Color

I don't have too much time lately to finish many new pages but I assure you they are in the works. In the meantime, here's the color for page 19.

My process

I thought it might be interesting to share some details about how I work. Maybe it'll be an excuse for why I'm slow... The last page I did is a single complex image so i feel it'll be a good example of my drawing workflow.

Here are the various stages:

1. Thumbnails

This in many ways is the most critical stage because it is where I decide on layout, (in multiple panel pages) composition, poses and overall flow and feel of the page. I do as many thumbnails as necessary until I feel I've nailed the major issues. It'll be a lot more difficult and frustrating to fix big mistakes later. You can see in the top left thumbnail that my first idea of how the drawing should look like had a weaker pose. The hand that clutches the poor bee is too close to the spider's head to make for a clear hierarchy of elements. I fixed this in the other thumbnails.

2. Rough drawing.

Here I'm mainly interested in the flow of the gesture, the over all composition and camera angle. I try really hard not get too involved with specific details. I usually don't succeed because I'm way to anal to leave the details alone. I like the blue color because it makes me feel like an animator (I'm not).

3. Volume study.

I usually do this with complex structures and characters that I'm unsure about their construction. The idea is to break down the drawing into basic shapes and be very aware in regard to their volume, direction and placement in space.

4. Unify volumes

Here I'm beginning to draw more tightly and tie together all the volumes. I'm constantly searching for ways to make the proportions and shapes more appealing. I'm also beginning to add more detail.

5. Details

Now it's time to go nuts with the details. It is smart, however, to keep the extra details on a separate layer in case you go overboard and need to erase some. I always go overboard with details. god help me.

5. Line cleanup

Now it's time to choose which of the details to keep. Thicker lines seem closer than thin ones. I always try to use all of the manipulations I know to direct the viewers attention towards the most important areas first. In this instance, it's the bee in the spider's hand and the spider's face.

6. Basic tones

To emphasize even more what is important and what is less important, What is near and what is far, I change the tonal values of the contours. I also add basic tonal values inside the contours, filling the shapes.

7. Final rendering

This part can be tinkered with for a long time. I can reach very realistic tonal values or keep the drawing more graphic, which is what I did.

Alright, That's that for now. I'm starting a new steady job next week so things will probably slow down with this project in the near future. Life has a way of getting in the way of my plans... I promise I'll keep working and uploading pages as often as possible.

New page

New page

Yeah. I know I'm slow. Shut up.

Color

So... I couldn't resist doing at least a basic color pass on the last page. I think this seals the opening chunk nicely and sets the tone for the rest of the story. From now on I'll upload batches of pages in grey tones and color them all later.

New page in gray tones and a question

Hello again

Remember me? Sorry I haven't been making swift progress with my baby here but I've been busy making a living, drawing stuff much less exciting than samurai bees. Maybe I should marry a wealthy girl that will take care of me while I work exclusively on my passion project... Oh well.

I've finished the gray tone stage of the next page and uploaded it. here it is again:

I've been toying with the idea of uploading the next few pages in grey tones first and then doing a color pass on all of them. It means I'll be uploading stuff quicker but the lack of atmosphere added by color will take away some of the effect of each page.

Right now there is very little of the main story on display. basically, none. You still haven't seen the main character or the main conflicts. I really want to tell the story quicker but I'm afraid the lack of color might be damaging. What do you think? would you like more story and less pretty pictures (at first) or the other way around?

I hope there's still someone paying attention to this blog. I've neglected it for too long...

New page and how I got started with this thing

A few years ago, when I was still a student, I took a course with one of the more distinguished design professors at my art academy. I tried hard but design wasn't one of my strong subjects. It still isn't.

At the end of the semester the professor gave personal evaluations to each of his students. When it was my turn to go in I stepped inside the room with my semesters portfolio and sat down. The professor quickly leafed through my work, a distinct look of non-enthusiasm on his face.

"You know," He asked rhetorically, "What the difference between you and *I can't reveal the name* is?"

The student he mentioned was the class's star pupil

"The difference is that he was exposed to design from a small age and you weren't"

What I understood from this professor, who will remain nameless, is that while I showed some talent, I did not receive enough visual stimulation as a child and as a result wasn't and will never be as good as my classmates who did.

I left that room broken. It's a terrible thing, feeling inferior to others and being told by an authority figure you respect that you are powerless to do anything about it.

During my existential depression faze I thought real hard about how much of a nothing I am. I explored imaginary alternative career paths; from sewage cleaning to grave digging. Obviously, I was too unevolved to be any sort of artist. I even thought of doing the work I feared most - working with my dad in the family bee keeping business. Images of angry bees and my nagging father filled my head. No! I thought. It's better to be a bad artist than doing something else and be miserable.

After the revelation of the fact that I don't want or care to do anything else I started thinking- Alright, I wasn't born in a city and wasn't always surrounded by designed signs and museums... ok. What was I surrounded with? After all, I wasn't walking around with my eyes closed all my life.

Slowly, it dawned on me, that what I was exposed to from a young age was nature. Trees, grass, fields; I was always playing or running through them. And the piece of nature I was most intimately acquainted with was - the honey bee. My grandfather and  my parents ran a bee keeping business. I was too good to want to help out with it and went off to art school.

Slowly the idea began to form. I wanted to do something with bees. After a while, my background in martial arts led me to the current direction.

When I finished my studies, my final project was character and set designs for an animated film about samurai bees. My old professor was there. He liked it but he told me I didn't space the prints on the wall properly. I guess I'm not a designer at heart. But I didn't care anymore. I learned a little something about who I am and what I want to do.

Here are some of the works I presented as part of my final project:

This final project turned out to be just the beginning. I wanted to know the story of these characters so I wrote it and now I'm drawing it.

There's probably some really obvious moral to all of this. So I think there's no need to point it out. I think I'll just continue working on my picture story.