New Year and Weekly Goal

I've been working on a page every day now for 8 days. Some observations have begun to surface.

I'm devoting a minimal amount of time each day to completing the page. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but a fundamental choice has once again emerged: either trade in your 'other' time for 'drawing time' or don't expect to do a serial. I'm simply not putting out work that meets my standards. This evaluation is given based on the facts of my current situation. At this rate, I'm more suited to working on my graphic novel... which may be a good idea.

One desire I've had is to actually begin some sort of planning outside my work time. Another is the desire to increase speed-- this one is most minor. Lastly, more skill building during work is probably the strongest desire right now.

Here's the criteria for evaluating my weekly work:

Goal: 7 pages finished

Estimated time: 56 hours (@ 6-8 hours per page)

Grade is based on actual performance and growth. An 'A' during week 1 will not be the same as an 'A' during week 11. You will receive 2 letter grades lower for late work.

A full 7 pages completed of average quality will score higher than only a portion of the work of excellent quality. The goal is to increase stamina, speed, and quality in that order.

First goal: To complete the page count in the allotted 1 week time frame. A 'C' will be awarded if this goal is achieved and represents a comic with complete, solid drawings with good construction, composition, and readability. The letter grade will then change depending on the actual quality of the drawings: a higher letter grade represents above average ability given my current aptitude (same for lower letter grades).

Week 1 grade: C-

Lots of hits and misses. Virtually every panel (save one... maybe) needs work to some degree. The minus is for the 2 bad panels that could have been easily fixed. That said, you nearly had a flat C. Shouldn't be too difficult to achieve a C next week, but you'll have to show some overall drawing construction, background, and technique improvement.

Problem Solving

Today I was pretty tired. Nevertheless, I did do some work. I corrected some faces and I drew some new ones. I decided not to draw faces on all the characters because some of the poses I may end up redrawing. Maybe I'm just tired, but something is bothering me and I can't tell what. I notice this feeling when I don't have a clear direction of what to do next. Part of it is that I haven't kept inventory on the bust shot panels that I need to finish. So, I don't know how many I've done and how many are left. The next problem may be because I haven't worked out any new drawing elements, only faces. Redrawing old panels felt like I was moving backwards rather than making progress, and attempting to make progress by working on new panels was frustrating because I didn't have enough planning done before hand. I keep forgetting to stop my timer, which is annoying as well.

Now that I've written it out, that's exactly the problem I was having. When I'm at home I want to work on the actual comic, not on preliminary sketches. I have two options then: work on sketches (hands, bodies, backgrounds, effects, etc.) or rework the older face panels.

Recap: Take inventory and redo the old panels. Take your time and move forward when you're really ready and don't get ahead of yourself.

Yesterday, I was noticeably pickier with my drawings than usual. After some thought, I decided to focus on explaining the head construction principles I've acquired over the years but rarely, if ever, have recognized. This will root out any bad principles and reinforce the good ones, since I'm essentially teaching the material to myself rather than burying it, untested, in my subconscious.

I want to continue with this method for as long as necessary. That means, I'm getting rid of the 64 page deadline. Going through and organizing my thoughts and putting the good ones into practice is going to be more beneficial in the long run since I'll be ridding myself of deep seeded habits that could continue to bother me for who knows how long.

The first thing I need to do is work out generic head principles. Then I need to state specific design principles for my current characters. I'm going to briefly mention the principles that I'm most familiar with and elaborate on the less known ones. Actually, after some thinking it seems I need only to state the specific design principles for specific characters.

My goal in a pure design sense is appeal. That's super abstract and something I'm not going to tackle right now, so I'll say appealing 'to me' for the time being.

General

Eyes- usually slightly angled outward at the top of the eye. Almost as if you're drawing slightly mad eye expressions. Size of the eye isn't an issue. Usually larger pupils are more appealing, but Dragon Ball has proven an exception, since Toriyama uses dot eyes. As I suspect it's the space he creates AROUND the pupils that makes for an appealing balance.

