Dear Readers,
I published a twelve-page comic book over the weekend, the first finished issue I’ve put out into the world since the mid 90s. I’m incredibly proud of it, but it was a process. Man, I learned a lot—stuff I don’t think you can learn from a book or a how-to video, stuff you can only learn by doing. And I’m anxious to put all that newfound knowledge into practice. But first: a breather, and some time to process.
Last week I shared pages 1-3 with you, so let me sneak you a peek at pages 4, 5, and 6:
If you want to read the whole thing, you can do so for free by clicking this here linkedy link. But if you’d rather learn a bit more about this fortnight’s work first, keep on scrolling and I’ll link it again down below.
Okay, so here’s what I’ve been up to:
ART
Using a combination of Daz Studio (a 3D modeling program) and Photoshop, I completed nine more pages of my twelve-page comic. Some panels were easy, some were hard. The ones with the white rabbit were the absolute worst. I tried two or three different approaches until I found one that worked and that was consistently reproducible.
I definitely want to take more art classes and watch more online tutorials going forward, so that I can re-sharpen my painting and pencilling skills. There’s a lot I can do with 3D modeling—and a lot that I enjoy doing with 3D—but there’s a lot that would be so much easier if I just learned to paint it.
WRITING
I had my once-a-month writing meetup with my pal Lissa (whose Substack you should definitely subscribe to) and ended up writing and/or revising about nine pages of the script for The Blood of Seven Queens. Nine pages isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but you don’t get to 288 pages without writing the first nine.
Interestingly enough, some of the lessons I learned doing the art for the comic will definitely be informing my writing process going forward. In some places, I need my descriptions to be looser. In some places, I need them to be tighter. And in almost every place, I need to write less dialogue! Man, some of my word balloons ended up being downright chonky.
WORLDBUILDING
A lot of my worldbuilding has been happening on my daily 4.6-mile walk along the rail trail that runs behind my house. Case in point, while roaming through the forest one day, I came up with cool bit of backstory for one of my characters that blends Ovid’s version of the Medusa myth with the fairy tale of Rapunzel. “How?” you may ask. Stay tuned!
I also came up with cool bits of backstory while I was creating the art for the comic. In one case, I completely reinvented a character’s backstory after realizing she was coming across visually as an uninspired copy of her mother. She needed to be her own damn person, gosh darn it to heck!
Below the fold, I’ll share with paid subscribers the story of three panels from the comic which caused me quite a bit of trouble and how I overcame the obstacles they threw in my way.
And so, paid subs: keep scrolling! Everyone else, I’ll see you back here in two weeks!
Yours,
Chris
P.S. I almost forgot to include the link to the full comic like I promised above. Here it is!
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