Gangsta

This week I've been learning a lot more about creating the 3D characters in Blender - a bit more tricky that animating them (I guess it depends who you ask!)  The above image is a character from a new 3D comic of Kyle Baker's.  He needed to make lots of gangsters, so he gave me the file of this basic gangster (above) and wanted me to change their clothes, hair, skin tone, etc so it would create many individual gangsters quickly.

You can not only change the color of a character's clothes, but "map" a texture onto it.  This was my favorite part!  Above, the black+yellow striped square was an image I found online and modified.  I picked all kinds of funky textures for the different characters, to which Kyle said "What kind of gang IS this??"  see below:

That's what happens when you put me in charge of outfits :)

Wrapping up the TNH animation.  It's in the final editing stage.  Above is a screen shot of me animating the chick, Officer Peep, driving a car.  Yes, it's a cartoon so s/he (we haven't decided it's gender) really can drive that way!  See the animation in the TNH2 link from last week's post.

In other news, drew more Aer Head yesterday (finally!) but that's for another post.  I also don't have a scanner at the moment.

Layouts

I've finally moved beyond the storyboarding part of the comic this past week!  I filled in all the gaps of the first episode and made sure everything flowed well and made sense.  Onto the next stage:  page layouts!

A layout is a general page composition.  I use circles and boxes to fill where characters and speech bubbles should be.  Layouts are important before doing detailed drawings so I don't have to erase them later if the composition isn't working.  Sometimes if I have a really clear layout, I get carried away at this stage and start to draw details, like below:

This is Pipsy remembering Aeryan growing up.  And yeah I can't deny that that page looks like anime :P

Sometimes I daydream about how great it will be when my AER HEAD graphic novel will be complete, but then I remember that the fun is in the journey and process of making the comic.  I'll continue to work at a steady pace, but I don't want to rush AER HEAD because I keep thinking of more cool ideas to help its story grow.  Rome wasn't built in a day.

Keep on Truckin'

This past week I've been working so much at my day job that it's been wearing me out!  But lots of work is a good thing.  Whenever I get a spare moment on the subway, waiting before an event to start, and in the late hours of the night, I've been fleshing out my storyboard.  I have most of the first episode of AERHEAD storyboarded and am filling in what  happens in between main events.  Last week you saw me take the pages off my wall and spread them on my desk.  This week I stacked all the pages on top of each other to see how it would read sequentially as a comic, which was super helpful in figuring out what I was missing:

It's pretty thick!  This makes me happy.  Here are some tidbits of drawings that are better than scribbles:

Storyboarding Storm

NYC has gotten hit with a couple bad winter storms lately.  One day, the heat in my apartment decided to take a vacation and left my roomies and I in the cold!  Hence the gloves (I love the finger/mitten ones!  You can actually grab things with them!)  I wished the sunny beach scene I was coloring could radiate heat.  I usually sketch in pencil but if there's a particular scene I need to test out I'll use color.

I've been storyboarding the rest of what will happen in the first episode of AER HEAD.  I took all the pages off the wall that would be in the first segment and spread them on my table so I could better see what I needed in between.  I counted 30 pages on the table, and I'm not even done with the whole thing, so it may be 2 comics instead of one, but I'll worry about that later.  The important thing is that I get all the important elements down and edit out over-explanatory details.

Oh and the heat was fixed by this picture.  I was just wearing the hat due to a bad hair day.  People suggest putting photos and videos of themselves on their blogs, but for me that requires looking presentable, which isn't how I usually look when I'm just in my apartment drawing.  Who really gets all dolled up just to sit at their desk and do artwork?  You're getting the real story here, people ;)

I've also made a tentative time line of when to finish storyboarding this segment and move on to comic page layouts.

Until next week!

New Year's Resolutions

The new year is a great chance to get a fresh start on many things.  In the past I made long lists of resolutions and didn't get to half of them.  This year, though, I will only officially make one I think I can keep:  My goal for 2011 is to finish and publish the first comic of AERHEAD!

