Comic Report #130 - Here We Go

And so it begins. This week I got a lot of comic done, which I'm happy about, since I have a lot of comic to do to get this scene in the archives. I'd said last week that I need to up my turnaround time to achieve what I want to do in a reasonable timeframe, and I think this is at least a good start to working towards that. I think I can get this comic page finished either by this time next week, or by the end of that weekend, and then I can jump onto the next one. I might be able to fit two pages in this month, and if I keep that pace going I think I could, uhh, get this scene wrapped up in time for Dead Winter's 18th birthday. Wouldn't that be something? However it goes I'm gonna do my best to compress three-and-a-half minutes of action in as little time as possible, and starting off it looks like I'm at least capable of achieving this goal.

To help speed up my workflow I've adapted one or two little process habits from my Titan Garden artwork. Usually when I prep a page I'll ink it and then I'll go in and hand-paint the flats beneath the lineart, because I wanted to make sure the tones got underneath the translucent aliasing of the lines. This probably speaks to how long ago I started working on these things, but I found if I fill-bucketed the flats into my lineart I'd get little gaps I didn't want, so blocking it in by hand made sure I had the smoothest results. The process trick I adapted from Titan Garden, which is a comparatively simpler style, involves duplicating the lineart into a layer below my actual lineart and fill-bucketing it all in, so if I happen to fill in a line it's not a big deal, my lineart is preserved. I started flatting this page in the usual way and when I thought about how many figures there are, and how many there will be in the future pages, I decided to duplicate my lines, flat it in and then convert all the black linework into the flat tone too. Worked like a charm, it did. Saved me a bunch of time.

What really saves me time, though, is definitely just having this whole thing plotted and choreographed in advance. When I compose a page a lot of the time that goes into it is trying to fit my camerawork into a panel. If I used a more static camera- one that didn't rotate from panel to panel with respect for the three-dimensionality of the scene- or if I just omitted background or just drew dynamic poses, I think I would go a lot faster, but I think I'd lose something I find valuable in my art. Plotting the camera movement is a lot of fun, whether or not it can seem invisible to a reader, I really enjoy rendering the space and motion of my cinematography in comics. It's a big component of why I do all this in the first place.

That's it for now. I'm gonna try to get this page as close to done as I can for next Saturday, I think if I can hit that mark and then follow up with the next one on a similar timescale I'll be in pretty good shape to get this momentum rolling. Thanks for checking in! We'll get through this challenge together. Until then, let's do our best and make it through the week.