LookingLand

i've just spent the last three hours over-processing pictures for Reconstruction. didn't i have some very simple rules for this challenge? i especially seem to recall that these rules very specifically meant to cut out the post-painting digital processing (shading, lettering, etc.)

why am i having such a problem following my own rules?

...so annoyed with myself.

edit: okay, i undid the mess. all is well in the world again.

: D

so this is the direction i'm sorta going in. it doesn't look much different now probably, but it's evolving and will probably continue to change as it stabilizes.

in deference to some concerns about the sepia tinting, i went ahead and kept the sepia paint, but have left it unfiltered (so the outlines are black, etc.). i think it will be a fair compromise. the pages won't look slick because i'm not adding any digital overlays (though when we get to night scenes, i'll probably cheat and add them because God knows i can't paint scenes in the dark.

i'll get better at the lettering also. i have nervous hands so my balloons are kinda monstrously hideous, but i'll work on improving those as well. my mistake here was using a template to pencil in balloons that i then tried to go over with the pen. i do much better if i just freehand the dern things. i don't care if they aren't perfect, but i do want them to look confident and intentionally misshapen rather than woggly like this.


the nicest thing about this? the time between scanning and posting was negligible. i fixed a few stray lines and adjusted some lettering just slightly (it was obnoxiously off-centered). but otherwise, i just cropped and posted. easy as pie. and that's what i really want: something i don't have to work on so much on the computer.

so yay all around.

i do have to trade in the ink on my calligraphy pen for some india. you can see how it ran on Lewis's collar there. and we can't have that.

p.s. this panel is on page 18, i believe, so it's four pages away and you'll see it again in a couple of weeks.

: D

in trying to fulfill faynudibranch's request for jokes about Andrew Johnson, i started drawing a scene between James and "skin trader" MishMash. couldn't get the joke to work, but there is mention of the "fatuous sot, Andy", which i hope will do for now.

James's relationship with MishMash is an odd one (and definitely unexpected). it almost sorta makes sense why James's relationship with States Morse is so hostile when you see how he is with MishMash and the sort of resentment that gets built out from Mish's attitude and the way his rabid abolitionism colors his world. and Mish is such the sydney carter of this world. he pops in and out of people's lives somewhat bizarrely (and with none of them ever knowing about the others) and then it's to a far far better place that he goes in the end. Mish and the Tall Blond Soldier share a lot of qualities in that regard. they are probably the two characters i love most who don't have "books" of their own (and aren't getting any either, sorry guys).



in my bid to capture the family resemblance,
i made his hair too flat (it should be floofier and
less combed, i suppose), but all in all not bad
for a first attempt at a character.
working on this scene has been sorta fun. Mish's over-the-top fanaticism is refreshing in a world where everyone else seem so uncertain of what they are doing. and i forget how wonderfully nasty James can be if provoked. he definitely has his dark side. put the two together and they are a fun pair to create dialogue for. unfortunately, this scene and a scene in which ladies' underwear features prominently are the only two times we ever see them together, which is a shame.

i guess i oughta start posting these boogers instead of talking about them, huh?

: o p

did some random experimenting today. i had an "event" in mind, but the two pictures were very randomly chosen (clearly i was in a mood to draw Morse with his crazy long hair, though i think when this scene actually happens, he ought to have it tied back...and he ought to be wearing a hat ~ my great sin against 19th century historicality is forever going to be people wandering around without hats. i can't help it. Lewis looks stupid in hats and always has ~ but i don't know why i always forget to put a hat on Morse. i'll try harder).

pardon the discursion: back to the image.

there's not a whole lot about this that's different from what i was doing before except that it's got a bit more white space between panels and i'm thinking about it strip-style instead of page-style. i was also goofing with the layers and throwing some texture on it (a wee bit of shadow on the boom ~ i like the boom).


it's also a lot "tighter". i tend to plan my "shots" poorly so that there's too much background and i'd like to avoid that. one of the things that SPQR Blues does that i really like is focus on the characters and their expressions. it doesn't do a whole lot of wide or complicated angles. since i am very poor at perspective drawing, that appeals to me. it's also not too tiny for details, but tiny enough that i feel confident.

i kinda like it. in theory.

i'm also painfully aware of the fact that i really do need to work from a more cohesive script. my thumbnails are mostly a mess. and notice how they are laid out in a strip-style? so i don't know why i changed my tactics on that. i'm dum.


none of this solves the "grit" problem, of course ~ but right now, the bigger fish to fry is story-wise. i promised myself i wasn't going to get roped into some linear chronology, but i did just that. by eliminating the narrative voice, i locked the story into a logical progression of scenes. foo! as a result i have been sorta stuck on figuring out what arc i'm after here, when there was never supposed to be an arc. so i need to either bring back the narrative voice or rethink this in some other way yet again.

geh. i need something with balloons on it to throw darts at.

mebbe then i could win a prize.