I've also decided to return to my original method of making comics, which is to draw multiple pages first, then ink them, then color them.  I'll do this in batches - I've divided the story into three parts, and I think the first segment should amount to one comic of the series.

When I started this blog, I altered the process of making my new comic to match up with posting each week.  Creating a new page every other week from start to finish was a good way to make quantifiable progress.  However, it's not the most efficient way to do a long graphic novel.  A friend I met at MoCCA said I was "starting and stopping" all the time and couldn't seem to get into a good work flow, and I realized he was right!  For example, when I was drawing page 5, I really wanted to draw page 6, but had to hold back because if I did I wouldn't have time to finish the current page in time to post.  Doing many pages at once will also keep my style, story, and details more consistent.

So you've gotten a taste of what the finished AERHEAD comic will look like from the first 5 pages.  I know you are hungry for more AERHEAD!  I'll keep you updated on my progress, but my only fear is that I'll lose readers if I don't post finished pages in awhile.  Any thoughts?

Page 5 is finally done!

There are so many things to say about the making of this page.  My main struggle was the setting.  I started to draw the page and was like "Oh crap, I have to draw their kitchen!"  I had to realistically think of what kind of apartment they live in like an interior designer.  I know what it looked like from the outside (see the left cone structure on page 1) but I hate drawing interiors!  I'll get better at it the more I just do it, though.

I started with how I wanted the characters to interact.  This is Dr. Pipsy's intro, so I wanted a close up of him and then Aeryan entering in the background.  I wanted their environment to be more realistic, so I looked around my own kitchen and thought of futuristic versions of the appliances.  But all those little details took forever to draw and then ink!  Also, there was the problem of the background getting too busy when I inked it.  In the top panel, Pipsy has lots of gadgets in the foreground and I didn't want the background to compete with them, so I didn't put any spot blacks in the furthest kitchen clutter.  Spot blacks are the filled in black areas of a comic page.  I usually looooove putting lots of spot blacks in my comics, but in this page they didn't fit the background well.

Another interesting note is Pipsy's dialogue - he's an Englishman!  I looked up American English vs. British English online and even asked my friend Ariel who's studying abroad in London for suggestions.  One difference is using words like well, right, and jolly in place of "very."  And you can bet the trousers off your bum you'll see spellings like colour and aeroplane in the future ;)!

The Art of Time Management

This is how far I've gotten on page 5:

I've realized this past week that I need to spend more time trying to find freelance work and less time making my comic.  I love creating AER HEAD and it's my true passion, so I'll definitely keep making progress on the comic and posting something each week, though.

I've been very good at dividing up my time between projects at various jobs in the past, but since this comic is my passion, I let myself be a perfectionist about it.  It obviously takes a lot more time and care to create than a typical stick figure web comic ;)  I have considered cutting corners by drawing at half the size.  That would cut half the work, and in this case that's better than doing a sloppier job faster.  Usually cartoonists draw at the big 11in x 17in scale and shrink it down so the art will be "super tight" when printed.  But I've heard more than a few cartoonists say what's the point of drawing so much detail if it almost disappears when shrunken down?

More plans for AER HEAD include merchandise like stickers, T-shirts, prints, and the comic book itself, that people can buy through PayPal right here on my blog!  But until then, I gotta pay the bills like everyone else.  Recently, I have managed to get a part time job at an art store :)  I'm very happy because it's art related, I work with super nice people, and I get an amazingly awesome discount!  If you must get a day job, try to get something related in some way to your passion.  It will be so much more rewarding than a daily grind because you'll still feel connected to your goals - more than just the money goal.  You could also meet more people in your field and even potential clients.  And I can't overstate the awesomeness of a great discount on supplies I already buy - it just makes sense.

But even so, part time won't cover all the rent, so would anyone like to hire me for any projects?  :)  I can work long distance too!

