A Whole Mess of Studies

After receiving Cacy's reference material, descriptions, and character studies. I put pencil to paper and got to work on getting accustomed with the characters overall look. Getting started this time around was a lot easier given all the work Cacy had already put into her studies. Making adjustments where I thought they needed to be made was the most difficult part in all this process. Such as in Supriya's dress, I took out the designs with the thought I didn't want to have to spend forever redrawing it onto her dress every time she was in a scene. But now that I see the study I'm thinking it looks a bit bland, any opinions?
Creating the features on the three female characters was fun, at first I had attempted creating them without any reference but drawing a specific ethnicity was much more difficult than I had anticipated. So I reference several online pics and combined them to create the different looks of each character. Next time I know to do this step first to save myself some time.
I also brushed up on my wolf drawing skills and they still haven't rusted out since I last drew them in "Justine".
Hope everyone enjoys this weeks drawings.

Thumbnails: They Come In Handy!

You get it? You see what I did there? With the pun? Thumbs… Hand-y…

Ah, well. I’m not talking about those kinds of thumbnails anyway. I’m talking about the other kind. As in sketches.

I mentioned before that I’m trying my hand at doing thumbnails as I write some of the scripts for the coming web comic. Here’s what that looks like:

Er… That might not work if anyone but me needs to understand them. Actually, after some time passed, even I was a bit confused and had to decipher my intentions.

First thing I did was type up the script based on my sketches. (You see all that indecipherable chicken scratch? Some of that is actually dialogue and stuff.) Then I re-drew the thumbnails. Since their purpose is communication, I tried to make these thumbnails sketches (palm sketches would be a more accurate size-correlation label, but whatever) as clear as possible. I thought adding some gray marker would help to that end. (And also, maybe I was procrastinating getting to the next thing on my to-do list.) (Boy, this paragraph has a lot of parentheticals [I loooove parentheticals!])

I kept forgetting that I’m left-handed and made a bunch of pen smudges. If you’re a southpaw like me, you probably already know that when working with smudgeables it’s best to move from right-to-left if you can’t keep yourself from resting your hand on the page.

Writing is re-writing they say, and just because one is writing with thumbnails doesn’t mean the old adage is any less true. Doing the thumbnails over allowed me to see what obviously wasn’t going to work. Page 2 is a good example of that. I made a few changes on this page, but one mistake was glaring. This is what I originally sketched out:

Can you see why that won’t work?

Scott McCloud explains it well in Making Comics when he talks about “choice of flow.” Basically, we have a certain way of reading. In western cultures, it’s left-to-right, top-to-bottom. The above layout sketch creates confusion because the reader’s eye will want to go from panel two to panel three to panel six. Adding arrows is an easy fix and works for some comics, but wouldn’t work for this one.

So this was my solution:

I made the three panels in question floating panels so that they overlapped panel five (previously panel six) and panel one just slightly. It was my hope that that would alleviate any confusion as to what order they should be read. After all, it’s an instinctively understood concept that the thing overlapping something else is closer i.e. comes first. Also, I thought this arrangement would indicate that those three images are one set, kinda sorta like a triptych. Whatcha think? Does it work now?

I’m quite liking this working-on-thumbnails-as-I-write way of doing thing. I think this experience will help me even when I’m required to write scripts separate from doing any sketches.

Quick Sketches

A page of sketches for some of the short stories and poems Cacy has written. This is always the first stage in the process of making sense of what I've read. Sometimes the drawings make sense and other times I forget what they mean and have to re-read the text, which is why I write the title of the piece next to the sketches.

No “Bam!”s or “Pow!”s Were Harmed During the Writing of This Post

Oh. Hello there.

I was so caught up in developing material for our upcoming web comic that I didn’t hear you come in.

No, stay. Stay.

I’m sure. Since you’re here, I’ll take a much-welcomed break. Oh, here’s an idea. Let’s warm up some hot cocoa while I tell you about my approach to writing for comics.

Okay, you can have hot cider if you prefer.

Unlike screenwriting, which has a very specific structure that is used for everything from feature-length film to live-action television to animation, there’s no one way to write a comic book script.

Take a gander through a bunch of different books on writing for comics. (Here’s one I really like.) Or flip to the back of one of those special edition graphic novels that includes the script. You’ll see the myriad of ways that comic book writers get their stories out of their heads and onto paper. Scripts, summaries, thumbnails, information tables…it seems anything goes as long as it conveys what has to happen on the page.

I’ve tried a few different approaches.

