Category: lunatic

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Comics process lunatic My Comics

“lunatic” process, 7-8-16

One problem with this “blog the process” experiment is that I’m thinking about the blog too much as I’m working on the comic!  Oh well…. on the other hand it’s a motivation, to make sure I’m getting some work done so I’ll have something to post.

Today, gathering more photo research, like this:

Then some character sketching.  In this story I depict the character as an infant, as a girl of about 10, as a teenager, as a university student, in her 30s & 40s, so how to maintain some kind of continuity, which features are most characteristic?.7-8-16 chararcter scribbles

Thinking about style: how should I draw her eyes?  I’ve tended toward dots lately, but I think maybe i’ll draw full eyes this time.

7-7-16 character sketch

 

I went back to studies for the first page/first scene.

7-8-16 p1 rough

 

7-8-16

Second page study.  Not a bad sketch, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the style I’ll be drawing in, that’s my guess. Well, not much to do with it.  I’m intrigued by the idea of using conte or something like it for shading.

I’ve decided that this story is divided into 7 chapters, all fairly short, single scenes, though they gradually get longer.

chapters

Not terribly thrilled with my productivity today, but better than yesterday.  As long as I’m working on it, it’ll get done eventually…

 

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Comics process lunatic

“lunatic” process, 7-7-16

The thing about this experiment is, I have to post on the bad days as well as the good.  The bad days aren’t where I do bad work, it’s where other nonsense eats up my day and I do pathetically little.  So here we go.  One page of sketchbook scribbles, with a sketch of page 2 in the center and some very loose thumbnailing around it:

sketches 7-7-16

I meant to do character sketches, but that’ll have to be tomorrow.

I can make myself look a little better by also posting these studiesI did when I was messing around with acrylics last week:

acrylic sketches

See you tomorrow.

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Comics process lunatic Process & studies

“lunatic” process: July 6 2016

Real-time blogging on the process of my new project, still at very early stages.  The plan is one image per page.  I want to take each image seriously so it can hold its own, not being part of a sequential page layout.  Which means in some cases that I will have to do as much reference and sketching for a single image as… well a lot.

Such is the case with my first image.  It’s an “establishing shot” of a Victorian or Edwardian street scene, residential.  I gathered plenty of photo reference, thanks to Google (“Victorian Street” mostly):

victorian street residential 2

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Comics process lunatic Process & studies

New project: real-time process posts! (“Lunatic”)

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:

first thumbnails 1

first thumbnails 2

first thumbnails 3first thumbnails 4

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.