Read, Watch, Draw: 2016

Friday, July 15, 2016

Day 197: Hiatus Pt. 2

Just a quick note to let people know I haven't disappeared. The break is really helping me with my focus. I've been able to knock out a plot structure book that's been on my read list for months now. The notes I took are already helping to stream line my script writing process.

After I get back from my business trip I'll be able to set down at the drawing desk with fresh eyes and some renewed motivation. One piece of advice I can give at this point is to make sure you have some fun while you're drawing. If you get too hung up on dedicated studies and singling out your weak spots it can be pretty soul crushing. I'm definitely adding that to my list of things not to do in the future.


Pages Read This Week	240
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1760
Books Completed Since Launch	14
Total Tutorial Run-time	14 hours 33 minutes
Days Since Launch	197
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	164
Drawing Time This Week	20 minutes
Drawing Time Total	160 hours 35 minutes

* I'm considering Friday to be the end of the week for tracking metrics so that it lines up with my summary posts.

** I had to use a some fuzzy math to figure the page count for some of my Kindle books since they only have location tagging.

Friday, July 1, 2016

Day 183: Hiatus

I'm taking a temporary break from the blogging and daily goals. It's not like I got tired of drawing after six months. I just reached the point where this schedule and format puts unnecessary limits on what I'm trying to do. I mean, it's hard to sit down and write out a script if I only have a finite amount of spare time and a chunk of it is sectioned off to aimlessly copying muscle structures and random perspective tutorials.

The plan for the time being is to dump as much time as I need to into breathing some life into an original project that I can use to drive my progress over the current plateau I'm stuck on. I'm still tracking time on my spreadsheet, it's just collecting a lot more big fat zeroes now that days are being chucked at plot structure and character development. Hopefully it will pay off big, so stay tuned. Or not, you can always catch up later when this blog is moving again.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Day 176: Week 26 Summary

This week turned out to be a little chaotic. I had to take a few breaks from the perception training exercises in "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". It's really hard for me to qualify the book because on one hand I can see why it's so highly recommended by artists and on the other I can see why reviews become more mixed when you look at popular ranking sites like Goodreads.

The first exercise was to draw the two opposing faces in profile. It might be hard to recognize in my own drawing below, but it's the wonky looking chess piece on the top of the page. This drill was pretty neat and I tried it several times throughout he week to see how far I could draw the faces before I started drawing the chalice.

The next exercise was to draw an upside down copy of the famous squiggly line guy. This was particularly hard for me because I have already honed my ability to draw the things I'm looking at by recognizing what I'm looking at. Making the subject confusing by flipping it upside down was supposed to trick my brain into focusing on the simple details like distance and curvature of the lines. Instead I ended up rapidly losing scale and proportion throughout the squiggles. The end result wasn't awful, but I feel confident it would have turned out much better if the source wasn't inverted.

I stumbled a bit on that chapter and decided to doodle to remind myself that I am drawing for a hobby to have something that I enjoy doing in my spare time. If you're noticing a quality drop it's because I'm trying to shift to drawing from memory or imagination and not from observation.

I'm also working up a character redesign for the next club meeting, so my attention is really scattered right now. From Monday I'm going to try to get back to nailing down at least one chapter a day from the book so I can narrow my goals down a bit.


Pages Read This Week	18
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1520
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	14 hours 33 minutes
Days Since Launch	176
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	164
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 10 minutes
Drawing Time Total	160 hours 15 minutes

Friday, June 17, 2016

Day 169: Week 25 Summary

I started reading through the opening part of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain so I could hit the ground running for next week. It's not exactly what I expected. Especially since the author says that it's less of a book on art and more of a book on perception. The first three chapters are text heavy explanations of the theories that are the foundation for this approach to drawing.

It's very interesting to read and I am keeping an open mind about the whole left vs right brain idea. The idea of being able to zone out and cut off my logical processes, even temporarily, would be a huge help for me. I tend to over analyze and critique my own work mid-process which makes completing exercises more time consuming than they should be.

The closest I think I've gotten to this approach on my own is when I've veeb listening to music and droning my way through gesture practice sessions. During those exercises I stop thinking about the specifics of the image I'm observing or the outcome of the finished drawing and I just go through the motions. I can relate to some of the testimonies in the book, because I have been surprised by my own work when I drop out of critical observation mode and just draw.

I knocked out some anatomy sketches and a few Pokemon doodles for my daughter, but nothing really interesting this week. I will be starting the more interesting drills tomorrow. I'm also working on a side project, trying to work up some character designs for a short strip. I'm hoping to have something worth sharing for that in the next week or two.


