Thumbnail-a-Day part 2

A little more of my progress. I sped ahead and did about a week's worth in two days... which, friends, is a bad idea. Now I'm slacking off and have fallen out of the groove. Bad Hex!

- Hex

Sketchbook: Xeari

Some quick sketches of Xeari, plus a couple of other miscellaneous dragons.

- Hex

Thumbnail-a-Day

I don't handle New Year's resolutions too well. I always end up forgetting and then just feeling guilty. Just because it's a new year or a new month or a new week doesn't mean I'll take a resolution any more seriously. So my goal is to draw one comic page thumbnail per day for 30 days.

Why comics? So many times I've suddenly thought, "I want to do a comic!" But I never, EVER have the motivation. There's so much to do - I have to iron out the story before all else, because none of my original stories have enough substance to them to sustain a comic right now. I have to design characters, figure out setting and floor plans, manage dialogue... not to mention that every panel of a comic is a piece of art in and of itself.

More than anything else, though, what stops me is page layout and composition. There's something about the sheer possibilities of the boxes and triangles and other shapes you can arrange on a page that just has me freezing up like a deer in headlights. Not that this is the only thing that makes me put down my pencil before I've even made a mark, but I get really caught up wondering to myself, what if it's no good? What if my product isn't creative enough? What if someone notices how awful my layouts are?

What I have to realize is that as long as a comic layout flows readably, it works. If the panel size and arrangement aid pacing, even better. If you can come up with a cool composition for the images within the panels that complements it, bonus! They're little things that add up. And I have to realize that I'm not always going to get it right the first time. I've freed myself up a little, working on this challenge. I start planning a layout the way I'm thinking of it. A lot of the time, though, I only have a section of it clearly in my head, and the rest is vague. But that's okay. When I run out of pre-planned stuff, I start making it up. If it's wrong, I just redo it. As long as I complete a page in a day, it doesn't matter whether it works or whether I'll ever use it. It doesn't matter what story it's for; most of my writing plays out in my head cinematically so it's easy to pick a scene no matter what medium I ultimately want to use. What matters is that I'm practicing.

...That said, the pattern lately seems to be that each day I'm just doing the previous day's work. Even when I do catch up, I then miss the next day. Evidently I'm just awful at this. But I will not skip a day! Here's my progress.

For the first one, since I didn't really have the feel of it yet, I started by sketching out the panels without worrying about layout. Then, when I had what I wanted, I arranged them into a page.

After that I quickly got the hang of just sketching in the panels, though I did retry it once or twice. If I'd already sketched it, I would number the panels and just do a page layout with the panel numbers in, not bothering to resketch. I already have the visuals there, after all, in case I do decide to turn it into a comic. Every now and then I did sketch a panel before inserting it, because I find boxes very stifling.  

I've started putting the date on them so I can tell when I've missed a day. Maybe one day I'll be inspired enough to do more than one, and then I'll be ahead instead of behind!

- Hex

A Very Giftie Christmas

I totally forgot to post this here.  I drew it before Christmas, too.

- Hex

Lenora and Madison

So... Lenora from my previous post is now Leon. I decided having two male characters would work better because a] it would give a better equality between the two characters and b] you would expect two female characters to be more willing to be protective of each other than two male characters. The way the plot works, the two take it in turns to save each other, and I thought it would just be a more interesting dynamic.

Because I still really like Lenora and her name, I decided to keep her as a character to use somewhere else. I have also been thinking lately that my character cast needs more lesbians. Or, to be more precise, any lesbians at all. My cast (and here I refer to all my characters across all stories, not just the ones from a particular story) trends towards male and this feels a little silly. Perhaps it's because I'm female and therefore I find less to discover in that aspect. I mean, obviously I'm not every personality of female you could ever find, but I relate better, so I feel I understand it better and therefore need to explore it less.

Anyway, long story short, I decided to draw Lenora and her girlfriend. Because of Lenora's previous role in Umbra as a guardian angel, I thought it would be nice to give them wings. But wings are a serious compositional pain in the behind, so I started wondering if perhaps these two are of a winged species, and every now and then a baby is born who only has one wing and so is flightless. It's a lonely life among those who can take to the skies, so they band together.

