What I Did Today

Weekends lately have a habit of getting away from me. Sometimes the house is quiet so I can get up like any weekday and work. Other times things get busy and I get pulled in different directions. When you stay up late getting up early on Monday isn’t so easy. :/ I’d been planning to launch my next webcomic in June but the more I thought about it the more I realized it would be better to spend time building a buffer. Letting my brain escape from “must finish this or die” mode was good, though I did go a bit off the rails. I spent today working on two pages but decided to try them again tomorrow because the drawings were coming out subpar. Very likely a result of not being used to drawing the characters yet. Perhaps working on another model sheet and keeping it up while drawing pages will help.

In other news I finally bought Cities: Skylines after debating it for awhile. I haven’t played a city sim since probably Sim City on the NES. I’ve heard good things and watched plenty of Let’s Plays. I was really hoping I could just spend some time strolling through the city but even on the lowest speed things get a bit hectic and you’re losing the game if you’re not floating above managing everything. I may try some speed mods to vary the gameplay up a bit.

Spent today drawing and inking. Still have two more to finish tomorrow. Looking forward to coloring since it requires less concentration. When I’m drawing I tend to listen to music. Coloring I’ll listen to podcasts and see if I can relax a bit. It’s good to switch things up when working on projects. As much as I love drawing, when there’s a deadline and I have to get things done I want to be doing anything else.

I’ve been trying to decide on my update schedule. I’d feel better about it if I had more of a buffer but wish in one hand and all that. Updating a webcomic is a bit like trying to build a fence to stop a boulder while it’s rolling down hill. You think you’re far enough down to build something solid and then WHAM! Better hurry or you’ll just get behind. Never listen to anybody who tells you, “Oh, just update when you feel like it.” That’s a surefire way to kill a webcomic right there. It’s also dangerous to upload ahead and feel safe. You need to have enough ready to go but never take it for granted. Basically always assume the tank’s almost empty every time you refill it or else it’ll run dry.

Finished inks on three pages. Worked on the fourth until my hand cramped and decided to call it a day. I really like how things are looking so far, just not crazy about how long each page is taking. Then again, nobody ever says, “Nah, we’re way too ahead of schedule.” They’ll take as long as they take. I just have to agree to sit my butt in the chair until it’s over.

Sometimes I feel the stuff I post is too Inner Game of Tennis. Some folks probably respond with, “Quit whining and just do the work!” I can understand that. Except when an artist grits their teeth it comes through in the work. I want every bit of what I make to look like I care a lot about it and that it was a joy to produce. So I think about how I wear the manager’s hat while dealing with the artist’s hat. It’s easy to talk about technique and process, to discuss software and whatnot, but the best way to do a thing is to do a thing. If you’re not focused on doing the thing and enjoying it you find distractions to focus on. The distractions can feel productive because they’re about productivity, in the neighborhood of being productive, but not really. So in the end it comes to butts in seats doing a thing until the thing is finished.

Woke up early this morning about 4:30. Penciled pages until I couldn’t focus anymore, which wasn’t too long with this humidity. I think I need to put my model sheet up on my second monitor along with the other reference I’m using. Characters should evolve as you draw them but not over a couple pages. I spent too much of my early morning energy writing down plans for the behind the scenes project. I need to stop thinking about that until the weekend or at least until I get more of a buffer done.

All I’m going to focus on tomorrow is drawing and inking. I just need to tighten up the sketches I have done so far. Might let myself ink in between pages since it helped me get my second wind yesterday. I want to enjoy myself and get lost in the work. I might split the next batch up because seven pages at a time is a lot to get done. Smaller victories are important with motivation. I’d hate to get six pages done in a day and be kicking myself for not getting all of them. Better to set an obtainable goal.

Today was spent penciling and inking pages. Things are coming along nicely now that it’s all drawing. I’m going to get a week’s worth done before I color or shade anything. That way I can take a little time to make up my mind and then go for all of them. It’s rejuvenating to see the clean inks when I hide the sketch layers. The plan for tomorrow is to pencil whatever’s missing early. I love inking but when you finish one page diving into an empty one becomes daunting. I work better when I convince myself, “Oh, just this little part to finish.”

In other news, I’ve come up with an idea for bringing back the WIP posts. I’d like to try doing something of a behind the scenes series. Before I was doing like a journal with it but now I’m thinking over-all structure. Treat it more like the podcast or a TV show with seasons. Then I can divvy things up for the various places I want to put them. It came to me tonight so I’m going to stew on it a few days. This is the kind of planning you sleep on so you wake up with ideas. I want to bring back Daily Doodles, too, but I need to build up a bunch of them so I’m not sharing all that I have every day. It would be a good daily exercise to let myself draw whatever I want for a set time each day but I suspect it’d be best to do a lot of it over a weekend or something and slowly incorporate it into my routine.