Pages Read This Week	46
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1502
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	14 hours 33 minutes
Days Since Launch	169
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	157
Drawing Time This Week	6 hours
Drawing Time Total	153 hours 5 minutes

Friday, June 10, 2016

Day 162: Week 24 Summary

Let's just say that with all the travel prep, packing, and family visits that's happened I'm surprised I even had a chance to look at a pencil. Things will be picking up on the 15th. (Yes, I know I sound like a broken record.)

My work area looks like something out of a war documentary right now, so it really needs some TLC before go time. Other than that everything is prepped and ready to go. The materials are on standby and my motivation is stoked


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1456
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	14 hours 33 minutes
Days Since Launch	162
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	150
Drawing Time This Week	3 hours
Drawing Time Total	147 hours 5 minutes

Friday, June 3, 2016

Day 155: Week 23 Summary

There's nothing too exciting or new to report. I've been doing a lot of research on universities with art programs that I can dump the last of my GI Bill into before the funds expire. The only problem is that I can't get the full benefits unless I attend classes face to face, which limits me to after work hour courses.

That hasn't been working out so hot for me, so I'm now digging around for on line courses so I can at least get 50% of the housing benefits and I'll just try to max out on the courses I can take to get lots of books and instruction time.

In the meantime, I'm still doing family practice with my daughter. She's shifted from inking my lines to coloring them so that's been fun. I've laid the groundwork for the next few books I'll be tackling. For now I just have to keep my hands limber and enjoy as much time with the family as I can until I drop them off at the airport.

Things should get much more interesting on here after that.


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1456
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	13 hours 23 minutes
Days Since Launch	155
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	147
Drawing Time This Week	6 hours
Drawing Time Total	144 hours 5 minutes

Friday, May 27, 2016

Day 148: Week 22 Summary

This was a pretty successful week for getting back to the basics and honing my pencil and paper skills. An added bonus for me was that my daughter has made drawing with me part of our nightly routine before she goes to bed.

We usually just draw pictures from the comics that are laying around. There's also been a few tutorials on YouTube that helped us turn out a pretty sweet Robonyan and SD Deadpool. I'd put up scans of those but they ended up crumbled up in one of her toy boxes. She likes to take the finished drawings to bed when we're done so I haven't had a lot of luck scanning them.

That being said, it's still great practice. I'm a little bummed out that she's gotten interested now when she's leaving the country to visit her grandparents in a few weeks. I haven't had any luck lining up my art classes at the local community college so I'm laying the ground work to roll through the lessons included in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. If the testimonials in the workbook are real, there should be tons of cool work to post when I finish up with that.


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1456
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	13 hours 23 minutes
Days Since Launch	148
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	141
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours
Drawing Time Total	138 hours 5 minutes

Friday, May 20, 2016

Day 141: Week 21 Summary

I had another "last man standing" kind of week. First my daughter got a fever, then my son got an ear infection, then my wife had a turn at the fever. So far I've managed to avoid the bug that's going around but picking up the extra slack around the house ate into my drawing time.

The time I did come by I used to work on gesture drawings and some Yokai watch doodles for my daughter. It does make me wonder what kind of witch craft you have to know to make colored pencils look good. Even the expensive ones I have are just a small step above crayons. The combination of their waxy tips and the grain of my paper makes it nearly impossible to get a smooth consistent color anywhere.

Probably my main motivation for doing this whole drawing bit this late in life is because I want to at least try to spark an interest in my own kids while they are still young. I fell in love with comics and drawing thanks to my dad drawing my favorite characters, so I'd really like to pass that on.

I don't really have any big goals for the upcoming week, just going to keep putting in the time for now. I think my daughter wants me to draw Pikachu next so I'll probably play around with that a bit.


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1456
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	12 hours 52 minutes
Days Since Launch	141
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	134
Drawing Time This Week	5 hours
Drawing Time Total	131 hours 5 minutes

Monday, May 16, 2016

Day 137: Libbie Hawker's "Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing"


Level:	Intermediate
Pages:	108
Published:	2015
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

It's been a crazy long time since I could sit down and read through a book. I snagged the kindle version of Libbie Hawker's "Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing" while it was on sale earlier and it's just the right length to get through in a single setting.

One thing I've noticed going through all these how-to guides is that the books that focus on writing have been much easier to read. I'm not just talking about better formatting and layout. These books have been genuinely more enjoyable to flip through even when I'm not taking notes. I guess that says a lot about what learning to write can do for your writing style.

Libbie's book has a bit of the "Anyone can do it, trust me" jazz that you find in most how-to books. It's blended in with some legitimate good advice though, so I don't really consider it a negative this time around. I may come back and do a follow up post for this book after I've had the chance to apply the outline scheme to one of my own stories.

If you're interested in writing, don't know where to start, or find yourself getting lost in tangled character developments then this book would probably be a good read for you. Some people hate on applying any kind of formula to the creative process. Even if you decide that planning ahead doesn't work for your writing method it's still a worthwhile read just to see where other writer's are likely coming from.

