Felt like sketching the elf yesterday, so I did. The one thing that makes me happy, after all these years, is that I have finally learned to loosen up when drawing. It's been the one stylistic challenge I've had forever. And I'm letting details be way out of proportion if that's how it goes. Here, his hands are gigantic and yet I like them. Since I'm only making this for me, I have that option. Also, this sketch shows a good deal of the under-scaffolding so, if one cared, they could see how I got here. Just pencil and paper.

More or less, the first 84 pages. I think it's really interesting to see the pages this small, where you can only guess what's in them. The colors almost look mapped. And I honestly thought I'd overused that night time dim copper color but I don't think I have. The next act will be more colorful, I think. I've been slow at this but I've learned a lot and have rediscovered a love of drawing. So here's hoping for Act 2.

Final redraws for this sequence. Most of these were not total reworking, but used elements from when I did the pages 2 years ago. One saw the elimination of the character, one was started from scratch and one had some minor color tweaks and text replacement. All in all not too bad and the track holds together much better than it did before. As I get older, the figure becomes more and more fun to draw as well as distort. I wonder how nutty the second act will look... 

A couple more. The bottom one is kind of a mess, and also feels a lot like graffiti in a way that a lot of the other pages don't. So I think it works. Just a couple more to go. My goal is to get this done this week and the whole act finished and uploaded.

 Two more re-draws for the day....

Today I began the task of going back and re-drawing some pages for the first act. In general, I'm happy or happy enough with the pages to mostly leave them be. There's one section, though, that I kind of hate. It feels stiff and uninteresting. I'll still leave the final pages mostly as-is, but the first 3/4 really just need help. For example, I decided that since this is the last time we see the spirit of the city, it might make sense for the POV to be from above, as if the spirit is looking down. Makes even more sense when we see the spirit descend at the end of the song. Didn't occur to me at the time. So on the top, we have the re-drawn page and below it, the problematic original. I have NO idea what the hell was in my head with that color scheme other than I wanted that high crime light organ, but was worried the comic was feeling a little too one-note palette-wise. Since the final pages have that palette at least for the background, I had to keep that. Otherwise, I threw the rest of the colors out. 

Messing about some more with this. The initial aesthetic, the smoother one has gone by the wayside again. Why? Because this style is FUN. I can keep things loose, I feel almost like an actual cartoonist and making the drawings on my iPad or the sketchpad work out about the same. We're supposedly doing these things in black and white, some with photo backgrounds, some without. One spot color per artist. I got blue which is more than good with me. Did a bunch more drawings but this was the only one finished as I assume we want it. I'm pretty happy with it.

More diversions

 

So... remember that part where I gave up cartooning? Yah. So, some guys I was doing an online comic with a few years ago suddenly popped up wanting to restart said comic again. And suddenly I'm trying to find myself an avatar so I can join in. The comic was called, "The Party Line," and is really just about three cartoonists talking about... whatever. Art, cartooning, life. That's it. Just some blokes talking and cartooning about it. Even the first time around, I could NOT stay with one style, partially because I never felt that I was doing that well with any of them. We haven't even started and already I'm doing the same thing. They're showing in reverse order; the lower ones I was working on, feeling I was finally coming to something that was pretty well conceived. And then I was shown the work of this cartoonist named Boulet, who is a lot rougher and more emotional. And so of course I wanted to try that. And now...well, there you go. Makes me miss real ink as well. No idea how this is going to go, but if I can make a mess of it, I certainly will.

Finished the track today. 20 pages, which might be the longest track in the comic so far. I think laying it out and making it this way really helped. I'll have to go back and read but it feels like there's a cohesion that might be lacking elsewhere. Next step is to redraw whatever pages in Act 1 that need to be redrawn and release the whole act as one package. And then I have to learn how the hell Silas is going to paint as well as how to fake real graffiti for act 2. Ah, well. 

Another page. This one was a bit of a challenge as I wanted to have 4 'panels' in this one to get him OUT of the alley. Managed to make them fit and also draw the figures distorted without using warp features of Procreate nearly as much. It's actually a lot of fun to draw that way. I will likely do more. I can already tell this comic's styles are going to be all over the place. 

Another day, another page. You really have to click on this to see but that's because there are so many, the thumbnails have to get smaller.

 

Another page today. I was almost stuck on this; it's the last verse-pair of the song and I wasn't sure where to go. And then, suddenly, there it was. I pair the next page, which is silent, do a page for the refrain and have one more silent page to end song and act. THEN the re-drawing starts. 

 Thanks to Vince, I made some simple but necessary changes to that page. I put the bricks and image into perspective and added a red 'shadow' from the previous page. While it doesn't add a lot of drama, it adds enough that now the page looks more like a part of the set and it does what I need it to do.

Another few days, another few pages. I actually got three done today which is nuts. Sometimes, stuff just flows. So when that happens, I try and grab as tightly as I can and just go with it. I think there's a lot of movement in this one except for that one panel of the graffiti. I'm not totally sold on that one yet, but it is kind of exactly what I need at the same time. I think it's just that it's so static compared to the rest of the pages. Making the 'chapter' this way allows for tweaks along the way before the whole thing's released so I'll likely look at it again before done. One more page of verse and one of refrain, possibly one walk-off page to end the song and the act and I've reached a pretty big milestone, especially for a project I had pretty much written off. I've done 82 pages of it so far and we're not a quarter of the way through. I'd like to think that this track, most of all, actually feels somewhat musical. We'll see.