Aiming for a 2024 Revival!

Hello everyone! I haven't posted here in a while. As you can probably guess from my lack of activity here (and pretty much everywhere else) lately, I haven't been doing much on my projects. And this is even though I had all of my Summer holidays to work on them. 

All that might sound worrying for most, but not for me. I know that my passion is still there, and it needs to be re-ignited with the right ingredients for its fuel. Recently, I have been trying to figure out what they are. This process may take just one guess, or, more likely, I'll have to test out multiple theories

So far, the theories I have come to a total of one. That theory is this: "If I update my project blog (and my projects Tumblr) on a more regular basis, then I will be more likely to do more work on my projects." Hopefully, this is the one. If not, that's too bad. But whatever happens, I'm looking forward to continuing my comics! ...And maybe more...?

(Also, uni's back and it's my final year, so it's going to be hell for me)

Subtle changing

When a character, place, or thing first appears outside of doodles and concept art, and into the canonical world that they're part in, it makes almost everything about them pretty much official. Even in my scenario, where I'm someone who's just making a casual webcomic project, I still feel that kind of pressure that everything seems all set in stone once something shows up in canon. 

However, as I'm making my comic, I notice that there are things that could have been done differently when I look back at the previous pages. There are things that I believe that I could have done better, so I try to change them

I can forgive myself because I'm working on my first webcomic project, but I have actually made some subtle changes to some certain elements. If you read Chapter 1, you may notice these if you pay attention. 

Take my my character Shashi, for example. He is Kamilla's cousin's son (AKA her second-nephew), who was introduced very early in the chapter. 

Here is what he looked like in his debut:

See all those stripes on his clothes...

And here is what he ended up looking like a few pages after:

Some of his outfit's colours changed for the sake of balance, too

Notice how I've removed some details on his clothers because I thought they were just too much of a hassle to draw.

Next, let's look at the colours of Kamilla's day outfit. Here is her first appearance wearing it:

A few pages later, you'll see how there have been some slight shifts in brightness, hue, etc.

Here is a comparison so you can see...

I just wasn't exactly as to how overly bright it was before, and wanted to create a better balance in her colour palette. 

You'll notice that this doesn't just applies to characters, but the background, too. You'll see how, with the art style, I'm still trying to figure out what direction that I want to go. I want to be able to make the process quick, but also appear well with the subjects.

And just recently, the colours of the speech bubbles and thought clouds have changed from white to a light yellow-brown colour just in case I would need the colour white to appear brighter if the future ever calls for it. Also, some lettering has been written by hand to create a stronger effect, if needed. 

Maybe this is a regular thing only for now. And maybe this will start to lessen once I become better and more decisive when it comes to making designs for my comics. It doesn't bother me at the moment, but I hope this will come to an end eventually.

First Commission!

Just last night I've gotten paid to do my first commission - with real money - ever. This is so exciting! I was so nervous that this time would never come, but it happened anyway which I'm super grateful for. The commissioner, a friend of a friend, found my offers on DeviantArt, which is one of the places where I announced that I was open. 

Aside from Instagram, I feel like DA is where I've most successfully grrown an audience. I guess that also makes sense because DA is a platform that I have been on since early 2014 (at age 12-13), and I have met people who have grown up with me and my art. Even after the time the UI changed permanently and many users moved to other places like Twitter, Tumblr, etc. there have been some old mutuals who have stayed and still see my art. 

To get myself ready for opening commissions, I really thought that I had to gather up good examples for the variety of character drawings that I'm able to do. And because I lacked any relevant/recent examples of characters that were my own, I decided I would do nine drawings before I would open. That didn't work out. I wasn't very consistent with my time and effort. I guess forcing myself to draw up 18 examples was not the best idea. Anyways, I gave up and just did small doodle examples xD

You can see what I've done on my commissions webpage, which you can view here.

What you see on my commissions page may seem a bit too "mathematical" or maybe even boring to read. So, I have also been considering putting together a sheet which showcases my prices in a more appealing manner. I still don't exactly know how yet, so I'll leave that for later.

Aside from working on my first commission, that's all that I have planned in relation to commissions. And who knows? -- maybe getting into commission work will motivate me back into regularly drawing again... :O

Kamilla vs the Petal-Rat!

Here is the first major action scene since the chapter began: Kamilla vs the crater Rat. This is the process of its creation. 

The set-up for the traditional art part of things

Before anything, I want to say that the critter that Kamilla encounters in this scene is not exactly a "rat", or at least the kind that is known as one of Earth's most iconic pests. It's just a common pest on Imest, a city petal-rat, known by most as a "rat" because of its many similarities with its Earthean counterpart. 

Trying to design the "city petal-rat"

Now with the Earth-rat-Imest-rat out of the way, I can finally move on to the real process!

At first, I thought I was already prepared to start drawing the thumbnails for the chase scene. I had its description all written out in the script, which meant I already had a good sense of direction, right? Turns out, that was wrong. I was actually struggling to figure out how I wanted the way the pages to look, even though I was only working on the thumbnails. 

