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Hello, and welcome
For everybody’s convenience, I’m gonna try to keep an index of quick links to the stuff I’ve made pinned to the front of my blog for the time being. I figure it’ll be a little more universally accessible than separate pages, given how wacky navigation can be (especially for mobile users). Lemme know how I can make improvements.
vvv INDEX UNDER CUT vvv
Okay, change of plans.
Despite my best laid plans, my intentions to produce that Hellboy comic through October are turning out to be more unrealistic than they were before I moved. Unforeseen circumstances are going to reduce the amount of free time I have in the near future (thanks, Ian), and I straight up overestimated how quickly I’d be able to draw each page. Which happens a lot.
See, there’s kind of a bigger problem here. I routinely find myself getting excited about making a comic project, writing it all out, and then burning out repeatedly as I draw it. For the longest time, I thought that was just what it took to draw that many cool pictures on one page. It wasn’t until I started living with a friend from college that I realized there was a problem. Or, he realized it first. He’s astonishingly good at clocking me through my stubborn bullshit lol. He said that maybe I constantly burn out because I’m using 100% of my artistic capacity 100% of the time. Which sounds ideal on paper. I’m making the very best art that I can. But it’s completely unsustainable because, uh… I’m a human with limits, as I constantly forget. And comics take a lot of stamina.
Because I don’t understand comics. I read comics all the time growing up, but I didn’t draw like them. I learned to draw from making fine art pieces in school. I drew with realism and life drawing as the core of my practice because that’s what my dad had been taught back when he aspired to be an animator at Disney, and that’s what he taught me. The only thing that ever impressed art teachers and classmates was how accurately I could draw a face or a vase or a landscape. So I did that as well as I could.
Now, I should be clear here. Realism absolutely has a place in comics. Some of the most beautiful and intelligent pieces of work I’ve ever read had clear roots in realism. Life drawing is a sensible basis for any kind of representational art, in my opinion. Sequential art that’s just a series of fully-rendered paintings astound and enchant me.
It’s just that I think that level of detail and accuracy just isn’t right for me. Partly because my writing style is also super extra. I have big spiraling ideas that take a lot of time and pages to execute. My writing is actually just now reaching a point where I can whittle it down to reasonable finished scripts that I can draw with (which might be why I never realized this art problem before). And sooner or later, my brain wanders off onto something else. So being stuck with these big projects that are so exhausting to execute leads to a kaleidoscopic labyrinth of “break” projects that are supposed to be easier. They never are. Because my brain doesn’t know how to do “easier”. Like anything, I think “easier” will take practice. Study.
My plan, therefore, is to study an easier style to keep in my toolbox. Something fun and shape-based that lets me lean on the forms of abstraction and simplification that I already use in my current dominant style. Mostly, I’m looking at Scott Campbell (lead art director of Psychonauts 1) right now. And I’m gonna try working with some brushes that won’t leave me agonizing over line weight. If this works, it might give me more time to think about color dynamics, lighting, staging, and expression (since you guys seem to love that so much in TMA Encore; I love it too).
What does this mean for Hellboy and Encore, then? I think the best thing to do for Hellboy is post the pages I finished before I moved and release the remaining script in text form through October. It’s not as good as having the whole thing drawn, but I think having initial pages will at least help readers visualize the rest. (And I’d really like people to be able to experience the whole thing because I feel like it’s some of the best writing I’ve ever done.) Then, starting in November, I want to get Encore wrapped up. This will take the form of a kind of… hybrid media presentation. Encore has no complete script, but I can write a dramatic summary of what happens chapter by chapter, accompanied by drawn panels and sequences of important moments. Like a picture book. That kinda fits the dark academia vibe.
Following that, I’m going to use that Psychonauts fanfic I mentioned months ago as a study tool. I have a whole side blog for that (link), but I might crosspost them here when the time comes. And from there, hopefully, I’ll have a sustainable work ethic and can start on my own original projects. With videos. And patreon!
It’s a big weird shift all of a sudden, I know. This may just be another art blog on tumblr, but it’s important for me to try to be consistent and accountable when I make projects. And if I can’t do that, I at least want to be transparent. (Who knows–talking about this might help someone else who’s struggling, too.) I have kind of a rare opportunity in my life to sit and focus on art right now, and I don’t know when another will come again, if ever. So I want to use the limited time I have to improve and position myself for success (and wellness) going forward.
I hope you understand. But I have a feeling you will. You guys are real nice. :)
Thanks for reading.
Some inks of the Boy and a farmer named Regina.
[ID: Four images rendered in digital inks with heavy black shadows. Based on Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comic book series.
1) Hellboy sits on an antique Victorian couch somewhere in the BPRD, surrounded by artifacts, old pictures, art, and books. Hellboy is dressed in a black tank and shorts. He’s looking at a photo in his left hand, his heavy stone right hand resting on his knee. His expression is his usual stoic, with some intensity from the natural graveness of his features. Caption: Hellboy. Special investigator, Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.
2) Hellboy walks on scorched earth, now with a trench coat on. The soil is black and bare with remnants of petrified wood and strange starburst markings strewn about. The melted remains of a metal cattle fence loom in the extreme foreground, pointing at Hellboy ominously. Speech bubble float in from the previous panel (not pictured). Bubble 1: I’ll be expecting frequent updates. Bubble 2: Sure thing, Baler.
3) A woman (Regina) with a long nose and wavy black hair sits in the cab of a truck, staring at the road and talking. She’s got one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the seat beside a pair of crutches leaned on the headrest. She wears a light flannel shirt over a t-shirt. Wheat fields whip by outside. Regina looks contemplative... unhappy. She says: Nobody’d lived there for years, nobody cared when it went up. I only noticed it when I started getting a creepy feeling around it. Like being watched.
4) Hellboy stands facing the reader with his head bent down to look at something on the ground. It’s kind of a funny pose--him hunched over so far that the shape of his body is defined entirely by his big square shoulders, his little topknot sticking up from the back of his Cro-Magnon head. Big bushy trees crowd the background. He says: Hm.
Index