Friday, May 13, 2016

Day 134: Week 20 Summary

I managed to squeeze in a quick e-book on outlining stories, finished Saga Vol 1 and Gotham Academy Vol 1. That's a pretty successful week for me as far as reading goes. I had to play around a bit more with my final t-shirt design but mostly this week was back to mechanical pencils and working through reams of printer paper.

I'm very slowly working my way through Matt Groening's "The Simpsons Handbook: Secret Tips from the Pros". The plan is to draw every picture in the book at least once and add my own notes along the way. Sure, it's a bit of a deviation from the anatomy studies I've been working on but it's just fun to draw something that looks like it's supposed to look.

I'm still planning to start my web comic on January 1st, I so I need to understand how to design a character that's easily drawn and looks consistent from panel to panel. Matt's book is fantastic for this, I just wish more animators would release handbooks like this one.


Pages Read This Week	162
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1618
Books Completed Since Launch	14
Total Tutorial Run-time	12 hours 52 minutes
Days Since Launch	134
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	129
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 5 minutes
Drawing Time Total	126 hours 5 minutes

Friday, May 6, 2016

Day 127: Week 19 Summary

This week wraps up the final version for my panel on the club t-shirt. I'm still playing around with an alternate version that has a single focus to make better use of the limited print size, but at least now there's no looming deadline.

One thing this proved to me is that application is worth a million times more than theory when it comes to art. The process I worked out in my head didn't go anywhere near as smoothly as I thought. I ended up making the same mistake a lot of the tutorial hosts I follow make switching to the wrong layer and having touch ups where they weren't supposed to be.

During the filling process I found out that Manga Studio's edge sense isn't too keen on gray toned drawings. So every time I tried to add whites or background colors it would eat up some of my line thickness. I tried to auto correct it using the line correction tool, but it had the same problem. Some lines would blow up to four or five times the original size and other lines wouldn't change at all.

I need to either spend more time darkening my lines or figure out how to get a threshold setting on my scanner that gives me dark lines without turning the page brown. If I had done that up front I probably would have shaved several hours off this project.

Left is the original pencil work (Pentel Graph Gear 1000 w/ .7 lead with Col-Erase base lines). I scanned and removed some of the noise before importing it into Manga Studio and shifting the hue to make it easier to work over.

I was going for an ukiyo-e look for the clouds to give my panel a different feel from the sci-fi and noir styles I'd already seen in some of the other submissions. I had the option to break the bottom panel, but ended up staying in the frame. When I dropped the lower guy's elbow and extended the spear butt off the bottom it didn't look as good on paper as it did in my head.

More inks and background. I didn't like a solid black field on the bottom, so I copied the long cloud on top and inverted the colors. I'm not sure if it looks like a shadow or a river, but I was aiming for shadow.

Looks like Read, Watch, Draw has passed the 1k page view milestone! Thanks to all the early viewers who are putting up with the low quality posts and wonky writing style. It kind of snuck up on me so I don't have one of those snazzy thank you pin ups. I'll work on having one ready for when we hit the 5k mark.


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1456
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	12 hours 52 minutes
Days Since Launch	127
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	122
Drawing Time This Week	8 hours
Drawing Time Total	119 hours

Friday, April 29, 2016

Day 120: Week 18 Summary

Pretty productive week for crunching out the exercise. I was able to get in a mentor session from one of the senior guys at the comic club I go to, which helped to get me out of the 1 hour and done routine. I'm planning to do more extended practice sessions when my family are overseas visiting the in-laws.

I'm also nailing down the final design for a panel that will be included in our t-shirt design. So it's another chance to work in some innate practice. Lots of practice doing thumbnails so far anyway. I haven't settled into a final version that I want to work all the way through yet.

The original idea to have tutorial and book reviews is in need of some rework too. There's only so many books I can read in a week and as unlimited as the YouTube channels seem to be, I'm not trying to throw out artists that I don't actually think are helpful. What I'm leaning towards doing is adding the reviews as they come up and filling in the empty days with drawing challenges.

That should encourage me to work outside my comfort zone a little and post finished drawings a little more regularly. For now it's back to the drawing board for me.


Pages Read This Week	6
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1456
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	12 hours 52 minutes
Days Since Launch	120
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	115
Drawing Time This Week	10 hours 6 minutes
Drawing Time Total	111 hours

Friday, April 22, 2016

Day 113: Week 17 Summary

I either need to improve my time management skills or find an extra hours in the day. The anatomy drills have been pretty ... meh. I haven't had a lot of luck with doing dedicated proportion practice so I went back to mixing it with gesture drawings. A little application to go along with all that theory.