: o p

i continue to struggle with color envy. i want oooo shiny colors like on Phoenix Requiem, but i am utterly incapable of working with a palette, it seems. i dunno. maybe this coming weekend i could try some things, but i feel like every time i start messing with digital coloring, i just get up crick without a paddle. monotones are safer.



it's sort of weird telling the story this way. i am developing some anxiety about the structure, but i'll try to keep that hound at bay as long as i can. i have a lot of thumbnails worked out in a general sense, but there are still holes here and there that i need to work on and i am sort of itchy at how much work this is (have i mentioned that i am lazy?). but really, it's not the degree of work that's frustrating so as much as it is just the slowness of it: i put in a lot of hours on the weekend and even though i did a lot, it ain't moving fast enough.

and the semester is starting to creep, school-wise, so pretty soon midterms are going to be biting in me in b-hind. but once turkey day is here, it's all over (yay!), though i am not looking forward to the whole job-hunting/moving process.

anyway...not much to say lately, i guess. busy in my head, i s'pose. and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

: D

the sun sets on another sunday ~

i have worked on a lot of odds and ends this weekend (prolly more odd than end, but that's about par for the course). it took me most of the evening to draw the "rembrandt" picture i mentioned the other day. it was a lot more complicated than i anticipated and i'm mostly pleased with the results, though i am not sure if it "reads" well. i posted a preview under the cut if you want to take a gander at it and tell me what you think. it ain't finished, but the shape is basically in place.

the lettering will be larger and legible on the final, but in case you can't read it, it's Mark 4:37-40ish. i'm sort of torn as to whether the image conveys well enough what i want it to, and don't know whether the quote helps or just confuses the matter. again, mebbe you swell flisters can give me your impressions. other than dead andy lying in state, this is the "opening" image of the story, so i feel like it has to carry all sorts of important tonal/metaphorical junk (you know, all that writerly crap).

okay, enough of me blithering again.

( click me if you want to see the pencils )

hope everyone had some bright moments this weekend! i saw 3:10 to Yuma on sattidy. review is in the works.

: D

it took me most of the morning to draw dead andy, which is unfortunate (that's pretty slow even for me, and the picture is still not finished). but then, it's a complicated picture and i had to fuss with it a lot.

this is the opening image in whatever it is i'm currently working on (this is technically Remember, Linwood Brown, but i don't know if that will actually be the title in the long run). i had wanted to open with rembrandt's painting, but it occurred to me that i could work in even more layers of schtuff if i opened with dead andy instead. so here's dead andy and rembrandt will be next.

andy is one of those characters who i created knowing he was going to die, but he was necessary for so many reasons, and, in all fairness, he lived a lot longer than anyone expected he might. it also mitigates my own guilt that since he's dead in the opening scene, we can hope he's got a life of flashbacks to count on.



i didn't feel like drawing this morning, but i forced myself to do it anyway (discipline, discipline, discipline). the picture's not astonishingly good in any way, but i like it well enough (and will tweak some more when i ink it. i'm still thinking of changing that candlestick to a votive instead, for example). i altered it a bit from my initial thumbnail sketch (enlarged somwhat in this scan ~ my thumbnails are usually about an inch high):



i wanted Morse kneeling, but it seemed like that would dictate one extra step to get him on his feet to touch andy's face and i didn't feel like that was warranted. i haven't figured out certain kinds of progressions well enough to know how to pull something like that off without it feeling like bad film editing. but i am nonetheless determined to make this mostly a learning experience.

and i also sort of randomly feel like i might delete much of the front half of this journal (just as a necessary purgative), and that i need new lj tags. but it's hard to know where to start.

something to mull.

look alive everybody, tomorrow's friday!

