Weekly Summary:

Well… this was a strange week to say the least. I got COVID-19 on Sunday, and I was still at the coloring stage of my web-comic. Um… That ended up with the coloring and cleanliness of the comic not being where it needed to be upon uploading. And for me, knowing that I could do better, it was really upsetting to not only be feeling physically unwell, but knowing that my comic was not at the quality that I could have managed if I was physically fit and had the mental fortitude to work.

I ended up spending most of the week fielding emails back and forth with professors, sleeping, and trying to do as much work as my body would allow me to do. It was very frustrating overall. I did manage to finish my web-comic. But I feel that it’s at a very low quality. But the good thing is, I’ve realized a lot of things from the upload of my first episode. The comments from family, friends and colleagues will allow me to make the changes necessary for episode two through the rest of the comic.

Final Stretch: Icon Arts

For the final bits of work, I had to get the vertical icon, chapter icon, and series icon done. For this, I just reused the vertical icon image, and messed with it to fit the dimensions. Not necessarily the best thing to do, but it worked for the time and physical health pinch I was in.

Here is the vertical icon:

And here is the series icon:

These two were a bit difficult to edit to the proper size allotment, but I managed to do so.

Final Stretch: Comic

The webcomic itself has a lot of flaws. Just getting that out there before you see it.

One. The coloring of the background is pretty sub-par because I rushed it.

Two: Panel one isn’t really that memorable.

Three: The type, which is a simple Bodoni, isn’t really settling well with style of drawing in my webtoon. A lot of people who read it said they wished I had used a script font. I do agree with them.

Here is the comic itself.

Extras:

When I was feeling better, I decided to work on the short 4 panel episodes that would go in between the break from the upload of episode 1 to the upload of episode 2- cont.

I’m still working on it, but I used vector layers this time, which allows me to easily clean the line-art and streamline my workflow. I will be creating the rest of the comic’s line art using vector layers as well.

There are two drafts, and there may be a third and fourth if I can’t get the impact I want in the next iteration.

Here is Short Form Episode 1 A:

Here is Short Form Episode 1 B:

1A I didn’t think the panels at the beginning, middle or end had enough impact, or were bringing the story where I wanted it to go. I had wanted Laelie to be a big reveal.

1B I think is closer, but I think I want to do a close-up of the ball rolling to Laelie’s shoes in panel 03 instead of showing her outright. Either that or have Laelie hide by the fence, extreme close-up shot on her face (but with her bangs and half the panel border obscuring her eyes. It’s a trick they often do in anime for kind of a mysterious feel. Often in Shojo manga and anime.

I managed to finish draft 1 C. Here is a preview:

I have to fix the pose of Noah in panel 4, but it looks OK so far. I like the panel compositions a lot more than the previous two iterations, and I like the feel the comic is giving.

Weekly Summery

This week I mostly focused on dealing with the colors of the webtoon itself. I also cleaned up the pages and messed with how the panels were oriented. It was a very time-consuming process. In hindsight, if I would have used a vector layer in Clip Studio Paint versus a raster layer, it would have gone a lot faster and been easier, but it ended up taking me the whole week to clean and re-do the line work on the panels that needed to be edited.

The flat colors also needed to be edited and changed once the line art had been changed, so that was another beast. Overall, the panels turned out well, but the coloring process was a bit rushed and I’m not proud of it.

Progress: Changes to Panel Layouts

For the changes to the panel layouts. There was a large section that was surrounded by a lot of white space. To make it look cohesive with the rest of the pages, I decided to bring the panels up into the outside negative space to break the fourth wall. It was a harder task then I thought it was going to be. I had to think about what lines to erase and how not to disturb as much of the original line art as possible. I honestly wish I had redrawn some of the line art versus trying not to disturb it, but I didn’t have that mental hindsight while I was working on the changes.

Here is the original section.

Here is the changed section.

 

 

Coloring:

For this part, I decide to change the shading on Laelie to match the style of the promotional art that I had done for the webcomic. It didn’t take me long, but I wish I had spent more time on it. I also shaded Noah as well.

Here is a sample of the original.

Here is the changed version of the sample.

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It was a Bit of a Week…

“I’m just trying to crawl to the end of semester…”, has been my motto for the end of this month.

For this week’s work, I did a bit of everything. I did some behind the scenes work of world-building, scriptwriting, and concept-art, combined with some newly finalized-art. My goal has been to get as many eyes as possible on my webcomic’s art and concepts. In doing so, I’ve found new and interesting ideas and synaptic connections from my friends and fellow classmates that I wouldn’t have thought of before.

They’ve also recommended some books, films, and comics that they said may help, so I bought or watched some of the recommended items. Two things I read were Witch Hat Atelier volume 1 and a bit of Ascendance of a Bookworm: The Manga – Part 1 “I want to Become a Librarian!” volume 1. Both have very extensive world-building, and Ascendance of a Bookworm has a similar magical malady to my own- called the Devouring.

