(A diary of the making of this chapter, which begins with the first day’s work at the bottom, and moves up)

March 13: summing up the last 6 months of work.

Yes, six months later, and I am still working on chapter 4. The slow pace partly because of interruptions and creative blocks, but also because this chapter turns out to be the longest so far, and I run into certain problems.  And I’m still not finished with it!

So I’ll bring this up to date, starting with page 2, which I completed in late September. Pencils:

Inks (still just inkwashes, the line work remains pencil):

Page 3.  I went through several versions of this, over the last couple weeks of October (MICE season.  A pencil version that I abandoned. I don’t really remember what I didnt like about this. The placement of the figure, maybe?  

More pencils:

And the ink washes added to that version:

Again, five months later and I’m not sure why I wasn’t satisfied with this. But, apparently, I wasn’t.  The shape of the skirt is a little blobby, maybe that was it.  Anyway, here’s the final version.  Maybe I’ll end up using the previous one, I don’t know. I got options!

Onto page 4, which was pretty simple, just one try (11/2/17):

September 20: Page one, at last!

After the slow process of the last few chapters, I’ve resolved to be more spontaneous, and allow myself fewer “re-do’s.”  Here’s the first page, drawn in one try, without any additional rough versions.  I changed the composition from the rough I’d done for the mockup, from this: 

To this, the pencils for the final page:

Before diving straight into the washes, I did a little digital experiment with tones, just to see how it might look, leaving the ground white and darkening the gate in the FG almost to black:

Good enough, so I did the same thing with washes.  I made some other changes first.  I added the professorial figure with the cane, on the right, to reinforce the academic setting.  Then, digitally, I adjusted the lettering on the gate a little, because it felt out of perspective to me (by the way, that’s Latin for “knowledge is power.”)  Final page:

Looking at it now, I think I might digitally darken the washes, and erase the pavement lines, to leave the ground a solid white shape with darker figures against it — more like the digital-tone version above.  That’s more of the graphic look I’d like for this.

Continue reading ““Lunatic” process: chapter 4″ →

In the past I’ve done process posts after-the-fact, when I was feeling good enough about how a particular project turned out, I’d go back and post the thumbnails, roughs, etc.

For my next project, I’ve decided to try and post the process as it goes along.  This is a little scary, since the project itself is somewhat experimental, and there may be frustrations along the way, which I’ll have to share as they come, with whoever may be reading the posts.  Still, I’m going to try.

This new project is a wordless comic, and I want to try it as a one-image-per-page story.  Maybe at about 5″ x 5″ or so, I’m not sure.  The title is “Lunatic.” It’s sort of like a children’s story, but not necessarily aimed at children.  I don’t think I’ll explain the story just yet.  I guess it’s got a bit of Victorian sci-fi to it.

The process started, actually, in late 2014, I think.  The story came to me, and I scribbled down a panel-by-panel outline in a sketchbook.  I’ve just now scanned the pages.  They get more scribbly as it moves along, and I can’t really decipher the last page too well myself.  Here they are:

The story’s sort of rattled around in my head since then, and it seems now to have reached the front of the queue.  As I’ve re-told the story to myself I’ve made some conscious changes (like the gender of the protagonist, for instance).  But now, looking at these old thumbnails for the first time in a couple years, I can see that I’ve changed some things about the story in my mind without realizing.   Now I have to assess if I like the changes, or want to go back to the original ideas.   The face in the moon was something that I had forgotten – was that a good idea or not?  It has its charm, and I’m tempted to go back to it.