: D

this morning i woke up to a cold breeze knocking all the paper off of my desk. then i made my first cup of hot tea for the season (yay!).

i was sort of feh feh on the whole drawing thing as i puttered around picking up the scattered papers, but managed to combat it by forcing myself to sit down and draw. i had for a long time imagined isaac's cdv to show him holding a carbine and was a bit unsure how i felt when i finally got his picture without one. but having drawn him, it seems refreshingly apropos that he's not holding a weapon. like morse, it should seem contrary to his character to carry a gun, and really, i think that's the source of lewis's initial trust with morse ~ that he reminds him of his cousin.

anyway, so i made some minor changes (like adding a bit of length to his hair and lengthening his face. this is just a pencil rough, so i have some further adjustments and refining to do.

the original picture sure shows a handsome fella (love the typical placement of the feet in his pose). the picture was taken in philadelphia, but other than that i have no information about it. whoever he was, i hope he had a good life and didn't die too young.

i've been reading online comics, including cowboys and aliens (in a sort of car-wreck gawking way ~ and yet this is scheduled for movie production in 2008. it's just loopy enough that it might work, who knows). also, hero (great art, but sort of airy for my tastes). i should prolly also mention fungus grotto, which is likewise beautifully drawn, though the pacing doesn't do much for me. and SPQR blues, which is sort of addictive in its simplicity. finally, for those of you who love the belgian style of comics, rainbow orchid is fabulous (and can be added to your f-list feed via rainboworchid).

though i have posted here a handful of mostly gems, the real reason i've been browsing online comic art is to see what's confidently out there and not quite so great and boy is there tons of unabashed doodling and scribbling and scrawling, to all of which i have to give great respect in spite of its flaws because those people made commitments. they created something. they drew it. they posted it.

i spent the week away from In Pursuit of Said Conspiracy and away from writing for the most part. away from reading as well, as my head is quite full, thank you dr. mitchell, and i'd like a break. instead i have been drawing (yes, that was a cold breeze that passed through hell just now), and i've realized a couple of important things:

1.) my art doesn't "suck", i'm just supremely lazy. even after not doodling for six months since i officially "quit" trying i can see plainly that my work has improved by enormous leaps since 2005.

2.) moomsy is right (natch): this whole "comparing" business is just death on a stick (and not even the fun carny kind, just cobwebs and old bones). in the same way that i can't write like other people, i can't draw like other people. i'm just me and i have to find a way to get along with myself better.

3. you can't get anything done if you spend all your time planning to get it done and none of your time actually doing it.

4. i lack courage (always have).

some of these strike me as "obvious" lessons, but i've always been thick-headed in this department. i also know that i am happiest just "doing" (which is why planning is such a compulsion with me ~ it's always moving forward, but requires only a fragment of the energy of actually creating). planning is also "safe". so long as you are planning, then nothing is finished and nothing is susceptible to criticism. truth is, i can take all the critique in the world when it comes to writing, but one negative word about my art just slays me. this comes from having an artist for a brother, sure, but also from years and years of being asked "why do you waste your time with that?"

if i've wasted time, it was listening to comments like that.

so i drew today. and painted. and made all sort of glorious mistakes ~ in fact, the original piece of artwork from which these panels were generated got mostly destroyed at some point while i was experimenting with backgrounds on it. i feel iffy about the colors, but there you have it and there it is. and let's hear it for the power of digital salvage!

( click me! )

my one disappointment with this is all the work i went through to draw a set of tea cups and saucers on the shelf and it got buried behind the text. how to make effective backgrounds is still a mystery to me.

anyway, so is everyone having a nice weekend?

: D

i know i can be hard on myself about my laziness, lack of inertia, etc.

i am slowly working through things. i am reminded that there's so much on my plate it's no wonder i feel like my wheels are spinning sometimes.

and then there's just the reality that i spend a lot of time in recharge mode (reading, surfing, frittering).

this year at ComicCon, in addition to bringing the fourth issue of Eleison, we're premiering a series called (for the sake of simplicity) Jack. my brother has finally reached the end of the artwork and i am starting to prep it for the printer. i think it's mostly coming along okay! my brother's art, as usual, is mondo boss patois. you'll be able to read more about it on my website soon (yet another thing i need to get around to finishing ~ yeeks).

anyway, all this playing around with sequential art has me wanting to draw again after so definitively giving it up.

sigh.



p.s. happy mothers' day, all you mothers on my flist!

: D