Observations

Whisper is very different from Collide (for those who have seen Collide). Collide was black and white, some screentones, and a very manga inspired style. Now and then hints of the direction my art would take could be found. Whisper is full color, a tighter style that leans toward realistic in some ways.

Basically, Whisper is a lot more work than Collide.

I could do a page of Collide in a day--maybe two, if I had a hard time getting things right. A page of Whisper takes days and days. Perfecting the composition, sketches, inking--that's usually a day (though page 6 took three days to get the sketches right), then color takes about a day and a half, two if it's complex. On rare occasion, I can do a page of Whisper in two days. In fact, at the beginning, I did the first page in two days and it was great. But I started spending longer on each page, getting the lines right, getting everything right. It's exhausting.

Too exhausting to continue forever. Good thing Whisper is only 47 pages.

I'm practicing a simplified version of my style for the next comic, in hopes of speeding things up. I have no idea if it will work. But it's a thing to try. I'm tempted to search my heart for another short(er) comic to try that style on. Will dwell further on it.

Also.

ALSO.

My colors. What's up with them. I like the colors themselves, I think I got a good thing down finally, but they look so shiny. So smooth. It's no good for all of my work. Some of my work needs to look gritty, or watery, or transparenty. I've been studying various artists colors and the thing I have decided that I need to work on for my colors now is texture. I need to start collecting textures to laydown on color to give it a real texture feel. I don't mean, hey, that wicker basket have wickery patterns so it looks wicker. No. The colors and lines that make up that kind of texture will still be smooth and perfect and inappropriate. I mean a background texture. Concrete, smoke, watercolor bleeds--things that look like the paper or the material used to make the art. I'm not making my comics on porcelain. They need life.

Recap on learns:

-Can't do comics the way I do an illustration because it will take the rest of my life to make my first full length GN.

-Must learn fast yet effective style.

-Must learn to utilize textures in my coloring.

Just doing things

It never ends.

You think you're done, and you're not.

I thought Strung Out was settled enough to start drawing. Two pages in, I realize there are some seriously weak characters, and set out to fix that. And, as a result, I'm overhauling the story. Boo.

This happened to Collide, you'll recall. I got tired of the weaknesses, and paused it. On that same vein, I've been making progress with Collide. I hit on the very things I was missing, and the modified story is coming together quite perfectly. It's a lot shorter and has less characters. I'm addressing some serious stuff, too, as well as fun stuff. It's going to be amazing.

It'd be easy to feel discouraged at myself for not drawing my comics--to tell myself I'm not progressing. But really, I am. I'm making my stories better, and that's progress. Things happen differently for everyone, and for me, I don't feel comfortable starting unless I have a script for the story. I do that because I want to make sure dialogue doesn't insinuate the wrong things, or that I include the right hints and allusions. I want my readers to reread later and gasp when they realize what a merry chase I've led them on. I have comic friends who know where their story is going, but don't write dialogue until the moment the page is being made. I can't work like that. I do leave myself room to adjust dialogue, though, if the moment feels right.

Change

I've been unhappy with Collide lately. I don't feel like I'm doing it the justice it deserves, and I feel stuck drawing it in a style I don't want to draw it in. I don't want know what style I do want to do it in, but this isn't it. It's wrong.

The problem is... If I continued to draw Collide in this style, I'd put myself in a rut. I wouldn't be able to change my art style. And my art style wants to change. It's trying, but it gets dragged backwards whenever I work on Collide. And when I have to take breaks from Collide, my style progresses (only to slide backwards when I start up again).

So, after consulting a few comic friends and voicing my concerns, I've decided to put Collide on hold until I know what to do with it. I'm going try different things, privately, and see what I like.

In the mean time, I'm going to start a new comic project, Strung Out. This one is more nailed down. I know the style I want to use, the script is done, and I know what everything looks like. It's ready to go. It's also shorter than Collide. Maybe I'll be ready for Collide once this one ends.

I am sorry that you all have to wait to know what will happen. I really am. But this is the right thing to do, and Collide will be better for it.

