Comic Report #129.1 - New Glass

Okay so, this has been an exciting week for me. Between last week and now I managed to get my inks and flats down on this page and start getting into some painting. The painting is what I'd been looking forward to the most about this new tablet, and this page is gonna be the first testbed for what my new tablet can do. Today I'm gonna talk a little bit about that, and also reflect on my old tablet, because I feel as though I've found some new truths in my old art in comparison.

For a while now I'd felt like my art had become more limited, less painterly and more shapeful- I'd interpreted this at the time to just an evolution towards more efficient use of value contrast, but the very first thing I did when I started painting a figure with my new tablet is render clothing fabric like I used to in the earlier pages of the comic. Like this wasn't a conscious choice, I just did it and it looks nice. The new tablet's pressure sensitivity is lending itself very well to the kinds of gradient shapes I used to do- like Spade's cloak in the first panel, or Snake-Eye's shirt in the second. I'm real excited about what kind of art I can do once I acclimate to this new piece of hardware, but now I'm thinking, what was going on with my art before?

I have this suspicion, now that I'm painting on a new tablet and I have maybe 10x the pen pressure sensitivity I had before- was my old tablet just gradually dying over all that time? Was I losing pen pressure and losing these gradients, and was that why my art looked a bit more efficient and a bit less painty? Was I just gradually losing pen sensitivity and adjusting my art to accommodate? Now that I've got the new rig, the contrast is striking. I feel like the weights are off, I have so much more overhead space to work with. When I get to my background pass, I think this one might really look good, and I think the difference will end up being substantial.

So, in planning for the coming pages, I've made a little note for myself for later, when I get to the backgrounds. I'd initially drawn the wall cutaway in the first panel as wood beams and drywall, but I'm going to need that wall to be more substantial in a few pages, so I'm making a note to myself to make it look like brick before I'm done. I'll often make a new layer like this to leave myself notes, because I know I'll forget if I don't and keeping the notes on their own layer will mean they don't affect my art at all. It's a small thing but it's worth pointing out, I think.

While I have you here, I am gonna put an idea out for you: the next few pages after this one are gonna be a musical choreograph segment, and I had the idea that I could use this Patreon to share how I plan and coordinate those things- since I've done two others in the past, there's end results to prove what I'm aiming to do, but I haven't actually showed the whole process of how I plot my art to read-along to the original studio recording of a song before. What I'd like to know from you is: would you like to see the whole process laid out like that? It'll involve spoilers for a few pages, you'll see how everything goes and what the outcome will be, but since it's all tied to a specific song it might be a bit more impactful to read about the process holistically. Let me know what you think!

Anyways, that's what I got for now. I think I might be able to get this page done in this next week cycle, and then it'll be go time. Thanks for checking in! Until next week: take it easy out there.