Tag: creaturedesign

Some focussed exploration work for my comic. I had a great session doing this yesterday, but hit a limit with how fast I can give basic renders to line drawings. Yes, my new feelgood process hit a limit and suddenly did not fit for rapid exploration sketches. This is a fascinating experience, as shifting my mind towards process is more important than the result seemed to be quite hard already. To also find out that the process also is changing during a lifelong art journey and to understand and feel what that means, that is a little but uncomfortable, too. But given that I will probably be surprised by many things on the road ahead, that’s just another decision to make, another adaptation. How can I work to become faster with exploring? Leave the lines and start with the form already? Or is that what everyone is doing already and I didn’t notice because my understanding of tonal values isn’t that good yet? How can a line indicate form rather than itself? Is the whole secret thinking in light and shadow?

Yesterday’s drawings taught me another thing, that might be useful for other comic beginners too. Your existence is frustration already. Everything does not fit. Every decision is too big and could be the absolutely wrong one. And it will probably never get done, at least not how you imagine it to be without having a clear picture in your head. I mentally prepared to having to draw out a whole world before I can even storytell scene 1 of my story, because that would probably the right thing to do. But then, as I was drawing, I was wondering…would it be really the best choice to make? Imagine building a world for 2 years, always teasing your potential audience until they are numb and move on. And then you draw scene 1 and realize everything was a bad idea and your thing is a bit boring. Good looking, but boring. You could not have known this because you aren’t an experienced storyteller and your friends and beta-readers weren’t either. And then you are sitting there. Overprepared by maybe 22 months. There will always be ways to turn a failure into victories, but you depraved yourself of half an eternity in which you could have actually told your story and learned to storytell in general by telling your story. In my opinion storytelling outweighs the visuals in the end, so go to that stage as quick as possible and gain experience. And this is really hard coming from someone who is such a visual creature like me. But I have made this mistake of focussing on developing my visuals overall for years. I dread all the inevitable beginner storyteller mistakes I will make, but this is a path I’ll have to walk to arrive where I want to be.

So for The Fearful Creator, oh this ironic title, this means I will prioritize getting episode 1 drawable and drawn as quick as possible. Quick is relatively of course, as I cannot draw what I have not designed and have no picture in my mind for yet. Yes, it would absolutely be preferrable if I wrote a clean script, from start to finish, built my world, from start to finish, to have it 100% consistent and developed, and then drew the perfect run of finished pages. But it would be madness to let me do this as a beginner. I would possibly procrastinate for years because I have no idea what “good” is, when something is finished vs overprepared and general, an insecurity that is probably harshest before you have the first comic out.