[Q]: The Skeleton Crew comic hasn't been going for that long but is already receiving a lot of love from the community. What made you want to start up the series, and pick the skeletons as your 'heroes'?

[A]: The first comic was based on a meandering thought after an encounter with an overzealous cannoneer skelly on Crook's Hollow. Our ship was nowhere near the island, but he insisted on using us for target practice anyway. I wondered what would happen if the skellies ever ran out of ammo... and what they got up to when no players were around.

Initially, I'd only planned to draw the first comic as a one-off but the reception it got on Reddit and the Sea of Thieves Forums was surprising. More ideas kept cropping up and after another couple of strips, I figured I'd stop fighting it and make Skeleton Crew a thing. The community has been so supportive of the strip; when people tell me they've started screaming "CARRLLLLL" at the cannoneers, it really makes my day.

[Q]: So far, the comics cover a range of in-jokes related to something happening inside or even outside the game, for example the release notes comic. How do you figure out which topic each strip will cover?

[A]: Most of the strips are based on things I've seen during a Voyage with my crew (like the beached Skelly Galleon), or ideas that have spun out of that. I just pick whichever one is funniest to me at the time and keep the others in reserve. I also watch the release notes and upcoming content announcements; if a gag suggests itself, I'll try to get a comic done as close to release as possible, while it's still relevant. The best jokes come from taking a relatively normal situation and just skewing it a little – seeing things from a different point of view or taking events to absurd conclusions.

Some gaming webcomics end up pillorying the titles they reference, but Skeleton Crew is never mean-spirited towards its source material – that's a line I don't want to cross.

[Q]: What process do you go through when putting together a new comic? Take us through how you get from concept to publishing it online!

[A]: When I get an idea, it gets turned over in my head for a few days to explore different ways that the pacing and dialogue could work. The gag gets run past my wife who usually suggests changes that make it even better.

When the idea has solidified, I open Clip Studio Paint on the iPad and set up the comic from a handy layout template. I fill the dialogue in first, so I know how much space there is for the art. I do layouts with a thick brush so I don't get bogged down in the details, focusing on staging and posing to make sure the strip flows clearly. Loose layouts also allow for spontaneity in the inking, which keeps things interesting. I change the layouts to blue lines and ink on a separate layer.

When the line art is done, I add the colours on another layer. Backgrounds come next – the Sea of Thieves art style lends itself to some lovely vistas, and some elements can be shared across panels (although I try to avoid copy-and-pasting too much, as it stands out a mile and just feels lazy). The final step is any special effects, like lighting, glowing eyes, fire or waves. When the strip's done it gets imported into a special Affinity Designer file, which resizes the artwork into the different layouts for social media, Reddit and the Skeleton Crew website.

It takes about five to seven hours to make a strip from start to finish, and the vast majority of that time is spent using the iPad.