Re-doing some things

I'm getting back into working on my comics again. I'm hoping this habit won't last a short time, this time. Right now, I'm starting with 'Project: Mydan'.

Just recently, I've rewritten the current scene I'm up to, which is right after Kamilla splits up with her friends, in the crater of city rubble, to look for her trailer and metal pieces. I did this because initially, I wasn't happy with how it turned out. This meant I also had to redraw a bunch of thumbnails.

Looking at the scene (which I'm going to avoid spoiling if anyone reads this), there is a thing or a few that I definitely need to make concept art of. For instance, a tool that Kamilla uses in an upcoming action scene, and also the mysterious machine piece that she finds. Maybe I should do some sketches of the crater, as well. That should be it.

Honestly, getting back into drawing and writing these projects makes me feel happy. I'm glad that I hadn't lost passion. I guess it was a little dormant for a while. 

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.

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!

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...

Nearing the end of the semester

If you've seen my last post, then you'd know that I had made the decision to focus mostly on my uni stuff. So far, that's been going well! Two of the major assignments that I've done in the past month are done and submitted, which means I can finally go back to the old routine. The semester is nearly ending and I only have two small assignments left to go, so I'm pretty confident.

However, although I'd just been focusing on uni for the most part, I've managed to find some spare time to really put in extra thoughts on my projects, especially Mydan. In my daydreams, I've really just been polishing some coming scenes and refining characters, mainly just so my future writing on the project won't get too messy.

I've also noticed that recently I've been taking most of my inspiration from video games, one of them being MOTHER or EarthBound Beginnings, as well as the rest of the MOTHER series. I'm not necessarily talking about how Kamilla's got a bit of her inspired by Lloyd and Ruwei by Ninten, but mainly its more game-like elements. For instance, how the protagonists are accompanied by a party that follow an archetype of some sort (although there will only be two main characters: Kamilla & Ruwei). Another, for a more specific example, is Kamilla mending broken machines overnight similarly to how Jeff does in EarthBound. I just thought that would be a nice thing to add.

Being careful with my pacing

As you'd expect, working on a long-term creative project and studying (whether it be uni or high school) is pretty much a bad idea. But, I'm still working on my projects anyway xD Although things have been slow, I've managed to make some progress in Mydan: basically, I've done all the concept art needed for the next scene. I hope to start the first scene of Chapter 1 real soon! If you want to keep up with my progress for Mydan in "real-time", I have a tag on a Tumblr blog for that which can be viewed Here.

Remember Kamilla?

Anyways, moving on to other important things: I've been trying to focus on uni a lot more lately. In the past year, my motivation to do my work has been kind of getting worse, and it sucks. And so, before I hopefully take a break for some time next year, I at least want to make my work before then have at least SOME quality. So! In other words, hopefully in a couple months, progress will start to speed up again. Wishing myself luck in my studies for now :'D

Also, I wanted to quickly mention a book that I've been completely into this year: it's a speculative biology scifi titled All Tomorrows by C.M. Kosemen. To summarise the narrative briefly, it basically follows the future of humanity and involves a lot of body horror, unique civilisations, hope and doom. It has become quite an inspiration for me and my own sci-fi writing, and has especially helped grow my interest in developing the alien civilisations that I've created for my universe. By the way, All Tomorrows is completely free to read, and there's even a nice audiobook reading of it on YouTube!

Mydan's prologue and other things

The prologue for Mydan is officially complete. It took me a couple months, but I'm just happy it's done :D Although I'm proud of how it turned out in general, there are a few things that I want to change/add to help things be a bit more clear. Hopefully, I'll find time for doing that in the future, since right now I want to get started on chapter 1. I'm also thinking about doing some ending art for after each chapter, and my next task is to get started on doing that. Anyways, wishing myself luck on future progress.

The prologue is over!

On the side, I've been coming up with ideas for, as well as drawing up, some small slice-of-life/gag comics with some of my characters. I've already completed one with some characters from Gone Unsupervised, which you can view HERE. From the way that the latest comic looks, I feel like that will be the way I'll be drawing up comics under GU from now on. I've had these characters for a long time and I've always wanted to make an ongoing, consistent comic with them. I might as well make the comic process easy, even though it sacrifices some of its visual quality.

Ben (left) and Felix (right) in their first official comic together

Also, uni's back on my tail (as expected). This means that I'll have to put my projects to a lower priority for now, which sucks big time. I only have two subjects for this semester to make things a little easier for me, but I'm still not doing too hot. All I can do now is just put in more effort into focusing on uni stuff, which is hard, therefore taking some time off my projects for a bit. That's not to say my projects are going to be totally dead for some time though - things are just going to get a little slower.

