Quick Rough

Thought I'd put up a quick rough. This is actually a 'workout' piece.  What I mean by that is I don't have the amount of time to pencil as much as I'd like.  Drawing is a skill, and as such falls under the 'use it or lose it category'. Since I'm limited on time because I work in television, I try to do one detailed practice drawing before I start drawing for real.  So this is a rushed drawing that I inked in. Under that criteria, I'm okay with it.

It's of the Suicide character fighting of the zino horde. . .whiiiich I guess is kinda obvious.  Man I need to get some sleep. 

Day. . .Whatever:Playing to your Strengths and Challenging your Weaknesses (CC)

So the scanner is STILL acting up, but I'm in a bit of a financial crunch, so I'm still plugging away, but it may be a bit or two before I get some of the art up.  Trying to though.

As a large chunk of this blog is, in essence a diary of what I personally encounter while creating this independently produced mess of a comic, I thought today might be a good day to talk about how I try to a) play to my weaknesses (apparently one of which is spelling and grammar) and b) things I'm doing specifically to challenge myself with this project.

As I've stated before this isn't my first attempt at creating a comic.  The other efforts were mostly stopped as I felt that I didn't have a quality enough product to send out; that it was too rough, too amateur level.  And of course there was the a fore mentioned "Abraham Lincoln; Zombie Hunter" that got killed when 3 to 4 different similar ideas suddenly flooded the market. Which is a shame as I really liked that one.  Maybe I'll dig through my old stuff and put some of the rough inks I had on it up, we'll see.  The drawn out point I'm trying to make is this; all those failed attempts were a good thing, because I got to see what my personal weaknesses were in the process of comic creation.  These are as follows:

-Heavy handed with inks and use of dark spaces.  Need to lessen crosshatching, it may have worked in art classes, but comics have unique rules due to how reproduction works. Perhaps need to study up on far more. Alternatively, I can attempt to ink digitally.  While it would save time, I have however never (really) tried this process. Could look far worse.
-Lettering.  I suck at lettering.  BAD.  Knowing this however, when writing the comics, I kept this in mind.  If you go back and look at the pages of script I provided last year, it shows I'm keeping this in mind. Characters dialouge on the page is short, sweet, to the point.  It helps that I picked a genre that is tailored to quick, precise statements (anyone quoting Shakespeare during a firefight with zombies deserves what they get).  While I typically prefer to have a heavy story especially through inner character dialogue, I'm keeping that to a minimum until I'm confident I've learned enough to do a really good job at the lettering process. Note to others:  Please never use comic sans if you're producing a digital comic.  I've picked up some indy comics that have been using it and just. . .ugh.  There are plenty of free fonts out there and available.
-Perspective.  This is a big one with me, which sucks because it's one of the most important things possible in conveying a scene.  Instead of drawing pin-up shots all the time, I should have focused more on practicing backgrounds.  In fact a lot of people that complain, that they can't get into the comic industry, despite how well they draw their characters suffer from this.  It's great you can draw an amazing picture of 'Super-Duper Man' but if he's flying over a city that looks like it's made of cardboard boxes how interesting is that.  So how do I get around my lack of experience. I knew it was a problem after all. . .well lets see, I have LARGE creatures (Dinosaurs) that take up most of a scene.  A TRex (even a zombie one) does seem to hide a lot of the background. . .It's a cheat, but for now, one I'm okay with.

This discussion does bring me to the next part however. . .Challenging yourself.

To start, let me say that Green Lantern is my favorite comic (or was till DC's reboot.  Not a huge fan but I digress), but back in the day I would have never wanted to work for it.  Actually I still wouldn't until I felt I was really ready for it. Why?  Because of the insane frame of references the comic has; billions of alien races, all different, in unique exotic locals,. . .hell, even a GL's weapon makes anything anyone can imagine. Penciling that just seems. . . intimidating.  And I realized recently that fear is because I never challenged myself (artistically at least).

