, but luckily when this happened I was already nearly done with a few pages anyway…

ANYHOO I’m super excited to be at this point with the comic finally. I was also mindful about making them flexible to cut up for social media. On here I’ll have the original full pages though.

I’ve looked forward to this arc for a while as one of my personal interests is sim racing, and I’ve simply never seen a good representation of it in media/comics before. While Driving Nowhere is about a broader ‘slice of life’ view of various characters living with different circumstances, on a personal note Layne’s interest in motorsport and sim racing is something I love. Making it has been challenging, but I’m having a blast! Of course, the first attempt at this had to be centered around Formula Vee.

I’ve always been a fan of Formula Vee since I first tried a simulation of one out. It’s just a good simple race car platform and one I always go back to when I wanna learn a track or something. Racing those things is a joy and I knew when the time came to illustrate racing in Driving Nowhere, the first one I’d tackle is Formula Vee.

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that my affinity for the category extended to my family who ran an entry during the 60’s. These vintage shots from Willow Springs are amazing. I love em.

-K

Lost everything. Site got compromised I guess and I had to reinstall wordpress. Was hoping my files would at least be saved, but yeah it’s all gone. I have the comics backed up and thankfully got those posts I was writing saved too. I’ll eventually get things sorted here… but yeah this sucks.

Stay tuned I guess. Might as well try and make the site better than it was since I gotta start from scratch anyway.

-K

The past week was a bit messy due to some IRL nonsense, so I just focused on drawing the comic. Since I don’t wanna go too long without updating y’all here with something, I figure a preview of what’s to come and a look at what I did prior is in order!

So for the most recent page in Layne’s room there’s a picture above his bed, which is supposed to be him as a kid on a podium where he won a karting race. The last time you saw this was early in the comic and that original drawing asset is pretty low resolution and it looked kinda… shit when I tried reusing it. So I decided to redraw that picture. Considering it was gonna be shrunken down a bunch I didn’t spend too much time on it, but I think it turned out okay!

I also redrew the picture on the wall of Mario Andretti’s Lotus F1 car to better fit the black and white art style I’m using now.

I’m really excited about the comics ahead! They’re coming along nicely. I’m also experimenting with a more flexible style of panels that I can still be dynamic with, but have the ability to cut em up easily for various social media platforms.

Now here’s a little insight into my obsessiveness. Take a look at the suspension details on this page:

I spent an entire day refining this to look ‘right’ to me. At first, it was just a rough take on what it looks like from the incar perspective on iracing. Then I cleaned it up a bit. From there it was just a bit too visually complicated and didn’t mesh well with the rest of the art, particularly with the other perspectives of the formula vee from farther away as those details ended up not making sense in comparison, so I had to sorta ‘simplify’ it while still somehow making it make sense mechanically. So I basically had to break down elements of the suspension into simpler shapes and leave out details that weren’t necessary. I’m glad I spent the time to do this as if I went with the initial version I’d be mildly annoyed every time I looked at this page..

There’s still a ton to do. I am really hoping sim racers appreciate what I’m doing here as I don’t think anybody has truly captured that excitement and fun we experience when sim racing. Either it’s seen as boring or they nonsensically exaggerate stuff and are silly with it… This arc is hopefully relatable to folks in the sim racing scene and I’m just aiming to create something that *I* would enjoy reading. Hopefully y’all will like it too. 🙂

I might have an update for next week, but with the whole election hysteria taking over, who knows? Whatever happens, keep calm and carry on.

-K