The Bamboo Fineline never felt right to me. I had to put an uncomfortable amount of pressure on the screen to register a full line. So I decided to take the dive and order my own Gen 3 Bamboo Stylus Solo. The soft mesh like tip makes a funny squeaky noise when I'm drawing, but it has a much better response to pressure. Now I just have to practice drawing at two-thirds speed so the slight delay on my iPad doesn't mess up my lines.

Didn't get as much drawing done this week. The gesture drawings and what not are mostly NSFW so I'm going to skip scanning this week. (Sorry to the one or two people who follow this blog.) I'm still set on pushing through the anatomy lessons.

My goal is to be able to draw a consistent body type in multiple poses sans-reference material. It's a pretty hard limitation right now that I can only finish a passable drawing if I lean heavily on resource material. So far I haven't found any good advice / tutorials / books on how to get over that wall but I'll definitely make not of it when I figure it out.


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1450
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	12 hours 32 minutes
Days Since Launch	113
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	108
Drawing Time This Week	6 hours
Drawing Time Total	109 hours 54 minutes

Friday, April 15, 2016

Day 106: Week 16 Summary

I promise, I'm not actually trying to write a blog on how not to be successful at writing / drawing comics. I've just run into a rough patch with work, club activities, and other projects I have going on.

A lot of the time I put on the clock this week was devoted to doing mock ups for a future t-shirt design, so I'm planning to post those after an official version is released. The rest of the time I had to drop into basic warm up routines.

Learning how to draw isn't like learning how to write a bike, at least for me. I found that my lines aren't as clean and I'm having a hard time drawing what I see right in front of me after taking so much time off to beef up my digital skill set. I guess that's why they always preach about doing things in moderation.

I'm planning to get back to fill up a page for most days moving forward. There's still a lot of reading I want to get into, but I'm going to focus on the art side more for the time being.


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1450
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	12 hours 37 minutes
Days Since Launch	106
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	102
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours
Drawing Time Total	103 hours 54 minutes

Friday, April 8, 2016

Day 99: Week 15 Summary

So, I ended up taking one more minor detour into digital art this week. One of the guys from my club let me borrow his Wacom stylus so I could play around with some of the apps available on my iPad. It was pretty hit or miss with some apps having serious delay issues and others causing the input to skip all over the place.

For now the best I can accomplish using those tools is a really rough layout or thumbnail, which is still really convenient. I'm leaning more towards one of the round tip stylus though since I couldn't notice a great deal of pressure sensitivity in my apps.

I managed to get a few sketches of different takes on samurai for this Japanese style drawing I want to complete in the next few weeks. A lot of the really cool styles I found were done with brushes so I'm hoping at least a few of my calligraphy pens can still write. When I was still working on my kanji drills that particular style of pen/brush was constantly drying out on me.

The goal for the next week is to experiment a little with different pens and brushes I have laying around. I'd also like to knock out some anatomy drills to help with positioning my thumbnails so it doesn't take as much work to correct when I'm adding details later on.


Pages Read This Week	244
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1450
Books Completed Since Launch	13
Total Tutorial Run-time	12 hours 15 minutes
Days Since Launch	99
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	96
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours
Drawing Time Total	97 hours 54 minutes

Monday, April 4, 2016

Day 95: Doug Hills' "Manga Studio for Dummies"


Level:	Beginner'ish
Pages:	384
Published:	2008
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

I'm not dead, really. I've been working my way through Manga Studio for Dummies and trying to walk through the menus at the same time. The short books with chapters dedicated to paper and pencils types were kind of low hanging fruit, so from here on out it's going to be pretty difficult to start and finish a book in the same week. Scheduling notes aside, on to the review.

I'm actually a fan of the "For Dummies" franchise. I've used several of their books to pass advanced IT certification exams. Don't let the title fool you though. These books often start off really slow and then dump tons of information on you. This one was no exception to that pattern. It would have been nice if they skipped over the guide for opening a new file (Click file, click new) or saving a file (click file, click save).

When you get through the really low level introduction the guide provides a number of useful shortcuts and recommendations that I've found extremely useful. For example, my Wacom tablet doesn't allow me to rotate the screen. When I use the twist gesture it gives me the rotate icon, but the page stays still. I found the hot key Shift + Space bar and mouse or stylus to rotate reading through one of the early chapters.

If I had to break it down, I'd say 30% or so common knowledge, 40% I could apply right away, and the remaining material is just out of my league at this point. So I plan to revisit this book in the future to lock down all the useful tips I can.

Friday, April 1, 2016

Day 92: Week 14 Summary

When I first started this blog I wasn't expecting to go on some cliche journey of self-discovery but here I am. I've discovered that the years of honing my mind to retain ridiculous amounts of IT trivia for college and certification exams translates very poorly to any kind of creative project. Even worse, my methods of studying and retaining information aren't especially effective for acquiring and improving new skills.