Spent today sorting out word balloons and panel borders. I don’t wanna sound controversial or anything, but I personally prefer rounded rectangular balloons. Ovals look a little pointy and make it harder to fit bigger blocks of text. Manga Studio has word balloon tools, which are nice though they’re basically the same as having shapes with layer effects in Photoshop. I’m going for a slightly imperfect hand-drawn kinda look. Basically it’s the same reason I went with a font based on my handwriting. The trick is to not over do it and get something wonky. Things are coming together. I just need to block in some more pages of balloons and borders so I can spend my time drawing again. Now that I’ve figured out the process I’ll hopefully speed it up.

Slept in today as I mentioned I would. It was nice to sleep uninterrupted by an alarm. The plan tonight is to get in bed once I’m done posting and hopefully get up early tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes. I have the most energy to work in the morning. When I wake up later it seems I get less done. I’d really like that to just be a psychosomatic thing so I can train myself to work all day. I think what it is is striking the balance between enjoying what I’m making and finishing something quantifiable. When I’m enjoying myself I’m left with doodles. When I’m working to finish something I get anxious I’m not going to finish on time and I lose the fun of making. It’s a delicate balance I’ve posted about before on the blog. It’s hard to talk to people about it because often they’ll either think I’m making excuses or tell me I don’t have anything to worry about. Neither of those is good to hear. Nobody wants to be told, “Oh please, you don’t have real problems…” I think it’s good to address we all have insecurities, they matter to us because we’re all human beings with thoughts and feelings, and sometimes they take up more brain space than they should. That’s the best way to get over them, I find.

Today I decided to resize the font for the pages I’ve worked on so far to a size that will scale better. (33.2, to be exact) I also looked at a model sheet I made and realized I’d been drawing my main character’s teeth wrong. That’s a good thing to catch before pages go live, I’d say. I did some experimenting with different brushes and I’ll be doing some more later. Hopefully I’ll have a good play with them tomorrow.

Today was mostly spent testing out a workflow. I need to place text and block in panels at reduced size. Then I can increase resolution for tighter penciling and inking. I’ve been using Frenden’s hairpin sable since it’s the most natural looking inker. I should probably test out some others, though. It’s good practice for somebody who draws as heavy handed as I do but a more consistent line width would probably fit my art better.

I’m going to sleep in tomorrow. I usually set my alarm for 5 but I’ve had a hard time getting up to it this week. I think the drop in temperature lately has made me lethargic. That and the fact that it’s already 1:30 in the morning means I’m just going to try to recharge tomorrow.

Spent today doing some more penciling and inking. Adjusted the kerning on the font so I had to move words around. It’s legible at print and high res but when it shrinks down to dashboard size it’s too small. Bumping it up so it scales better makes it harder to work around. I should probably be drawing the roughs at the smallest size first just to make sure it all reads. Still bouncing between Manga Studio and Photoshop with the lettering and drawing. Of course I’ve been drawing in vector which doesn’t save to .psd but allows me to switch sizes so it’s important for these first few pages until I work things out. Also confused why a vector layer can’t have a fill but whatever.

Stylistically I’m a little conflicted. I like when things flow and look clean. This results in simple lines. My brain keeps telling me that’s wrong, that these are illustrations not animations, so they need to be more detailed. I might be stressing too much over it. I just need to get in the zone while drawing and cut anything that gets in the way. Maybe if I take more frequent breaks.

Today I went back to penciling. The template changes I made last week meant the page I penciled needed some reworking. I also started another page rather than inking. I’m trying to get used to Manga Studio’s lettering tool which is different from Photoshop’s but not hard to understand. I just keep accidentally clicking wrong and dragging. I tend to marque a square for text in Photoshop since it lets you control the area the font runs into. Manga Studio acts more like when you click and type with creating a string of text. It’s also really easy to accidentally resize text because it gets surrounded by scaling dots I keep hitting while trying to edit. As I’m writing/lettering pages I’m stress testing the font. It needs to stay at the different sizes I’m zoomed to. This led to redrawing the “e” so it’s not mistaken for a “c” as well as scaling the period and comma. I think kerning’s going to be next on the fix agenda though I want to get more art done before I fiddle with that.

Saw Age of Ultron yesterday. I found it fun just like Avengers was. It had a lot of plot threads running together but it is kind of the spoke for the Marvel movie wheel so that’s to be expected. As the movie started I was trying to plot out some coming pages of the new comic but my brain immediately pushed ideas for another project out. This just reinforces my claim that if you want to generate a lot of ideas just try to work on something else. Set a deadline for something and ideas will come crawling out of the woodwork, “You could be working on me instead!”