Pics
Complete with notes-on-what-I-don’t-like. I think inking is just something you’ve got to look at after you’re done, acknowledge what’s wrong with it, and try to do better next time… when I try to fix things, I always make them worse.
This is what’s next in line, after the short comic.
It isn’t really like the dialogue is any super-secret awesome surprise. I liked how the panel turned out, except for the size of her hand. No amount of white gouache can fix that, so I think I’ll probably resize it in Photoshop when I have everything scanned and am fine tuning.
That day seems far away, though.
So on questions of whether this comic will be published, the answer is: most likely! I’m making it for Afterworks 3, which is an anthology comic put together by Ted, Nate, and Scott, showcasing comics done by Pixar people. Provided that the page count for the book doesn’t have to be chopped and I get this short done on time (and if it fits with what everyone else is doing), this comic should be in AW3, which is In The Works.
Art.
Another page inked, but this one I’ve got to go back into tomorrow and redraw a closeup which is not shown here. It is not shown here because I want to give the impression that I’m good at drawing, so I’ll fix it all quiet-like and then probably just pretend the fixed version was the original.
It would maybe be a good idea to do a model sheet of my main character, I’m beginning to think. From panel to panel, he seems to have nothing in common with his previous incarnations except that he’s a guy.
Hrm.
I’m inking on vellum(?) that’s been punched for animation pegs. I don’t know exactly what it is, because it was a I’m-not-using-this-and-it’s-cluttering-my-office-do-you-want-it kind of gift (thanks Craig!), but I can see the pencils through it because it’s so transparent, so I’m happy with it.
Pencils are on marker paper, which is not as fancy as vellum but works pretty much the same way (but with more tooth ). The moleskine cahier sketchbook in the photo last post is an inking-warmup kind of thing I’m doing: I get the brush and ink and a french comic book, and I shamelessly copy the figures and inking until I’m not copying anymore and instead am messing around and doodling, and then I start inking on the actual vellum.
Here’s a sample of tonight’s work.
Steve said the other day: “Where other people bite their nails, Emma draws horses. It’s a nervous habit.”
aaaand I guess it’s true.
Starting inking on my 15 page short, and quality is all over the map, except for the continent of awesome which is unnervingly barren of anything of mine.
It’s a little frustrating to be doing this, because I know that by the time I get finished inking the 14th page, I will be saying to myself in a congratulatory tone, “boy have you figured out inking! and you are fast, too!”
I may pat myself on the back, or shake my own hand, even.
My point being that I’m only going to grow arrogant enough to be confident at the END of this project, when that confidence will be completely useless, because I’ll be done.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that even when you know it’s going to suck, you gotta get it out. It’s like a firstborn - you gotta get them out of the way before you can get to the good stuff.
Not much happens in December, so it pretty much only warrants one post for the whole month.
(horses ref’ed from Flickr.com) Using the time off during the holidays to work on a short comic. It’s a medieval kind of thing. (today’s progress - notice the shortening of the yellow pencil. I need to go and get another one…)
Check it out, a shield made of styrofoam! Easily hefted although probably not terribly useful in an actual fight.
I’m not going to say “I plan on updating every day”, because that pretty much guarantees that I won’t. Instead I’m just going to draw…
I gotta work more on consistency, being able to move the guy around while keeping him the same guy. Sometimes it’s almost like you can get a character in your head, and then all you gotta do is life drawings (which works the best), but sometimes it’s like you’ve got a mannequin drawn in white on your page, and you’re just trying to tug it into something vaguely resembling emotion with all the black lines you put down…
also some monsters!
Searching out the face of a character for a comic project. This is really easy to do when the face is blank and staring, with the body in a relatively neutral pose. This is called CHEATING.
It’s cheating because it’s easy to make it look neato, but how many times in this comic is she going to be staring blankly out of the panel? Not too many, or else it’s going to be really really really boring. Melodramatic mugshots all the way!
More stuff on this project will be forthcoming… and forthcoming and forthcoming until nobody wants to see any more of it.
© Emma Coats 2009, all rights reserved.