The good news (for me anyways) is that the need to research and find answers does carry over in many ways. For example, it's been easy for me to memorize the hot keys that are available in Manga Studio which has really helped my digital work flow.

I've also picked up several warm ups, exercises, and a kind of road map from where I am to where I want to be in the future. Nsio has the best explanation that I've found so far. He breaks down the fundamental skills, the level they're obtained, and how they're combined to produce high level works. Check out his "Learning Order" tutorial to see what I'm talking about. Fair warning though, if you start to browse around outside of his tutorials folder you're going to find some very NSFW content.

I didn't make nearly as much headway on this as I was expecting. I imported one of my sketches from week 7 into Inkscape to clean up the lines. It worked really well on the boy because I had gone over his lines several times to make them stand out. Parts of the girl ended up whited out and I had to fudge them back in after I moved it to Manga Studio. I'm intending those colors to be the my flats, but I'm not sure how much more time I want to dump into this one image before I move on.

For what it's worth, this was my first attempt at digital art since Mario Paint.


Pages Read This Week	36
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1206
Books Completed Since Launch	12
Total Tutorial Run-time	11 hours 46 minutes
Days Since Launch	92
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	89
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 5 minutes
Drawing Time Total	90 hours 54 minutes

Friday, March 25, 2016

Day 85: Week 13 Summary

One thing that I've learned by immersing myself in the technical side of creating a comic is that I don't know jack. It was easier to feel like I was improving by leaps and bounds when I was using a traditional medium and following a course structure. That is such a small piece of the puzzle these days. Not to mention Clip Studio recently released an animation extension for adding motion comics to the process, which I'm really excited about.

The breakdown, as I understand it now:

Prepare draft work in traditional a medium (i.e. pencil / paper)
Scan and manipulate that image to reduce the amount of noise that might be picked up around the lines.
Import that scanned image into a vector program to process the raster image into a vector image so that you can more freely manipulate size and position without losing quality.
Import that into your art program of choice, in my case Manga Studio.
Create a base layer under it, an ink layer over it, a separate layer for each base color in the design.
Add rough lines, clean up lines, drop in base colors, add shadows, at lights, and you should get something like a finished product.

At least, that's my understanding as a rank amateur. I'm hoping I can convince some of my club members to let me shoulder surf they're work process to create a kind of walk through guide for their method and tools to see if I can fill in any blanks I might be missing.

Ideally, I would like to finish the Manga Studio for Dummies book and some of the exercises in it before I switch back over to focusing on creating something. My most optimistic guess for that would be next week. So if I can get back into actually drawing on the first of next month, I'll consider that a win.


Pages Read This Week	0
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1170
Books Completed Since Launch	12
Total Tutorial Run-time	11 hours 46 minutes
Days Since Launch	85
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	82
Drawing Time This Week	5 hours
Drawing Time Total	83 hours 49 minutes

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Day 83: Tutorials by Will Terrel

Will's channel is another one that I stumbled on years ago, subscribed, and then promptly forgot about while I focused on school and starting my family. His humble approach to drawing and loose sketch work is what caught my attention back then. It's still a great thing now that I've been drowning myself in the epic works of artists who have been at it longer than I've been alive.

For starters I checked out his video on how to get out of a drawing funk. Mainly because I am in kind of a funk of my own right now. Learning Manga Studio was a convenient reason to put down the pencil and get a breather, but I've still got that worry in the back of my mind. Am I going to get better? How much time is that going to take? Everyone says it takes years or even decades, but how much of that is spent in the "No one can ever know I drew this," phase?

Taking a day to fill up a whole sketch book seems insane to me. In a good day I can fill up two or three pages. Maybe. I've still got a lot of work to get comfortable with the idea that a practice drawing can be bad and that's ok.

Will's video on 5 tips for better drawings has some more practical advice, like drawing lightly during the sketching phase, turning the paper to see your mistakes better, and practicing to get confident smooth lines.

That part kills me. I did those choppy awful lines for probably the first ten or so years that I was drawing. If Youtube and the internet in general had been a bigger thing back in the 80's I could have found someone to tell me not to do that. Live and learn, right?

Friday, March 18, 2016

Day 78: Week 12 Summary

This is a pretty unspectacular way to wrap up three months of daily practice, but here it is. I've knocked out several hours of Manga Studio tutorials and I finally have a beginner's grasp on what some of the tools are and how to use them. I even figured out some of the hot keys for things that I plan to use often.

Still stuck on configuring my Wacom tablet to actually use all of the buttons and clickers on the stylus but that's my next goal. Well, that and importing some of my own sketches to ink and color. It's still tedious and painfully slow to do anything 100% digitally. It's hard jut to draw a recognizable oval. But I read that there's supposed to be tools for that in MS if I can figure out where they are hidden.

