Page 230 - October 3 , 2012

Ah, motion blur, you're such a good friend. That's one effect I simply could not be able to pull off by using traditional medium. Hmm, I guess painting the background with oil colors or something and then smearing the thing before it dries could create something comparable, but...ugh. That sounds like work. Thank heaven for digital artistic tools!

Yesterday I had a half day at school (yesss!) so I managed to finish my daily page well before eight in the afternoon (double yesss!). Which meant that I actually had a few hours to spare for once to do whatever I wanted! My first instinct was of course to just start drawing the next page right away, but then I decided against it for the simple reason that the sketching and linearting part of a page is by far the most brain power consuming part. You know, got to envision all the dialogue, try to set the pacing right, decide on a panel design and then actually start drawing a whole bunch of stuff on an empty sheet of paper. Brrr! That late in the evening I just don't have enough mind juices left for any of it, so...  

...I drew a set of character sketches for "Stand still. Stay silent" instead! I'm going to continue working on these once I get another evening of magical extra time and finish them as speed paintings of some sort.

I know, I'm an awfully messy sketcher! Just look at those pencil lines, outside of the facial areas they barely even make sense! Uh, well, as long as I'm able to understand what my brain is trying to convey...

 Believe it or not, but the combined time for all of these is almost three hours, even though they look like something that was done in way less than one hour. I'm going to blame that on the fact that I'm still quite unfamiliar with the facial structures of these dear characters of mine. Hannu I can sketch up in a matter of minutes if I'm in an alert mood, because I've drawn his darn face for about 300 pages by now and I can finally declare, without hestitation, that I know what he looks like. But these guys... I just don't know what the proportions and general shapes of their faces are. I could probably count the times I've drawn any one of them on my fingers alone, no toes needed there. Which feels surreal, as I've been thinking about them almost every single evening before I go to sleep for the last year and a half, mentally defining every single detail about them and their upcoming adventures. I never, ever think about the plot for aRTD unless I'm actually in the process of drawing a page and trying to figure out how to move the story from key point A to key point B.

Anyway, I'm not going to fret. I've still got plenty of time before I start drawing SSSS, a year is a really long time. (Wait, am I being sarcastic or serious? Both, maybe?) And frankly, even if these sketches took me way longer than they should, I did manage to achieve the proper appearances for each of them in the end, so I'm happy. Now I just have to draw them a couple hundred more times, from different angles and with different expressions, and we'll be all set for a great webcomic.

...yup, a year is totally a long time. o_o