This one looks rushed, and that is because it is.
I did that on purpose though. I knew the topic itself would be relatively easy because I spent most of 2017 pregnant - I found out on the third and she was born late august. So, I thought out kind of how I wanted to progress the panels, sticking to the nine because I used this task as a bit of an exercise in constraints.
I have a tendency to spend an excessive amount of time on these “low-stakes” assignments because under the right conditions I find the whole process very enjoyable and relaxing. This is cool because I don’t often HATE whatever I submit, but it isn’t cool because I have a lot of items on my to-do list daily and I simply do not have three hours to draw one page of comics. I WANT to, but I just don’t have the time, and these are not assignments intended to take up time like that.... not for the drawing alone.
So when I started to draw I told myself I had only one hour.
and I didn’t start to draw until 9:30pm tonight, because I didn’t want to keep coming back to it to tweak it throughout the weekend. I wanted to do it and be done with it.
Even if I had ‘submitted’ it early, because of the nature of THIS tumblr medium, I could very well edit the post and change the picture at a whim until the actual date the assignment was due!
In the spirit of “constraint,” I gave myself a specific window that I could not wiggle around to physically complete this part of the task, and I forced myself to use precisely nine panels, nothing leaking out of any of them and they are all the same size.
It’s not GREAT, but it doesn’t suck either... and with some fine-tuning on the art skills, or at least just the art itself - if I erase and try again enough times, eventually it looks like I drew it that way on purpose!
I actually really like the images I used - about 2/3 of them I had decided upon the general content before I started, not necessarily the actual image, but what I wanted to depict - I truly feel if I had allowed myself to spend time on the art itself rather than just the concept of the art, and maybe if I had a larger-page notebook, the images could have really done the trick.
I think the nine-panel grid is a really great “framework” type of structure to have for the medium. It definitely gives new-comers something to latch on to, and I think it invokes the concept of “classic” for experienced readers. It’s also a good way to make sure a creator is SHOWING SOMETHING... if nothing happens in nine panels, nothing at all, something probably could use an edit. There are certainly exceptions, creators who can totally pull off a “long pause” like that, but it isn’t something one can just DO, and in order for it to be received correctly, there needs to be some kind of “basic form” to call upon when nothing else needs calling upon....
I think the nine-panel thing is great. I think it opens up a lot more doors than one might think when one hears about a “form” or a structure, and I think it is important that anything that has to be “created” comes with some basic form or structure, a starting point.