The scipt for the chase. Read if you like!

So, what I did was try to draw up a storyboard showing how the scene would go without having to worry about page composition. My mind is mostly pretty simple and in this kind of situation, my preference is to work on one thing at a time.

Storyboarded

This way, I would be able to get a visual script of what would be happening in the chase scene. My intention for this scene was for it to be both short and (hopefully even) mildly entertaining for the first piece of action in Chapter 1. 

I actually only relied on what I could remember from the written script for the storyboard. Really, my only use for the text version of the scene was to get a basic structure for storytelling so that I could feel a sense of direction. I even had to cut off parts of what was originally planned because it was going on for longer than what I had intended when I rewrote it with thumbnails.

And, although the scene was scripted, I didn't include any specific details on what was going on during the action. As seen in the thumbnails/storyboard, there are small moments where there would be some kind of activity such as Kamilla and the rat jumping on these sorts of platforms, Kamilla falling face-flat onto the ground, the rat jumping onto Kamilla's face, etc. Those things, I didn't write in the script. Instead, these ideas came from two pages in my sketchbook full of small moments I would like to see in the scene.

An idea I had that took inspiration from this

Finally, with having finished a storyboard that I was pretty proud of, I moved on to working on the page thumbnails themselves. Although this required me to pretty much draw each moment again, I was able to easily figure out the composition of the comic pages. 

Turned to thumbnails

As I'm writing this entry, I haven't yet made it to the next step, which is drawing up the pages themselves. But it's really simple - the same way I've done the rest of all the other pages. All I have left to do next are as follows: sketch, line, colour, and publish. Until the next scene requiring some kind of coordination, the process begins again!

Doodling without sketching

Recently, I've discovered a skill that I want to put in a lot of my time and dedication into. And that skill is being able to draw my characters without there needing to draw a detailed sketch underneath. 

In other words, I want something like a "dumbed down" version of my art style so that I can quickly make little comic strips and shorts. This would especially be useful for if the comic is just a small scenario, usually for some quick laughs or for just to tell a moment.

Here are some of my attempts:

A dynamic pose

I may include "noodle arms" on occasion

This skill of drawing with minimal sketching should also be able to help me in creating strong character design, too. If I have too much detail in a character, I would either forget to include them or I would struggle to add them without having to erase what goes underneath it. This is especially useful because in comics, I would have to keep drawing the same characters over and over. 

It was actually only not too long ago when I realised I could apply drawing without sketching to my art. At the time of writing this post, my current media of interest is the TV series, We Bare Bears. This series was my main motivation to practice the skill.

We Bare Bears by Daniel Chong

I was looking at the art style used to draw the bears themselves and I noticed how simplistic yet strong and memorable they were. Eventually, I doodled them on paper and I loved how easy it was. 

I eventually found the webcomic that inspired We Bare Bears: "The Three Bare Bears" and this was the hammer to the nail. I want to make dumb little comics, but I don't want to have to put as much time and effort into them as my more ambitious projects. This was the inspiration of the motivation.

The Three Bare Bears webcomic by Daniel Chong

I'll wish myself luck!

Drawing backgrounds

For some time, I've been trying to figure out how to draw backgrounds with detail, but at the same time, make them quick and easy to draw. 

There's a technique that I noticed in some cartoons where detailed backgrounds are painted with an "imperfect" sort of feel to it. The lines are mostly loose. The colours focus more in lighting & shadows, sometimes not even in line with the lineart. The main subjects are drawn normally with minimal shading and details. See what I mean, here. 

I kind of took some inspiration from that. I found that painting areas where there would be a lot of detail was a lot quicker and efficient than drawing every detail in the picture. I also found that painting with a more transparent brush that mimics how pain works in real life was quicker than cel shading because I could be looser and more laid-back.

A realisation

Lately, I just hadn't been feeling the best I coul've been. Lately I've been feeling kind of down. Everything just felt slower and sometimes I was even finding it difficult to look forward to the day. This has been affecting many important aspects of my life, including working on my comics. 

When it came to working on my Mydan project, the uploads had been extended to being a page per week, which is, considering my process for drawing up each page, not enough. After each upload, I tell myself I can do better and I try to find motivation. But even so, I never improve.

Becase of this, I had been trying to find what I have been missing. What sort of things motivate me to do more? What can I do to make each day count? It took me forever, but now, it's finally hit me. What I found was lacking was that I wasn't really putting as much visual direction into my pages as much as I used to. 

I forgot about the fact that almost every panel (or "shot") shoud have its own character. And because I forgot about that, when I would draw, there would bee a sort of "stale" feeling. It felt like a chore to get to the next pages. I forgot about the media that I drew inspiration from and I forgot how to bring my heart and soul into my project.

Now that I've learned that, I feel like I've cleared an obstacle out of the way. All that's left is to find the motivation to take action...