Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Busy busy busy

Ooh, I've got a banjo. It's a 5 string Bluegrass one, but I didn't really know that until the helpful music shop owner told me, I just liked the look of it, what can I say, I know nothing.
I bought a chord book and a how to play DVD thing, it's going to take me a while to learn how to play, but then, so what, that's part of the fun.
In other news I go an email from the editor of my comic project, he's read my script and mostly likes it but has problems with the ending, both versions. I agree with him, endings aren't my strong suit (Simian Smith was lucky as the ending was pretty much the first thing I came up with, which is probably the best way to plot). I've emailed another possible ending, but I'm still not sure about it. Fortunately the Ed's got an idea for one which he'll share after I've had a try.
The other issue with the script is it's length. I've been asked to change it from 15 pages to 20. This is good, less panels per page will improve the storytelling and I can also change some dense single panels into two panels (in some cases they were two panels which I edited down to one for the 15 page count anyway) But it means more work. More work on the script, and more pages to draw. With the deadline quite tight I'm going to be hard at it.
My plan is to complete the script by the end of the week and do the thumbnails in another week leaving me about 5 weeks to do the final art. If this seems like plenty of time then you haven't drawn a comic! You also have no idea how slow I am.
I'm slow because I don't draw very well. What I do is redrawing, and I'm not bad at doing it until the final thing looks passable. Thumbnails are not meant to be finished drawing and no one expects them to look as good as the final art but it's where my lack of drawing ability really stands out, and in the case of showing it to an editor, which is what I'll have to do here, I'll worry that if I don't make the thumbnails look pretty then I might as well hand in several pages saying "This man can't draw, get rid of him. Now!" So the week I'm giving myself to do the thumbs is pretty optimistic, but it's also what I'l have to do to allow myself enough time to do the final art. This is why I stopped doing comics, I'm just better at single illustrations. But comics are an early love and the chance to be published is just too strong.
So, self doubt, talent limitation or not, I want to finish the strip for me, I want to be in the book and want to get better so I'll just have to knuckle down.... and whine about the process on my blog of course.

5 comments:

Garen said...

New design: Hurrah! New Comic: Hurrah!! Banjo: Hurrah!!

Ahem.

Gopher said...

Kudos on the Banjo!

I missed my deadline for the work and still can't find the e-mails! I wish you luck in meeting your deadlines.

A new design is refreshing - was considering one myself.

paulhd said...

Calm yourself Garen!
Oh go on then, hurrah!
Already sorted out a new draft for the comic with a new ending which I think is much better, so it's winging it's way oto the editor now and I'm hoping he like's it. If not then I hope is ending is better.
Sorry you missed the deadline Phil, hope other opportunities present themselves.
Nice to change designs every now and then. I've avoided this template for some reason, but I think it's now my favourite, I'm going to see if I can figure out how best to tinker with it so it looks more like how I want - way to much dead space at the top of the page for my liking.

Gopher said...

I expected to miss the deadline unfortunately. I still intend to complete all 3 of them (that was the requirement - 3 chapters from 3 manuscripts). I think the fact they enjoyed the samples I sent has made me more optimistic about completing them.

When I find the time I'm hoping to create my own template from scratch - it's easy enough but web stuff bores me silly. I was going to do a Garen and write a blog engine from scratch but it seemed so much easier to use Google's.

paulhd said...

Don't worry I twang gently.
Point taken about the link type size, as soon as I figure out how I'll sort it - I'm just pasting things from one template and messing with stuff at the moment, see, I really don't have a clue what I'm doing.