The Callous Blog

For those of you eagle-eyed enough to notice, you may have observed a very gradual change in several characters' (Rianne in particular) hairstyles.  Rianne originally had a hairstyle with "waves" from the part over her forehead which eventually formed an oval that framed her face.

This looked fine in black and white but when I decided to publish Callous in color I ran into some unexpected problems.  Doing a daily comic strip in my spare time means I need to do my colors quickly and easily so I pretty much use a color "fill" from my imaging software.  However, those little white spaces inbetween the strands of hair from Rianne's forehead would get filled with her skin color, usually inappropriately, in my opinion.

So, I had to fill those tiny spaces with a dark shade to signify hair behind the strands actually drawn.

This made things appear a little better but I wasn't satisfied, at least from an artistic standpoint.  So I came to the decision to alter Rianne's hairstyle to better facilitate coloring.  I didn't want an abrupt change as this may confuse readers so I did it slowly yet purposefully, as if to mimic a natural growth.

Then we come to her final hairstyle which I like because it appears more natural and realistic compared to her cartoony 'do in the past.

I've made a similar change to Aimee's hair which is still undergoing subtle modifications.  Modernizing Callous has brought changes that were both necessary and, in the end, unintentional improvements.

Caz