Progress!

The prologue of Mydan is nearly coming to an end, which can only mean the (hopefully) soon arrival of the comic's first chapter. Although it hasn't been too long since I started (since about May 2022), I'm glad that I was able to make it this far. That's because it seems that almost every time I make an attempt to start a comic series (heck, even a comic short) I always end up losing motivation and putting it off for who knows how long. Guess you could say Mydan could be the one that stays for long. Honestly, who knows? But nonetheless, I'm pretty confident in this series :P

Also, it was in the past week/fortnight that I've had a couple of big motivation-boosts! First, on the 3rd of August, a close friend of mine shared my project sites to their class at university as an example for whatever it was their course was focusing on, and I couldn't be more thankful. And if THAT wasn't enough, I only learned just yesterday that Mydan was featured on the homepage of The Duck, a webcomics hosting site that I post on. Words cannot describe how happy I was at that. I've never felt so aknowledged before, and there's the bonus points that I don't really promote my stuff much. Here's the link to the feature: https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/09/featured-comic-mydan-post-beginnings/

YEAH BABY, there's my lil boy!!!

Good news

Good knews - Mydan's already started! I don't know if I've mentioned this already (especially since it's been a while since I last updated this blog) but I've already made some decent progress on the pages for my the comic. Scene 2 in the prologue chapter, to be exact. I'm really hyped to get this one going! Since it's currently my mid-year break, I've got plenty of time on my hands to be working on my projects. However, starting on the 25th of June, my classes will be back, which will make my schedule pretty tight (which I can't really say I'm ready for xD). Even so, I'll do my best to stay as dedicated as possible, especially since this is something that I'm really passionate about.

I've already reached the 10 page mark :D

Aside from the actual pages for Mydan itself, I'm always thinking about what's going on in the story. A little bit of a risky move from me, but frankly, I don't think it would bother me too much. If anything, it'll just slow me down and I'll eventually complete my first comic and be ready to start my second one by the time I retire my 9-5 job. Which I don't want. A bit off-topic here, but I really enjoy when I come across a webseries that starts off not at publishing quality. Sometimes it's just nice to just see someone's webcomic/animation that's clearly there because someone felt like sharing their stuff online. (This could be getting annoying since I've discussed something like this before in another post xD) Anyways, as I said, I'm willing to take that risk.

And... What ever happened to the fourth page of Cosmic Loneliness? Because of my whole assignments craze last semester, I put it off for a while. And since it's being done traditionally, I left my papers and my light-board in my cupboard, and haven't worked on it since xD I do hope to get back to it in the future, though. I've got plans for it that I don't want to put to waste.

Website updates!

The old Steel House site (link currently unavailable)

So a while back, I've built a website that was dedicated to my Steel House project. But for a while I was thinking, if there are more stories I've got in mind that are set in the same universe, shouldn't I just make a site dedicated to that one universe and make sub-sites dedicated to each story? In other words, I'm planning on having one main site for the universe that my Steel House project is in and each title underneath that universe will have its own site. I've already gotten started on its design!

A preview of the new main site layout which isn't ready for publishing yet!

So far, I've got the webpage for my Mydan project active. It's still a work in progress since I still need images for the site in general, as well as the dividers and whatnot. I'm hoping to get it done shortly after my homework grind is over (yes, uni is back at me again).

It's active and you can view it here: https://starpiaros.neocities.org/mydan/page.html

Not totally polished, but getting there!

Actually starting now

A lot has happened since my last entry on here. First off, I've just finished the first scene of my Mydan project which has been available to read for some time. I'll be continuing to be making updates as much as I can and, as you would expect, I'm really excited to see how this comic plays out.

Here are the places it's available to read, by the way:

• Actual web comic hosting sites (& similar)
  - Main comics site
  - ComicFury
  - The Duck

• Social media:
  - Instagram
  - DeviantArt
  - Tumblr (I'll create an index page for this series, but it's just the page for Scene 1) 

Right now, I'm starting off this comic a little more laid-back. I just want to know what it feels like to finally get something started and worry about all the more extra things that I'll end up worrying about later (like schedules and making things seem more "professional" and whatnot). 

I know it doesn't sound like the best of decisions, but hear me out: I don't want to just sit around making sure everything is perfect before take-off. I would much rather look back at my comics in months time and see how completely mediocre my works are compared to the stuff I'll produce in the future, over worrying about making it like an actual published comic book. So looking at it that way, it's probably a nicer idea.

As I've mentioned before, I'm in university and it's making things a bit harder than it should. ...I also heard at one point that it's recommended that I probably shouldn't be working on a major personal project, as well as smaller projects at the same time, while studying because it'll end up being a lot to juggle. But I don't really mind. 

