Month: February 2024

There are panels I lean on a lot, panel shapes, compositions, etc, and honestly, I’ll do them without thinking because they work for me, but I’m trying to rethink some of these choices and make more interesting (or at least, more thoughtful choices).

Take this panel:

<figure>Panel 1</figure>

Absoloutly fine. Dredd gets to a door, door gets opened. Not terribly interesting, but largely doesn’t need to be, this isn’t high drama. But the next panel, is an almost identical composition and so I needed to rethink it. Initially I went for this:

<figure>Redrawn Step 1</figure>

This is a bit better, I think. Pulled out more it’s an establishing shot, much easier to see we’re outside at a doorway. But still, that old habit of mine of keeping everything on an eye/just below eye level. What if we wanna move up higher (giving us a little more distance, a little more of the location?)

<figure>Third go…</figure>

SO I think this is better from an angle, though the danger with panels at these angles is they feel voyeuristic, like you’re standing beside someone watching the proceedings, I mean if I added a window frame it would feel even creepier…

<figure>Creepy much..</figure><figure>Too creepy..</figure>

Anyway, that’s not what we’re after (I mean it COULD be, and if it was, it’d be great… but it’s not…)

Since a panel isn’t alone in it’s composition, it’s judged by what went before and what comes after, I check the previous panel and find – OF COURSE – I’d gone for an almost identical angle on the previous page (last panel) and this (the first panel on this page) feels a bit… like the time gap between them is immediate… I want it to feel like more time has elapsed, so a cheaty way of doing that is to flip the horizontal of the panel…

<figure>Still works!</figure>

And in context, this flipped panel feels better (you’ll have to take my word) but I feel like I’ve lost a little of the atmosphere of that second attempt, so I’ll take another swipe at it…

<figure>rejected</figure>

I think what I’m losing here is some sky, and at this angle (birds eye view) I’m not gonna get it, so time to go low… really really low…

<figure>AH-HA!</figure>

This has enough in it that I think this could be the one, so a quick refinement later and…

<figure>YES!</figure>

One thing that I’ve started thinking about on this new Dredd strip is… how much does this bit look like a scifi book cover (and how little does this look like something I’ve drawn before?) and this scores it on both counts. We’ve take a functional but dull panel (in my drawing of it, at least) and turned it into its own little sci-fi tale. Pleased with myself now, let the self loathing recommence in 10 … 9 …

Yes, I know I should’ve posted this yesterday, but I posted something yesterday and I didn’t want to drown you in notifications.

So, pencils and inks for the week – 7 pages of pencils, 12 pages of inks. Bringing the total for feb to 41 pages of pencils and 21 pages of inks. Not as much as last month, but I DID take a week off.

This week was mostly about getting the next episode of the leopard of Lime street drawn, followed by the start of inking Skulduggery Pleasant, chapter 6 (final chapter).

Also through in some development stuff for a possible image pitch. We’ll see.

Slightly (though I admit this is insane) disappointed in how much stuff I finished compared to last month, but all the same, it’s a complete comic and then some.

March is starting slow, but I’ve planned out every week in it, so we’ll see how that all goes.

Onwards.

Here’s an entirely spoiler free panel (with a spoiler free/vastly redacted thumbnail) to help explain my process as detailed in a previous post.

Stage 0 – draw the thumbnail, I honestly have no idea what physical size it is, but it’s six thumbs per page, so that’s drawn on one of those areas. 

Stage 1 – expand the thumb for the page to take up the whole page, in the old days I’d be redrawing the thumbnail on the page, that cuts out that unnecessary step.

Stage 2 – roughly pencil, it’s pretty simple here cus it’s not too complicated – close up of one dude. Looking for the gesture/emotion of it.

Stage 3 – tighten those pencils, adding shadows where I think they should be, emotional expressiveness and tightening any element that I’ll need tightened.

Stage 4 – comes after I’ve pencilled an entire chapter, here I’d realised I’d given the guy a different coat on an earlier chapter and had to change it and I wanted heavier more dramatic shadows.

And that’s it. Pretty simple, and for me, relatively fast.

Coming towards the end of Bad Magic – 21 pages of ink and then that’s a wrap.

This week I’ve also drawn another episode of the leopard of Lime Street, and talked to a guy about pitching for an image book. I have an appalling track record of pitching and I can’t abide six pages that just go nowhere (the normal expectation is to draw six pages of the story), so instead we’re gonna try doing a 16 page complete story and if it doesn’t land we’ll kickstart it just as a one off. (I dunno what a kickstarter would look like, but I figure it’ll have a lot of process stuff – pencils, inks, script, the whole shebang)

So I’ve also started scheduling ahead. Since everything can be a little chaotic with art, especially the further ahead you attempt to plan (I mean, can you plan for sickness? plan for sudden spurts of activity and speed?) but planning one fully drawn page per actual day drawing seems solid. 

In truth I can probably reliably do one and a half pages per day, so I’ll always, over a long time period get ahead of deadlines.

But, if you’re interested, here’s how I’d LIKE the next few weeks to go:

6 March – 12 March ink 21 Pages Skulduggery Pleasent (this might go over)

13 March – 19 March Judge Dredd 6 pager (this should finish in less time than I’ve allowed)

20 March – 26th Match Leopard ep10 (6 pager ditto)

27th March – 11 April Image Pitch (16 pages) #1

And then, I’ll be on Dredd, the Leopard then Dredd non stop (well, until I’ve done 8 episodes in total)

Start of April I’ll need to reevealuate. I’d like to not have any non working weeks (I mean, apart from holidays, obv)  but that depends on work. Plus an email from DC asking me to do something there will obviously derail this all, but I’ve no expectations on that front.

