A3 Ensemble Piece

August 8, 2012

Ever found yourself in that situation?

Where you’re in the middle of something and you just happen to spot a bit of dust on a table? It could wait, indeed it can wait but you can’t. It’s there on your peripheral vision, burning a gaping hole in your attention. It’s got to go.

So you wipe it away, only now you look closely the table is covered in the stuff and you quickly resolve to start what you finish, scrubbing away with naive optimism unwittingly dislodging an avalanche of grey snow; reinforcements quickly follow too forming a vanguard of dead moths, fluff and crusty hairs from parts unknown. You open a window in an attempt to offer a peaceful solution but the invasion is underway; counter attacks have already begun on your nasal passage and eyes. Negotiation is out of the question.

Surrounded with battle lines drawn and full-blown war against the filth all but inevitable you shoulder the vacuum cleaner with a heavy heart and wonder why you ever trifled with that harmless little dust fluff…

Since you’re probably wondering where the heck I’m going with this overblown analogy I’ll get to the point; allegorically I had that dust situation with the above piece.

As I outlined in my exhibition plan my last hung piece (15) was intended to be a collage made up from existing artwork at A3 size, however as I started piecing it together I couldn’t resist the urge to tinker. It started out small with lines being thinned out for the sake of uniformity or the odd hand being redrawn but before the long that intention had spiralled out of control; the more I changed the more edits I wanted to make and in the end what started out as a quick collage became a full-blown artwork.

Though the end result here is all new, some of the poses will likely be familiar as they are based off old work but the lines and colours are completely redrawn. I went for an ensemble image of Branch’s key cast since it struck me that I have very few promotional pieces; I’ve done a fair amount of work on the comic itself but didn’t get around to creating much in the way bonus or self-contained art. Having felt this lack acutely at the last MCM Expo besides using it here it could additionally be useful for when I’m trying to sell myself in such situations.

On the technical side it’s worth a mention that I tried some new colour and shading methods here; I applied some very faint texture overlays in an effort to create a more interesting kind of graininess and character to clothing and hair, while I also endeavoured to give greater depth to shadowing and more sharply defined highlights. It’s experimentation so the results are slightly hit and miss but as always it’s good to be freed up a bit and try new things.

At any rate, ideally this should make for a strong closing piece to my exhibit, capturing the essence of the comic and its characters generally while breaking up the relative monotony of A4 art on show. There’s a lot more I wanted to do with it that time wouldn’t allow and of course I could of saved myself a lot of work by making a more modest final effort, but for the most part I’m glad I pushed myself this one last time for the MA. While Branch will be ongoing my formal studies end here and it seems only right that ensure everything finishes with a bang rather than whimper.

Strangely, I’m rather glad I decided to pursue this creative dust fluff!

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Posted by Ozy

Issue 2, Page 1

July 20, 2012

My deepest apologies on it taking so incredibly long to get issue 2 off the ground properly and indeed to anyone whose blogs and stuff I’ve failed to follow in recent weeks – things have been a tad hectic.

As I’ve noted/raved-about previously the MA is quickly drawing to a close and pressure has been on to wrap my current progress up into an exhibition and justify my the direction and development of the project as a whole. My maiden issue makes for a nice point to evaluate Branch as a formal Masters piece, but if I want to be serious about finishing this thing on my own time then I can’t start slacking off. Much of the worst panic is over for now as I have a relatively clear idea of what I’ll be doing for the next couple of weeks  – which is not to say I can promise regular updates, but I can promise the next page won’t take a month to materialise.

As for the page itself, I’m generally pleased with the overall effect as it quickly draws us into a tense situation with an immediacy my opening issue lacked. There’s a nice sense of balance to the layout and composition with steely hands forming the focus of two frames situated diagonally from each other, while the palette strikes me as an improvement aswell, being more cohesive than previous pages with a progressively cooler colour temperature as the dramatic tone changes.

Still, there are a few things I would/should have done differently: the last two panels really feel like they needed detailed rather than abstract backgrounds – there’s too much wasted space and it breaks the immersion a little – on a similar note, while the spaceport isn’t meant to be especially busy a few extra people dotted around would have been nice to enforce credibility and realism.

Elsewhere, a friend pointed out that Scratch seems a little off in the second to last panel, I was aiming for an alert sort of expression but it came out lacking the intensity required somehow. Up till now she’s typically appeared bored and I didn’t want to plunge her into ridiculous OTT bulging eyes and furrowed brows the second trouble appears but still, it’s not quite right… It’ll be something work at over the next few pages either way.