My first attempt at a full script is on it's third re-write. I think I put too much emphasis on the cool idea between the plot and left the characters bland and interchangeable.


Pages Read This Week	24
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1170
Books Completed Since Launch	12
Total Tutorial Run-time	8 hours 17 minutes
Days Since Launch	78
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	77
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 15 minutes
Drawing Time Total	78 hours 49 minutes

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Day 76: Tutorials by Jet Kimchrea

Jet's YouTube channel, "The Jetty Jet Show" is a new addition to my watch list. Right now I'm cramming through a marathon of every tutorial he has on Manga Studio.

To put it simply, these videos are great. A lot of take screen captures of their work and go back to voice over it for their lessons. Jet is actually recording live. So when he says, "This tool will do ___," or "Using this affect will cause ___" he actually stops what he's doing to go through the different steps.

This is probably the first time I actually felt like I understood what the dodge tool was even used for or how the multiply layer option affects the layers below it.

If you're new to Manga Studio or looking for pointers on how to color a drawing after you've scanned it, his starting Manga Studio series is a great place to get a feel for what his channel has to offer.

Starting Manga Studio 5 Tutorial Pt.1

For an idea of what his finished works look like, check out his DeviantArt page at:

http://jeteffects.deviantart.com/

Friday, March 11, 2016

Day 71: Week 11 Summary

I've been wrestling around with the idea of when I would break into using digital tools. After reading the hundredth or so artist mention how they moved to digital over a decade ago and never looked back, I've come to the conclusion that I really can't put it off anymore.

If I plan to stick with the initial idea of shifting gears to a short form web comic at the start of year 2, I can't be a complete digital novice. So I'm still going to sketch from time to time. I'm just going on hiatus from the whole one page per day goal I had going.

Trying to crunch out something scan worthy left me with minutes each day to break in Krita and Manga Studio. If I had a solid background in Photoshop or GIMP that might just work. But the closest thing to a digital program I've ever put time into was Mario Paint and I mainly played around with the music program in that one.

With any luck I'll be crunching out even more practice by working directly on the computer. That will save me time on erasing, clean up, and scanning. It might not sound like a lot, but every minute helps when you're as strapped for time as I am.

On an up note, I finished the beat sheet for the first issue of my future first comic. If my schedule sticks I'll have the actual script worked out by next Friday.


Pages Read This Week	66
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1146
Books Completed Since Launch	12
Total Tutorial Run-time	6 hours 30 minutes
Days Since Launch	71
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	70
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours
Drawing Time Total	71 hours 34 minutes

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Day 69: Tutorials by Neil Fontaine (Learn2draw)

So this is one of those channels that I threw into my watch later bin and never really got around to before now. On the plus side the host posts regularly, has decent content, and there is a structured course on Udemy. On the downside, this is one of those one take styles where you get advice direct from the artists mouth. So there are some tangents involved which don't really have anything to do with drawing.

On to the links.

How to draw the female figure from your mind -- no references

This is the video that caught my attention because he's using Manga Studio EX. The tutorial on laying out the human skeleton is more of a refresher for me at this point, so I mainly focused on which preferences he was playing with and how to use rulers in the program.

If you're still working on drawing a skeleton and getting the proportions right, this is a pretty decent approach.

Lesson Story Structure and Plot 1-12

I segued into this video from the female figure just to see if it would shed any light on my current script writing process. I picked up on a new concept of breaking the plot down by turning points, which seems rougher version of using a beat sheet. I plan to watch through the rest of his lessons on story structure just to make sure I understand the process he's using. From the first lesson it seems like a pretty solid approach.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Day 67: James Scott Bell's "How to Write Dazzling Dialogue"


Level:	Intermediate
Pages:	136
Published:	2014
Arbitrary Rating:	5/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

When I first started reading this book I was convinced I was going to hate it. James Scott Bell has a ton of short how to ___ books under his belt and that's usually a dead give away that someone is trying to milk a market. I must have gotten used to all the mediocre how to books that I just lost hope. Turns out, this guy is the real deal.

Added bonus, the text for this books run all the way to the very end without the extra page fillers like an index and pie charts that some people sneak in. If you've ever been reading a e-book and hit the end around 80% you know what I'm talking about.

James Scott Bell's "How to Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way to Improve Any Manuscript" came across my radar when I started looking for some kind of guidance on how to make conversations more interesting. The first comic I decided to roll with is more in the vein of suspense / drama so I can't rely on pretty pictures and flashy action to carry it.

James gives examples of awful writing, followed by several iterations that offer improvements. He also offers some exercises to loosen up your writing style and break through writer's block.