Starting the Mydan project stuff and more

Huh?! What's this?

Good news everyone! Despite uni kicking my ass again, as always, I've decided to go ahead and begin my Mydan project. In other words, this is it - I'm actually starting my first major comic project, which is pretty crazy to me. I'm really excited to get going with this one and I hope this one's a success. But first, I've got to get all my uni troubles out of the way and then I'll find a way to fit working on the project in my schedule. 

You can read it on ComicFury

Also, due to beating the game Earthbound some couple of months back, as well as reading the game's fan comic The Chosen Four, I've gathered some inspiration for my comic work. Sure, there are aspects that have inspired parts of my Mydan project, but mostly, I've found that my Steel House project has been the one where all this inspiration is going. It makes a lot more sense too, since the elements of Earthbound have more in common with April and her friends than Kamilla and Ruwei xD 

Here's a little screenshot redraw that I did with April and Farqua over the Ness and Titanic Ant.
(Source: pg 35 by Darrow)

I should also mention that, once again, I've been thinking about my Cosmic Loneliness project a little more again. And that's it. That's all I want to say for now.

Adding on to the pressure

Not too long ago, I made the decision to get started on drawing up the thumbnails for the prologue for my Mydan project. If me in the past found out I was doing this, I would be worried that I'd be going on a head a bit too early in the project. But now, I've chosen to go head-first into the waters. I want to channel my thoughts into a mindset close to the one I had in my first attempt at making a webcomic: going straight into production after a good-enough script to base everything. 

First, I wanted to get rid of that sense of perfectionism that has been stopping me from moving along in the past couple of years. When working on my SteelHouse project, my plan was to be around 5+ chapters ahead and make sure *everything* was in line and confirmed. But throughout the months, I kept making little tweaks and edits, always treating things like they were never ready. Because of that, I haven't even started making the right concept art.

I also thought that by doing this, I would be able to take my projects a crap-ton more seriously. I'd be setting myself time limits, due dates, and be not-so laid back when it comes to this stuff. There are many stories that I want to get out there, some in comic form, and knowing how long it takes to actually get a narrative out there, my lifespan won't be able to fit in everything in time, which is a pretty tough truth to face.

Anyways, here's the notebook I'm doing my thumbnails on. Here are the ones for only the prologue for my Mydan project, so I'm okay with showing you what I've got:

Hopefully posting again!

Log 2022-03-10

So, I guess I should start actually posting here, huh. I know it's been a long while since my last post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything in the past months. And I'm happy to say, I've made some nice progress (for my standard, at least).

Here's the current status for a bunch of  my major projects right now:

Gone Unsupervised!
Good news for this one: I'm actually drawing up the pages right now! This one's a long-term laid-back project so I'm hoping to keep up for as long as I can. The characters featured in this project have been with me since 2014 and they still have a very special place in my heart to this day, so I'm ffeeling pretty confident with that statement. I've got lots of ideas for this one, and since this is a comedic slice-of-life, I don't have to worry about too much of the story and worldbuilding as much as my other stuff.

Steel House in the Prairie
This one's on hold, currently: that's because there's a shorter story that I've got in mind that actually comes before SHP. Since this is a longer and more ambitious project, I feel like starting off with a story that's a bit less compared to SHP would do me a huuge favour in terms with the quality of it. Really excited to get back to this one, though.

Mydan: Post-Beginnings
Now, here's the story that comes before SHP, as well as the main major project I'm working on right now. Unfortunately, I'm still not past chapter 1 of the story, but I guess that's because I still want clarity on the basics of the story surrounding our narrative. I don't want exactly to "try too hard" with this story since this will be my first, but to keep it from being forgettable, I'll try gather some inspiration from the more simplistic stories of older video games.

The Side Effects of Outer Space Loneliness
This one is nothing more than a casual side-project. I plan for this to only be 24 parts long with a more simplistic art style. I'll just work on this whenever, but despite its lacking qualities, I still find myself enjoying working on this small project. Fun fact: I've had the concept of this strip series in mind since 2018!

Project: April and friends - Log #039

We are back!

Right! So it’s been ages since my last update log, but that’s (once again) not to say that I haven’t been working on anything since then. I’ve been working on more of the concepts side of my SHP project, as well as Mydan, the story that comes before that one. 

I also should mention that I’ve been focusing on my Mydan project a lot more, recently, particularly because I really want that one to come out before SHP does. It’s a lot tamer when it comes to story and characters, so I feel like I could get this one out pretty soon. I just got to get some concept art out of the way. Really excited, and I hope I actually live up to my word!