Inspirations

Many animations, comics, tv shows, movies, places, people, and other things stirred around in my brain to form AER HEAD.  My main inspiration is Daft Punk's animated music video of their Discovery album -  "Interstella 5555:  The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem."

I already loved Daft Punk's music and was totally amazed when I saw this anime-like music video in 2003.  I can't even begin to describe it's awesomeness, so watch the animation here.  I love the style of the characters and how colorful everything is!  The film was produced by Daft Punk, Cédric Hervet and Emmanuel de Buretel along with Toei Animation, under the supervision of Leiji Matsumoto.  Interstella 5555 © Toei Animation 2003.

Another influence is Colleen Doran's "A Distant Soil" graphic novel series.  Isn't that picture so beautiful and sparkly?  I LOVE Doran's work!  I'm mainly inspired by her vivid color schemes, fluid coloring style, and collage-like page compositions, where panels can be any shape and meld into one another.  I even got to meet Doran one time at last year's New York Comic Con!  I totally geeked out :) A Distant Soil is published by Donning/Starblaze © Colleen Doran 1989.

Another visual inspiration for AER HEAD is the light of late afternoon summertime.  Not quite sunset yet, but like 5 in the afternoon.  When it's super hot out, the sun is blazing and casts a golden light over everything, reducing objects to wavy silhouettes.  This is why I love to use so much yellow and shadows in AER HEAD!  It definitely gives that summertime feel.

Also, I took this picture looking at Coney Island from Brighton Beach.  That old Parachute Drop ride even influenced some buildings on page 1 of AER HEAD.  That structure looks so sci-fi!  Doesn't it look like a space ship that just landed there?

AER HEAD's story is greatly influenced by Lost, or the first few seasons anyway.  I got busy with college and work and stopped watching all TV, and just never got back to the series.  However, I was very intrigued by what I did see early in the series.  For those who don't know, Lost is a sci-fi drama of plane-wrecked survivors' mysterious encounters on an island in the middle of nowhere.  I loved all the bizarre things that would seemingly happen without explanation!  Like the random polar bear on the tropical island and the mysterious hatch.  The writers of that show were excellent story tellers that mastered the art of suspense.  In terms of AER HEAD, let's just say that things are going to get weird.  Very weird :)  Lost © ABC Studios and Touchstone Television 2004-2010.

Those are the main AER HEAD inspirations, but there are many others like outer space, manga creators Rumiko Takahashi and Osamu Tezuka, the movie Inception, and even Scooby Doo!  And I already mentioned San Diego's influence in my second post.

Oh, there is another major influence... but I can't reveal it yet because it may take away some of the surprise later on ;)

This week I've been drawing page 5, which you'll see next week!

Storyboarding

Yes, I DID draw that pic just for this subject ;)  Storyboards are a series of pictures used to visualize a movie or animation.  They are usually based off a script and are an essential step before filming or animating.  Comic books are storyboards in themselves (which is part of why there have been so many comic book movies out recently - the storyboards already exist!).  I'm using my own kind of storyboarding process for the AER HEAD comic.

AER HEAD is a very long story.  Before this, I had done short stories of 6 to 17 pages, so tackling this was pretty overwhelming at first.  I've sketched these characters for years, and attempted to make the first part of the comic before (I'll post that after this version catches up ;) ) but I realized the big picture had lots of plot holes, I didn't know how characters would get from place X to place Z, the villains were unclear, and it didn't have much character development, so I put the story on hold.  For awhile I still had all these half baked ideas floating around in my head, but this summer I realized if I don't do the comic now... when will I do it?  Next year?  5 years from now?  No, carpe diem!

