“Lunatic” 9-5-16

Pretty full day of work today, on the Labor Day holiday monday.   I finished page 2.  In general, happy.  I think I am doing a little better using conte crayons for tone.  The composition works okay, and after some fussing and using acrylic to white-out, I like the expression on the nursemaid’s face.  The whole thing is drawn in conte crayon, and then I used black ink and white acrylic to punch up the figure and carriage so they stand out from the background:

1-2-v2-touchups

 

 

My one sorrow: I actually measured to try and get the two window-things to be the same size.. yknow, like they would be on an actual building.  But in the frantic heat of drawing, I somehow ended up with the one on the right much narrower.

I guess I could cheat, and squeeze the left side oft he picture in photoshop.  It goes against all my principles, but I’ll do it.  First I use the marquee tool to isolate different parts of the picture as separate layers:

p2-processs-left-windowp2-processs-right-windowp2-processs-bg

p2-processs-figure

Then, I stretch the right window layer out slightly… and squeeze the left window to be a little smaller, and combine all ingredients:

1-2-v2-touchups-reduced-windows

Barely noticeable, but it makes me happier, and took less than an hour.  And I even had some time to start sketching/planning next moves.  Back to thumbnails.

95-thumbs-19-5-thumbs-29-5-thumbs-3

 

Grappling with some basic questions for the spreads, and at this point I have to nail it down: the baby is looking up at the moon. The moon is looking down at the baby.  Does it work better to have them “facing” each other across the fold?

9-5-l-r-look

That seems the more obvious, reinforcing the left-right reading direction.

Or is it better to have them facing opposite directions.. baby on the left page, looking up and to the left / moon on the right-hand page (i think they’re called recto and verso), looking down to the right.

9-5-r-l-look

I feel like that could help the reader take in each image on its own, slow down the flow from image to image.

I fiddled with the layout a bit, and made another decision: have the baby reach for the moon, perhaps smiling, in the last page of the chapter.  Well, no, the LAST page would be black.  Which has some meaning: the baby reaches but grasps nothing of course.

reach

Sketches of page 2.  Working out the perspective.  If the baby’s going to reach in the last image, then her arms should be on top of the blanket (at least one arm should, and it has to be the left arm because when she reaches I don’t want it to block her face).

p-3-sketch-1

p-3-sketchpage-3-perspective-study

“Lunatic” 9-4-16

Am I over-sketching, over-fussing page in the preparations 2?  In danger of losing what’s good about the sketches, the freshness?  We’ll see  All I did today on the project was to start pencillling lightly…. trying to be a little more careful about the architecture and perspective, I even used a ruler!

1-2 light pencils

“Lunatic” progress: 9-3-16

…finished page one.

1-1flat 2 touchups

 

I wasn’t feeling so happy after finishing this page.  Didn’t really feel in control of the shading with conte and charcoal… felt muddy.  Even though it’s a fairly elaborate drawing, I still felt I rushed in places.  Not happy with the figure and the vehicles, after all those sketches.

But… better not to pay attention to those negative thoughts and move on.  Progress, not perfection!

(Still I might re-draw it at some point… MWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHHHAAAAHAHAAA!!!)

And I even had time to do some sketches of the next page.

9-3  p 2 sketch 1

9-3  p 2 sketch 2

just fine-tuning the composition/placement of architecture in the background:

9-3  p 2 sketch 3

Okay.

Although I used ink-spatter technique in the bg of my first sketch of this page, and had ideas of trying different techniques from page to page, I think that’ll be too much, it’ll be cacaphonous.  I’m going to stick with conte and ink again for this page.  There will still be a variety of media, as I’m going to use acrylics for the images of the moon, but that should be enough.  I’ll try the spattering again later, probably for chapter 3.

“Lunatic” Process: 9-1-16

Still on that first page, and didn’t have a lot of time to work on it today.  I wanted to get a better fix on the figure of the nanny, so I did a couple sketches:9-1 p1 fig sketch 19-1 p1 fig sketch2

Then a little more fussing with the composition.

9-1 - p1sketch 150

 

In the last post I said I was thinking about the personality of the picture, and I think what I mean by that is something of a playful quality, like children’s illustration.  Is this a book for children?  Not exactly… it will be acceptable for children, but I;m not really reaching out to children the way you have to in a kids’ book. I  think of it more as having the mood and aesthetic qualities of a fairly serious children’s story, but probably more for an older reader.

Anyway, even though it’s not a humorous story, I want some sense of whimsy in the style.  Looking for inspiration on my comics shelf, I chose one of my favorite comics, Gare Centrale, by Lewis Trondheim (writer) and Jean-Pierre Duffour (art).

gare central p1
Gare Centrale, by Duffour and Trondheim, p1

 

This book really should be published in English translation, I think people would love it.  It’s a Kafkaesque tale set in a train station, very funny and beautifully drawn. Lunatic is really nothing like it at all, in terms of story or drawing style, but sometimes something very different can still be an inspiration.

gare central p2tif

 

Lunatic 8/30-31

 

This is two-day’s work.

