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...

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.