So I Went Adventuring…

So I Went Adventuring…

Digital artwork of a chipper, perhaps even smarmy, kingfisher on a branch. The kingfisher is decked out in fantasy royal knight regalia. This includes a blue cape with ermine fur on the inside, a small buckler strapped to her shoulder, a sword strapped to her back, and a dagger attached to a belt wrapped under her distinctive red 'belt' of feathers which marks her as a Belted Kingfisher. The sky is big, bold, and blue behind her, ripe for adventure!

Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel
“Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel of Gürtelfischer Manor (she/her) is an adventuress who has gained some notoriety as a skilled and fearless swordfighter in recent years. Her origins are somewhat mysterious. While she is more than happy to talk about her home and family, neither she nor various other interested parties have been able to turn up a single other person who has seen or even heard of the realm she claims to come from. Those of a more sceptical disposition might say that it is rather convenient for her that nobody can verify her claims of being a warrior-princess. However, while she may or may not be a princess, the “warrior” part is evidently accurate, so it is wise not say such things within earshot of her.”

-R. Kraft, Avians & Aviaries

About This Piece
Lady Sigrid here would not exist without the chance sighting of a kingfisher by my photographer friend, GettoKnowNature. Kingfishers are notoriously elusive photography subjects and here was one just chilling on a branch one winter morning! The bird had so much character, I was equally smitten when Nature’s luck.

Digital photograph of a belted kingfisher perched on a branch full of lichens. The sky is super blue behind her. The kingfisher is female because it has a rusty brown 'belt' around her waist.Photograph byGettoKnowNature. Displayed with permission.

So, I did what I do best when I see a cheeky beak: I drew it! I also found out tangentially that kingfishers are related to kookaburras. This was related to noticing the beak and crest being kookaburra-like.

Where Have I Been?
I have been right here, busy as ever. Perhaps busier. I had to put the blog on the backburner when contracting picked up a little too much to maintain everything I wanted to accomplish. I return with thoughts on how to continue making the two-week schedule I’d originally envisioned here managable.

Simpler Posts
Step one, from here on out each post will simply be that. I won’t add tutorials to the end. These tutorials were taking a lot of my time. I couldn’t trust that they were accurately conveying the concepts I wanted to teach. Finally, each one kind of contained enough information to be its own blog post, which often felt at odds with the subjects I was actively blogging about. Therefore, whenever I make a tutorial post in the future, it will be its own fullblown post! I think this would be very fun and make the amount of work involved feel like it’s worth it.

Status/Update Journaling
Step two, there will be times when I don’t precisely have a finished product to show. I’m opening myself to status updates and observations that come with that. I’m already experimenting with it via my Amphiox project and it feels great.

Blog Redesign
I would also like my blog to feel less detached and all-over-the-place. I’m going to revisit the layout and make it easier to navigate through posts and find posts with similar tags and categories. I think it should feel like it’s part of my main website rather than a different area.

Up Next
I’m tabling at GeekGirlCon! This is one of my favorite, favorite conventions. I’ll be at table 915 so if you’re in the Seattle area on Saturday 5th November, I’d love to meet you. I will have a new zine and tons of new prints, plus some returning goodies from years past. It has been a long time since I tabled anywhere due to COVID but I’m looking forward to getting back into these. I love meeting people so much.

Care to read more?

A Fossil Returns to Life

A Fossil Returns to Life

What Do We Do with Old Art that People Really Liked?I've been doing conventions for awhile now and find them very personally fulfilling. I have so much fun setting up my display, rehearsing my sales strategies, and figuring out which things sell and why. Of course, my...

Amphiox, Continued

Amphiox, Continued

Defining Steps in a Personal Production PipelineMy Amphiox short comic is an exercise in art production. Up until I attempted it, I'd never really done much longform comic storytelling. Most of my practice was in one- or two-page micro-stories. I chose 48 pages as a...

So I Went Adventuring…

So I Went Adventuring…

Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel"Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel of Gürtelfischer Manor (she/her) is an adventuress who has gained some notoriety as a skilled and fearless swordfighter in recent years. Her origins are somewhat mysterious. While she is more than happy to talk about...

Want to chat about this?

Amphiox Monthly Challenge: Complete, but Not Finished

Amphiox Monthly Challenge: Complete, but Not Finished

Digital artwork of a cow mascot over a colored-in balloon letter word of 'SAWGUST'

I Completed a Monthly Challenge!
For the month of August, I pledged to ‘rough’ 48 pages. Roughing a comic means to start drawing in the figures and backgrounds of each panel. Roughs are typically more polished than thumbnails, but they aren’t necessarily polished. As I went, I colored in typography supplied by Sally Charette, one block for each day I completed. The cow mascot, SAWgustus, was created and drawn by Adrean Clark. I even won an ‘Auggie’ – a casual award for participating.

