Amphiox, Continued

Amphiox, Continued

Digital artwork of the opening page in a 48-page comic titled 'Amphiox'. It depicts the title in loosely-kerned Alegreya font as well as a section of some sort of eel, fin included.

Defining Steps in a Personal Production Pipeline
My 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 test for art production because that’s a typical length for a ‘floppy’ comic book, like the ones that debut monthly in comic shops. As I continue to work on it in drafts, I have to define particular stages of production. This frees me from judging myself too hard too early; if something’s not working, I can do my best and then leave it for a later pass.

At the moment, I’m working on inking. However, prior to this I needed the following passes:

  1. Thumbnailing
  2. Value Sketch
  3. Roughing
  4. ‘Clean’ Roughing

I don’t like two separate stages of roughing. For the purposes of figuring out how I like to work I had to give myself the opportunity to ‘let go’ on any given panel in my comic. But, will this be a fast enough process to deliver a comic according to a tighter schedule with more people’s livelihoods on the line? Most comic art I see has a roughs stage, then a lineart stage, nothing in between. I wonder if I have to sharpen my confidence to get to that stage?

Just for fun, here’s what the above stages look like on the most complex spread of my comic so far. It’s an airship village that I named ‘Villagespread.psd’ and it’s fun but I also am expecting a lot of myself with it.

Digital artwork of a very scribbly, simple 'airship village'. If you squint it might be full of airships.Thumbnailing

Digital artwork of the airship village, rendered in stark black and white. The shapes are still very abstract. There's stick figures running through it shouting 'Amphiox! Amphiox!'Value Sketch (with extra panels to indicate the path the characters take)

Digital artwork of the village spread, now drawn more competently and with grayscale shading. It's still pretty rough but at least the airships are visible.Roughing (with grayscale study)

Digital artwork of the airship village spread, with more work on the characters and refined setting pieces.‘Clean’ Roughing

Digital artwork of the airship village spread with the rough sketch set to low opacity, and a few polished lines on the left of the composition.
Inking (Work in progress, of course!)

I also did some late-stage editing on the writing in this draft. When test readers went through the comic they were greatly misinterpreting the following spread. They thought this was a rescue team. I came to the conclusion that this was just a few too many threads in a very short, simple story.

A rough spread with a subterranean submarine, new characters, banter, and uh yeah it's confusing.

However, it’s a bit late in the game to commit to a spread that is equally complicated as this one.

Digital artwork of a view over a hill. There's an airship village on the beach. A rickety house sits on the hill. Off in the ocean there's a grotto. There is text: ONCE UPON A TIME... A traveling village perched upon a shore.  The villagers kept an eye on the horizon. Hungry and deep, the ocean growled. The villagers called their planet, 'haunted'.

I schooched in a ‘prequel’ spread using graphic design to minimize the amount of art I needed to draw. White space is more than about being artsy or airy…it’s also about freeing yourself from extra work. This spread also solved a problem with staging that I had. It’s important that the reader be able to ‘feel’ the location of the airship village in relation to the Amphiox grotto and the haunted house on the hilltop. I’m not the greatest at prose but hopefully I could give a little bit of cultural context to how people react to giant magic doom eels.

Scanned traditional sketch of Lyrat with a patchier outfit and more utilitarian clothing.

I also redesigned Lyrat Poes (‘Poesy’ in the comic) because I didn’t want her to be so symmetrical. I also felt like her original balloony clothing was going to get caught on stuff. Now she looks more like she mods her outfits for jobs rather than fashion.

What’s Next?
Inking! So much inking. Especially that airship spread, wow. I was averaging about 3 full spreads per day before I hit that one.

How am I Feeling About Warlock’d?
Right. This was meant to be a thing that helped me with Warlock’d. Okay, so, I’m feeling intimidated by the amount of work I have to do to make a very long story (300+ pages) coherent and as polished as I am making Amphiox. However, I think that I can commit to polishing individual chapters and editing layouts in the same way that I’ve been editing Amphiox layouts. Am I glad I made Amphiox? Yes. Do I enjoy how much time it’s taking from Warlock’d? No, but at the same time, I needed a break from Warlock’d.

Care to read more?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

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?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

Want to chat about this?