Behind the Scenes: Jenny's Big Debut!
Thank you to all who've read the comic so far, and especially those who gave feedback! It means a lot that people have enjoyed it so far, but that is just the first episode... so much so that I got a couple of my friends together to form the "Jenny Crew"! I'm currently in the process of writing/planning episode 2 with the help of the crew.
I'm hoping to get more done with it soon, I hope you all look forward to the next episode! Fortunately, it wont take as long to come out as the first one. I plan on doing a schedule for pages to release while I'm working on the comic, perhaps maybe 2 pages a week?
ANYWAYS, I wanted to make a post highlighting a lot of the behind the scenes aspects of the first episode. There won't be a particular order, I'll just go along with the comic.
DEVELOPMENT:
(note: concept art is just that; concept art. Some ideas or concepts presented may not be canon unless it's used in the actual comic.)
Everybody has to start somewhere, especially when creating a first episode...
Above is the cover to a very early draft of the first episode, dated around March 2023. I created this before I had properly ironed out exactly how I wanted the comic and characters to look/act.
Even in the earliest phases of the comic, I pretty much had a good idea on how I wanted the comic to start. Even Jenny's personified conscience was there from the beginning! However, the character art, writing, and overall layout left a lot to be desired.. and I knew that at the time, too! I didn't even finish the fourth page!
So I eventually scrapped this draft, but I went on to further develop the characters, style, and vision for the comic... I think that's for the best. The final pages look 100 times better than these gross old ones...ugh.
It was around this time I really decided to try to nail down exactly who I wanted these characters to be and how they should act. I started with Jenny:
Jenny always sorta had a more extroverted personality in my head, but here I wanted to exaggerate that a bit more, make her a character that's fun to watch. Jenny is mostly motivated by the fact that she exists. She has an unprecedented amount of self confidence, most of it may be somewhat misplaced. BUT, at the end of the day, she'll stop at nothing to accomplish what she sets out to do.
With that in mind, it makes perfect sense that Jenny would start out the comic by shoving herself in the audience's face and doing a whole spiel about how awesome she is. Jenny would absolutely be excited over being a titular character of a comic series.
Of course, Jenny isn't the only character, there's another that's existed just as long as she has; Eliza!
Eliza is pretty much the complete opposite of Jenny. While Jenny is loud and extroverted, Eliza is more reserved and introverted. Jenny claims to fear nothing, Eliza admits to fearing many things. Jenny knows exactly what she wants to be, Eliza doesn't know what to do with herself.
Despite that, I still wanted Eliza to be an interesting character that people could hopefully relate to. I wanted her to be a really sweet and kind character, but I also wanted her to have more of a manic side to her character, particularly when she's anxious or embarrassed. I feel like that makes her both more entertaining to watch, but also more relatable in a way.
I wanted Jenny and Eliza's relationship to be a key aspect of the first episode. I wanted to show that, while Eliza is aware of Jenny's faults, she still looks up to her a lot. Jenny is confident and very sure of herself, something Eliza wishes she could be more like. Eliza admires Jenny a LOT and wants to help her in any way she can, not just because she puts other's needs before her own (although that is a part of it), but because she wants to make Jenny happy and make her dreams a reality... secretly hoping that she's still a part of that.
Of course, I didn't want this dynamic to be so one sided, I added scenes in the episode to specifically avoid that. Jenny appreciates all that Eliza does for her, she probably trusts Eliza more than anybody else. Even when they first became friends, Eliza always believed in Jenny's dreams and aspirations, which in turn motivates Jenny even more to reach for the stars. Jenny recognizes that Eliza isn't the most confident, but she still wants her to achieve her dreams too.
For the part where Eliza gets in trouble for hanging up the posters, I had to rewrite some lines cuz I didn't want to make it seem like Jenny was just using Eliza. Jenny needed help, and Eliza wanted to to assist her. Jenny realizes she inadvertently got her into trouble, and is quick to blame herself. Jenny can be self-centered, but she realizes when she's done something wrong or bad.
I think now's the time for me to talk about other aspects of the comic. I was going to mention Jackie, but I have plans for her in future episodes so i'll save her for later...
BACKGROUNDS
When it comes to art, backgrounds tend to sometimes be my weak point. I feel like i've gotten better at them since working on the comic, but they still aren't a strong suit of mine. So how did I go about making a background in Jenny? I'll show you how!
First, I start off my modeling the desired scene in blender. It usually doesn't need to be too detailed, just a basic guide on objects in a 3D space that i can trace over. I then get a good shot to render out and trace over in CSP.
...after I trace (and add additional details while doing so) i color and shade it all in and it's done! They're pretty simple, but it works well with the artstyle, and I've streamlined the process so decent background don't take too terribly long to make.
As a bonus, here's how this background looked during the first draft...
Yeah, i vastly prefer the new one... can't the old draft get ANYTHING right??