How Many Comic Roughs Can I Get Done in a Month?
As it turns out, 48 individual roughed pages in 24 spreads is a reasonable first benchmark for me. These aren’t ready to ship at all, by any means, but I have a solid start to a zine I might be able to sell at Geek Girl Con coming up in November. Probably not full-color or fully complete, but it’s exciting to think about having a short story available when normally all I sell are one-off illustrations and charms and things like that. Check out my progress below.

Digital artwork of a sketch of Lyrat, a bandit who wears a beanie and a jumpsuit.

I did some explorations of character designs as I went, but they needed adjustment within the story, so I’m glad I didn’t get too polished too quickly. I think I’ll leave my other character designs like this in the future. A little amorphous until they need to be solidified.

Digital artwork of various cover ideas, including some typographical explorations, some character art, the Amphiox monster, eggs, and random junk in the ocean.

I even had some time to experiment with cover designs.

Now what I’m sitting on is a base for the rest of the comic. I don’t think I can get a full-color comic inked and printed by November, but a black and white one would be possible. I definitely want to take an appropriate amount of time with inking so that I don’t have to re-do that. I also don’t want to commit to color too early and use a color-key to help me make good decisions as I polish off the rest of this comic before the year ends.

Many thanks to the SAW community for the great space to post rough progress and catalogue my thoughts as I was creating this!

What’s Next?
I have the following steps to get through as I continue honing this project and turning it into a little comic for my portfolio.

  1. Test Reading: Two readers have tested my comic and written a short story summarizing what they think the story is about. I’ll be reviewing their thoughts and incorporating changes to the story and characters based on what they thought. Some of the comic is still too ambiguous at this stage.
  2. Rough Revisions: I’ve shuffled the spreads into an order from least-favorite spread to most-favorite spread. I’ll be revising them with fresh rough artwork
  3. Value Studies R2: Roughs are a great spot to pause and see if my values have changed from my initial studies. They also inform whether my compositions are still working or not.
  4. Color Studies: Roughs are also a great spot to try out color schemes and see what will fit for the entire story, or if I need to adjust particular compositions.
  5. Inking: This will likely happen in a few steps but I haven’t thought through them fully enough to deliberate what those steps are.
  6. Coloring: This, too, will have its own series of steps in a process. Probably something similar to how I color smaller artwork.

Care to read more?

A Fossil Returns to Life

A Fossil Returns to Life

What Do We Do with Old Art that People Really Liked?I've been doing conventions for awhile now and find them very personally fulfilling. I have so much fun setting up my display, rehearsing my sales strategies, and figuring out which things sell and why. Of course, my...

Amphiox, Continued

Amphiox, Continued

Defining Steps in a Personal Production PipelineMy Amphiox short comic is an exercise in art production. Up until I attempted it, I'd never really done much longform comic storytelling. Most of my practice was in one- or two-page micro-stories. I chose 48 pages as a...

So I Went Adventuring…

So I Went Adventuring…

Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel"Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel of Gürtelfischer Manor (she/her) is an adventuress who has gained some notoriety as a skilled and fearless swordfighter in recent years. Her origins are somewhat mysterious. While she is more than happy to talk about...

Want to chat about this?

Amphiox Monthly Challenge: Setting the Stage

Amphiox Monthly Challenge: Setting the Stage

Digital sketch of a comic page containing the image of a dilapidated seaside shack, as well as panels depicting a roughly-drawn character suiting up for some sort of task.

How to Draw a Whole New World
On August 15th, I was halfway through a self-appointed monthly comics challenge to create rough art for a 48-page short fantasy story. I’d been lenient with my goals, imagining that most of my time would be spent designing the environment of the story. The sorts of things I set out to draw (airships, motorcycles, tanks, other vehicles and things like houses, mechanical garbage, and other waste) seemed very difficult because I had never rendered anything like them before.

I’m pleased to say, I underestimated myself. I now have a rough setting for this short, silly action story.

Digital sketch of an airship village filled with various vehicles and junk. The humans are not yet drawn in, but there will be a lot of them and they'll make it look even messier.

In addition to the house above, I also have a mobile village of airships. They set down roots where they can, but the condition of the world itself causes these people to evacuate at a moment’s notice. Little roving villages like this are excellent at scavenging. They’ve taken all the refuse left over from a world-engulfing war and turned it into housing, transportation, farming, and more. While I can’t imagine it’s pleasant to have everything torn away by natural disasters, these are people who will come back and re-scavenge what they can, but also find new useful things dredged up from the ocean depths.