Some of the suggestions in this book seem a little silly though. For example, he uses a random number generator (or dice) to pick a random page in a random book and then drops the first line of dialogue from the book into the piece he's working on. The odds are just astronomically against anything making sense, but maybe it's good for a chuckle. This is what I came up with using an random number generator I found on-line and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo":

"Sorry. No hope," he said. Less outlandish than I was expecting but a little on the dark side.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and plan to revisit it after I've gotten a few rough drafts completed so I can experiment with some of the techniques to see if it jazzes up my dialogue.

Friday, March 4, 2016

Day 64: Week 10 Summary

Well, the streak is over. I took my first day off on Wednesday thanks to a two and a half hour traffic jam on the way home from work. I could have forced my way through a few exercises that night, but the only thing creative that I wanted to do was make new combinations of four letter words.

I'm still working with a club member to finalize a design for our club's business card, so I'm holding onto the process works until that's settled. When there's a finished product I'll put up the step by step process from draft > lines > ink > digital finish so I can break down where some of my time has gone this week.

Still, innate practice like Jazza mentioned in the tutorials this week is pretty rare for me. It was a nice change of pace from staring at other people's pictures or running through another exercise that involves doodling some object in my office. Hopefully I'll be able to stretch my artist legs more in that direction when I get enough progress into my comic to start drafting the first issue.

Slim pickings for scans this week because of the missed day, club project, and charcoal work not being scanner friendly. It felt like a productive week to have so little to show for it. I'll have to try to refocus next week to get better results instead of getting lost on so many side tangents.


Pages Read This Week	137
Total Pages Read Since Launch	1080
Books Completed Since Launch	12
Total Tutorial Run-time	5 hours 15 minutes
Days Since Launch	64
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	63
Drawing Time This Week	6 hours 15 minutes
Drawing Time Total	64 hours 34 minutes

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Day 62: Tutorials by Jazza

I've been a big fan of Draw with Jazza for a while now. For some reason I always home in on the inspirational or philosophical videos. He does have a series of step by step tutorials for drawing particular subjects or characters that are on my watch list.

This week I caught up on two clips that have been collecting virtual dust on my saved for later list.

How to Practice - Improve your Art Skills, the Smart Way!

Types of Practice:

Innate
Inspired
Developmental

To paraphrase, innate practice comes from doing your craft, inspired involves simply anything that inspires you, and developmental is deliberately focusing on a topic you need to improve. For example, when I start working on my first draft of my future comic I'll be getting innate practice in perspective, anatomy, flow and so on.

When I sit down with a dozen copies of Prinny fan art and start reworking them to learn the style / structure of the character that's inspirational practice since I'm huge fan of Disgaea and my desire to learn helps to push me through slumps.

Developmental is my personal weakness, since it focuses on weaknesses and I don't like doing that. I'll ping on a weak area like drawing hands for a day and then move on. What I really need to do is take a weekend and just throw a dozen or so hours at dedicated study of one topic and push myself over the hump. Like Jazza mentions in the video, doing something that you're weak at can be pretty soul crushing.

What To Draw... When You Don't Know What To Draw

I usually don't buy into pep talk videos, but for some reason I get this. Probably because I've been stuck looking at the blank page so often.

Jazza recommends three exercises which include:

Draw something mundane, use randomized ideas, and repeat the same drawing with progressively less time.

I've done the mundane practice before and have a few dozen sketches of keyboards, mice, erasers, speakers and so no to show for it. I'm not sure how much it has helped me grow but it's the closest thing to drawing from life that I typically get.

Using an randomized sketch generator sounds like a lot of fun and the repetitive drawing exercise seems like it would help me a lot so I'm going to try to work both into my routine. Just as soon as I can stop playing around with charcoal drawings...

Monday, February 29, 2016

Day 60: Francis Glebas' "Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story"


Level:	Beginner
Pages:	64
Published:	2012
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

You may already know Francis Glebas from his other books "The Animator's Eye" and "Directing the Story". That's not what you should expect from "Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story: The visual way to see your story structure". In this brief introduction to plot structure, Glebas lays out some of the most popular story devices in a short illustrated story.

When I say short, I mean short. Thanks to the Kindle format and the illustrations you can roll through this book in less than an hour. Still, it's one of my early favorites because it made the idea of plotting out a story easy to understand. While you could use the dragon template provided in this book for all of your stories, it would probably be a good idea to research other methods or simply experiment on your own.

Following a formulaic approach like this can make it easy to hit all the necessary points to have a complete story, but there is a serious drawback to being too routine. My personal opinion is that cookie cutter stories can be too predictable and that causes me to lose interest even when other aspects are done well.

