100 Days of Making Comics - Day Five - Tiredness, wasting time and mind changes

Good Eve.... zzzz...

Welcome to 100 Days of Making Comics, a challenge in which the goal is to spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day working on or towards comic creation.

Today's post almost didn't happen, I did the required amount of time working on the comic, I did that this morning before work, I  was just so tired when I got home I nearly didn't bother to do any more, or post what I did do this morning.
The reason for nearly not posting was that everything I did this morning... I erased when I got in!
I just wasn't happy with the placement of the patterned box on the table, or the positioning of it on the page. So I spent a short while this evening redoing it, placing it now in 5 rather than 6, and giving it a more interesting angle too.
Click on the image to view larger.

I'm now officially too tired to continue now though, I'm at the stage where I'm bound to start making mistakes and wasting time, so as I am more alert and eager to create first thing I shall bid this farewell for the night and revisit again tomorrow to finish of this panel (cracks in the wall, some other items around the box that are lying on the desk itself) and start panel 6 and 7. Weirdly i know what's going in panel 4 but I'm kind of putting off doing it....

Until next time, keep creative!

   

100 Days of Making Comics - Day Four - Panel 3 Background and Contour Lines

Hey hey Internet!

Welcome to 100 Days of Making Comics, a challenge in which the goal is to spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day working on or towards comic creation.

Another quick one today, I spent around 45 minutes this morning finishing off the basic shape of the skull in panel 3 and tidying it up, then did some of the background to that panel. 

Click on any image to view larger.

Then when I got in from work I didn't have much time so decided to stick a contour line around the skull and the statue head in panel 2 to see how it looked, I like it! 

Might go a little fatter on the line once i get to the inking stage but we'll see later down the line. 

I'm not entirely sure how much extra detailing and rendering might get added when inking so at this point I'll just concentrate on getting all of the basic linework in there and worry about the rest later.

Will definitely get a fair bit more done tomorrow as I have an hour or so before work, and the whole evening after work to spend on it, minus dinner and a wee bit o gaming...maybe...


Keep creative people!

100 Days of Making Comics - Day Three - Fantasy Creature Skulls!

Good Evening all!

Welcome to 100 Days of making Comics, a challenge in which the goal is to spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day working on or towards comic creation.

Just a quick one today, first day back at work today and I am very much looking forward to some sleep!

I didn't expect to get much done today, the first day back to work after the Christmas holidays is always a chore, and once back home I really only wanted to chill out and do some gaming/watch some Netflix/read. But that's the idea of the challenge, make yourself get at least a little done EVERY DAY, whether you feel like it or not. 

And what happened once I got started? I did half an hour of research, and an hours sketching, so I got 3 times as much done as I set myself!

Click on the image to view larger.

Just concentrated on starting panel 3 this evening, I did start panel 6 this morning but am undecided on how i want the patterned box to look so I left it for now and got on with some fun stuff, skulls! Or more specifically creature skulls!

I'll continue with this tomorrow morning before work, hopefully getting the skull finished and the background laid in.

I still haven't actually finished panel 1, but I'll get back to that once the last 3 blank panels have something in them.

So until tomorrow, keep creative!

100 Days of Making Comics - Day Two - Switching Panels and Shading a Statue Head

Happy bank Holiday! (If you're in the UK, if not happy Tuesday!)

Welcome to 100 Days of making Comics, a challenge in which the goal is to spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day working on or towards comic creation.

Today is day two, I managed to tear myself away from the Playstation for a while this morning to work on the current page I'm working on of JAR, yesterday I was working on panel one of this page, today I decided to do a bit of shading on panel two.
Click on any of the images to view larger.

If you looked at the images within yesterdays post you may have noticed that panel 2 and 3 were empty whilst panel 4 had some pencil work on it, although most of the details were in fact off screen. You may have also been thinking "why has he drawn panel 1, then panel 4, skipping two panels?" 
Well the explanation is quite simple really, the contents of panels 2 through 7 are each close ups of various objects that are within the room drawn in panel 1, this statue is on one of the bookcases that line the back wall, so which object I draw first isn't really that important! 
Actually that's not entirely true, although I know what all of the objects are that will be in the panels, I have yet to draw a couple of them in panel one, so it'd probably be best to do that first before drawing a close up. 
Anyhow, I picked the head to draw first as, originally, I'd planned on having it in panel 4, with the eyes looking slightly down to panel 5 on the bottom row, this being a method of leading the readers eyes down as they go from panel to panel. But after sketching him out I then wanted the eyes to be more of a fixed stare (the reason is plot related so I won't explain) so I flipped the image and now have him in his present position, eyes facing forward in a fixed stare looking directly to panel 3.   

I've then done some shading on him, not going overly into fine details as this will be coloured so a lot of the lighting effect will be done within that stage.

That's me done for today, I'm going to do a bit of research into the the objects contained in panel 3 and get sketching that out, then attempt to fit in a small amount of gaming before I go out for the day!


Hope you all have a good one!

100 Days of Making Comics - Day One - Denting Cardboard Boxes

Happy New Year to the each and every Internet User!
Apart from the bad ones, not to you, you go away and think about what you've done....

Welcome to 100 Days of making Comics, a challenge in which the goal is to spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day working on or towards comic creation.
This is day one, and the first of a new year!