Digital sketch of an airship being open for boarding and then rising up into the air with other aircraft.

Designing this large airship presented two challenges: How do I make a big central vehicle believable, but also function in the layout in a way that makes sense? How do I convey that this was once an industrial and military vehicle retrofitted to become mobile housing? I looked up futuristic concepts of airships as well as the aircraft used to cart other aircraft around.

Since characters are leaving the scene, I wanted them to run from left to right, up the airship ramp. Otherwise they’ll look like they’re arriving into the airship. The motion of left-to-right feels more like exiting. Which meant, in previous scenes, the airship needs to face our left.

In a situation with more resources or higher stakes, I could have explored other methods of quickly boarding a mass of people onto an airship. This would have required redrawing scenes I’d already roughed in. For the sake of keeping a personal learning project going, I limited exploration of this airship design and proceeded to other parts of the setting. I’m hoping that by adding people in the next round of drawing, I can really convey the scale of this thing.

Digital sketch of an underground basement, filled with trash. There's a rough stocky character featured in it.

This basement was a fun exercise in pointing the viewer’s eyes to specific spots, where I will later add more characters. Also love the idea of putting so much random, odd details in that the reader might pause and look at this image more carefully, instead of glossing over it like readers normally do in comics.

Digital artwork of a beach strewn with junk, while some sort of cryptid-like snake monster swims off in the background.

This is going to be the final page and interior liner of the short story. Drawing junk feels so intimidating until I actually start looking up photographic reference and typing prompts into an AI image generator. Then it becomes oddly soothing, almost addictive. Can’t stop drawing junk!!

Comics Tip

Staging Tactics
The direction from which characters enter and exit panels can add or detract storytelling value to each panel. The ways characters are situated near each other can simultaneously add depth to their story relationship as well as allow the audience to keep track of their relationship to each other in a scene. A lot of how readers perceive comics depends on the language they are reading and which direction the words flow in an order that makes sense. This was something I was thinking about as I focused on my environment design for this short comic.

The English language reads left to right. English readers are going to perceive the writing and the artwork based on how it’s laid out. Elements on the left side of a panel are going to be perceived first, followed by elements on the right side of the panel.

Digital sketch of a man entering from the left on a comic panel.

Directionally, elements traveling from left to right may feel faster to the English reader, more fresh and new. When a character walks in from the left side of a panel it feels more like they are there for the first time.

Digital sketch of a man entering from the right on a comic panel.

A character walking in from the right side of a panel feels like they’re returning to the scene from elsewhere because they are walking against the direction of reading English words.

Digital sketch of two men entering a comic panel at the same time, each from a different direction.

When two characters approach each other in the scene, the reader may experience a slight bias towards the one on the left because that is the first character they perceive. The character approaching from the right is going against the flow of reading, which gives the character a feeling of blocking, antagonism. When elements are introduced in a scene, we tend to prioritize the first element we see, often preferring it to additional elements.

DIgital sketch of two people sitting and having a conversation. In the second panel there is a dramatic closeup.

Additionally, comics readers do not fully perceive images as they read. They read the text, and then they observe the image peripherally. If two characters are sitting side by side, then the characters need to maintain that same relationship throughout the scene, even if they get up and walk around.

Digital sketch of two people sitting and chatting. In the second panel, it's hard to tell who's speaking because the character positions have been flipped.

Otherwise, the reader may append the wrong speech bubble to the wrong character and become confused, snapping out of the story. This applies to stage left and stage right concepts rather than literal positioning of the characters in the scene, and why the 180 rule is a good thing to keep in mind. Avoid flipping the positions of characters arbitrarily, unless there is a clear transition between them that shows where they’re moving in relation to each other, or where the camera is moving.

Check out comics from other languages to see how their layouts differ. Japanese comics, reading right-to-left, use different conventions from English comics for how they introduce characters and settings. Sometimes comics in any language use strong visual elements to help the reader find their way through more unconventional layouts, too.

 

Care to read more?

A Fossil Returns to Life

A Fossil Returns to Life

What Do We Do with Old Art that People Really Liked?I've been doing conventions for awhile now and find them very personally fulfilling. I have so much fun setting up my display, rehearsing my sales strategies, and figuring out which things sell and why. Of course, my...

Amphiox, Continued

Amphiox, Continued

Defining Steps in a Personal Production PipelineMy Amphiox short comic is an exercise in art production. Up until I attempted it, I'd never really done much longform comic storytelling. Most of my practice was in one- or two-page micro-stories. I chose 48 pages as a...