The first approach I took was to write in a basic script format while dividing the action and dialogue into panels and pages as I wrote. This, of course, was with the understanding that what works in my head, might not work out on paper once it comes to doing the thumbnails and layout sketches. This always seemed like a “standard,” straightforward way of doing things. What sucked though was that when re-writing the script, if I took out a chuck of dialogue or added a bit of action it would throw off the panel and page divisions that I’d already written into the script.

In reaction to the first approach, I decided to write the scripts without the page and panel divisions. If I got a specific idea of how the panels would unfold I took note of it, but other than that, I didn’t stress about it. For me, this type of script is faster to write simply because I don’t have to think about how many words or actions can fit into a panel. The downside is you don’t really know the page length until the script has been annotated or turned into thumbnails, so if you’re writing to achieve a specific number of pages you might want to be prepared to do some cutting. (Scripts seem to run longer than whatever I had in mind when I’ve done it this way.)

The latest approach I tried was to do thumbnails as I wrote the dialogue. This works for me since I’m usually pretty specific in my scripts anyway. Again, I do this with the understanding that when Jose starts working out the sketches, he may find better ways of executing certain things. So far doing this has lent itself well to the more action-oriented stories. While it seems to take longer, I think having the thumbnails already thought out is ultimately a time saver because it better communicates what’s going on in my head.

Oh, and there’s a fourth approach we’re trying out. That’s basically where I back off, stop being so annoyingly specific, and let Jose do whatsoever he wants. We’re not working with scripts at all with this approach. Instead I’ve handed a bunch of flash fiction and poetry over to Jose for him to decide what to do with. I can’t wait to see what they’ll be turned into.

What’s that? Time for you to mosey on out of here?

Alright. Thanks for visiting. Swing by again sometime soon, okay?

Have a good one!

Looking at the Midway Process

This week we'll be looking at the midway process of developing an illustration for one of the short stories called, "The Cold Front". After I sketch out a few ideas I choose one thumbnail to develop more. If you remember the sketches I posted up last time you'll find the thumbnail I decided to develop on the bottom right hand corner.



I decided the simplified gesture would work for what I had in mind.

Next I developed a value sketch of what the finished image would look like. Keeping the character separated from any background elements I thought would help give the image more of an isolated feeling.



The next step was to burn some paper to incorporate into the final image, which you'll find out goes along with the story when you get the chance to read it. After several sheets of burning I chose the better looking burnt paper and scanned them in.



Next, I draw the final image, then scan it into the computer and manipulate it until I get something I like. But you won't be able to see it until the website is up and running.
Thanks for stopping by.

Meet Supriya

Since I got a nice chunk of writing out of the way, I decided to move on to character designs. Because I’ve usually already got a pretty good idea of what my characters look like, Jose and I decided it would move things along if I went ahead and sketched out the characters (Rather than us having to go back forth with him designing something, and me saying, “Eh, it’s good, but how about making it little more like this,” and him redesigning it, and me saying, “Well, I was thinking it would be a little more like that.”)

That said, here are some pages out of my sketchbook and a peek into my process of designing characters.

As a former aspiring costume designer, I always start with what a character is wearing. The first new werewolf story to be posted on our website is going to be set in 1971. That meant I had to flip through some fashion books and scroll through some google image results. I picked 1971 because it allows me to take a little from the 60s as well as the 70s. Best of both worlds!

The character, Supriya, is one of the protagonists. She’s a butt-kicking, cleaning-up-the-streets, good-guy (gal) werewolf like Justine, but she also enjoys being a girl. She has a very feminine look and prefers wearing stuff like this her down time.

Then it comes time to design the face. Just as important as working out the features of the face is capturing a couple of key expressions. Supriya has a bit of a disdain-toward-the-world attitude. (And a Twiggy sort of hairstyle.)

Look out! She means business.

A clearer drawing of the dress I decided would work best for chapter one, with hair and jewelry. Since I was a kid, I’ve had the habit of drawing costume designs without faces. I used to also never draw hands or feet, so you know, progress!

An action shot to show some movement of her clothes. Also, weapons! Those are personalized fighting sticks. They’ve got a few tricks up their sleeves so she can do a lot more than just hit monsters upside the head with them, though technically she should be wearing gloves because they’re made of silver.

Thanks for checking in with us. More later!

Preliminary Sketches for Short Stories

Hello all,
As Cacy mentioned before we will be posting new material every other week to keep you coming back and interested as we work diligently on new stories in preparation for the website.
This week you can peek into my process of creating images that go along with two of Cacy's short stories. The bottom and middle pages are from the same story and the top page is from another short story. Each story will be composed in a different format, experimenting and pushing the boundaries of how text and image can be viewed together. At times the format might not work together but just maybe enough compositions will be attempted that a remarkable piece comes together.
Well, that's it for now and don't forget to come back in two weeks for another installment by Cacy.