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Page 21

April 30, 2012

Excuse me as I pick the tar out from between my toes (see the end of the last post). Obviously out later than planned though hopefully better for the extra spit and polish here’s page 21!

There a few things of note here, mostly in relation to the change of scene as we return to the spaceport lobby. For one it should be evident to anyone who flicks back to page 11 or earlier how much the rendering of the art has changed; linework and colours are far cleaner and less murky creating what I hope are clearer, stronger images. It’s annoying that the stylistic continuity has taken a hit in the process but it’s better that the larger changes are made now than later, in an ideal world I’d redraw the backlog but time isn’t on my side so for the immediate present I shall be pressing on…

The colours themselves aren’t as striking as with the previous scenes, moving back to a less restricted more subtle palette of oranges and browns off blues and greys. Besides the practical change of location and consequent lighting I felt that it was time to turn down the intensity for a little while and wind up the tension again for the next major beat of the story – in relation to this, I’d like to draw attention  to the use of repetition on this page.

Pauses and reoccurring elements if used heavy handedly are liable to simply create tedium, but they can also help garner a sense of unease between events, creating a rising rhythm and suggestion that we are waiting for something to happen. Emphasising an awkward pause in a comic is an odd affair as sense of time is often determined by reading speed; a dramatic moment the author intends to be held may well be skipped over in an instant by an impatient reader given that they are ‘in control of the acquisition’ (Eisner, 1996, page 52).

What I’ve done here in effort to create the impression of an uncomfortable pause is use three panels that are almost the same but with varying details; I didn’t want to just repeat the same image three times with gratuitous copy and paste – it tends to derail my immersion in a comic when I see recycled art – so I reused the composition for each but gave the characters slightly different expressions and poses, thus holding the moment while hopefully avoiding tedium or literally appearing to stop the comic.

An additional area of pseudo repetition I’d like to point out is the first panel; an entirely new drawing but with composition which echoes a panel from page 11 (looking past the security guard over the desk) and to a degree the first panel from the previous page. Whether these touches register with reader subconsciously or knowingly it should in theory dial things back a few notches while maintaining the feeling of impending danger I’ve been developing along the way.

One last minor mention I should make is that I changed the colour of Scratch’s trench coat now that it’s in neutral (i.e. not green) lighting. In early concept art it was greenish-grey but it struck me that brown-beige was a better fit for both the character and comic’s colour schemes, it also pushes it closer to the kind of 1940’s trench coats I based it’s look off in the first place.

That’s all for now folks!

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Posted by Ozy

Page 20

April 8, 2012

Since I already covered my recent production troubles and new course of action last post, I’ll keep this nice and simple by weighing up the finished page on its own merits/problems so I can get on with things and try to make up for my poor output.

The third panel is pretty much the most notable feature of this page, working as a background and being a more ambitious effort than my usual. Besides wanting to break up the monotony of flat closeups, as I’m bringing this scene to a close I thought a longshot would make a striking conclusion displaying full figures and emphasising the bizarre meeting location. I also thought that the raised angle looking down would make for a nice echo of the first panel in the toilets from page 12, while giving the atmosphere a warped edge in the buildup to the next major beat in the story.

On the downside even with a photographic reference and preliminary sketch to work from it was a small nightmare to draw,  forming a large bulk of the delay. It’s close but I’m not sure it quite pulls it off, the perspective on Curt feels on the money but I’m not so sure about Scratch. The fact it looks a bit fisheyed isn’t all bad given the intended tone but I definitely have a long way to go drawing this sort of viewpoint.

My favourite panels are the first and second, an odd thing given how bad they looked in the sketch but somehow they worked out as more than the sum of their parts. Scratch’s ‘don’t give a damn’ expression feels spot on and I was especially pleased with the way the light catches the edge of Curt’s face in the first image. The third and last panels meanwhile feel functional at least but at the same time didn’t quite capture what I wanted; Curt’s expression seems too understated while conversely Scratch’s brooding irritation is a little too overt maybe.

The colours are a continuation of the last two pages so there shouldn’t be any surprises there, however they emphasise my biggest issue with the overall page: wasted space. The top row is fine in this regard but the bottom panels have some embarrassingly barren spots I really should have filled. I coasted on abstraction for the last image but the left corner could have done with some extra clutter or a shift in focus maybe.

One final point; I deviated from my script’s dialogue someway here as it seemed a heavy-handed on review. Scratch said a lot more than she needed to at this stage while Curt’s behaviour seemed unrealistically bold under the circumstances, questioning her ‘name’ and getting a snarky response. It was kind of interesting in some respects but felt forced and unnecessary – a case of what’s left unsaid being more effective I suppose.

