Lunchtime break and I sadly brought the wrong art bag today, so I can’t draw in the old sketchbook today. So here’s a little Art Dump of some old images previously put up on the site. I think all these images can be found on the gallery section of the site. The first one might not, just be the last page of chapter 23. Anyway, enjoy the mini gallery!
Hello again everyone, back with a bit of an update. So I’ve been a bit busy recently working on Halloween related stuff both for this site and the Green Raptor site. In fact I actually get kinda stressed this time of the year because I feel a great deal of pressure trying to get Halloween related stuff out before the big holiday, which is especially stressful when I got a chapter to work on in addition to all that.
Fortunately it’s all done, and I’ll get to writing the script to the next chapter next week, as well as get cover designs going. To give you all a little preview and show you some work, here’s a work straight from the sketchbook. So we’ve spent two chapters thus far in Japan at the fortress of Hideyoshi and his wife Karou. Well next chapter you’ll get to see them as children and the origins of their home will be revealed. These are the first sketches of them as kids, though I think there will be some slight changes before the final product. So enjoy this sneak preview of what you’ll see, straight from the sketchbook.
So I mentioned that we would be doing some behind the scenes work, and while on that subject matter, there is indeed some commentary that must be said. In today’s blog, I want to talk about… the FULL PAGE.
Since starting this comic in 2014, I’ve personally discovered much on this long journey. I dare say that a full use of page was honestly something I had not even considered, for I, as a rank amateur back in the day, only saw a page as simple means to align panels. Over the course of time, I looked at a few artist who talked about using the whole page but it wasn’t until webtoons that I started to develop my own style.
Commonly found on webtoons are single panel comics, which are read through the use of scrolling down. It was something I had not once seen before and I dare say, did NOT adapt to it well. My comics were originally done with full on pages and cutting up those pages and making high quality scroll down pages was quite new and difficult for me. In fact I feel my lack of experience is one of the big reasons the comic didn’t exactly fly so high on webtoons. Shortly afterwards, smackjeeves also switched to this format and thus I left that site as well.
Since leaving and the struggle with scroll down comics, one of my working methods is to ultimately challenge the single panel scroll downs and thus not only make use of multiple panels but also design a page that can’t have the same effect otherwise.
Whenever I make page, and it’s possible, I try to make it artistic and present a unique scenario that can only be achieved through use of multiple panels. One such example is this page from chapter 22 where Kalwa goes on a rant. Kalwa’s text balloons are designed in a way that guide the reader down the page and keeps all focus on her. Yet the reader also has the option to view the members of the tribe who show a great deal of remorse, as though they were secondary focuses
Most of the time I do tend mix text with the pictures in order to set up and guide certain scenarios to the reader. Often I deliberately have text leak over into the next panel so that readers will be guided all over the page through the text itself.
This technique can also be used to convey a certain sensation, and example can be found in this page from chapter 24, which at the time of this post is the latest chapter to finish. The use of sound effects coming from the following panel convey a sense of interruption and swiftness. This of course does pertain to real life and Kalwa’s own perspective, as realistically an strong opponent would move quickly on a weak one and hit them before they knew what would hit them. These are types of scenarios and feelings that I try to convey within my pages, and attempt to make the entire page on big illustration in itself rather than just being a collection of smaller illustrations. Something a single panel scroll down comic could never achieve.
So all that being said, I hope this post has been most informative and (possibly) inspirational for some of you. I’ll be doing more posts similar to this in the future when I’ve got something I feel is worth talking about. Thanks once again for reading and I hope I can continue to bring you all more entertainment and some inspiration in the near future.
Just a little project I threw together over the last few days. This was kinda a piece to practice curves, and was inspired both by some pin ups from W.I.T.C.H. and an AMV on youtube I’ve been obsessed with all week tuned to the song Move like Jagers. Initially I was gonna gonna draw Kalwa in a bunny costume, but the original drawing was just not working out an I deleted it knowing I wouldn’t want to work on it anymore, thus we landed here.
Happy late friday everyone, we got a brand new page for on this fine Friday to help open your Saturday. So that’s another week’s worth of work finished, tomorrow night. Work on another project. As usual, click the thumbnail to see the latest page.
My internet has been giving me some major problems lately, and I got a little swamped yesterday after I left my mouse to charge. But we are back on with yet another page entry in chapter 23, we’re now officially up to page 10, which means we are nearly at the halfway point of this chapter. Now today, we introduce a new character who will be playing a major role in this arch and the entire story as a whole. As usual, click the thumbnail below to see the newest page.
Page from chapter 20 where Kalwa visits her first nude beach. It’s a little funny because every time I touch on nude beaches with Kalwa I always get some kind of praise for acknowledging Finnish Culture. I had originally touched on this subject for one of the young Kalwa mini comics and even though it was played as a joke, people were thrilled that I was addressing it. I’m really not obsessed with nude beaches, they are just a basic European piece of culture different from america.
As usual, you can check out the rest of the chapter by clicking the page.
So I know it’s been a while since I uploaded some sketches from the sketchbook, the reason has to do with the scanner, I also wanted to wait a little as we got more story out. So right here from the sketchbook I’m presenting some sketches of the Tribe, who debuted in issue 22. For some backstory, I really had no real model for how each of these characters would look like except for the chief and the simple idea that his “second” would be a female. These faces were were mostly just drawn up and designed and fine tuned to fit the characters. I actually intend there to be about thirteen to fourteen members of the tribe, but just couldn’t design that many characters in the amount of time. So actually in chapter 22, there are a few shadowed characters in the background as blank slates for future designs.
The chief I wanted to have facial hair as a way to establish him as the leader. Since we had earlier done a western story arch, I was actually trying to get some facial features from that era worked into the chief given the the eventual background that will develop from these characters. The chief went through probably about four possible designs before finally settling on the current one. My model was actually John Hammond from the first Jurassic Park film as I felt he was the type of senior citizen who looked like he would be out and active in the world. From his open shirt to his bamboo hat, this was my idea of the type of senior citizen who would fit this story. Many of the chief’s final designs such as his potbelly and few other facial features actually were finalized on the spot of chapter 22, as you can see here the sketch looks a little lankier and thinner, although I did make notes to myself while designing it.
Carol the second in command of the tribe I wanted to be young and female. Those who follow my work should note that I mostly draw female characters as opposed to male and the reason is that I value strong female characters over male as I feel they are rarer to find in entertainment. Carol was supposed to look like a working girl, someone who was higher up and could instantly jump into the role of leader if need be. Her design was actually inspired by Sora from Digimon Adventure, and I even had pictures of Sora without her helmet out while I was drawing her. Unfortunately that ultimately resulted in her first design (girl on second image) looking far too young than what I intended. The second design (2nd female in third image) was much more along the lines of what I initially wanted.
I do think if I had to pick one, Mikeal was probably the character whose design I liked the most, and his final drawings in the actual chapter were breathtaking for me draw. He will defiantly be one of the more vital members of the tribe in future stories.
Hope everyone had a great holiday. I spent the day mostly working on yet another page for chapter 23, I’m really getting into this shading style for the trees and plants. I think this new shading style will help me do other comics with heavy shading styles in the future. This is overall really good practice. As usual, click the thumbnail to check out the latest update!!!
An adventurous manga series about a teenage girl and her time traveling cell phone 