BUT that's good (challenging yourself that is) because that's how we grow as artists.  Tell you secret. . .before this comic it had probably been about 10 years since I drew a dinosaur.   While I like them, I was always drawing humans, superhumans, humanoids, etc. Because that's what I thought I needed the most.  What I should have been doing, is looking at everything I could that made me go "How do I draw THAT?" and then doing it.  Despite what I said about the perspectives above, I AM really forcing myself to get into the background and dig it out.  I still 'cheat' when I can. . .obviously with as long it's taking with the updates to the blog, my day job is hectic as all get out and busy as @#$@#$@ (Hollywood Reporter actually ran an article about the show I work on and how hard it is to work for it. Keep in mind I've got the bottom of the barrel on the show, and you could reasonably say I have one of the more 'unique' jobs in Hollywood. And that's saying quite a bit.)  So anything I can do that saves me a bit of time, and gets another page done is a god send in my book, but still, I'm using this book not only as a learning tool, but as a way to bring my skills to another level.

So that's today's babble;  know what your weakness as an artist, writer, whatever ARE.  Think for ways to either work around, or even use them.  And most importantly challenge yourself, because it's the only way you're going to grow.

"But you don't have to take my word for it"-Levar Burton (who rocks btw).

Zombie Dino goodness coming soon.

-Trevor

How I do layouts (CC with a little ZF thrown in) Part 1

Scanner has been acting wonky at work so this post took awhile, and I'll have to do it in parts.

This post is really about how you can actively know what your strengths and weaknesses are and how to plan accordingly.  For example, as I mentioned before I'm horrible at backgrounds, and I feel they are a very important part of the visual layout of the page.  If perspective is off, the reader may not know why they dislike a panel/page, but they probably will dislike it more than something put in the proper perspective.  Also detail is important on a background.  A slum should look like one; trash strewn about, graffiti, etc.

The below picture is a version of the start of my layouts (after the thumbnail process as mentioned in a previous post). The reason it looks so rough is I had to HEAVILY adjust the levels after it was scanned (more about Levels and Photoshop/Gimp in an upcoming post).  I included a picture with just the straight scan so you can see how light the 4H pencil I use looks.  Also, that does bring up a good point; discover the range of lead pencils you want to use.  Some people use much darker leads than I do, as they provide a clearer image.  I prefer things in the mid to high H (hard lead) pencils as they don't show up heavy in a scan, and if done right are easy to erase.

Anyways, onto the start:

 So you can see the basics of the city have been laid out.  In fact you can see some of the perspective grid I set up just to make sure everything stays in proportion as well.  I already started putting some of the debris in the street, but obviously that, and of course most importantly, the Zombie Dinosaurs need to be put in the page.  But by laying out the backround first I know where all the little stuff would be (Stop sign, Fire Hydrant, etc.) that the characters would need to avoid when moving. It makes the world seem more real, more complete. Now you'll also notice the large amount of space at the top and bottom of the page.  This is because I have a large caption box going at the bottom, and, as I'm a fan of when Silver Age comics put the title on the first page, I'm going to do exactly that. And lets face it, especially of late, I've very limited on time, so it'll save me some when drawing the page. 

BTW this is how light my pencils are (no levels ajusted, just a strait color scan)

So you can see how easy it is to erase, and how little work I have to do digitally to clean it up as it barely registers (actually I had do a little touch just to get that to show).  As always taking the time to think and plan before you start will save you more time in the end.  The military has a saying "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast," and it's dead on. Additionally since I know I'm bad at backgrounds by having this problem dealt with first will same me a lot of time.  When I used to layout the character first and the backgrounds around them, it would often take me forever because I'd notice little faults I was constantly correcting.  The running dino is very sketchy and will probably be changed.  I had already altered it from this scan (this scan was done awhile ago) but as I leave everything in pencils, until I'm ready for the next stage, I can still change it).

More on the page progression later. I'll try for later today but we're really busy at the day job right now.  

-Trevor