Eyes closer together are usually not as appealing. Dragon Ball is the exception again. I'll have to experiment more formally, but I've noticed that the closer of the two eyes in a 3/4 angle drawing is more appealing when skewed closer to the ear. In other words, leave some space between the closer eye and the nose.

Ears-

Hair proportions

Glasses- put little circles near the top left or right of both lenses. The eyes need to meet the top rim of the glasses, which means there should be some space between the bottom part of the eye and the lower glasses rim.

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I'm leaving the previous text up because it prompted the following developments and I think it's worth keeping. On some actual paper I began drawing some characters and bit by bit dissecting and reforging them into the most appealing things I can. I should note this was only ACTUALLY possible once I was somewhat familiar with the character. It seems after awhile my subconscious feelings of 'something isn't right' began to actually surface into something I could grasp... this is in general a very awkward transition as a person and over time I'd like to minimize the 'downtime' associated with figuring out a particular problem.

To rephrase the previous bit: Humans don't have 'instincts' to begin with. It takes a certain amount of time/ experience with a 'problem' before I actually recognize that there is a problem. Then I have to figure out what the problem is. Then I have to figure out how to solve it. Then I have to experiment until the problem is solved.

Back to the comic. My goal going forward is to begin drawing in the heads of all the panels and experimenting with new elements as the opportunities arise.

I inked a couple of yesterday's drawings, just to make sure. I think I have finally solved the layout drawing problem! While these aren't the greatest inks ever, and there are certainly a few touches that can be worked with, I'm at a state where I can move forward with the layout drawing phase without worry.



The solid black scabbard looks strange for some reason. I think it's because I'm not used to using blacks so often. Again, these are details I can think about later on. For now, I should go ahead and work on character layout drawings (again). I say again because there are a certain number of drawings I've done already using a g-pen.

By the way, I think Eichiro Oda uses a 'school' pen. That's the pen I'm using to draw the layout drawings now. It makes a uniform line, like a kabura pen, but it's different somehow.

Again, do some layout drawings and then come back once you have some new observations.

My goal for Sunday is to draw as many pictures of Roland as possible. Also, clean up any unnecessary layers.

For my next trick...

I seem to think it a good idea to finish the whole comic in a low quality. My goal will be to give myself a limited amount of time to work on each page and record the observations and results. I'll start with 1:30 and adjust as needed. Basically, I want a readable copy finished which I'll then follow up with notes on how to improve.

My first hour I realized something: The end results of my drawings are the same. I want to solve the problem at the root, rather than waste time finishing a drawing of poor quality and continuously improve it until I'm satisfied. If I solve the problems as soon as possible and replace the bad habits with good ones... Well, who knows what could happen. It sounds a little crazy if you ask me.

Let's look at my first specimen.


Stage 1: This drawing has some nice energy to it, looking back. Why did I take the handles out? Oh wait, it's because I'm too lazy to figure out how handles work!

Here's an attempt to make the hands look more natural when holding a sword. I think I'll go back and do something similar to the hands in the blue sketch.

A cleanup. Notice all the problems and how I didn't take time to fix them. I wasn't completely focused on the drawing.

Again, rather than fixing the problems, I go ahead and finish the drawing. Nice job... As a side note, I need to find a way to vary the line quality. Perhaps turning the opacity down more on the under drawing so I can see the line variation better.


On the surface, the line quality isn't very good. However, line quality ultimately doesn't matter. If the drawing isn't appealing, then it is the drawing itself and not the finish. There are several construction problems to work out:

The left side of the hair shape.
Sword hilt.
Hands.
Sheath clasps.
Sparkles.

You have to be able to consistently draw well constructed layout drawings before doing faster versions from which to ink. Let me say that again: There are no shortcuts. Pay attention to what you're drawing and ask whether what you're doing makes sense or not.

Steps for improvement-
1) Have model
2) Construct drawings

Begin with those two steps and record the results.

Looks like most of the old problems are solved. Honestly, it isn't that drastic a change. It looks like the sword hilt is better constructed. My hands overall need work. The line quality is better, but not great. I think the shopkeeper's head should be lowered significantly and replaced with sparkles and such.

I'll stop working on this drawing for now and pick another panel.

