This is a good reminder. It's interesting how we drift back into habits of thought which cause us to waste our precious time here.

Can we see some samples Please?

Take that banana out of your pocket.
 

Some sketches.. basically going from "pencils" (whiteboard), skipping inks and going into coloring
using Paint.net --to make a "paper doll" for playing with color choices, or other finishing effects.


..going for 90s comics mashed up with manga/anime aesthetic..
These are 30-minute sketches-- penciled and mastered but skipping "inking" the line work.
Working on composing the dynamics of the motion within the frame, dramatic/spooky lighting, etc.

I've used a pretty old version of Trac, and it's pretty good.  Probably a lot more features now.

fargon wrote:

Flint that is awesome.

Thank you. It's hard to describe but I'm pulling in a million different directions at once, some days working on page/frame composition, anatomy, perspective, or sometimes the finishing techniques-- how lines, shading, and color are rendered, and always-- the process, how to be efficient, how to produce a consistent style with the least steps.

Probably the most important thing of all is, what does a human face look like?
This whiteboard sketch captured something I have been striving for-- the "pretty villain"
..and the other one is a little more rendered.. but the eyes just doen't capture that disdainful thousand-yard stare..
..I think, on the first one, it's the cheeks *pushing up* into the eyes, and the thickness of the line weight under the eyes


Sorry for the thread hi-jack. But this is where my attention has been. It beats playing solitaire.

I'm trying to write an elevator pitch for my story, should I post that here or start a new thread?
It's actually really helpful to try to explain it to someone, it organizes my thoughts.

Last edited by Flint (10/19/2023 12:47 pm)

griff wrote:

fargon wrote:

Flint that is awesome.

I'm with him! By tradition once a thread is set free it's life is it's own.
 

Concur.

glatt wrote:

Do you have a vision when you start, or do you just start drawing and allow the drawing to just take shape on its own?

This is a really interesting question. When drawing, I'm either working on something like anatomy, OR-- I'm just drawing something "cool" and letting it take on a life of it's own. This is the childish, curious mind in me, doodling, exploring.

So I have visual ideas that were not part of any plan-- I don't know who they are. So I either assign them to a character I'm writing, or now I've got new character that hasn't taken shape yet. My son calls it the "slush pile" --a storehouse of loosely formed ideas that can be brought into the main continuity when you need a thing.

I can't separate the drawing from the writing-- they  feed each other. When writing, it's mostly, "what would cause or necessitate a condition" or "if a certain condition exists, what would happen as a result of that" --answering questions. This is science fiction, I have to stay educated, able to produce realistic answers to hypotheticals. But there's this other element to writing, that "people" come into existence, whom I haven't learned about yet. They exist only as an image.

How it started was, I started following bodybuilding (again) a couple of years ago, and thinking that these anatomical references could make great superhero reference (again). This is what I was doing 30 years ago (Silver Surfer = Ron Lim drawing Flex Wheeler).

But I needed a reason to draw-- who am I drawing, and why? I need a story. I started writing a story which spun out of scope, into something I struggled to have confidence in my ability to draw. So my drawing had to catch up to my writing. Now, they chase each other. And I'm approaching being able to produce finished works, but I'm coming at it from two opposite directions. I'm like a film director, who is also writing the screenplay, doing the cinematography, the set design, wardrobe, all of it. That's what comics are.

And in reference to your question, the "actors" in the story-- they are real, living beings who are born from a vague, subconscious idea. I try to discover who they are, and find a place for them in the world.

Karl Jung, and later Joseph Campbell had a lot to say about this. I'm coming at that through Philip K. Dick.

He was pretty strong emotionally until he was tested.

He doesn't realize his ideas, philosophy, of being strong and defending his goals against outside influences can be self defeating.
Bend like the willow, Grasshopper. Grin like Brad Pitt, it's disarming.
Try to seek a middle ground and if that's unsuccessful you've lost nothing but a little time and may save you from a war that's at least costly... possibly deadly.
He's wondering why you drew him instead of some sultry siren. What horrendous trials await? 

cool cool cool

this next guy I've been developing for a while, but hit on this idea of "scales" ..
..rounding out a "chimera" look-- with the lion's mane and goat's horns

I'm also working towards a process for a "finished" look.. not really my string suit. ..these colors are just one layer of flats and one "multiply" layer of gradients,
both tied to one reference line layer (a separate set of lines from the original whiteboard lines, which are there in the details)
(and the background, that's 100% aimless noodling)

Last edited by Flint (11/29/2023 6:19 pm)

yeah I'm loving this design