Side note: This was my break glass in case of emergency book. I was saving it for an especially busy week to make sure I would have something easy to read in my spare time. Unfortunately I ran through several craptastic books so I may run into a rough spot finishing one of the longer books by next week.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Day 57: Week 9 Summary

This was a rough week for drawing. I'm throwing some time at working up a script from one of my old plot lines and it's been eating into my dedicated drawing window. So I've had to squeeze in drawing sessions with my daughter's Crayolas while I'm watching the kids. I'm still enjoying the gesture drawing practice, so that cuts my actual drawing cartoon window down to 30'ish minutes.

This is actually two days worth of drawings. I rehashed the opening example from Cartoon Cool using the new stencil I got to make the base circles uniform. Didn't do much for making the final pictures more uniform... but the third face actually turned out pretty close to the reference. Alien guy is from the Simpsons for any younger readers out there.

This is a Prinny from NIS's Disgaea series. They just released a port on Steam which I'm really excited about and I figured I would roll with the idea of doing a focused study a little early. The mapping and notes are ideas I worked out from deviantArt's Chickenlover13. His complete study includes contour lines and is way above the level I'm at right now, so it's pure gold as a reference.

This is what a week's worth of 30 minute gesture drawings looks like. Well, half of it anyway since I didn't flip every page. Yeah, I did it on lined notebook paper. Thanks to school I have dozens of partially used college ruled notebook paper and this seems like as good a use for that as anything.


Pages Read This Week	130
Total Pages Read Since Launch	943
Books Completed Since Launch	11
Total Tutorial Run-time	4 hours 45 minutes
Days Since Launch	57
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	57
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 5 minutes
Drawing Time Total	58 hours 19 minutes

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Day 55: Tutorials by Mike Koizumi

My recommendation for today is Mike Koizumi a.k.a 'koizu', and his YouTube channel. This is the first channel I've dug up for my blog that doesn't seem to be active anymore, but it still has some valuable information.

Don't let the low level examples in some of the videos throw you, this artist has a strong grasp on anatomy and perspective which really shows in his more advanced drawings particularly the video on How to Draw Fight Scenes.

It's no exaggeration that I've watched that clip over a dozen times since I first subscribed to his channel. The sad part is that after all these years I'm still stumbling around on the "fill in the details' stage even though he describes it as the easy part where you start to coast. Still, laying down the fundamental shapes and poses before starting the drawing is sage advice.

Lately I've been experimenting with laying the groundwork in a thumbnail sized version and referencing that but it's easy to lose proportions when I start to expand to full size. Now that I'm back into the swing of drawing I may have to revisit Mike's ghosting technique and see if that doesn't work better for me this time around.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Day 53: Tim Stout's Short Notes on Long Comics


Level:	Intermediate / Advanced
Tone:	Beat Sheet Breakdown
Pages:	63
Published:	2010
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

What's with these books having massive titles? This week I finished up Tim Stout's "Short Notes on Long Comics: 10 Great Examples of Story Structure in Graphic Novels". Fair warning, the intended audience for this book is pretty niche. The author does an amazing job of breaking down popular comics into Blake Snyder's popular plot structure. You can find a detailed explanation of the structure on Tim Stout's own blog at:

https://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/

The only reason I can't call this book perfect is because the ten titles he chose mostly fall outside my preference. On the plus side, if you're interested in writing it's a safe bet that at least one of the comics he chose will be exactly what you're looking for in an example.

The best fits for my goals are Batman: Year One, Hellboy, and The Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper. Two out of three I already own and one is on my to-read list. There's a spoiler warning in the front of the book, but just to be extra safe I'll repeat it here. Short Notes on Long comics contains spoilers, since the author systematically brakes down the stories and explains where they fit in the plot structure.

With less than 100 pages you can easily crunch this book out in a single setting, but it has a great re-read value since you can revisit it whenever you're stuck on a story or having a hard time figuring out what to write next.

Friday, February 19, 2016

Day 50: Week 8 Summary

I'm looking into starting some courses at one of the local colleges around May. The progress has been coming along pretty smoothly solo, so throwing a teacher into the mix should speed things up. For now I'm keeping my focus on the fundamentals like line quality and anatomy.

Of course that gets boring, so every now and again I find kaiju to draw. The originals were done by Marcus Erdt and posted on deviantArt in his Chibi Zilla project folder.

Here's a little cartoon work from Christopher Hart's Cartoon Cool book and generic anatomy sketches.

Finally a few skeleton to form studies. This process seems much easier on YouTube than in practice. I keep struggling to draw the body the way it's supposed to look and not the way my brain remembers it looking. Practice, practice, practice.


Pages Read This Week	78
Total Pages Read Since Launch	813
Books Completed Since Launch	10
Total Tutorial Run-time	4 hours 13 minutes
Days Since Launch	50
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	50
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 10 minutes
Drawing Time Total	51 hours 14 minutes