Author: zmb5135

This week I looked back at the artist that originally inspired me in high school to strive for making my own webcomic. I presented Michelle Czajkowski, the author of Ava’s Demon, in my Contemporary Art Seminar as a “living mentor” and shared how I thought their art influenced my style and hopes as an artist.

https://avasdemon.com

Now looking at the art of Ava’s Demon, I thought about what I liked about it and how I  could help my own comic by taking inspiration from it. I struggle the most with text bubbles, so I really studied Michelle’s bubbles to improve my own. To start, I decided to spend time and use Caligraphr and create my own font using my own hand writing.

 

I went in and adjusted pages I thought looked weaker. Adding the new font in where it was needed. As well as went through and adjusted the text bubbles, creating color coded bubbles for each character. I think this really steps up the level of creativity and makes the text feel like a piece of the art rather than stickers on top of it.

 

 

After sharing my initial pages with Cromar, he addressed something I never really thought about before. How word bubbles should appear while on a comic page because, they are visual also! They need to be thought about as carefully as the panels and layouts are! After looking at a link Cromar gave me of Winsor McCay, I compared it to what I liked about Oratoreye’s Mritunjoy’s Tragicomedy .

I realized what I liked about these speech bubbles, and how effortless the words are integrated into the work, and do not obstruct the art either. Becoming a part of the piece as a whole. This is something I want to explore more with my work now.

I am still messing with how I want to lay out text, but I am happy with this almsot completed chapter so far!

I also joined some larger art communities on discord, one of which is ran by the artist mentioned previously, Oratoreye! I promoted myself and some characters designs I did for my comic. Sharing my art with fellow artists. As well started making friendly connections in this group.

 

 

Starting off this week, I did some additional sketches of more supporting cast characters. But, since I am part of the senior exhibition class as well I don’t have time to keep doing heuristic type work. Keeping additional character design work to loose but thought out sketches to save on time.

Then I began to fully work on my first pages of my comic! I wanted the first images to be establishing shots. The first page is a large illustration of the Court of Candor, and the second page starts with a panel that shows the characters in the court. I feel that it’s important to invite viewers into the world before jumping into character interactions so that my audience understands where the character’s are. The setting is as equally as important as the characters, it shapes the cast into who they are and why they do what they do. The environment ends up becoming a character itself.

We begin the story with Avrin meeting with members of the court with a criminal, Soleil, who is affiliated with a witch coven known as The Circle of Whispers. Essentially the counter fource against the Court of Candor, the members of this coven are secretive and under handed, while the Court values honesty and balance.

Being in a 400 level studio isn’t all fun and grinding away at projects. The horror of realizing people will perceive you and the work you pour your heart into is something one must quickly over come to succeed.

This week I presented my Heuristic Overview and received excellent feedback from my peers that boosted my confidence in what could be possible with my project. Professor Cromar suggested I look into the Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Gunn after looking at my maps so far for the setting of Conflux I have been developing. He also suggested I make sure that I still keep the audience on edge by having twists despite what the choice is made by the audience. Another peer in my class suggested then that I should set up a patreon and post “alternate results” there for the vote that did not win, which I thought was a very interesting idea!

I gained a few followers and a lot of positive responses when I posted previous character designs and a test page of my comic on my personal twitter! Below are the thumbnails, lines, colored page, and the final page with text.

 

After making my test page, I made my first iteration of the webtoon preview image, since the image would always be next to the name of the comic I decided to not use text on my image. Keeping it more simple, while still mysterious and intriguing.

I shared the image in an art server with people not from the class, asking for their opinions. The feedback took me to adjust Ceri’s position in the image, the colors of the gold on the eye, and another version where the background had a more noticable perspective blur.

Lastly, I made another design sketch for another character that will be part of the story. As well as worked on a looser style to be used as warm ups or for more concept pieces that might need colors but still be done quickly.

 

After showing the turn table I created for the first two main characters to my peers and got positive feed back. I also asked for a response to which logo I made looked the best and I dove into Adobe Illustrator for the first time in about three years and created the above image! Cracking open Illustrator again after having not used it in so long was a bit of a struggle and I do not particularly like the program so the icon took much longer than I would have liked. The scale with eyes is the combined symbols for two of the godly figures known as Guardians in the setting of Conflux, the Gazing Guardian and the Balancing Guardian. I chose this as the webcomic’s icon for social media because the Court of Candor, the core ecosystem that characters will be in, is dedicated to those two gods who oversee all their actions. Being satisfied with I have for now I created my twitter account dedicated to the comic and the Webtoon space.

Links to all social media related to comic:

ttps://twitter.com/TheGazingTrials

https://www.webtoons.com/en/account

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4q5rxSnqFcMMNvUenXshnJ?si=f1f3203e4a474a62

https://pin.it/5usPJfv

I also added a lineup of additional characters that can appear in the comic! I wanted to expand into people who would be hanging around the Court of Candor and what their personalities might be like. As well as thinking about the influence they may have on Ceri and Avrin.

 

In addition I received feedback on my map of Noru Downsy and added some more details to the map. Working on this I realized I never uploaded the full map to my blog and wanted to do so! I am still chipping away at this large map and thinking of what type of environments might live on this continent.

After getting feedback from multiple friends and professors on previous logo sketches. Most people seemed most attracted to the scale with eyes logo! This helped me narrow down what I should making the icon for social media sites. The next step is going to be turning one of the above icons into a finalized vector drawing in Adobe Illustrator.

New sketches I did of the two characters who would be the Overseers of the Court of Candor. Everyone at the Court works under these two, they act both as priests and judges, and allegedly communicate directly to some of the Guardians within the pantheon of Conflux.

I wanted to expand outside just the Court of Candor and fleshed out the country of Noru Downsy where the Court exists. Considering the climate, where towns would most likely be situated, and what travel routes might exist. It was difficult coming up with names for these locations but I do like what I have here!

Character turn table for my webcomic I’m starting! pic.twitter.com/Z50qkNbttF

— Fae (@guineapigi) February 6, 2022

Lastly, a completed turn table of the two main characters Ceri Pye and Avrin Belmont. Getting a feel for what their personalities are with shape language and color coding, it took me a really long time to figure out what colors looked best next to each other while ensuring that they matched the personalities that these two have. I studied a variety of bird images (blue birds, canaries, and chickadees) or Ceri, as I wanted to portray her as a sweet character still trying to learn how to spread her wings as an Investigator for the Court of Candor. While Avrin is her strict and cold demeanor mentor who does their job excellently but doesn’t like to talk about their past. I shared this on my personal twitter account in hopes of getting the followers I have interested in what I am working on!