So I Went Adventuring…

So I Went Adventuring…

Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel"Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel of Gürtelfischer Manor (she/her) is an adventuress who has gained some notoriety as a skilled and fearless swordfighter in recent years. Her origins are somewhat mysterious. While she is more than happy to talk about...

Want to chat about this?

Amphiox Comic – August Challenge Prep

Amphiox Comic – August Challenge Prep

Digital artwork of around 48 pages of extremely messy, light comic artwork. Panels have been arranged with pink outlines.

A Break from the Webcomic Doldrums
I’ve been working hard on Warlock’d, but not in any capacity ready for public release. There is a lot of editing to be done on it (and has been done on it) and it gets overwhelming on a day-to-day basis. One issue has been that I’m not quite confident enough in my steps between layouts to complete art. Doing one-off single page gag comics is one thing, but it doesn’t quite give me enough experience with doing a whole batch of pages in a consistent style.

‘Sawgust’ logo and mascot created by Adrean Clark

The Sequential Artists Workshop is hosting, for the first time ever, an event dedicated to completing a comics challenge over August. It’s called SAWgust and it’s a comics-themed NaNoWriMo-type event run by two volunteers: Adrean Clark and Susan Marks. The cow mascot’s name is SAWgustus and also a leftover from when the event was called ‘SAWCoWriMo’. I wouldn’t let Adrean and Susan get rid of such a good boy. The cow remains even if the original pun does not and currently goes by the name of ‘SAWGustus’. I preferred ‘Gus’ as his name but I got what I wanted with regards to the mascot in the first place, so there’s no need for me to be petulant.

As for my project, I chose to comic-ify a short fantasy heist story I wrote last year. This would include some fun challenges: Character design, setting design, monster design, and a lot of practice drawing machines. I pre-gamed with 48 thumbnails and rudimentary lettering. It’s not part of a larger pitch, it’s just a short story that I can wrap up and sell at conventions as a single-issue floppy. There’s no additional baggage or expectations of it. All it needs to do is exist.

Then I got excited and did a series of value studies for all the pages as well. This is amazing for me. When I squint and look at all the pages at once, it already feels like a real comic!

Anatomy could use some work, of course!

I’m going to incorporate the value studies into Warlock’d. It gives me one more round of editing built into the layout stage. I hope it revitalizes my energy for my project and helps me move on out of the writing and into the artwork. I wonder what else I’m going to learn from this monthly challenge!

Comics Tip

Quick and Easy Margin Measurements for Organic Comic Page Layouts
You may have noticed weird pink outlines along some of my panels. These are FPO (For Placement Only) graphics that help me eyeball margins between panels. When using organic layouts it can be tough to figure out how far away panels ought to be from each other. Mechanically measuring each one takes too much time. However, by using Outer Glow and Object styles, we can make this process much less painful and perhaps even fun.

Page without guides…It’s hard to tell if all the panels are evenly spaced near each other.

Page with guides. Now we can see how far away each panel is from its neighbor!

Snap pink bands directly on top of one another for fun and profit.

Now all the panels are evenly spaced!

These borders are an Outer Glow Effect that can be set up within InDesign’s Object Styles panel. Use these settings for crisp edges on your Outer Glow. Color is up to you — I suggest something vibrant that can be seen clearly on whatever color your pages will be. I used pink because it’s cute and grabs my attention. As for the size of the margin, mine are typically 1/4th inch, but margin sizes differ according to personal taste. Definitely play with that until it’s a width that suits your comic.

You’ll need to apply the Object Style to each panel in your document. The easiest way to do this is to click the Object Style before creating the shapes. This will automatically assign the Object Style to all shapes you create until you click a different style. However, if a panel or two sneaks out of it, never fear, just select the shape and click the Object Style.

Why is the Object Style so important? Because once you’re done carefully laying out your panels with even margins, all it takes is one click on the checkbox seen above to disable the pink margins from all panels that have the Object Style applied. It’s also easy to turn back on if you feel like a stray panel looks off.

Now go out there and have nice even margins in your comic!

Care to read more?

A Fossil Returns to Life

A Fossil Returns to Life

What Do We Do with Old Art that People Really Liked?I've been doing conventions for awhile now and find them very personally fulfilling. I have so much fun setting up my display, rehearsing my sales strategies, and figuring out which things sell and why. Of course, my...

Amphiox, Continued

Amphiox, Continued

Defining Steps in a Personal Production PipelineMy Amphiox short comic is an exercise in art production. Up until I attempted it, I'd never really done much longform comic storytelling. Most of my practice was in one- or two-page micro-stories. I chose 48 pages as a...