Progress; Script/Story-Writing:

“Afino Purgo!”- “purge the forsaken.” This is a spell derived from two words, Afino -meaning forsaken, and Purgo, meaning to purge. This is the spell that causes the mist that the Magician’s Association calls the “Scourge of the Forsaken”. In this world, Forsaken is the term used by magicians for the magicless or slightly less magical humans and creatures that become consumed by rage and insanity as the mist eats at their body and mind. For the Scourge part, I was a little unsure when I saw the first definition of the word, but the second definition makes sense for the context. In the Oxford English dictionary there are two definitions for both a noun and verb form of the word Scourge. Mine is more noun based. Definition one is “Historical: a whip used for an instrument of punishment”. Definition two is “a person or thing that causes great trouble or suffering”. I went with definition two.

I also created the character profiles of the enemies of the main characters. There are five of them, since Selené Emeraldí and Myra Mistfeld have similar weaknesses based on their magic types. These five are meant to directly oppose the main characters, in both moral and power values. The leader is named Adriel.  He directly opposes Laelie Thomson by using strong Arcane magic. His background is akin to hers as he is also half-celestial, but he has fallen towards the side of darkness. The other four antagonist characters, Hael, Milos, Diana, and Fir also directly oppose the other five members of the party. For now, the name of this group is The Harbingers. I wanted to name them The Harbingers of Skia (The Harbingers of Shadows), but I was told The Harbingers is fine by multiple people. I am a little worried the name is used elsewhere though.

I also created the mission of the evil team and their reasoning behind why they are seemingly attacking the magicians at the same time. Adriel, the leader, was a part of the Magician’s Association along with Hael, but he disliked that so many wayward mages were being rejected and thrown into the outside world after failing the strict tests that were opposing them. When he was turned dark during a mission to a den of dark elves, he concocted the spell Afino Purgo and gathered a mass of followers. His first act as leader was to release the spell and cause the mist to spread all throughout the Kingdom of the Sun-Helios where Notare, and the four other cities are located. Helios is an island kingdom, isolated from other lands, but the spell didn’t stay constrained to the island. He wanted to cause strife for the gatekeeping Magician’s Association, and the humans and creatures that both take advantage of and spurn their existence.

That was about as far as I got for the lore-building. For the script writing, I started and finished page two, and started page 3. I know I said I was going to get up to page 15 done, but I am a little unsure if I can get up to page 15 done this semester. I may reduce it to page 10 or 12.

I also started to refine the comic’s elevator pitch. This is what I have so far, but it’s nowhere near good enough to put on the webtoon’s page. I think once my semester ends, I’m going to have my friend who majored in English and does freelance editing look at my ideas and help. Because I need it.

“In a world full of magic and gears, magicians, humans, and creatures lived peacefully. That was until the day the mist descended. It ate at the body and mind of the magicless, causing those afflicted to devolve into insanity. The magicians, blamed and persecuted, disappeared … or did they?”

Progress; Webtoon Panels:

Um… I didn’t get as far as I had wanted to this week. I had wanted to clean up inconsistencies with Laelie and Noah’s models, but I wasn’t able to after I had found out that some of the panels had to be changed. I don’t mind changing the panels, but it’s taking more time than I thought. If I had used Vector Layers, it would have been easier, but I didn’t know how to use them before.  I’ve been dealing with changing panels and messing with page consistency. I didn’t get much done, but here’s a sliced version of the panel work.

Here is the long scroll:

Progress; Promotional and Vertical Icon Art:

HO BOI. This is where things got sticky. I was going to work on the webcomic for much longer this weekend, but when I got started on the Vertical Icon art, I got stuck. Mainly because I wanted to add the rest of the cast in. I have an idea of how I wanted them to look, so I was comfortable drawing at least their faces and bodies. The outfits though… not so much. I already have a good idea of how I want to fix them, though. I don’t have enough space in the blog post to explain, but basically, I want to look up some 1890’s-1920’s uniforms and outfits for professional work. My comic is set somewhere in-between that timespan, so looking up fashion for that time will help me with establishing the reader’s ideas about the synaptic connections to the era of the comic.

I also created an image that I aim to put out as a fun promo for the spring season. I sadly didn’t have enough time to add the type, but I hope to have a logo created by the end of next week for both images that will be used as the series logo.

Here is the Vertical Icon (The type I believe is Bodega with an Italic and Bold modification):

Here is the Promotional Image:

Works Cited:

n.a. “What does afíno mean in Greek?” WordHippo. n.D. https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/greek-word-50d959fb77c3e907274517b864547a05f03a8478.html Accessed April 17th, 2022.

n.a. “What does purgo mean in Latin?” Wordhippo. n.D. https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/latin-word-c9545d1a65534cd76356a61c332de879e9ff499f.html Accessed April 17th, 2022.

n.a. “Skia.” BibleStudyTools. n.d. https://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/skia.html Accessed April 17th, 2022.