The bottom line? An adequate page but still a disappointing one, not so much because of the end result as the time invested. One way or another I must get faster at how I go about this. Hopefully my new approach between traditional and digital mediums will improve matters, I just hope the quality doesn’t suffer as a result.

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Page 19 + breakdown

March 15, 2012

Remember when I said I’d have this page up last week?

Somehow I had it in my head when I pencilled this one out that it would be relatively simple, unfortunately it ended up being the proverbial greased eel. The end result is solid enough but there’s no way it can justify weeks of hiatus; while there may be artistic merits to the work it’s also entertainment. Entertainment with readers. Readers with limited patience who I’ll wager have a hard time maintaining interest in a conversation spanning across a month and would rather spend their time with Batman or watching funny cat videos on YouTube…

To anyone who is still following I really am sorry for the slow output and continual broken promises, speed is by far my biggest weakness but I’d still rather delay than churn out something unremarkable which I’m deeply unhappy with. Anyway, rather than moping about my inadequacies again or making more shady promises I thought I’d do something different here and provide some insight into how I work while considering how I might tighten things up in the process:

The rough pencil plan which I start with (above, left) based on the script is perhaps the easiest part of making a page, I sometimes end up wrangling with the layout a bit but it’s usually over and done with in a day. Anatomy tends to be wonky while the linework itself is immensely crude but since it’s all going to be redrawn it hardly matters, what’s important is that I get a sense of the overall thing  and whether it works compositionally before beginning proper.

Conversely, ‘inking’ (pictured above right) is typically the most difficult and time-consuming portion of the process. Previously I’d draw out each panel individually with fine liners but since realising I’d have a far easier time doing the same digitally I now work over the layout in Corel. The new approach affords me more control and makes mistakes – of which I make many – much easier to reverse, on the downside though it tends to bring out my obsessive side. Given the option to redraw things as many times as I like means I can often lose focus on the bigger picture and end up repeatedly reworking a nose/eye/hand/miniscule detail, whereas on paper I’d get it down and that would be it – no going back.

To my mind at least the quality of the art has risen over the last several pages or so thanks to the new methods but I need to be stricter as to how I allocate my time and avoid being tempted to overcook irrelevant minutiae.

Stripping away the linework – and inadvertently creating some seriously trippy imagery – you should get a sense from the two stages above of how I build up colour. Given that this scene is saturated in sickly greens the palette isn’t as complex as some other pages but I still ended up putting in a lot of effort.

I start out with a base green, apply midtones, then work in shadows and highlights from there with the dodge and burn tools; I know that professionals often start with the darkest areas first and work up to lighter tones from there but I find the mids give me a greater sense of balance as I build up the layers, providing a kind of anchor I know not to stray too far from. Keeping everything in variations of green struck me as somewhat monotonous and unrealistic so you can also see how I’ve overlayed other colours in the second image to make certain features such as eyes and Scratch’s prosthetics standout.

Something I’ve additionally begun paying more attention to recently is lighting. Besides the regular greens being a little strong on their own adding the sense of a lightsource/s creates a far more interesting visual atmosphere; note the cyan highlights applied in the left image via brush selection and translucent gradients, in this case giving the characters a paler complexion along with the sense of cheap and nasty lighting overhead. For similar reasons I also applied a dark blue tinge to areas of heavy shadow to enhance the feeling of depth.

Finally, the last image (above right) shows two irregular effects I applied in this case: the mirror and the HUD overlay from Scratch’s viewpoint. The reflection was a simple affair only requiring some overlayed gradients and highlights, unfortunately getting the HUD right proved considerably more taxing, being largely responsible for the last day or so of delay. Unlike most other features it needs to look computerised rather than organic/living but on the flip side it has to fit with the style making it a mind-boggling contradiction to draw up. It took a few tries but the end results I hope are at least serviceable, appearing precise enough to be a computer readout with a suitably rough edged look to prevent it from jarring with the rest of the comic.

Putting aside smaller foibles I feel like my methods and techniques have evolved into something I’m fairly comfortable with, as ever the bottom line is the need for greater efficiency. With future pages I need to be more aware of where the time goes, which details are necessary and which are superfluous. I’ve seen others with less time produce far more than me at a higher standard so it’s not a question of whether it can be done, I’ve just got to keep refining and work towards a more respectable output.

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Posted by Ozy

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