tonycliff

Multi-media multimedia

Above, a minute-long video showing a few of the good ol' tools in action.

For most of the line art, my Zebra brush pens are proving pleasant. They're more rigid than the Sakura Pigma brush pens, though, and I'm not sure I am getting used to that. The Pigma might be a better fit for me. (At least in Canada, you can order Zebra pens directly from Zebra. Mine were cheap to ship and fast to arrive.)

For blocking in things like DD's vest, and when I want thick lines wi...

“Could it be… pirates?”

… asks DD’s mom, in the top-right panel. She will find out in due course.

This week was weird! I did a bunch of page prep (“pencilling”) on Monday, then a bunch of “non-work work” during midweek, including a podcast recording, a presentation to university illustration students, and prep for that presentation. Oh and there were taxes to do and furniture to move and grass to till.

BUBBLE author Jordan Morris and myself recorded a brief interview for the 2021-04-02 21:10:26 +0000 UTC View Post

Exciting Things on the Horizon

I really like how this sequence turned out. Sitting at my desk, hunched over the paper, I whisper to myself, "maybe this comic will be all right."

If you click through the images, you should see captions/descriptions beneath them. If not, then uh-oh, this plan didn't work as I anticipated. Of course, I do not intend to present the finished comic in this way. It was just the most straightforward method I had at hand.

Edit: the little "Xs" in the first image are shorthand f...

No Rulers

Some lessons carve a groove in your brain. For whatever reason, this is one of those for me. In animation school, one of our teachers taught us that you might use a ruler to draw straight lines in your roughs, but never use one for your final, clean lines. That is what I have done ever since. Even for the finest, cleanest, most precise lines, it's valuable to take the time to draw them freehand.

The reason is simple: a ruled line robs life from your drawing. That was the theory...

Timelapse - The Main Top and the Horizon

Want to see some rigging get drawn?

This is an hour's work, sped up to 10 minutes (that's as much as my video editor will let me do). More than anything, I just wanted to test out the process of making timelapse videos.

Featured within:

• Arches drawing paper.
• Sakura Pigma brush pen, "fine."
• Sakura Micron "PN" pen.
• Pentel Brush Pen (just a little bit).
• Pentel watercolour brush pen.
• Prismacolor Ebony pencil.

Basically the Same

…in case you were wondering how the pages from this post turned out.

For the pirate page, I drew the bottom panels on another sheet (which you can see in a post from last week). For the dancing image, I wanted to mess around with inks and washes and whatever, but did not want to have to re-draw the characters, so that all got done on a separate sheet. They’ll get computered-in later. They might look reall...

Tips Two Ways: Research and Dip Pen Nibs

Quickly: Dip Pen Nibs

I was experimenting with dip pen nibs earlier this week and having mixed results, so I asked Twitter for some pro tips. Here’s the thread. If you are at all curious about trying this method of ink drawing, I recommend scrolling through.

Ni...

First Week of Inking!

Exciting! The pages are turning out better than I expected. I’m using a combo of Pentel brush pen, Microns, a Pigma fine brush pen, black watercolours, and my trusty ol’ Prismacolor Ebony Black pencils. It has been fun and rewarding, so far. I tried using pen nibs, and they put down nice lines on the Strathmore Bristol, but my favourite Arches drawing paper did not like the abundance of ink—I was getting all sorts of awful bleeding. Cobwebs all over the place. I will come back to pen ni...

Inking Begins!

Not an easy page to begin with, but I wanted to try that watercolour effect. It’s not as masterful as I’d like, but I just need more practice. The colour will hide a lot of the gracelessness. :)

There are a few spots I would re-draw, and I’m making a note to add kelp dangling from the scythe, but otherwise this is an encouraging start!

Power Hug

Above: favourite panels from this week’s batch of work.

Still roughing in Chapter One of DD4, which has come out to 45 pages. Only six pages left to do, which I’m hoping to accomplish next Monday. After that? Well, probably a little bit of experimentation, then it’s time to start drawing these pages.

Professional Artist Pro Tip(TM): nib pens work a lot better when you’re not trying to use them with a pot of India ink that’s at least ten years old.

WHAT IF

A quick test, wondering if I should try a mixed media approach for the “line art.” My lightweight, bright white drawing paper takes watercolour better than I expected. It warps, but probably not so much that it would interfere with the scan. 🙂👍

Progress on Roughing-In.

Above, a select few roughed-in pages for DD4 (as before, apologies that they’re so hard to see). This is my favourite part of the process, I think. At this point, each page has so much potential. Nothing is set in stone. Every sketchy line could turn out a hundred different ways. And yet, at the same time, unlike with thumbnails, it is possible to see that final form in there. Every time an expression is funny, a composition is exciting, or a drawing just turns out nicely, it makes you (me)...

Making Connections and Communicating Subconsciously

Years ago, I heard this great recording on CBC Radio 2, where the host reviewed a Mozart work passage-by-passage, pointing out the repeated themes and talking about how mathematics informed (or could be rationalized onto) the music. I took away a strong feeling that the principles that are used to build music apply in similar ways to story-building.

One idea that stuck with me is the way musical elements (passages, themes) are repeated—sometimes surreptitiously, or in disguise—in or...

Ouch.

I’m just extremely pleased with this pose. That is all.

Learning from the Best

I'm in the process of roughing out and/or blocking in the first chapter, getting a few pages down every day. Unfortunately, it's a part of the process that doesn't give me much of anything to post, both because the drawings are so fuzzy and because that blue line doesn't photograph well (by design).

