Category Archives: Art

Head cold brain fog

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I finally finished something! My little horror comic is all done. See how cute and horrible it is. Joel is definitely me, going to work every morning. Witness the melodrama.

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/last-minute/list?title_no=276285

Being sick actually helped get this done. My brain was in a weird fog. I spent a long time sitting in my car in the parking garage because I got distracted by the weirdness of my tongue in the rearview mirror. It’s such a horrible gross alien, all twitchy and purple and veiny and sluglike. I just stuck it out and moved it around and marveled that I was in control of this thing. After a while I realized, I’d been doing this for god knows how long, and I needed to get a drink of water, and drive home.

Then I got home, and Don said something about the cat doing something, I don’t know, I don’t listen to him much 😉 and I thought about saying, “It wouldn’t be outside of the realm of possibility” in response. But I got mentally hooked on that phrase and was like, how long did that take just to say in my head. It’s the longest possible phrase. I say that all the time, too. Did I say that just now? I’m not sure. Why don’t I just say maybe. Could I find a LONGER phrase than “It wouldn’t be outside of the realm of possibility?” Could I BE any dorkier?

But when I called in sick, I just spent all day staring at the computer screen with the paint bucket tool, connecting lines, clicking fill, connecting lines, clicking fill. The whole damn thing got done. I am really amazed that I got anything done in the state of mind I was in, but if I were in a normal state of mind, I probably wouldn’t have done jack.

I didn’t used to be affected by colds this way. I’m not sure if this comes from getting older and being just more susceptible to everything, or if it is simply a matter of me not being as repressed, so I allow myself to get emotionally and mentally affected by things. It was kind of fun, except for the occasional drowning in my own excretions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More comic art you didn’t want

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Each page is getting a little bit better than the last one. It was fun playing with the light and shade this time around.

I’m finally getting to a point where I can actually use the software and make it do what I want! This. Took. Weeks.

Ezekiel cried, dem gray tones!

 

Screenshot_20190315-002832~2.png

Oh guess what, now I see mistakes. Time to go to bed!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anime/Manga style drawing

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Anime/manga style art is the way it is for many reasons. Here are the things I like and want to emulate:

  • Cartoon styles can be exaggerated, meaning they can be more lively and expressive than realistic styles, which can look static by comparison.
  • It’s simple, attractive, and easy to draw, which helps when you’re going to draw an entire book of manga on a deadline.
  • The pacing and plot lines. They’re beautifully flowing, interconnected  hill climbs, with periodic bursts and falls. They line up perfectly with my EKG. Long-running TV shows also do this well: They’ll have a mini arc within the time between a commercial break, a larger arc in the 30-minute episode, and an even larger arc encompassing the whole season. This makes me happy in a very deep way.  I got distracted didn’t I. What was I talking about? Anime art?

What I don’t like:

  • I’m not good with faces, and I have trouble telling characters apart sometimes if the artist doesn’t do a great job with character design, because all of their faces are the same.
  • It has a standardized visual language to communicate standard emotions or character types. This is cute and very effective, but leaves little room for complex emotions or characters. The best manga writers use these only rarely.

Learning to draw digitally, I was getting pretty frustrated (as my sharpest regular readers no doubt picked up on, haha). I thought, dammit, I CAN DRAW. And I figured I’d do an anime style as a morale booster. It wasn’t as easy as I expected, but it was certainly easier than everything I was attempting. Morale was boosted. I realized I was trying to develop my own style while also trying to learn new software. No wonder I was frustrated.

 

animehug.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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