Plus in that time I may be snuffling around for longer gigs – though, right now, I’m of mind to pour a lot of time into drawing Dredd, assuming Matt will keep asking me. 

Here’s how I get in to the flow. Sit my arse down and draw. I’m in a pretty great position of not having any other job to do but my job, and I find it a lot easier when I have a big chunk of pages to get through. 

That said, here’s how a typical page works – and you’ll see all the steps I take that speed me way up.

Any new project requires a new file, so I create a new document in Clip Studio at exactly the right size for print (actually it’s usually 30% larger than print, because I used to physically print the art out and ink over it – I don’t do that, but habits are habits)

I’ll usually append a few extra pages to the file, a 21 page story gets a 26 page file. On pages 22+ I create thumbnail pages, I have a nice little clip studio action that generate a 3×3 grid on the page. In practice these thumbnails are actually pretty big…

I’ll pencil my thumbs in this page – my thumbs are often crude blocky things, but enough to get a sense of what’s going on and I’ll thumb the entire book in one day. It’s exhausting but necessary.

Once it comes to pencilling, I’ll open the thumbs and select the thumb from the page I’m drawing and copy and paste it into the new page and scale the thumb to fit.

(an unusually detailed set of thumbs)

Then I’ll apply a second action that preps the entire page for me (this will add a few layers that I’ll need to draw on, putting all the pencils into a folder, and adding the frame around the page) reducing a thing that can take 10 minutes into a few seconds.

(this action seems to include a mad amount of “Make Layer above as editing target” I suspect they’re mostly a bit pointless, but when you make an action it records everything you do as you do it, so it was my fault, I probably clicked the same layer a few times, I could tidy it up, but I’ve relied on this action for years now…)

Then I’ll tighten the pencils up a bit, this is an intermediate step, just cleaning up pencils a little and clarifying anything in the thumbs that are too vague.

Next I’ve another action that simply creates a nice clean pencil layer (while making that pencil layer fade in to the background a bit) and then I do a finished pencil on that layer (which is named “finished pencils”)

And then I move on to the next page to pencil. My pencils are rough but detailed enough for me (unless the page is a struggle in which case I’ll usually move on when I’ve done something more detailed)

It can take me 2-4 hours to pencil a page (sometimes a lot less if it’s a big simple splash, sometimes days if it’s a complex crowd scene…)

As long as I’m not interrupted, I’ll break for lunch around 12. Kids get out of school around 3:40 so I’m normally hanging out with them, until after dinner, around 7, then back to work (sometimes don’t get back to work until 9) then bed around 12.

A week of slight frustrations, where I’d genuinely thought I’d lost the ability to get work done at any sort of speed. Felt like a slog some days to even get two pages of crude pencils done. 

BUT! ultimately – 20 pages of pencils done, one final page and that’ll be the last page of the last chapter of bad Magic – the Skulduggery Pleasent graphic novel done and it’s on to inks. Really looking forward to getting it finished (there’s some fun pages to ink too)

Monday I’ll get that last page done, then spend a couple of days doing the leopard from Lime Street. 

We have mice again. Flipping mice. So some amount of time was spent just laying traps and reassuring my wife who is freaking out.

Once Bad Magic is done (I’m planning for it to be finished Mid-March) I have a couple of scripts I can do, but I’m waiting on more things! It’s that time where you start looking around and snuffling for work. It’s hard because you find yourself in a position where your criteria for a project is more than just “can I get paid for this” you have to consider “is this a good use of my time” “does this progress my career in some hard to define, blurry fashion” and also “can I get paid for this”

ANYWAY… I leave you with a silly reference photo…

I do love a scifi cliche. This is just a late night unfinished doodle.

Not sure where I was, but I was in the mood to do colour sketches (these turned up from a de-duplicate image search on my ipad.

Ugh. What a disappointing work week. I thought I could slip a couple of non comics gigs in there, and of course, it through my entire schedule out of wack. Really I’m at my best when I’m drawing comics and know the work I’ve got to do and just get on with it.

Pencils / inks completed this week-  1 page pencils and inks (and even that was 90% done on the Sunday prior)

I did do a cover, which I needed to do. And some film stuff that will probably not happen, but you never know. And some other stuff that is a bit odd and may or may not happen, we’ll see. And took a couple of full days off (it’s mid term here, so both kids off school, next week they should be going back, but eldest is currently ill – maybe covid, maybe not and the youngest has exams but also half day on Tuesday because of a teacher strike (I fully support))

What I’m saying is next week may turn out to be rough. And page 1 of the new pencils which I should get done tonight starts with four panels and a crowd scene on each panel which is exhausting and slows you right down and is not the best way to start back in to work after a week of not working. I’ll get it back. I will, dammit.

(I could’ve drawn 10 pages of art this week, and now I’m annoyed any weeks I don’t – which is stupid, but you’ve got to let yourself off on stuff like that)

Anyway, onwards!

(Oh the pencil numbers in the boxes were my estimates of when I’d’a finished the previous chapter of bad magic, but obv I got that done ahead of schedule, so they’re not inked in…)

So far this is the only time I’ve drawn Sinister Dexter for 2000AD and it was around 2014-2015.

I’ll be brutally honest, I don’t think my art was in a good place – or at least – I didn’t feel particularly happy about it. There are charms in it, and I think it was all digital, so I was still finding my way (and frankly, still am) but it’s so chonky. Made worse when you see it in context, where more polished art sits – it’s available in Volume 7 Sin Dex of the massive, I-dunno-how-many-parts Hachette 2000AD collection out soon ish.

Every panel felt crammed, I was drawing figures much larger than they needed to be and inking them so crudely they looked like I drew it all half size and then blew it up.

Anyway, it’s out there now.