So I read some comics this week.

Mike Mignola's AMAZING SCREW ON HEAD

I thought to myself, "who does great page compositions?" and the first name that came to mi...

The Seal is Broken!

They may not look very glamorous*… yet… but I have roughed/"pencilled" out the first three pages of DD4. Going straight from the thumbnail, I have "broken ground" on the clean line art.

This is only really post-worthy because it is emotionally significant. I was talking to a friend today—let's say "Suzie"—who was relating a story of her friend—let's say "Kevin"—who in turn was new to painting and unhappy with the results. Suzie reassured Kevin, "what are yo...

BOAT INTERMISSION

I was having a hard time progressing on the first few DD4 pages, I think because I didn't know my boat situation well enough. So I took some time out to do some boat research and make some choices in those regards. To paraphrase Stephen King from ON WRITING, often writer's block is simply a manifestation of a lack of research (and he is careful to point out that "research" does not necessarily mean looking something up in a book; it can also be a creative process, doing the work to invent and...

Thumbnails and Roughs!

Over the past week or so, I thumbnailed out the first "chapter" of DD4, doing a lot of writing as I went. It was pretty successful!

I'm going to take the entire first chapter to final art before continuing with the rest of the book, as an experiment. I'm scared about this approach, because it's different, but it offers a few benefits, including the opportunity to think about (dwell upon) the story for the next chapter while I'm pursuing the time-consuming drawing stage. For example, las...

How Often Should I Post?

Like it says on the tin: how often would you like to see posts on this Patreon campaign?

Seems like Patreon sends out an email every time I post something, so assuming you are in full control of when/if you receive those emails, and it's not a nuisance, do you have an opinion on how often I put up new posts?

Any other thoughts? Slammer-jam them into the ol' comment section.

* If you select "MORE POSTS PLZ," note that this will almost certai...

Working Methods: to Fight or to Embrace?

A while back, I wrote a series of posts talking about how much I would like to change my method of working. Now, I’m sitting down to make progress on this comic and I find myself proceeding in a very familiar fashion. This feels like the same old exercise! I wonder, how easy is it to change working habits? How hard should I work to challenge my own working habits? Is it worth it?<...

Costume Design Continues!

Thinking about Mom a little. Born and raised on an Ionian island, she eventually met a visiting Englishman, fell in love, and accompanied him back to his family Estate. She feels affinity for both her homeland and her adopted home, and has invested herself in thorough adaptation. She wants the same for her daughter.

So she dresses nimbly. In our story, she wears her Hellenic looks to identify as and blend in as a local, and her English looks to identify herself in her relationship, as a...

Costume Designs for Young Delilah

This was frustrating for a few days: I knew I'd need a few different costumes, and I had a bunch of reference at my disposal, but I didn't know exactly where to aim my efforts.

After a bunch of semi-productive but aimless sketching, I thought to set my story beats in order and consider what type of costume I'd need for each. This may seem obvious beyond measure, but I hadn't considered it. Doing so made it a lot easier: I itemized the different looks I would need and discovered how to a...

Is it bad form to go with your first ideaaaarrrrr?

The design for the Pirate Captain is challenging my design discipline. At various points in my education, I was told to "never go with your first idea." Get your first idea out of the way, then keep working until you find something more interesting or innovative. Amass a panorama of options, then pick the best.

But I dunno, guys. I really like that original Pirate Captain design (including the looseness of the linework). Yes, he looks more or less like what we expect a big old patriarch...

Back on the Design Wagon

The purpose of the "Character Design" process is to create drawings of characters to which I can refer as I am working on pages. Primarily, this is so I can keep everyone looking consistent as I go, and if everyone looks consistent, the book is easier to read. Ideally, readers are not distracted by having to stop and ask, "wait, which character am I looking at right now?" So I try to make each character look unique among the other characters in the book.

At the same time, I do not pursu...

A Small January Message

Two things:

First: a big, big Welcome to everyone who has joined as a patron over the last month or so. You've all given me so many reasons to be optimistic about this endeavour and about this work, and I can only hope to repay you for that gift.

Second: a request! A weakness of mine is that there are a lot of things about artistic and comics-making processes that I take for granted. For example, when I was teaching animation students, I took for ...

The "Scene/Sequel" Writing Approach

THIS WEEK I have been putting my story notes through a writing process originally referred to as the “SCENE / SEQUEL” approach. If you are a writer and are curious about new ways to approach story-making, I recommend just giving it a shot. The instructions are straightforward, the requirements are low.

But! Before you do, only take this into consideration: I find the Scene / Sequel approach...

See the Scenic Sights!

Been trying a few different landscape and environment studies!

• The first two: I'm making a few studies based on photos that my dad took during my parents' honeymoon in the Eastern Mediterranean back in the late '70s. My intention is to directly reference at least a few of these photos in panels (I'll ask if he minds if I post the respective photo when they do make it onto a page). (in the first image, I wanted to study the sort of "organic" form of the steps. In the second, I was ...
  2021-01-18 23:58:06 +0000 UTC View Post

The Value of Studies

To shake out the cobwebs, I've been doing a few studies from research images. The first, above, is from Edward Dodwell's Views and descriptions of Cyclopian or Pelasgic remains in Greece and Italy. The second is from Marie Gabriel Florent Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier's Voyage...