I don't know where to go with this story. I don't really want it, to be honest, because I want to focus on the ones I've already got. So I'll keep thinking about it and see if I can fit them into any other stories of mine, though that'll probably mean I'm nixing the wings. Unless they can be Mythics, but then the one-winged thing would be weird. And they'd probably have to be a bit older. Hmm... *continues to ramble to self*

This piece isn't exactly romantic, so I theorized that it's probably a little before they actually start dating. You know, they're getting along, getting to know each other, falling further into that awkward anti-communication stage where you're developing feelings but aren't sure whether or not to voice them yet. At least, that's how Madison feels. I'm finding it interesting that Madison appears quite self-confident in the way she dresses and makes herself up, and yet in demeanour she seems reserved and maybe even shy. Lenora, on the other hand, wears a dress that makes her look young and girly, yet has a more tomboyish personality. At least that's what I want to build on with these two.

Will I finish this? I dunno. I have a lot of other things I should be painting. Also, I'm leaving for Toronto tomorrow and Colombia on Monday. I'll be there with a big family friend group for a week, and although they say we should have wi-fi and I can bring my tablet or whatever, I won't have as much time to myself as I would at home.

- Hex

Umbra Characters

These are a couple of character concepts I drew for a story I had to come up with for our Narrative unit at uni. Because the story's meant to be geared towards a pitch for a hypothetical end-of-year short animated film, I wanted to draw them in a style that would be simple to animate. My usual art style might be a tad complex.

I think these guys' designs could still use work, but I enjoyed working with a more cartoonish style. I started with silhouettes for them (which is how I got into the idea of using silhouettes to generate poses), which helped me break out of my usual style.

In the story, Umbra, people's shadows represent their inner thoughts and feelings. For example, a couple of people could meet up and have a polite conversation, but they don't actually like each other, so you can see their shadows fighting in the background. Our protagonist, left, is currently named Damien; he's a surly teenager who hates the world. His shadow (aptly nicknamed Shade) finds out it can eat other shadows and, in doing so, gain power. Not 100% on what happens to shadowless people, but they'll probably go zombie-ish or just flat. Certainly in visual style they will lose all three-dimensionality, and they may become very plain personality-wise as well. Of course that would mean it'd have to be obvious that they are three-dimensional individuals prior to their flattening, so I'm still thinking about it. It might be very interesting to combine 3D and 2D mediums... but I like 2D better.

Digressing: Lenora, right, is Damien's best friend and foil. She's more timid and rather kinder, and the story culminates in Shade going out of control and eating Lenora's shadow. It's only then that Damien realizes what he's doing is wrong, but possibly Lenora's shadow becomes the light that separates Shade (or something deep like that) and restores everyone's shadows to their rightful owners.

I'm in a bit of a bind over what to do with the shadows' designs. Shade is supposed to change as it eats more and more, morphing away from a human form into the form of a monster. It's symbolic, okay? He would morph as below:

Everyone else's shadows are just silhouettes of them, signifying that Shade's gluttony is the reason it's changing. So for Lenora's shadow to have wings is a bit illogical. I don't want her to be eating any shadows because that's supposed to be wrong. I'm not sure. Anyway, I have until the start of next year to iron it all out. I'm actually quite interested in getting this film made next year. I don't know, though - there are so many brilliant ideas this year and I think I've got some tough competition!

- Hex

I was going to write a blog post...

...about how I've suddenly lost all motivation to draw anything. But it started meandering and I figured I'd spare you the pity party. I might try doing some quick comic pages for practice. I don't want to dedicate myself to a huge project I won't be able to continue, but I've done some thumbnails and I wouldn't mind just illustrating snippets of my stories. Comics are something I really want to get back into. Believe it or not, once upon a time I kept a comic going for about 80 pages. It's utter crap now. Wanna see? Here's the first page:

And here's the last one I did before I dropped it:

Loads better, but still pretty craptastic. Looking at ToK makes me laugh.

[ETA] Oh, yeah, and here's one with people in it for comparison:

- Hex