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:
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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.
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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