So first, I looked through all my sketchbooks (about 12) to remember what I had sketched about the story over the years.  I had totally forgot about some things!  Which is why sketching them down is so important.  Then, I wrote pieces of the story on index cards and put them on my wall.  That's how I was taught to do it in animation classes in college.  I drew images for the college storyboards, but I wrote for AER HEAD because I was still in the general concept stage and didn't want to worry about committing to drawings yet.  The index cards allow me to easily switch parts of the story around, take parts out, and add parts in.  I hung them in a time line like fashion to help me figure out what needed to happen between place X and place Z and other places.  This was really helpful and I kept thinking of more and more things to happen!

One time I was talking with a cartoonist friend and he said he drew small thumbnail sketches of his whole story before doing the real drawings.  Thumbnails are really small, like a couple inches high.  They help to get the basic layout and pacing of a comic.  So I was like, "All right!  I'm going to draw the WHOLE THING out!"  Which didn't last long... I kept getting stuck, was thinking way too hard about it, and underestimated the amount of time it would take.  Sometimes the creative process is organic and you can't force it, and what method may work for one artist doesn't necessarily work for another.  So take my crazy process with a grain of salt ;)

I started sketching some whole pages.  I don't like drawing small, and I invent the dialogue as I'm drawing, so I used regular typing paper to fit everything in.  Here's a close up of the storyboards for the first 2 pages:

Sometimes the storyboards are more detailed like page 1, but mostly they're very sketchy and basic like page 2.

I mentioned that storyboards usually come from scripts, and while I didn't write one for AER HEAD, I read many screen writing books to help me "write" visually.  Some of them were:

Robert McKee:  Story

Madeline Di Maggio:  "Screen-Writing" Insider Tips and Techniques to Write for the Silver Screen

Peter Dunne:  Emotional Structure

I didn't read them all through, but definitely the first couple chapters and skimmed the rest.  There were some other "writing for TV" books that I had to return before I read them, but I forgot their names... but just look in the library and they'll all be in one place.  I also looked at Scott McCloud's "Making Comics."  All these resources combined helped me to move my story forward, cut things out, create conflict, and develop characters pasts and inner desires.  I also learned about things like character arcs vs story arcs, the difference between plot and story, and technical terms like archplot.

I went to the New York Comic Con this year and they had a panel called "Writing Character Driven Stories," where I learned about the impact character, holistic vs linear thinkers, and mental sex - like if a male character thinks like a female (which my male characters might turn out to be like, since I'm female and can just guess how guys think.  Gotta work on that mind-melding technique... mindyindymindmeld!!)

Ok, so that's a lot of info to digest!  I'm still storyboarding as I go along.  All the pages you see here...

...are probably like 1/20th, or maybe 1/40th, of the whole story.  One of the fun things about writing as I go is adding stuff that strikes me at odd moments like "Eureka!"  A potential drawback to writing as I go is if I want to add more info to past pages, I run into problems.  But at this point, I don't want that to hold me back.  It's important to JUST DO IT.

PS:  Yeah I know I said I'd post page 3 this week, but lots of crazy things happened and I didn't get to watercoloring yet.  I'll have it for next week!

This is where the magic happens!

This week I give you a peek into the world of the mindy indy studio!

This is actually the other half of my bedroom.  I live 45 minutes away from the city in Brooklyn, so it's a fairly large room!  I salvaged that big table from my roomies (who were going to throw it out!) and it's perfect for spreading out all my supplies and having lots of room to work.  Tip to other artists:  SALVAGE!  Salvage EVERYTHING!  This past weekend I even salvaged a mini grill from someone in my apt complex = the ultimate delicious victory!  But I'm on a tangent...

I also got that tall standing lamp from my roomies - it's important for me to have lots of light to work under.  Um, almost everything in my room came from my roomies because they are awesome :)  Oh except the laptop - that's mine.  It's more than 4 years old and crashes regularly :\

All those little cards on the wall are my storyboards for the AER HEAD comic.  I'm going to do a whole post just about the storyboarding process, because there's TONS to say about it!  In the first picture, they were just words on index cards, but watch as they grow on my wall:

The storyboards have grown and have taken over my other wall!  Luckily I have lots of wall space, but I'm running out.  The full pages are drawn with pencil so that's why they don't show up as well, but that's ok - I wouldn't want to give away the story!