Day one:   I think I have the first chapter roughed out, here are my revisions after the mock-up.

8-29 thumbnails ch 1

So now I circle back to the first page, the “establishing shot.”   Since I first drew a rough version, I seem to have changed the dimensions that I’ll be working in… horizontal rectangle now, instead of a square.  I did a few sketches, getting all hung up on the perspective:

 

Day two:

Getting closer.

8-30 sketches

(those numbers are me trying to work out the dimensions of the final… based a little more on the way the mock-up worked.  I am now thinking 5.5 x 4.5)

Then I tried a “final” version, on this fancy drawing paper I bought.   Using pencil, conte crayon, brush and ink:

p1 try 8-30

 

I don’t really get this paper… the texture is too intrusive.  Maybe it’s just not to be used for this level of detail.

Otherwise, while I like this picture okay, I feel it’s lacking personality.  A little too “straight” of a drawing for this project.  I will try another approach tomorrow.

“Lunatic” process, 8-28-16

I woorked on the moon transition, from cloud-covered, to the face emerging.  This is done with black, white and gray acrylics. Though my plan has been this comic will be one image per page,  I’m thinking it’s too much to stretch this over several pages, so I will do a panel page for the transition.

moon transiton

Not sure of the composition yet….  maybe a more conventional grid.  Also, I had to flip the second panel because the direction of the cloud movement was wrong:

moon transiton adjust 2

I am finding that thumbnailing is inadequate for this project.  In order to sense if I am telling the story with the right rhythm, I feel like I need to see how the page turns will really work.

I do a rough thumbnail of the page spreads….8-28 ch 1 thumbs 1

Then I print up the pages with the right layout… trim and tape them together to create a little mock-up of the first “chapter” of the story:

1

2-34-5

6-7

8-9

 

Better to work this out in advance than after I have drawn “final” pages… some of the sight-line angles of the shot-reverse shot-type pages between the baby and the moon/roofline would be affected if I have to move things around (and I want to avoid the same direction diagonals on facing pages).

Reading the mock-up, I make some adjustments, thumbnailing a new set of spreads”8-28 ch 1 thumbs 2

Next, I’ll start roughing out these changed pages and see how it works….

 

“Lunatic” process: more baby steps

Just a lil time drawing yesterday… which is INFINITELY better than none at all, as I now realize/knew perfectly well all along.  Still sort of retracing my steps to get back to where I was a month or so ago.  Re-drawing the baby looking up at the moon, but also trying to refine the expressions ( it will be a sequence of 3 reactions, with subtle changes)8-26 baby1

8-26 baby28-26 baby3

8-26 3 babies

Lunatic process (oy, you call this a process?)

Well, for those of you who remember, I resolved to post every day’s work in my progress on this project.  Last post was over a month ago.  I didn’t stop posting…. I stopped working.

I guess that’s one thing about posting as you go, you have to reveal the embarrassing lapses in work habits.  Not that I was blocked or anything, just one thing or another got in the way, most of it unavoidable… FOR NEARLY SIX WEEKS!

I was doing so well, too…

Getting back into it is really hard.  Especially since this is kind of an experimental project for me.  But, enough complaining.  I dug up the sketches, and photo reference and stuff I had left lying around (to be covered over by the sifting sands of time)… and at least noodled around and did some sketches and thumbnails.

8-25 sketches

Had to remember how I am going to draw my protagonist, at various ages…. Fiddling around with her intense expression when she’s at work on her invention.  And (earlier) the scene where she is kissed on a park bench.  Plus more baby and young-girl looking at the moon faces, and playing around with moon expressions.

8-25 sketches1

8-25 sketches 2

And thumbnailing out the first chapter.  I actually find thumbnailing this one-image-per-page layout very challenging, trying to envision the spreads.  Also, thinking now that maybe I will actually break my one-image-per-page rule when needed.  For instance in the sequence where the face gradually appears on the moon.

8-25-16 ch 1 thumbs8-25-16 ch 1 thumbs2

“lunatic” process: 7-16-16

More photo reference and sketches, for the baby in the pram:

7-16 pram sketch4

I decided I don’t want to do more detailed sketches.  Getting a little burnt out on that, and also worrying about losing the spontanaeity if I expend too much effort drawing non-final images.  For this chapter, I think the next image I draw will be intended as final, not rough. Even though I’m still a little undecided on certain things, I think it’s better to work it out when I know it’s gonna count.  Just to avoid that feeling of not being able to capture what I liked about the rough version!

As far as the different media/effects I’ve been bouncing around with: Charcoal or conte crayon, acrylics, ink-splatter…. For now, I think my system is no system, just find the best medium or combination of media for each image/page.

Also, might be a bit of an interruption in this process… next week I need to spend time laying out the Shirley Jackson book, drawing an illustration, then Monday going away for a week.  So, probably not much progress on “Lunatic” until August….