Redrawing and reredrawing

The very first time I started drawing Collide, I posted the pages on smackjeeves. It was all well and good, but after getting a much honored critique from someone who I greatly respected, I decided to redraw the first chapter (which I had just finished). When I began to redraw chapter 1, I moved my comic to google sites, and soon after procured a URL for myself. And now, I am a few days from posting the last page of chapter 2.

The thing is...

I didn't script far ahead of myself. This happened because I was a bit frightened of the largeness of Collide. But after a bout of successfully scripting one of my other stories in a few days... I tackled Collide. And it went marvelously. I finished the first go a few days ago, and then proceeded to ponder the script and adding scenes which were necessary. I think it's pretty satisfactory now. But the result of this scripting was that I got to know my characters even better. And that meant that when I read my current Chapter 1... I not only cringe at the dreadful art, but now my characters aren't acting quite right.

And the other evening, I finally accepted that I would have to rescript and then redraw chapter 1. Again. Which, really, I have no objection to. Except that probably means I should redraw chapter 2 as well. Probably. The last few pages of it are actually quite satisfactory, so maybe I'll redraw up to those...? Blarg. I don't know. Chapter 1 is definitely getting redrawn. Chapter 2, probably. That kills me inside because I just spent the last year drawing those pages. A whole year. I don't call it a waste since my style has improved by leaps and bounds since then, but it's still murderous to my happiness to consider it too long.

But I'm still going to move forward with chapter 3, and work on the revised chapters in my spare-spare time. Yyyyeah.

Printed

So I finished drawing Chapter 1 of Collide a while ago, and sent the pages off to be printed into a neat little book. And it happened! It's done!





It turned out pretty good! So I ordered some more to sell at the next con I go to, which will hopefully be in September. I'll probably make them available to order through a website. Yeah.

All right, I'm off.

Dilemma

Seriously. Dilemma.

I've been doing Collide in the style I've been using for years. I've tweaked it a bit, and I do like it. It works for Collide. But for my future comics... I don't want to use that style. It doesn't suit them. Collide is the first comic I planned and it took a long time, so I've been staring at these character designs in that style for years. It belongs with this style.

So I spent the past few days nailing down what I want to do my other comics in. I knew I wanted it more detailed, realistic, and less manga-ish. But I still wanted large eyes, very expressive faces, and will probably use chibis.

Here's what I came up with.



You like it? I do. Very much. I've been drawing characters from my other comics all day. The biggest change is the nose. I really like it.

But I am concerned that I won't get truly used to this style unless I draw it all the time from now on. But Collide is in a different style.

I guess I could do both as best I can, and try not to let them affect each other?

Mehhhhhhh!

Go me!

I'm working on the last page of chapter 1 right now. This moment. I'm excited!

I've been working like a fiend on Collide. I'm amazed at how fast I'm tearing through this! I'm so excited to finish chapter 1 and to thumbnail chapter 2 and start that! XD

Once I finish the page, though, I'm going to wait about a week, review the pages, see if any changes are needed, and then submit them for printing. I'm going to print the chapter 1 copies as early as I can. I'll do the one test copy, and if it looks good, I'll probably print 20. I haven't decided if I'll start offering them online on my site yet, though. I might wait til a few more chapters are up for reading, then readers will know if they really want the chapter (I hope they will)!


I'm still blown away that I'm doing this. That I'm pushing myself to achieve. I sometimes consider myself really lazy, but this is making me wonder if that's true. I'm working so hard and refusing to give up. I'm impressed with myself, honestly.

Collide and tiny illustrations

After careful contemplation I have concluded that there is little chance I will be finishing Chapter 1 of Collide in time for WonderCon. Which is all right, really. I hoped to have it done, but it's not the end of the world.

Between now and WC I'll work on illustrations. Today I drew two tiny illustrations I'll watercolor tomorrow. They're little fanarts of Totoro and Princess Mononoke.





I was planning on doing more little fanarts, but it doesn't really show off my art as much as I'd like. So I'll work on original stuff from now on.

Ahoy

Right, so, Collide is chugging along nicely. I got over my worries and started drawing it again. Art board was readily available at University art at a far less expensive price than online; online including shipping, which is 13 dollars--yuck.

