New month, new winds blowing
10 days. 10 days I worked on the comic in the past month. That’s pretty good, right? Right? Like, at least 2 days a week, kind of. Anyway, what that means is that the thing is really close to being done. And I mean DONE, publishable. Isn’t that crazy? It’s been months of struggling, learning, desperation, and inspiration. But here we are, I can see the finish line now, and it feels… Utopian to be honest.
I’ve had crazy amounts of work this month, as I mentioned in the Main News. That has meant that I’ve been more tired than usual, especially with the push that my husband is giving in his work at the moment. We wake up, and work till AM hours. Well, I try to keep up, but my goldfish brain has been rotted by TikTok-esque scrolling so… Attention span is a real harsh mistress, eh?
So, I finished all 3 tasks I set out to do. I love that I managed, despite the constant fatigue that keeps lingering on me. And no matter the final weeks rush, I still did it. Maybe I can now go forward with a bit more wisdom about how to manage my time. And you know, with the understanding that I still use way too much of my time in things that are just shadows to take me away from my path.
WIP: DA!
The shading was an interesting task. I had it down for the characters, pretty much, but I found myself struggling with the backgrounds. Trees, man, even just the trunks. It’s like a throwback to the bloody bark of the Forest Pond all over again. I also went ahead and implemented the highlights and everything, so the comic is pretty much done now. It only needs the text, cover, and back leaf! How exciting.
The things on the to-do list for the rest of the way include making the font, writing the script and implementing it, doing the cover (in color, of course, that should be fun), and a back leaflet that my husband suggested. Then it’s time to polish, make the necessary legalese pages, and compile the thing (or figure out how else to publish it, maybe a lightbox kind of gallery would be fine, at least on this site of mine). But that’s a lot, and we are taking it slower, you know, to not overwhelm ourselves.
Lessons learned
First and foremost, I dropped the hatching, and occlusion shadows, for now at least. We are loving the style and look of the comic art as it is in its current shape, so why shove more things into a stew that we like already. It’s simple, expressive, and clean. I did try some hatching things on the side, but it’s not quite the style for me. While amazing when others do it, I just find it very time-consuming, and scratchy when done by my amateur self. And I have all this tech now, I love my easy gradients and layer profiles!
Talking about ease of use and layers, I’ve found the magic of Multiply and Screen. I mean, No need to shift colors (not that I had that to begin with, since I work with the grey-scale), finding the right values… Just slap a layer on it with the inherited alpha and the right blending mode and voilá! You have yourself shadows and highlights! I know it’s a bit hacky, but hey, what works, works. And as a lone artist working on these things, I must sometimes take the lovely shortcuts that offer themselves up on a platter… Or on a layer menu.
Remember to study your movement!
A valuable lesson learned here. I had not paid attention to the movement of my darling Kiki (that would be the spider), when she jumps. Her trajectory was pretty abysmal, going up, then a little diagonally… and then straight to the side. Because that’s how a leap works, right? So I had a problem that could devastate the whole layout on pages 2 to 8. Great!
Thankfully, as you can see, I managed to figure it out in the least amount of pain possible. With the help of my dear husband, who is the best. With his suggestions and my additions, we managed to bring the second page to an end without having to break the layout too much. Instead of the two panels, it now has 3. And much of the original was saved, too!
So, kids, always think about how your characters are moving, and where to. Otherwise you may end up with a spider going perpetually sideways with dust coming out of its feet for no apparent reason.
Coming next…
So, the bulk of the job is done, phew! Now I only have to figure out the text placement, and to optimize the speech and such… We don’t want a novel in a comic, do we now? Let the images speak, that’s the whole point.
Since it worked so well this past month, I’ll make another mini-plan for October. Here’s the next 3 steps in my WIP, DA!:
- Making the font. I found this great page called Calligraphr, which allows users to make a font of their own. This font can then be plugged into say, Krita, and ta-daa! I’ll have you reading DA! With my hand writing in no time.
- Script writing. Coming from a writing background, this shouldn’t take too long. Which may be the famous last words, but oh well. This will also be my first time doing it specifically for a comic, so it should be a fun exercise in how concise I can get.
- Implementing the Script. You know, vector layers and all that. We’ll see if I left enough space for the text in the panels… Yikes! (I mean, I tried.)
Bonus: If there’s time, I’ll see about making the first sketches for the Cover, since I already have some ideas for it.
It seems like this is bound to be another crazy month. But I’ll get better at where I spend my time, I’m sure. I really can’t wait to show you guys what I’ve been working on this whole time. I’m rather happy with it, and I believe it may get some giggles out of a few people. Maybe even an Eesh or two.
As always, visit my X to stay in the loop during the month, or to drop me your hints. I’m a notorious lurker over there, after all!
The season may be dark, but don’t let it get to you – draw light into the world,
Mrs. V
Oh, and here’s a peek at the Forest Pond, since I re-did the foliage in the foreground. Much better than the stamped terribleness, no?