I may switch between which comic I'm working on depending on what goes on each day but the majority of posts will be work on the comic book series JAR, written by James Fletcher with art by myself. The amount done each day will depend on what day of the week it is, given day job work etc.
But each day I'll post an update of what I did, with an image or two and a brief explanation. I also might add in some non comic related news if anything vaguely interesting happens.
Click on any of the images to view larger.

So onwards with day one!

I'm actually posting this at the start of the day, I've got a busy one ahead but I've done around 40 minutes of pencilling this morning since I got up, currently working on a page of the comic, doing detailing on a panel, here's a pic...

For the pencils I work in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, mostly just because I like the feel, it does have it's limitations such as when you zoom out it becomes harder to see, with a lot of the pixels not being rendered, but for detail work that's not a problem. I'll most likely ink and colour in Photoshop as it has better inking tools and is definitely better for colouring.

Today I worked on the cardboard boxes that are lying around the floor, they start off as cubes with very straight lines and of course don't look very much like cardboard boxes at all at this point!
So that means going in and erasing the straight lines and re-drawing them by hand, making sure they actually look a little less precise and more interesting, adding dents and folds where they've been handled over time, giving it all a slightly more lifelike (hopefully) look.
I also added some patches of texture to the rug on the floor and the arm chair in the corner, to make them also look more aged and worn and a little less clean and flat.

When laying out the object in the room everything is done with rulers and guides tools to get it all in the right places, looking the way they should in perspective.

That's it for today, I've got some journeying to do by train so i'll take my notepad and sketchbook with me, where I'll be working on my own graphic novel series, mostly doing some story plotting and maybe a small amount of sketching if any visual ideas come to me that need to be made note of.

Have a great day one of 2017 and see you all tomorrow for day two!

100 Days of Making Comics - Coming Soon!

Hello again!

It's been around abouts 6 months since my last post, a lots happened in those months and a lots coming in the months ahead.
This summer was a horrible, nuff said. I won't be going into the details of it, this is a creative blog and during those months nothing creative happened.

But! Over the past month I have been getting back into the swing of things, getting back into the comic making game and working on the JAR comic book series again, and have gotten started on the pencils for issue one! (Screenshot below)

My own personal comic book/graphic novel series was also put on hold during this time, but I'm going to get back onto the writing of that soon, there's a new year coming and it will be one of strategic planning an execution. I need to balance several things a time,

1.creative content for JAR which includes design work of characters, environments etc, pencils inks and colours on the first issue, and storyboarding the future issues,
2. creative content on my own comic series, all the above things that I'm doing for JAR, plus plotting and script writing.
3. Planning another, yet to be disclosed, non comic book related project.

So how to do this? Well I have over the past few years watched many other artists complete (or in some cases start and not complete) a 100 days of making comics challenge!
This is a challenge that people undertake that either struggle to find the time to create comics due to day jobs or motivation, or even just do because its a fun way to organise their work flow.
The challenge is simple, find at least 30 minutes in every day to work on your comic project, for 100 days. And at the end of it you will have progressed further than you may have if you were struggling to find time and had been slacking a bit.
Some people make blogs of their progress, some videos that they post on YouTube, some may post on social media like Facebook or Twitter etc.
I'm not sure at this time which medium I will go for, videos would be the ideal way in my mind but the time needed to edit each one is adding to what will already be a busy schedule.
I will definitely be adding a daily update here on the blog, and if I can maybe a weekly update video on YouTube with the past 7 days worth of progress detailed.
Either way progress will be made!
The 100 days of making comics challenge will begin on January 1st, I will of course in the meantime be working on JAR, and my other projects, but as I can't guarantee that over the Christmas period I will be able to work on comics every single day I thought it best to hold off until afterwards.
There's no point in starting a daily challenge with a large obstacle in the way, even if it is a fun, relaxing obstacle filled with food, drink and loved ones!

Anyhow, for now here's a shot of my progress on JAR, this is a page I'm working on currently with a large fisheye view of a room filled with objects, really fun to draw but slightly time consuming, as this project isn't solely mine I'll not be explaining what anything is in too much detail, you'll just have to wait and see!

It's now 6.30am, I've relaxed for an hour since getting up, time to do an a bit of work before i have to go to...work... until next time, stay creative!

  

June Update

Hello All!

I just thought I'd post a quick update explaining the lack of activity on the blog.

I had an amazing holiday in sunny Mexico at the the end of May, which was really pretty much like being on another planet, living another life.

Since getting back works been very tiring, as it always is at this time of year, so getting any motivation at the end of the day to produce anything like a piece of interesting finished art is pretty much a no go.

I have been working on both the Jar and Void comic book series', Jar less so over the past month as it's a collaboration with the person writing it, but we have got back on the go with it and have been discussing some plot changes and how they will effect the story as a whole.
I've made some progress on The Void, the beginning of one characters plot was holding me back a little (I know the middle and end of their story, just wasn't sure how they actually began on their path) so that's really helped.

And I have been really diving into studying human anatomy, although both of the comic series' will be far from photorealistic renderings I felt they both deserve to be the best they can so before getting to any serious drawing thought I'd jam my brain with some knowledge to give them a bit of a better look, and reduce the need for any reference material during the making of them.

Anyhow, that's the update for now, I will post again soon, much like the YouTube channel I think there will be a bit of a reduced flow of content being uploaded, at least until my day job calms down a little, but it's all in a good cause and i will be back with a more regular schedule of artwok and videos soon.

Until then, keep creative people!