Of special note is the hanging teal colored thing on my closet - it's actually a travel make-up bag that I use to put all my art supplies in!  It organizes things SO effectively and I can SEE everything that's there instead of supplies being hidden in desk drawers.  Come to think of it, I can't imagine anyone needing THAT much make-up for TRAVEL... I don't even OWN enough make-up to fill one pocket!  Getting off that tangent, besides needing a new computer, I also need a new T-square because that one isn't square anymore!  I think it must have gotten warped somehow.

This is pretty much what my studio looks like now.  I was working on page 2 when I took this pic.  Here I have my watercolor supplies out.  It's important for me to clear my desk of most things before I begin working on a comic page because I don't work well with lots of clutter on my desk.  In particular, I clean between the inking and watercoloring stages of my comic, because both processes have tons of supplies and to have ALL of them on my desk at once is a disaster!

In retrospect, I'll take some pics with ME working in them in the future.

I've been creating page 3 this past week and will post that next week, and beyond that I'll explain more about those crazy storyboards all over my walls!  Lots to look forward to!

The Process (Don't try this at home)

Here's a little about the process of how I did the first page, and I'll answer last week's question at the same time!

1.  The left page is colored by computer, whereas the right one is water color.

Now, backing up a bit, why did I color this twice?  Backing up even further, I usually draw directly on the comic board, but I was inspired by some people in my class who used transfer paper to save their drawings (instead of inking over them).  I've been told by various people that my drawings are better than my inking skills, so I wanted to save it.  First, I drew the page on newsprint, as shown here:

Then, I traced it on transfer paper to transfer it to the comic board:

It kind of looked like a blue print!  Then I inked it on the board:

But then I realized if I wanted to use water colors, I had done the page on the wrong paper.  EPIC FAIL.  I didn't think ahead to the coloring process.  I really wanted to use water color because it was a strong aspect of my previous comics, but it would buckle the current paper and pieces may start to rub off.  So I tried coloring on the computer:

And this looked fine.... but it just didn't feel RIGHT.  And it looked like coloring I'd seen in other comics before.  So I took the original drawing and REtraced it onto better paper (vellum bristol), RE-inked it, and finally water colored it, ending up with this:

All in all, I do NOT recommend the transferring process.  True, it's cool to keep the drawing instead of inking over it, but it's totally not worth the time and AGGRAVATION.  Although, if I hadn't drawn it on another paper, I wouldn't have been able to transfer it a second time to another board...  Anyway, the rest of my pages won't involve this ridiculously insane process - I was just trying out something new.  I hope I can save some poor soul from making the same mistake.

Another thing that I changed when transferring was:

2.  Different buildings in the foreground and mid-ground.

The story begins in the futuristic city of New San Diego.  But in my first draft, the buildings didn't look... San Diego-y enough, even for it's future.  My sister lives in San Diego so I've been there many times.  I tried to incorporate the Mexican influenced architecture more in version 2.  Some have also said that the city looks more like San Francisco, but there's a reason for that on page 9.

3.  Replaced "Part 1 Aeryan the Dreamer" with "A Mindy Indy Production" and my signature.

At first I tried dividing my story up into little parts of 4 or 5 pages, but the end format will be a graphic novel, so the "parts" seemed unnecessary. That, and having a title page so often seemed kind of ridiculous.

4.  I made a black outline on the title (version 2).

Not sure how noticeable these next two are to others when scaled down on the computer:

5.  I made a broken outline on the shiny parts of buildings and other things (version 2).

6.  I gave Aeryan's hair more texture lines (version 2).

7.  I added another bridge and more city on the smallest island in the background.

So those are the major changes!  There are countless smaller details too - one of my friends also noticed I had added a new sign in place of some buildings.

Stay tuned for page 2!