As of today I have inked through page 5. Once I get a bigger scanner I'll be able to tone and letter them. I'm not sure how updating will work, though. I don't want to update one page at a time, so it'll be in groups of probably two or three, but I want to have a nice backlog before I do that. Although, I prefer to have chapter 1 up before WonderCon.

Sigh, there is much to do.

Bump-bump

The past few days I've been feeling discouraged about Collide. Sometimes I think I'll never be good enough at drawing to do the story justice. Other times I think the story isn't as good as I believe it is. And most of the time, I'm terrified of having nothing to bring to WonderCon.

So tomorrow I'll order the art boards. I've decided to buy the manga dimension ones. They'll arrive in some number of days. I assume.

But for the most part, I need to rewrite the beginning. Completely. Which means I need Jacqueline and Maria time, to bounce ideas around. Lucky me I get that tomorrow (today?) night. Unless something gets canceled. Which could happen, y'know?

It's making my stomach hurt, all this worry. I need to relax and not get so stressed.

An assist

Yesterday, exciting things happened. I heard back from a guy who writes comics, whose work I really love, and he had read my comic and was offering some advice to me. He provided me with a lot of frank opinions about what I should change, and I think I'll be taking a majority, if not all, of it to heart.

I need to rehash the beginning, and change it. I'm going to redraw chapter 1 anyway, but now I have to hold off on Chapter 2 until chapter 1 is revised.

Also, my dad has decided to invest in my art a bit and is going to buy me a bigger scanner soon. Why? So I can start drawing my comics on art board.

This will all be happening very soon. Of course, Chapter 2 won't be coming for a while, though. But I really want a good copy of chapter 1 to sell at WonderCon.

I'm really tired, so this entire post might make no sense. Oh man. I hope that is not the case.

Arg, dimensions

So having finished chapter 1 of Collide (yay!), I set about trying to find out the proper dimensions for comics published in the manga format. It took a few days of hard work and internet scouring, but I finally found out the truth.

And it burns.

My pages are not at all the right dimensions. *urg*

I guess it's good I found this out early. That means I only have to redraw 1 chapter, yeah? Ha... T.T

I'll worry about that later, though. I'll start drawing the rest in the right dimensions, now. Everything will be fine.

Another branch on the tree

I think of my journey towards becoming a published graphic novelist as the life of a tree.

This little nut fell off of something and buried itself into my brain, and then one day I looked in the mirror and saw a little tree growing. And since then it has weighed heavily on my mind.

Spending the next years learning how my own process works was frustrating and difficult. I had no one else's standard to look at. I didn't know how people went about drawing graphic novels at all. I started following the blog of a webcomic artist (who is no longer drawing the comic, but is writing it) and she would post shots of her work table. I tried to absorb as much of that as I could. As I absorbed, little branches began to grow.

I tried to come up with original ideas, but they felt super cheesy to me, so I couldn't work on them seriously. I have a lot of "first pages" and can't even remember where that story was going. My first attempt is in a sketch book from 7th grade and it spans 4 pages. It's super cheesy and bad. >_<

When Collide came into my mind and began to wrap its tendrils around my brain and dream tree, I knew something big had come into my life. And it scared me because I wasn't ready! I wasn't good enough at art, and had no idea how to make a GN yet.

So I spent another 4 years writing, rewriting, and completely editing the story. When the story was at a point I could feel satisfied drawing it, I began to working on background stories and developing cultures and histories. Those things changed the story, too.

And now I have finally begun to draw the story. I know how I work. My pattern is set. It'll probably change, but for the better. I also know that this is only the first draft of the story. I want my art to be SO much better and full of finite work. I don't think I want it in super manga style. I love all the comic styles from Marvel to big eyed shojo, so I don't feel biased. I want my comic to be in a detailed, smooth, expressive style.

It's not there yet, but I'll get there. I look at my hands and see the capabilities within the veins and layers of skin and muscle. I'm not afraid anymore.

Now begins the skill honing. The comic will continue and I will begin the intense training of my art. I expect it will lead to swift changes in the comic art, but that's why this is the first draft.

It's not perfect and it will change.