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Ok, so I've done quite a few things in the last few hours. I seem to have built up a bunch of problems subconsciously, resulting in an overload of failures. So, let me see if I can't define all the problems down one by one and decide what to do next.


I don't have all the variations of this panel, but what was going on during this time was experimentation with line thickness and stroke. I dropped the thickness from (probably) .80 mm down to .70 mm in .05 mm intervals. The goal was to get the same 'default' line that Akira Toriyama has. This also led for a brief experiment with stroke. The only purpose was to give the option 'another shot' to try to emulate the g-pen look. Stroke on definitely does achieve the g-pen look but it doesn't look like Toriyama's style nor my own.

Here is a panel with what I consider to be the ideal thickness to shoot for. Actually, the balance is very good too, so I should say this is the ideal drawing. This drawing was not achieved with stroke on, and it was drawn in the .80 mm range. It doesn't necessarily emulate on the surface Akira Toriyama's inking style.

Also during this time, I began to experiment with blacks and shapes. I don't have any examples and I'm not going to make any new ones, but as an example I took the shopkeepers hair and made it black and then played around with the proportions. This didn't last very long, but I imagine it contributed to some of the anxiety build-up.

I was reading some One Piece during a break and I noticed that the character lines are inked quickly and almost crudely. Actually, I've noticed this before. The main point is that the drawing has to be appealing without the finish in order to be a good drawing. I keep gravitating toward the line quality instead of finding out how to fix the drawing itself.

So now that I've resolved that conflict, it's back to work.


Here's the best solution to my problem so far. I've found a pen with a uniform line that I'm drawing with. I seem to be able to cut right to the chase in terms of seeing construction problems right away without distractions.

Here are a few successes:



These all look like they're constructed just fine. I'm glad I barreled through this problem. Maybe for the next step I should ink a couple of these and see how they turn out... Or maybe I should draw some other characters. Hmm...

Learning

I finished page 25 yesterday (1:17) and began working on page 26. I noticed that my drawings were still 'unbalanced'. I'm still not quite sure how to define unbalanced, but right now it has to do with the proper proportions or ratios of negative and positive space which includes solids and lines. Included in this definition is a harmonious balance of thick/ thin line weight. In other words, my drawings felt 'off' and I began analyzing why that was.

I've been fawning over Akira Toriyama lately, so I decided to do some practicing. I think his drawings are really well balanced according to the definition provided above. I took some drawings from the comic and began copying them. My initial goal was merely to match or emulate his line weight and proportion.


Here's my first attempt. I wasn't at all trying to go for drawing accuracy, only line weight. A major, but slightly painful, leap forward for me was simply zooming out when I drew or inked. I'm used to zooming in more than 25% and focusing on each line individually. However, 25% was still very close to the image, showing maybe half of Goku's face while I inked. I think by staying focused on the whole image layed out a good foundation for improvement.


Still working with image zooming, I tried this next drawing at 20%. At this level, I can see the entire head of Jheese. This level provided me with great success! The only problem now to solve is the thickness of my pen. This drawing was inked at 1.00 mm probably.

This ink (the Freeza drawing) was inked at .95 mm. I found that this line weight was very close to the original drawing barring inking errors on my part. To correct this problem, I decided to drop the weight down to .90 mm.



It's time to start applying what I learned to my own work! Although it isn't bad, I wondered if I'd actually learned anything from the practice drawings. The balance is really off still! I wondered if it was due to lack of blacks...

So I filled the hair black. I think it does make a difference in balance, but only superficially. There is still line weight problems. It seems that, whether the lines are really thin or really thick or in the middle that the drawing still doesn't quite come together. My theory now is that this phenomenon is due to proportions and ratios.


Here's my latest drawing. I tried to vary the line quality a bit more (though the drawing is still flat in many places) and added more volume lines on the face and hair on the head. I think these are minor improvements, but probably still surface solutions like the black hair. Looking over the drawing, I think the left eye and the hair shape are not properly placed/ constructed and that leads to image imbalance. The ear is a little small, too. Anyway, I'm going to keep whittling away the problems until I achieve the ultimate balance!