So I Went Adventuring…

So I Went Adventuring…

Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel"Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel of Gürtelfischer Manor (she/her) is an adventuress who has gained some notoriety as a skilled and fearless swordfighter in recent years. Her origins are somewhat mysterious. While she is more than happy to talk about...

Want to chat about this?

Writing is Like…

Writing is Like…

Digital Comic about how weird writing is. Transcript is in blog post.

Just What Am I Doing With All These Phonetic Marks, Anyway?
I’ve been deep in the documents lately (hence the break in blog update schedule two weeks ago). A few different projects are being juggled with not much, visually, to show for them. Each one feels endless and hopeless. So, I designed a short project — a one-page diary comic — to give me that dopamine burst of finishing something. I also wanted to try out a couple of new stylizations in my art and I think they are fine. This and the rest of my creative struggles are perfectly fine fodder for future blogs, but for now, I leave this one thought abstracting the whole process altogether. I know I need help, but it feels so egotistical to ask my loved ones to read my work.

 


 

Comic Transcript:
This is a one-page digital comic with three panels. The first panel is of the author/illustrator in a gray hoodie covered with silver stars. They hold a pencil aloft. It sparks with colorful little stars.

Narration: Writing is like…

Panel 2: “Hello!” bursts out in 3D yellow letters. “Let me put vivid hallucinations directly into your brain!” These words meander through a psychedelic landscape of pink, blue, green, and yellow chaos, featuring an old-timey Saturn drawing; stars; a half-seal, half-pelican creature named Norman wearing a dapper hat and cane; a peeled banana; cheese; and a bucket full of pink slime. The panel ends with a very, very sharp pencil poised to poke into someone’s ear.

Panel 3: The author, in real life, demands that their partner, Devin, “Experience an emotion!” while threatening their ear with the pencil. Devin cowers over the manuscript. “I feel it! I feel it. wagh,” he says.

Comics Tip

A Little Bit Every Day
Writing and drawing are habits. The act of writing and drawing is more important than the results of writing and drawing, what with revisions and edits. When I first started writing, I thought I had to write at the speed at which I would read a story, and in the order that the story happened as well. This would lead to getting down large blocks of writing in a single day. I had so many Chapter 1’s and Prologues on floppy disks.

These were immaculately edited, as well. What was happening was, I would write while an idea was fresh. Upon returning after a full day of school, I would read what I had written. As I read my own work, I would judge the word choice and cadence, tweaking and editing as I went. Before I knew it, my free time was used up, and I would blame my lack of personal time for lack of progress on the writing. Fast forward past school, and various graduations, and even a lucky life where I don’t have to log a big block of hours every day — Somehow, more available time, and a flexible schedule, wasn’t resulting in more writing being done.

Hmm!

Here’s what’s working for me: Even if all I write in one day is one sentence, that’s enough. If I’m in a bad mood before I start writing, or during writing, I must write until I feel good again. If this means skipping scenes or swapping projects, so be it. I write, I win. It took years of practice, but now, every day, I put at least one new sentence down. I use other techniques to keep projects fresh and on track, but this is the biggest tool in my arsenal so far.

So far this works for 90% of the project, and then the last 10% feels like another 90% on top of that. I suppose I fall in love with the project and want it to be ‘open’ because it feels good to work on. It has led me to investigate shorter finish lines when it comes to my aesthetics and what counts as ‘complete.’

For instance, I’m not sure how much ‘value’ shading is adding for the time I have to spend doing it. At least, not on every panel. Maybe for special panels. Flat, simple coloring and compositions reliant on that are what I’m going to experiment with.

It would be nice to find more simplifications like this for my writing. To do that, I must practice. To practice, I must return to writing every day…Even a little bit is better than nothing.

 

Care to read more?

A Fossil Returns to Life

A Fossil Returns to Life

What Do We Do with Old Art that People Really Liked?I've been doing conventions for awhile now and find them very personally fulfilling. I have so much fun setting up my display, rehearsing my sales strategies, and figuring out which things sell and why. Of course, my...

Amphiox, Continued

Amphiox, Continued

Defining Steps in a Personal Production PipelineMy Amphiox short comic is an exercise in art production. Up until I attempted it, I'd never really done much longform comic storytelling. Most of my practice was in one- or two-page micro-stories. I chose 48 pages as a...

So I Went Adventuring…

So I Went Adventuring…

Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel"Lady Sigrid von Eisvogel of Gürtelfischer Manor (she/her) is an adventuress who has gained some notoriety as a skilled and fearless swordfighter in recent years. Her origins are somewhat mysterious. While she is more than happy to talk about...

Want to chat about this?