tonycliff

Back to Boats (Chapter Three Inks Continue)

Added 2023-02-09 21:45:13 +0000 UTC

THIS WEEK: a busy week! I've been throwing "Reels" at Instagram, drawing the ins and outs of boats again (hoo boy), and looking after a toddler who is a foot taller every day, it seems.

(As ever, the images above are repeated below, just for ease of reading/viewing, and the inked pages are the last item in this post, in case you want to avoid "spoilers.")

REELS ON INSTAGRAM

I need to get word out about this project some how, so this week I'm experimenting a little. I'm making Instagram "Reels." I've always enjoyed setting videos to music, and it's especially fun to pair PRACTICAL DEFENCE imagery with good ol' Erich Korngold adventure-movie scores; it adds a dimension that I love, and Reels let me do that.

So far this week I've posted a reel introducing PRACTICAL DEFENCE, a reel showcasing this week's public pages, and a reel showing some inking in progress. I'll probably post another inking video either today or tomorrow.

[EDIT: Here's the most recent video. I'll look into putting these on YouTube when I get half a second.]

My only conclusion so far is that frig, making videos for Instagram is hard work. I expected this, but still… sheesh.

Plus, there's something about posting to Instagram that extremely feels like homework. Maybe it's the vile quantity of ads. Maybe it's the suspicion that Instagram is only showing people my "content" as long as it doesn't lead them off the app. Or maybe it's an accumulation of a hundred small details that make me feel like not only does the house always win, but that I should feel lucky to even look at the house from the outside. For example, you—Dear Reader—probably can not watch the videos I've linked above unless you have an Instagram account. That's… frustrating, to say the least.

But I also need to attract readers to this Patreon, so I have to try to find each one of them wherever they may be. If you—Dear Reader—have any ideas as to how I can do this better or smarter, please do not hesitate to let me know below.

[EDIT: My curmudgeonliness about social media does not extend to writing these Patreon updates. I like doing this. Too much, one might argue. :) ]

FIGHTING SHIPS

Boats feature heavily at the end of Chapter Three, so it's time to dig out this bad boy.

I bought this massive book years ago at a Chapters store for only… wait for it… twenty dollars.

Now, perhaps the fact that a big, colourful book about 19th century boats was on sale for twenty dollars should have told me something about the market for books about the 19th century and its boats—something like, "it's going to take a lot of work to get the broader book-buying public up to your level of enthusiasm, Tony." But I didn't care then and, frankly, I don't care now. In fact, I stumbled on this purchase between DD & THE AQUEDUCT and THE TURKISH LEUTENANT, and though I'm not really a "signs from the universe" sort of person, it did seem like some sort of serendipitous cosmic nudge to make these comics.

The reproductions are enormous—the book takes up almost my whole drawing desk—thought the quality of the images is not universally perfect. E.g., the cover looks like it's been upscaled a little bit.

I'm happy to put up with its shortcomings, though. It's been a really useful resource over the years. I find one of the hardest things to understand about sailing ships is the scale of everything relative to the sailors aboard. This book helps with that.

Some of the diagrams and information can be found online, but it's nice to have it all in one place.

Do you have a book like this in your life? Something almost… totemic, let's say? I'd love to hear it. I suspect there are a lot of "Art Of…" books that might be that way for my animator friends.

CHAPTER THREE IS BRINGING THE TENSION

^ The pros and cons of "talking head" comics are a recurring theme around here. This is a two-page spread where I think the focus on the character acting works well. I like how the change in Alexandra's expression reads so clearly.

Also, I can not wait for you to see this sequence in colour. The visual concept for it is—I think!—so strong that I only hope it comes out with half as much mood as I am imagining.

^ The right half of a two-page spread in which Vignelli bribes pirates to frighten the town. My favourite part is the little "skull" cuff link on the pirate.

^ I looked at the first drawing of that ship and worried that it looked too much like the Cordelia (the ship in which Alexandra arrived). I re-drew it, thinking the additional sails and the general shape and scale of the hull would look distinctive enough, but looking at it again, I don't know. Boats kind of just look like boats, unless you have more than the average amount of familiarity. But I got the skull flag blowing in the right direction!

^ In this sequence, I'm trying to suggest a "fog" or "mist" creeping in through the portholes, over the ship. I wanted to render it in a new way, compared to, say, drawing the outlines of lumpy clouds or misty tendrils. This is part of my effort to think about the colouring early-on, to consider my approach as a joint effort with the line art, as opposed to thinking of colour as something that is added on top.