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:

1. Prepare draft work in traditional a medium (i.e. pencil / paper)
2. Scan and manipulate that image to reduce the amount of noise that might be picked up around the lines.
3. 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.
4. Import that into your art program of choice, in my case Manga Studio.
5. Create a base layer under it, an ink layer over it, a separate layer for each base color in the design.
6. 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.

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Metrics

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

* 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.

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?

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. 

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Metrics

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

* 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.

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/

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.

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Metrics

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

* 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.

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.

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

Quick Overview

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

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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.

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.

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Metrics

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

* 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.

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:

1. Innate
2. Inspired
3.  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...