Here's some more comparisons
Backgrounds like these tend to take longest to finish, just because there's a lot of buildings and smaller details. Not to mention the different colored outlines that the backgrounds tend to have for certain things like grass or differently colored roofs. The whole skate section in general took me about a month to complete.
The kitchen scene contains a few smaller details that are unfortunately hard to make out in the final comic. But I'll highlight them here!
On the walls is a picture of a baby Jenny! She's mostly obscured in the comic aside from one panel... On the right is a picture of a younger Jackie. That one unfortunately went unused as I couldn't really find a good place for it that wouldn't be obscured or in a awkward spot.
These two pictures are seen on the fridge. One is a drawing made by Jenny when she was younger. The other is a Christmas postcard...? The postcard was actually one of the few hints at when exactly the comic takes place; near the end of summer 2014. Unfortunately, it's such a small and nearly unnoticeable detail in the final comic. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't even notice it. Next episode, I want to include more hints at the comic's time period.
Finally, here is a picture of a slightly younger Jenny on her first day of middle school! Also, the full 3D render of Jackie's burnt breakfast. Don't listen to her excuses, it IS burnt. Calling it crispy doesn't change that. Stupid.
Sometimes I don't even need a 3D reference for some backgrounds, like this one here. I'd also like to mention the various fake brands and stores I made for this part of the comic.
I really wanted the world of Jenny to feel real and immersive, so I created a whole bunch of in-universe stores and brands. A couple of these weren't used, but you may see them in a future episode.
Now that we're in the town, I wanna highlight a character... This is Ronald!
He is the #1 hot dog lover! He was created by my brother, who I'm not even sure has read the comic yet!! He described him to me while I drew him. He was made right around the time I was working on this section. He loves hot dogs and that's this one and only character trait.
Occasionally, I'll draw concepts for locations and how exactly I'd want them to look. MHS originally was going to have more of a brown color, but I thought I'd give it more of a tan n' red sorta look. (That's how my high school looked lol)
Since we're here, here's concept art of Mahogany the Bever! The idea behind him is that he was a mascot design introduced in the early 90s. Almost 20 years later, his design was never updated and the mascot costume is badly worn and smells really bad. His design was inspired by Bubsy the Bobcat, particularly with the shirt.
Forgot to mention it earlier, but I wanted to talk about the place Jenny lives in... Woodsdull is meant to be a very low-income part of Texas, with very little to nothing notable about it. It's meant to just be a very boring place to live, hence the name. Pretty much most locations here are named after different types of wood. I wanted the location Jenny lives in to contrast drastically with Jenny herself. Jenny is exciting and ambitious, but she lives in a boring and unexciting place.
That being said, I do have plans to expand certain locations of Woodsdull in future episodes. Perhaps It's not as boring as I'm letting on?
The school hallways... had to draw these quite a bit, but I ended up reusing a lot of them for a decent amount of panels. Be resourceful! Reuse assets when it's convenient! Don't make things harder for yourself for no reason!
This is the end of Part 1, will write/post part 2 shortly!
The classroom certainly backgrounds would take a while to finish, simply because of all the desks (which, again, are all 3D models)
The classroom actually has some background details that unfortunately get obscured in the final comic. Here's some of the posters i made for this scene!
Really like the "Open your mind" one.
I also drew out a layout for the seating arrangements, I wanted it to stay consistent between different panels/pages.
To cap off the classroom, here's the original drawing i did for Jenny's sketch.
Moving away from backgrounds for a little bit, here's some sketches for the school orchestra. There's a couple of scrapped designs, but for the most part every character used is pretty on-model with how i originally drew them. Originally, none of these characters had names... however, recently we decided to name the girl with the drums "Timpany"!
Speaking of concept art, here's some random expressions i sketched down. Sometimes I like to sketch down expressions or poses I want to use in a particular page or panel. I don't do this terribly often, mainly just a spur-of-the-moment sorta thing.
I also drew a whole page of expressions I wanted to use for the confrontation scene, I drew these months before I got to this scene I believe. I think only one or two of them weren't used.
Speaking of which, I had a good idea of what the tone of this scene would be pretty early on, down to the dimmer lighting. I was really excited to work on this part, cuz it meant i could finally start drawing characters OTHER than Jenny and Eliza!
I don't have much concept art for this, but I had a very specific tone in mind when doing the scene where Jenny and Eliza walk home from school. I wanted the scene to have a very pretty sunset atmosphere and heartfelt tone to help sum up Jenny and Eliza's relationship for the episode. That was one of my main goals with this one and I feel like I did it pretty well.
Looking back, I kinda wish I foreshadowed the Denim Dames a bit more and gave Jess and Laura a bit more screen time... but I suppose that's what the 2nd episode is for! I'll certainly be talking about them a lot more when i eventually finish it.
Well, I think I said most of what I wanted to say in regards to this episode! There's probably some other things I'm missing that i'd probably ramble on for a paragraph or two... ANYWAYS if you've read this all the way through, thank you! I care very deeply for this comic and I'm happy to share the process of how it was created and I hope to continue this for as long as I can! See y'all soon!