PJ Holden's Blog

Spent today doing a last minute storyboarding job for a chum.

There are things I’m good at and things I’m bad at. Things I’m good at I like to talk about, and I like to make big pointed reference to how average I am at them, and things I’m bad at I like to shout about and make light of it – because it pains me.

One thing I think I’m actually pretty good at is storyboards.

Laying out a story, communicating required elements, and not getting bogged down in over rendering – all play to my strengths.

There’s a few things I’ve noticed myself doing that are a real hang up of comics:

1) Left to right travel is even MORE important in storyboards. Flipped the horizontal on at least three or four boarded images just to keep the left-right flow going. It’s because the story boards aren’t descrete images the way comic panels are- rather they’re a single scene playing out, and cutting to a movement right to left feels odd.

2) Scene setting even more important than comics – I like to drop backgrounds in comics (often removing panel borders and giving white), or cheat them at least, and while many many backgrounds in tv are cheated (just watch line of duty and notice how much of the BG is out of focus) you can’t just drop them altogether., you’ve gotta keep backgrounds.

3) establishing where characters are in relation to each other. Again, in comics, there’s more scope to just cut characters out of a drawing, when the focus is the other character – the page serves as a constant reminder of where everyone is, doing the same thing in a story board has the effect of making the character look like they disappeared.

4) Can’t change panel shapes. Even if you change the panel shapes. I’ll stretch and expand the frame I’m using to draw a story board IF it’s supposed to include some sort of camera movement, so in the above example, that frame is taller than the view that the viewer will see. But even if you do that, you’ve still gotta keep in mind they’re looking at a landscape view – big tall things don’t work (and I like tall panels)

Anyway, those are all the tiny nuggets I gleaned from the little amount of story boarding I’ve done.

The above image btw is from the World of Tanks video game sequence, I story boarded and drew up final art that’s been animated for the game. It’s  pretty crazy!

And, as if to prove, that no plan survives contact with the enemy, I ultimately dropped Tower Bridge above for Big Ben, and inked it up and it was coloured by Dee Cuniffe 

mmm… Always frustrated that things are less realistic than I want. I don’t think I knew what I wanted from this digital paint job, but this isn’t quite it.(I like the Kirby crackle though…)

This is one of many pages I did for Dept of Monsterology book 2. This was one of the 49 pages I drew in a month. Some of those pages were, hand on heart, some of my favourite pages I’ve ever drawn. Lookit hitlers little left foot.

You can buy a digital collection of book 2 for just £6.99 on Comixology – it’s a bargain! 

(and hey, if you’re not already a Patreon of mine, you can sign up for $1 to see early pics and some exclusive pics, and get a behind the scenes peek, with articles on Clip Studio Paint and Comics story telling for the early bird price of just $5 – only a limited number of slots at that price!)

From the “This project is probably dead” files.

I’m back to digital inking. Failing eyesight, and arthritis make it a better way to ink – instead of fighting with my hands and eyes and the pen and ink, I’m just battling with my ability to draw.

I never win, but I do, at least, get the odd lucky strike.

I wanted to try and paint something in Clip Studio Paint, more impressionistic than I normally do – or at least looser. The first Rogue was done with that in mind but it totally got away from me, like some small bits (I like that he looks blue without … you know… being entirely blue).

Wasn’t what I wanted though, so thought I’d have a go again this time using a photo – so I nabbed a random “male model” sketch off the interwebs, and scribbled roughly the look and painted the colorus based on the lighting in that. It’s miles better. Frustratingly so. Much less faffing in the colours, and the lighting (despite him being blue) is much more believable. I should probably do more studies of this nature.

Auditioned for a play. Got a part. Local am dram.

Bit nuts, this is lining up to be the busiest year ever for me. But then, that’s all the more reason to do something else. Something that I can switch myself off for and just be somewhere else.

I’ve acted before- 20 years ago and went back to it last year, did Macbeth and had friends I’ve known for decades come up and say “I’ve never seen you stand so still”. Then I did another play where I was a narrator and stood on stage stock still for an hour. I liked the stillness. I like the knowing that I have something to say at an exact moment. The most awkward bit of rehearsals I find are the bits before and after the rehearsing where you’re mixing, and I still find myself standing alone amongst a crowd.

It’s wanky to say it, I know, but I like just losing myself in someone else’s lines.

Look there’s me playing ross (centre) in Macbeth! What a tubby little man I have become.

(I still want to do a mega sci-fi fantasy epic of Macbeth… but it’s unlikely to ever happen…)

I’ve always struggled to draw pretty. Ugly, is more my metier. But I keep trying. Two good friends of mine have suggested, and I think they’re right, that US comics, especially ,thrive on “attractive”-attractive women and attractive men. It may be a British thing that we tend to move more towards brutish (or it may just be me). 

British artists that can do pretty do remarkable well in the States. 

British artists that can’t, end up having a decent career in the UK, but never noticed beyond those shores.

My mum (god rest her) used to say my women looked like men. I’m horribly aware of my shortcomings in this area.

Anyway, this sketch is alright though – literally a 2 minute pen & ink sketch – drawn using one of the Frenden brushes in Clip Studio. My instincts are to use a very controlled line, nothing rough, thought it’d be a fun exercise to use a rough pen to draw something nice.

Digital inks, I’ve tried to give you a sense of the pencils over the inks – you can see my pencils are pretty rough.

This is from a new Dredd strip I’m working on, written by my old comics chum Michael Carroll. Hot off the drawing table, finished the pencils and inks for this today.

First day of school for one of the kids today too. Should be back to school next week, and hopefully I can catch up on stuff. Running a little late on this, and a couple of projects I wanted to get down have ended up on hold, while I look after the family (Annette, my wife, broke her arm two years ago, and had the radial arm removed last month because she’d lost rotational movement in her wrist following the breakage. She’s doing great, but recovery is taking a long time)

I’ll try and post something non-spoilery of every page I’m doing as I do them, which is fun for me, because usually only the editor sees this stuff until it sees print.

I used to do a lot of these kind of warped perspective shots, I think I lost the knack of it somewhere along the line – they’re inaccurate, but off kilter and usually have some energy – and in the wider context of the page being non-exact doesn’t matter too much.

Hi, thanks for signing up (was not expecting the guilty feels of knowing the people that sign up and happily counting them as friends).

I intend to get into a posting rhythm, on the one hand don’t want to overwhelm with posts on the other don’t want to make it feel like poor value money. 

My plans with the Patreon are to do articles on story telling and tutorials on clip studio paint and I think, Photoshop, given the funding on Patreon I can now subscribe to Adobe’s Creative Cloud (quick hint, the photography subscription is the cheapest sub at only £10 per month, but  only gives you access to Adobe Photoshop) and, obviously, sketches and what-I’m-working-on-now insider bits and pieces.

You’ll get all that in the backstage pass area, for everyone else, it’ll be art, blogposts and more general stuff. Now the school summer holiday has passed I may even get time to do some video stuff (for Patreons!)

Once a month I’ll unlock one of the backstage pass articles for general readers.

I’m not expecting Patreon – as it has in some other cases – to be a big source of income for me, but it has motivated me to blog more, and with more depth on subjects. Hopefully I can find the balance to make it something worth your time and money.

Thanks again, I genuinely appreciate it.

-pj

(Oh, and if you’re coming to this post new: There are still slots in the $5 early bird backstage pass patreon, get it while it’s hot!)