I have another update! Yay! Below you'll find a break down of the struggles with the current comic page along with how I attempt to solve them.
Previously:
As you all know I've been hitting art block quite badly last year and haven't been active very much every since art wise. I keep bringing this up to give context in case you forgot or missed any news regarding that. The comic page was about half way done by the time art block had hit me. Towards the end of last year that art block slowly started to disappear and I was able and motivated again to draw and write things, but especially with the comic it was still difficult. Whenever I sat down it felt like work. Something you HAVE to do, HAVE to finish. And somehow I never really questioned that or maybe I wasn't ready to question it at the time.
Last weekend I was sitting at my art station, wondering what I should draw and decided to take a look at the comic page that was still in construction. So I opened it -
thinking I'd close it again soon after. But instead I was able to look at it from a more neutral view and I saw the problems in the concept and flow of the page.
Let me try and explain with the scribbles you see above:
This comic page is quite essential to the overall story of Sovereigns. There's a lot of big and small implications, some foreshadowing, setting the tone, etc. happening in this very page. The stuff you see in the picture up there are two very different ideas for the central panel of that comic page. The lower one was the first idea I had but as you can see with the many variations of Will it would be a sh*t load of work! So I quickly abandoned it, feeling I had grown enough into a professional to come up with something that could tell the story equally well with less effort on the drawing side. Which brought me to the upper concept where the Heart somehow creates a reflective surface and Will sees her reflections in there. Feeling myself clever I merrily went on my way working through the page, cleaning lines until I noticed: This doesn't work. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
It took me half a year to figure out what didn't work! HALF-A-YEAR! Still blows my mind.
But at least now I can report some progress. Here's what I found out:
- Problem #1: The way I planned the page, there was no room to show how that reflective surface was created by the Heart. It's just suddenly there. Which makes no sense. Even less so, if it is broken. Either I would have to add some panels, to give more space to the magic happening, see how the Heart activates, some surface starts to build up and then shatters in a third or fourth panel until Will looks at it, which would require rethinking the bottom half of the page or move that to another new page entirely...; or I would have to change the central panel.
- Problem #2: The different versions of Will in this concept were all crammed into one reflection of her, making the shoulder of this version, part of the head from that, etc. giving each one only a tiiiny portion of attention. In my head that had a cool and mysterious effect but seeing it on the page I just felt sad for the versions for not getting to shine.
- Problem #3: Lack of motivation and inspiration while working on the comic. While this issue had lessened over that half year, I could still feel a part of me rejecting the thought of returning to the comic.
Being in the mood for some tinkering said last weeked, I decided to just give it a shot. I had nothing else that was pressing, and if I dropped it after an hour again, that would be totally fine.
So no attached pressure. I played around with another option to give the different reflected versions more space but ran into the same issue with the magic not being properly displayed. Next
thing I did was explore different concepts for the centre panel. This would mean a lot of rework, or rather, scrapping stuff I had already drawn out and partially colored. I tried not to worry
too much over any connected effort just yet, since I was 'just experimenting'. Sometimes you have to trick your brain to get somewhere new.
I remembered the skribble I did all the way back at the beginning of the comic that you can see up in the picture (the lower one) and thought: Well, it's still a sh*t load of work but let's at
least give it a try. To test it, I used 3D models, shaping them roughly into poses, moving and morphing, adjusting the angles, adjusting shadows, until I felt it could give off the feeling I had
planned for originally. That took a good 6 hours.
I let it sit and slept over it, returning to it the next day with a fresh and open mind. I got a good vibe off of it already but decided to adjust the rest of the page to this new centre piece
too. This took another 2-3 hours. Then I had to adjust the script. Another 1 hour went by. Until I finally sat there, and thought: This is actually really cool. Sh*t load of work, but cool.
So problem #1 and #2 were solved. Yay!
Problem #3 was still giving me a bit of a bother though, and it still does a little even now. After going through all that trouble of turning over my perfectly planned out comic
page concept and more or less starting from scratch, I felt a lot more inspired! It was... fun! So why was it fun now while it wasn't before?
I talked to by friend about this and he mentioned to me that he had the feeling I had had lots more fun with the first few pages of the comic years back than I have now. He was right!
I think the problem is with this whole "feeling professional" thing. I started learning about how to make comics with this. And there came a time where I had made my process super efficient and
yet, it still took me a long time to get one page finished. So I started working on the script, cutting it down by half - meaning from planned 12 issues down to planned 6 just so there would be a
higher chance of me actually getting it finished at some point. But you can already imagine, if you try to fit the same content into half the time, it's going to get messy, feel rushed and lose
its touch. Well, I fell into that trap. Multiple times. And I felt I was simply being efficient, realistic and professional, while taking away the girls breathing space!
My learning from this: I have to cut myself some slack! I was pressuring myself to just get the next page done, plan everything out to perfection, make it efficient and focused,
etc. etc. That's not art though. It's just not how it works. Eventually your content is going to show the lack of love and inspiration that went into it. And it's frustrating staring at it but
not being able to change it. Because I couldn't say what the problem was until now. So that spiral just goes down and down and you feel less and less motivated to do anything.
But since allowing myself NOT to work on the comic, allowing myself to rework a whole page from scratch because I feel it just doesn't work,. allowing myself to change the script again, bring
back some humor here and there and let the story fill the pages in a more natural pace that just feels right; I think if I can get back to that, then I'll find my inspiration and fun back for the
comic as well. Because that's what it was about at the beginning. It was just a fun project, I kept including the community, ask some questions, make some polls, make you guys guess what would
happen next or even decide a few things here and there that I would include later. That kept it fun and changing and just more... connected and alive. I want to get back to that.
What does that mean for the future?
Honestly, I don't know? This was a finding I made like... today and it all sounds nice and easy on the page here but humans are complicated and I don't know what will happen next. Fact is, I feel
a lot more comfortable with the reworked comic page concept. Also fact is, I sit down a lot more often on weekends to draw again - though so far it wasn't for the comic.
I want to get back to drawing the comic I want, that I want to read later too and look at it and marvel at the magic and stuff that's happening in it. And I'd like to include the community a bit
more here and there too, to liven things up. I don't know for what exactly just yet but being a creative person, I'm sure I'll figure something out.
Well, that's it for today. There's no definite answer or schedule. The next page will definitely take some more time until it's finished... sorry if that's not the update you wanted to hear
:D
But there's a silver lining on the horizon. And that's something to cherish, too.