Artist of many trades: Illustration, 3D Modeling, Game Development, and more. I'm here to bring you my comic series "From Greatness to Dust and Back Again".
Tools
Photoshop CS5.5, Blender, ZBrush, Intuos Pro 5 M tablet
Hello all,
Sorry I haven't been on here in a very long time. I didn't like the direction my story was headed (the plot wasn't solidified at the time and I made choices I wanted to go back and change), and with a full time job I didn't have the energy to keep drawing.
I have been back at my notebooks re-envisioning the story and characters. Soon I will start publishing content again- but I'm considering more of a written text approach with some illustration to support. Not sure if that would be appropriate for this platform.
While I am still working on my comic as usual, I had an idea that I can't shake now- making my comic interactive instead. I'm thinking of a visual novel / point & click sort of game where you take the role of Marija and live out the plot and experience the world and characters. Not clear on how I want it to work yet- but I am definitely open to ideas and suggestions.
something I think would be cool would be interacting with the facility environment. Maybe like opening a door to a lab or maybe like accessing a monitor file
yeah that would be fun. I'm starting to explore more ideas in my head about how the game would work. Making the story a bit less "constrained" to the written script I already have and allowing the player's choices to really matter. I also want the option for the player to take their time and see the world- even if it's off the plot path. I'm thinking of ideas for things like puzzles and maybe a "mood" system to reflect how the character feels about your choices so far.
I'm all moved in to my new place and I'm back in action. I also took a short break to learn some new things and tinker with a few other projects.
To warm up back into the drawing rhythm, I drew my characters in the style of a game I found very inspiring (don't spoil it for me, I haven't beat it yet)
I've finished some tests with a new B&W style for my comic going forward. I think it looks pretty acceptable, and it's certainly much easier for me to produce. I'm excited to get to work knowing that it won't burn me out and I can spend more time telling the story! For those of you who really enjoy my painted panels, don't worry- I'll still be doing them for the important scenes. I'll also try to incorporate color washes and tones for scenes that require more emotion and mood.
I really like the colored version but in cases like this, we need to see what's more viable. If you don't mind a suggestion, I think the thick lineart gives it a cartoon feeling, so probably making it thinner would be better imo... But that's good anyway. And be careful with that moire. Try applying the screentones only after downsizing the image.
I work at a high resolution now (in the hopes I might print it some day), and I'd hate to have to shade it twice, but I do know exactly what you mean about downsizing the screentone. That, and some other things I have to experiment with- illustrations that aren't paintings are hard for me to make NOT look cartoony given my animation education lol!
I agree though, I do have to nail down a more serious looking line art technique, especially for the other comic series I'm going to do sometime based in the same story-world (it's going to be a horror comic).
I'm trying to decide if I want to move forward with the comic in mostly a black/white graphic style for most of the story with occasional pops of color, and only do the fully illustrated panels for really important scenes. I hate to not have every panel fully painted, but it takes a lot of time and energy to produce pages that way and my story will never get done. I'm not exactly sure how I want to do the graphic style though because I'm not the biggest fan of my own lineart techniques.
Use this opportunity here to try new things. I'm changing the dimensions I use to draw the pages, for example, and I'll see if I can use screentones this time. Making it completely colored takes too much time, so I think it'd be a good idea to go grayscale now.
Hey all, I've decided that since I haven't updated in a couple months, and I am currently in "peak" season at my full-time job (60 hours a week), that I will call it a hiatus until the beginning of 2017 when I finally get my life and free-time back. Just want to let you all know I'm still here and I'm still making my comic. I hope you all can look forward to updates again in January!