A bit of a Summary:

So this week I did a few things to spruce up the comic itself. I had wanted to do more, but I couldn’t in the time I had available to me. I hope to do so next week, though. I want to edit some of the drawings of Laelie and Noah to make them more on model, and I want to clean up some scenes. This week I started work on the shading of Laelie, and I changed the door to the Magician’s Association. Overall, that scene hadn’t been properly realized, so I went back and changed the whole scene besides Laelie. There are some other parts of certain scenes that need to be messed around with, but I didn’t have the time to do that this week. Like the hallways I wanted to add some decorative elements to, but when I thought about it, I realized it’s a hospital. It wouldn’t really have decorative elements on the wall besides crown molding.

Color: Flats and Shading

So I started flatting last week, but I managed to finish up finally early in the week. After that, I moved onto shading Laelie. Laelie is mostly shaded with a monotone color palette. I normally shade first with the base color on a multiply layer, then lower the opacity of the multiply layer and then shade with one shade darker of that base color and again, lower the opacity of the layer. I was hoping I’d have the time to light Laelie, but I wasn’t able to get to it by Sunday. That task will move into next week, along with improving the consistency of the comic’s characters and scenes.

The Door Problem:

So… this door. The door to the Magician’s association was most definitely unrealized on first go around. I had used a film that wasn’t really a good inspiration for the door, and I am a little embarrassed to say the name, but it was the Santa Claus. I also didn’t look at a reference. I went back to the drawing board, looked up some references and tried to re-envision the door. All the while attempting to keep its original motifs.

I still wanted the rainbow-stained glass of the original door, but I decided to get rid of the gaudy M and C and use a simple pentagram like star, which is the symbol of the Magician’s Association. I also decided to use a diamond glass pattern on the other windows of the door to keep the angular motif of the star all throughout the door.

This was the original. I don’t have a photo of it flatted sadly. But it was bad. It didn’t even really have any geometrical logic or structure to it, and it just looked off.

Here is the new door. I used the symmetry ruler and cleaned up the scene itself in using it. I was able to create a mirrored scene where it needed to be symmetrical due to the perspective it was in.

Here is the whole comic as it is now. There are some inconsistencies with Laelie and Noah that need fixing. I think once I have a properly done turn-around for the both of them it’ll be fine, but I currently don’t have that.

It still needs a lot of clean up and a ton of work, but I hope that I can get it done within the next week or so. I’m behind for my deadlines, so it’s definitely going to be a situation of No Sleep til I’m done.

Color Troubles:

This week kind of got lost on me. I didn’t get a lot done. I did manage to finish the flat colors for my webtoon, but nothing beyond that. I was hoping to get started on the official icon and vertical icon art, but I was incredibly busy this week, and I had a lot of problems keeping up on assignments not just for this class, but for others. I was glad to at least get all the colors on the page, but they now need to be organized and named so I can quickly shade and light the scenes without having to hunt for the proper layer. I do think the values are looking a little samey, so I want to go in and with a saturation layer positioned over-top, I want to edit the brightness and saturation of the colors. Just to make sure I have a balanced page set up color wise.

Here is the colors as they stand now.

They looked a little samey, so I decided to add a saturation layer over-top to check the values against one another. I was right. They were very samey.

Here is the grayscale panels with the saturation layer over-top.

Another problem I’m seeing is with consistency. Some panels look like they’re in a different environment and Laelie and Noah aren’t always on model. So I feel like I need to go back and clean things up a bit before this gets released to the world. Noah definitely looks better than Laelie, so I want to focus on cleaning her up first. Now that she has a turn around, though, that should be much easier.

I also plan on composing the icon and vertical icon art next week. I think to avoid spoilers (as episode 2 and 3 won’t be up for a bit, Laelie and Noah will be featured on the vertical icon art. At least until episode 2 and 3 are released. I am a little concerned about typography for the title and logo. I’m not experienced with that, and I haven’t been able to come up with anything of worth. So that’s one thing I’ll definitely be actively seeking help for.

Sadly that’s all for this week. But next week I hope to get the color balance issues fixed, start on lighting and shading after fixing the discrepancies of being on model, and getting the icon and vertical art done. I also plan on working on more of the writing.

The writing has sadly taken a backseat to the artwork. Mainly due to the fact I was so overwhelmed with the amount of concept art I need to complete this comic’s world. I plan on getting at least the outline done and finishing scripting pages 3-5. I don’t usually do more than an outline since it feels very constricting script wise if I plan out too much. I’m more likely to drop the project. And this is a very solid concept and I want to see it through. But if that means I need to plan more, than I will do so. I know I definitely need to write down some of the world-building ideas I had after reading about life during the Black Death’s rampage. Otherwise, that’s all on the plans for next week.