Progress Report!

Hey folks! Here's your second update of the month on what I've been up to. PLEASE scroll past my Check, Please! updates if you don't want spoilers for Check, Please!: Year Four back matter.  👍

Project Yesenia

I spent most of this week re-thumbnailing/re-writing the first chapter of my graphic novel! Ho boy, the first draft of this first chapter was exceedingly rough. I feel like I've only recently figured out the protagonist's voice/personality as well as the tone for this graphic novel.

Thumbnails for a classroom page.

The first attempt at chapter one was very dramatic/moody but not engaging? I was trying to pull imagery from literature and got really cutsey with my page layouts. The opening pages of Project Yesenia now are straightforward, funnier, and revolve around being a nervous/tired/anxious high-schooler!!! Which is what I want to read about!!

Some thumbnails I made this week.

Check, Please!: Year Four 

Frog Charms! In the making!

Most of the Check, Please! work I've been doing these days has been creating back matter for the Check, Please!: Year Four book. It's been fun! HUGE spoilers for back matter content!

Shopping!

Jack: I like Bitty a lot
Jack: what ring says that

me, emotional for no reason: BITTY HAS LEARNED THINGS HE DIDN'T KNOW......AND HE CAN FINALLY TAKE CARE OF HIS YOUNGER SELF.....HE'S STRONG ENOUGH TO CHECK/BE CAPTAIN/TELL HIS PARENTS HE'S GAY....EAT THE DAMN PIE....ERIC BITTLE!!

• I LOVE THEM........I LOVE THEM.....
• UGH......Hops becoming captain and being really outgoing and a leader around his freshmen, but a total goober when bitty or dex come back to the haus.
• I should just draw that and post it so that it doesn't morph into hearsay fanon
  OUR CAPTAIN LOVES NARUTO
• Whiskey'd probably be captain after Dex right. So it really goes Jack >> R&H >> Bitty >> Dex >> Whiskey >> Hops
• The Samwell Swallow
  - We Thought We Were Done With The Hockey Team And Then We Saw Them Naruto Run
  - Caught On Tape: Weebs
  - Who Is Responsible???

SCAD Mentorship

I also finished up the mentorship program for the Sequential Art students at SCAD! It ended up being a closed Zoom call (and even then we had to deal with trolls! The students handled it SO well.)

You can check out the students' art/social on this Tweet Thread.

It was such a fun Final Critique!!!! I was so impressed with the work the students turned in and was thrilled to give them feedback on their projects. For each student, I gave a "word salad" or a jumble of adjective and nouns as a reaction to their work. "Cute punk" "heart-driven" "Grungey textured" and "YA Teen Rave" are some examples. 

I loved being a mentor! 10/10 Would do again!!

Madison

No big Madison updates this time around. I spent most of my week (when not working on Project Yesenia) working on back matter for Year Four.

Fan Comic! (Jeeves & The Turnip Goddess)

I'm working on a fancomic called Jeeves and The Turnip Goddess. It's a story about Bertie and Jeeves helping Bertie's old school pal, Bingo Little, find a mysterious woman they ran into on the streets of London.  I've been enjoying drawing these pages while sitting on the couch and zoning out through Netflix/podcasts! I've draw half of these pages while on the phone with friends! 

My goal for these pages is quantity > quality. I also want to keep pushing my colors and page layouts. (I'm not USED??? To working in this traditional vertical page layout format? Believe it or not?)

If it seems like I'm making less Jeeves and Wooster fanart, it's because this fancomic is like making 8  j&w illustrations a week. You can check out my Jeeves and Wooster sideblog for updates!

And that's it from me! Thankful to be a busy (ish) bee.