The smouldering continues, but the fire is still alive; not burning out this time!
Won’t lie, it took some proper downtime this past weekend, but I was able to avoid burning myself out; I was incapacitated for most of Saturday, spending the morning in bed, while rounding out the day by running D&D, and getting my creative mindset back on track. I felt right in doing so by having the remaining pages of January’s Showcase story completed ahead of time, thus keeping the schedule running at least until after the weekend.
It feels good to be a page or two ahead; by the time of this being posted, I have finished tomorrow’’s page and next Monday’s one as well. There’s an important birthday this weekend, so I’m going to need Saturday free once more, but no other major social obligations are on the table until next week, so I’ll have plenty of time to get more pages done. Also, luckily for my personal productivity, the inverters that were supposedly installed at the day job continue to be non-functional; unfortunate for the office, incredibly helpful to me in getting stuff done.
Having that little extra wiggle room allows me to be more experimental in my artwork, trying new things and improving on what I’ve done in the past. Last month, I was focusing primarily on lighting techniques, which I am carrying over into February’s story; even from the first page, I’m already pleased with the subtle improvements that it has brought, adding that little extra depth and pop that wouldn’t be there otherwise. This month, I’m focusing on perspective and panel layout; my figure work has been satisfactory for a long time, now I’m going to get my backgrounds up to snuff. My continued experiments with art programs have yielded some fun results; the perspective ruler tools in Clip Studio have been a joy to work with, and you’ll be seeing the benefits of them from the very next Showcase page.
As far as panel layouts go, I’ve been told in the past that I have a good eye for flow and continuity in my storyboarding, but I have noticed that I tended to stick to the grid format a little too rigidly in the past. I’ve been attempting to loosen up my panels a bit more in recent pages, and now with February’s story, I want to go a little more wild. The setting and imagery is meant to be really trippy and weird, and I’d like the panel flow to reflect that; it’s going to be a fun challenge getting everything to look coherent while still giving it a surreal vibe.
All this to say: I am really excited about my own artwork right now, more than I have been for some time. I’m excited to be trying new things, I’m excited for the stuff I’ll be doing in the March hiatus, and I’m excited for the stories to come afterwards.
Plus, if I can pull far enough ahead, and my social media boost functions the way I hope it will, I may even be ready for the next stage of Fifth Ace Comics; keep a close eye out later this year…
Ciao for now.