Momentum lost… or just beginning?
This past month, I’ve not been able to work on the project a much as I would’ve liked to. The move to our new studio took most of the wind out of me, and on top of it, I’ve had several bigger projects for paid work. I look at my little calendar sheet on Google, and shiver seeing that I’ve only worked 4 days on the comic.
Yup, it has been one of those months. This project is taking time that I didn’t know it would take. After all, I started it months back… Months! It’s only an 8 page wee thing, I thought I’d be done in the first week or two. Yet, I am still at it, and that’s impressive to me, considering I am a chronic project hopper and my drawers are filled with unfinished crumpled papers. DA! will be done, even if it has been thwarted momentarily by freelancing and my general laziness and poor stress tolerance.
In these 4 days that I worked, I got a few steps done in the plan. I finished the flats and made the effects lineart. Not too much to go, before I can put it up there! (Albeit I still haven’t decided where to put it — yikes!)
WIP: DA!
Check out that image, I chose it because I felt it showcases my progress the best. I’m just astonished what a few speedlines can do! A hovering spider turned into a dynamic, depicting little panel. Crazy stuff, since I always struggled to ‘show’ in my written stories. Drawing images seems to really be growing on me as a medium, although it means I will need to make peace with not being able to get everything in my head out before my time comes.
The next stages of this project are to do the shadows, light/highlights, and the final polishing touches for the pages. After that, I will work on the hand-written font I promised so long ago, re-write the story, and finally, make the cover.
I have some thoughts about the cover, and am so excited to work on it. I’ve learned so much about values working in black and white, that coloring the cover should be the perfect next step!
From static to dynamic
I had never done speedlines before, and quite frankly, I struggled to understand them for a while. I tried so many things from line practice on my sketch book to watching all sorts of videos on it… They are just speedlines, how hard can it be?
One of the tutorials I watched suggested to make a custom brush for it. I tried that for a while, and let me tell you, what horrific advice! There’s a much easier way and I nearly slapped myself when I finally found it.
Ready? Guides. Use guides. In Krita, my software of choice for the moment, you have an Assistant Tool. It lets you place rulers, perspectives, vanishing points… And allows you to snap on to the proper lines. You can focus completely on your pen pressures and such, which was an amazing feeling! So, don’t over-complicate things like I did, 9/10 times it will make you stuck.
Coming next
As mentioned, the next steps are the shadows, lights, and polish. Now I’ve just figured out the whole multiply layer secret, so the shadows shouldn’t be a problem. The lights on the other hand…
For now, I’d like to try setting the next 3 steps I’ll take towards the goal. Isn’t that what they do on all those self-help guides? Let’s see if it’ll work for me this month. So here are the next 3 steps I will look into taking:
- Doing the main shadows for all 8 pages
- Seeing if occlusion shadows are something I’d like to do, and then implementing them where needed.
- Learning about an easy/efficient way of doing light and highlighting effects in art.
Bonus: Implementing the lights and highlights.
That’s about it for now. Visit my X for current updates, or to hang out in the comments. Let me know if you have some insight to this lighting stuff, I’m a true noob in it! I would love to see some Autumn art, too.
Have a great start to the final quarter, and don’t get discouraged by plans that change,
Mrs. V