/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

Originally I had a completely different idea for the webcomic, pic related.

A newspaper sized strip that I could produce in my spare time for a weekly update. Drawn bits refined,defined, redefined and recycled where I could, I assembled panels,and acclimatiing myself to maintain the quality of the strip and hit deadlines. I managed 8 of them,and was drawing the elements for the ninth,when life found me in waiting rooms for the foreseeable future, away from Photoshop and any chance of getting going. So I brought a new sketchbook to pass the time. I drew a demon head, and thought how to fit it into a story in my ficdom. That was the origins of the 180+ story. I might assemble a PDF of the strips,in ordet,and possibly give it away. But ftom where?

>>7034121
It was part of the interface of the hosting service. It showed webcrawling things too,but those were under one percent of the traffic while most were direct domain name accessing.

>>7034087
This strip was what I wanted to produce:something that I could knock out on a weekly update in my spare time. But life intervened and I found myself stuck in waiting rooms with a sketchbook to pass the time. A story grew from a random drawing of a demon head, and having nothing else to upload,that became my story. Completely unplanned,unscripted, spontaneously generated. Flawed, admittedly, but still a story that had to be told. Also made a dozen years ago when reading it meant sitting in front of a desktop screen,not to be squinted at from a smartphone. I tried to make this story more palatable by isolating and enlarging the panels into a video format,like this:

https://youtu.be/jeNSwSU-jlE?si=5EDYIS4Ly84FehQw

Overall, its the story that is important, and I chose this strip to be the example of this. It was a half hour fiddling with my phone,and it too is flawed, but the more that get made the better they will be.

>>6969915
When I was doing this particular storyline, I had no idea that I was going to be stuck in waiting rooms away from my desktop and unable to crank out strips like this : bits drawn separately and assembled in Photoshop. Instead, I kept it crude and designed all of the Snowglobe story on the fly. I have far less free time to draw now,so I am drawing the first introductory story and taking timelapse videos of myself doing it,so the watchers can see such iconic imagery appear before their eyes.

Why not storyboard the comic for now?

That means draw just enough to get a feel for the situations, dialogue, and character placement. These are NOT for public consumption, but notes to yourself, your reference material for the comic you will eventually do. What you draw you can redraw and refine. Comic art seems a headlong stumble that few master,but your results are dependent on how you approach a project. Even stick figures can serve as a guide to where to put word balloons and the players occupying space for blocking the scene. I did roughs of about 30 strips of this story,and this is an example of how the finished product would be. The elements of a panel are assembled from my drawings of separate bits,then heavily processed in Photoshop, and where I could I recycled stuff like background and prop elements to speed up production and minimize what I had to draw. I work a night job stocking shelves,and I had a short commute, so I was planning on having a weekly newspaper sized strip that I could make in my spare time. But fate intervened,and I was forced to give gentlemanly support to my wife then girlfriend by occupying waiting rooms with her. So I started doing another story entirely, and posted them at my website instead. 180 strips and the story was about to hurtle into an endgame. I toyed wih the idea of redoing them as Full Color Sunday Strips,but I have a far longer commute that was way worse 4 years ago, so what to do with the average 10 hours per week I can call my free time to further my career or even have something. The latest venture is a YouTube channel where I would video myself drawing stuff. I have yet to promote it in any way,as I want someone else to help me with that so I can just worry about cranking out content. Here's the latest abomination:

https://youtu.be/HRsG_7o8vwE?si=3PUABHrc2LNzAGR8

So plan ahead.

>>6705559
Another aspect of life was the derailment of my original GoPro project, pic related. I developed this "2D sculpture" method of comic creation, but it requires time at home,to draw in pencil and computer time to process the raw art into useful chunks that I can recycle where I could, enabling me to manage a new strip of this size every week. But,got a girlfriend who invited herself over one day when her kid was taken away from her to live with her grandmother. I couldn't turn her out to face her empty apartment by herself, knowing that the kid was intelligent and ruthless and grandma had far better home. So instead of this sort of strip,I found myself in waiting rooms with a sketchbook. I drew a demon head, and it grew into a head in a bubble:an interface. For whom? And a story spun out of control, 180 pages of "storyboards",that grew with complexity as I realized that waiting rooms would be my life for the present,so I told the tale,watching it along with my readers. The other picture is a scene from the story,and significant to me. So I felt moved,in my journey to relearn the skills of pencil drawing, and reimagining the players in this sprrawling drama that appeared under my pen. So,as I have noticed that the storyboard strips were drawn in sketchbooks that are the dimensions of your average Sunday newspaper strip. So I am going to start this process with a standalone picture that I can slap on a tshirt. And maybe stick with black and white, cheaper to make and a better reproduced image on the cloth. Then,I will proceed with roughing out the strips. Once I have a few dozen made,then I will shop it around, get it syndicated,collated, and hopefully enough money up front for me to NOT spend 48 hours and that fucking commute to supermarkets.

>>6649528
That isn't the finished product, just the storyboards. The final version will be full color and constructed from Photoshop processed bits. This is an example of what I mean,but with a dozen years more experience.

And here are the rest of the produced ones....