Page 33 and 34 WIP

So, as I continually work through phases of life and new thoughts and work flows, I thought it might be fun to show my page progress continually. I know I had been recording videos, but honestly it isn't frequent I work on just one page at a time. So the choice is between having hours-long videos that jump along with me, or sitting and cutting up my work flow for the sake of making a video per single page. Until I can think of a better way overall to format videos (and until I can figure out why my screencap software stopped working.....) I'll stick to this! Plus then you guys get more regular updates out of me, and that habit will hopefully carry on to other updates on other things.

So my thumbnails/first passes start out either one of two ways- on grid paper (page 33) or on ipad (page 34). It all depends on how difficult a time I am having visualizing a layout. If I think I have a pretty clear view, I'll do it on grid paper. If my ideas are more conceptual and disjointed, I'll open up a file in CSP so I can sketch and doodle and move and flip elements around without chewing my paper up erasing it all the time. I also have a layer template that breaks down the canvas into even thirds and other pleasant ratios, to help guide my composition.

I like the grid paper because I draw relatively small- keeping me mindful of my overall shapes and balance and what details I REALLY want to come through. This is the same reason I use a pen with no taper/pressure sensitivity for digital first passes. It keeps my pen strokes down to minimal lines of action and form, rather than trying to jump right into giving a sketch a sense of weight. That isn't necessary until I like the base elements- these huge shapes and expressions and poses.

Usually I like to do a batch of three or four thumbnails at once, but what I want to come through as this sequence begins to shift scenes, I'm not yet sure of. Sometimes part of the writing process is the drawing process of what comes before. Once progress is made on these two pages, I'll walk through that as well in a new post.