This is my first Comic Creation Update since New Year's Day! I hope 2018 has been treating everyone well so far. It's already going by in the blink of an eye for me!
As I mentioned briefly in the prior column, I've had a bit of extra motivation lately. To make 2018 a very productive year; myself, @kommienezuspadt and @artistchristian are all engaging in a friendly "accountability group." Each of us has a comic project we're working to bring to life, so every Wednesday we're tasked with presenting our week's progress to each other. Anyone who comes to the table empty handed or with a particularly lackluster showing is honorbound to pay up to the tune of 25 Steem.
In this second week of the challenge, I got the ball rolling on my interior sequentials. So, c'mon, take my hand and I'll show you what I've been up to!
My goal for this week was to pencil the first page of "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." While I didn't quite finalize everything in the pencils I'm pretty satisfied with the progress so far. I'll be completely redrawing panel 4 though, I don't like that face at all.
As I was tired, stumped, or frustrated at times, I transitioned into starting on the "inking" stage of the artwork. I'm doing my best to get in the habit of shifting focus productively when such things happen. It's better to absentmindedly ink a panel than to absentmindedly wander to the couch and watch Perfect Strangers while eating Pop Tarts. (Yes, I have the mind of an 8 year old... what do you expect, I draw comics!)
I'm going to continue accelerating through January and be at top speed by the spring! The minimum pace I hope to achieve is 2 completed pages per month which will land me with a mostly finished first issue by year's end. This regular column gives you shotgun ridealong privileges for this exciting/boring journey!
Stay tuned for the next update and be sure to give my fellow artists in the trenches, @kommienezuspadt and @artistchristian a follow and some support as well!
Love these progress shots and I equally love the idea of an accountability group. I'm excited to see more!
I love that @drwatson posts so much of your work in various stages. Equally a joy to see!
You're a fantastic artist/illustrator - thank you for showing us some of the process! @pegasusphysics did something like it in a recent post.
Join us here if you could use more word of mouth and encouragement:
https://discord.gg/KgVeGe
Ah! SO this is what @artistchristian mentioned to me the other day. I think this initiative is awesome. Always great to have accountability. Plus, since Christian is working on our collab for a percentage of the time, then I'm indirectly benefitting from this wager as well haha!
The pages are looking great, Bryan! Is this project going to be comedic?
Thank you! Comedy will be a very big element. But I’m a firm believer that you get the best payoffs of genre and emotion when it has a lot of contrast. So while comedy will be plentiful, I hope I can also pull off some gut wrenching drama, face ripping action/adventure, and some fantasy creature designs that stray into pure horror.
From everything I've read, I'm sure you'll be able to pull it off!
I know how hard it canbe to make a comics strip. You are doing a super good job at it. I really love the 'grab my hand' pose, the perspective is vwr well done. Im jealous 😁👍but I will get there...eventually
Thank you! No need for jealousy though, as I mentioned in some other comments here, I rely heavily on some visualization tools to get perspectives like that right. I’d like to get more skilled in drawing from imagination, but I’ll take whatever I can to get the story told!
You go well I like, hoping to see soon much more ;)
Oh man, sometimes I get suck on something in my art and I take like a 2 week break lol When you pencil, are you doing it on paper and then putting it in the comp, or do you do it in the comp and then go over the lines you like to ink it?
All done on an iPad Pro now. So it makes it very easy to skip around. You can see in the shots above how I just took the pencil lines of panel 1 and turned them light blue to start an ink layer above them. And believe me, I understand the weeks away from drawing. It may feel like a couple days away but you realize it was a couple months! Can’t do that with Steem on the line!
ah, i see. that is cool. I have so much to learn in this area!
I know, that seriously is the great thing about our accountability group! Although my netflix watching will suffer....
lol, that is hilarious. but I do think it's good advice!
Nice to see your work here again! I hope the new year treats you (and your comic) right!
So far, so good! Hope the same is true for you!
Not too bad yet, but I have 11 other months to sully it up :P
That's the spirit!
So, waiting for the future updates to see this new work! I'm happy that you have a project even for this year. Many people are quite discouraged by Steem value changes and want to cash out and stop publishing.
Thank you for reading and looking forward to future updates!
As a long term user I’m at a loss for words if people are currently discouraged! Steem is worth so much more than it was just a couple months ago, and it’s only been about a year since Steem was at .08.
Regardless of price, the interactions and inspiration I’ve gained here, evidenced by the beginnings of my new comic, are rewards in their own right!
I've just started last December, but I think that Steemit is a great opportunity for who wants to share his work or passions regardless Steem value. It would surely be better if there wasn't so much speculation involved in cryptocurrencies that make its value change so much is short periods of time. This instability discourages many users. However, we'll keep on with our elearning blog, hoping that it will get users appreciation in the future.
Everything looks great. I love the perspective shot when he is reaching out his hand. The beauty of digital is that inking requires much less focus. I've been watching Sopranos re-runs while inking lately. I wish I lived in Philly and could be part of your "accountability crib" (that's what DDP calls it in DDP yoga lol). You gotta be all about the crib!
We’re all spread out. PA, OH, and MN. We’ve met through Steemit, but I’ve had the opportunity to “real world” meet up with @kommienezuspadt a couple times now.
We’re all still feeling out how to conduct this little accountability group, but maybe in the future it’ll expand or inspire others to buddy up themselves!
And once again, some of my favorite work results when I take time to “pre-visualize” with 3D tools. Just like the car on the cover, that difficult foreshortening shot was easily achieved with a 3D mannequin reference layer in Clip Studio. I’d love to build my skills in drawing straight from imagination... but I’ll fight a story onto paper any way I can for now!
Clip Studio keeps getting better and better with the 3d materials. I imagine when Version 6 comes out, it will basically be Poser and Clip Studio merged as one (where else is there to go as far as evolution in drawing software).
I'm already finding Clip Studio's figures easier to use than Poser. Being able to pose and manipulate them within my comic page and also having them create their own perspective grids... amazing icing on the cake!
I only see a need for Poser now if it is actually going to deliver your finished image. A 3D render. I don't even care for a huge prop library, it's just all about getting the basic forms blocked in and then redrawing the whole thing by hand. At that point you can tackle costuming, texturing, etc. with traditional drawing techniques - but the layout and perspective tools of Clip Studio to me are lifesavers and amazing at getting ideas onto the page how I initially envisioned them.