Long Distance

[Charles Jones]

I'm no stranger to running a low-key webcomic, though I tended to keep its following limited mostly to a relatively small circle of friends. Honestly, I think I'm more comfortable running things like that in such a way, especially since I seem to have all the attention span of a dead goldfish, and sometimes jump off to another project while the one I'm already working on is going full-steam. Still, a few years back, my good friends Ben and Fio encouraged my wild flight of fancy regarding the serialization of an online comic strip based on a rather old story idea of mine entitled "Long Distance". I was further encouraged to share the works-in-progress here at CCS. After some consideration... why not?

I'll use this space as an area in which to share what I'm working on for Long Distance, posting processes as well as end results with respect to the artwork that goes into it. I welcome (and encourage) questions, comments and critiques!

To start with, I'll put up a portion of a page I've been working on; one panel in particular which has taken some time for me to be happy with. Thankfully, I got a lot of good suggestions.

When I first began working on this panel, I started by drawing out a grid. I had a specific reference picture I wished to use for the pose of the character, and had a great deal of trouble getting it down freehand. Therefore, I gave myself some assistance in going from A to B. The assistance helped immensely. Unfortunately, the 'model' I used was quite heavily clothed, and even with the use of a grid, I still had to do my best to proportion her not only the way I wanted, but realistically so, when taken down to a spaghetti strap tanktop. I wasn't going for full realism, as the art style I'd chosen was more along the lines of an anime and manga style, but you can tell by my notes that I was already looking for ways to cover mistakes with things like clothing and hair once I'd realized I couldn't figure out how to fix them.

[Charles Jones]

Thankfully, I received a few good suggestions and EXTREMELY helpful guidelines from Ben and Fio, upon showing what I'd achieved so far. They recommended a few different courses of action in fixing the rough spots, and even drew up some guidelines on the image itself. This resulted in a much cleaner-looking revision.

Her figure is much more clearly defined, at this point. She has more well-defined curves, her chest reflects her age a bit better (I'm going for somewhere between teens and early twenties), her neck and back are better proportioned, and her clothing is starting to sit on her a little more properly. I'd also given her the start of a hand and arm to work with. In addition, I found the strap of her top to be problematic for me. It was throwing off proportion, the flow of the lines, and just plain looked awkward.

My infamous notes-to-self make another appearance, expressing my displeasure with where the hand is going, and the the problems I'd been having in sketching it out properly. Having a visual reference helped this greatly, however.

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

Good idea using the grid. I've done that and it's really helpful.

[Charles Jones]

It's the first time I'd used it. I'd never really done so before now simply because I considered it impractical to have to do so much work beforehand, and so much erasing afterward. Such a mess to have to deal with and work around. Man, was I wrong. It's TOTALLY worth a little setup and maintenance. I'm pretty sure I'll be making liberal use of grids in my artwork from here on.

[Charles Jones]

After a brief bit of poking around at Pose Maniacs, I found a good starting point for the pose I wanted her hand to have and ran with it. It took some serious effort (hands are DIFFICULT!), but I eventually ended up being reasonably happy with this:

I shortened the space between her shoulder and neck just a touch... all I could do without some serious redraw, or careful digital editing. I decided to be happy with what I had, there. I also added a simple line at her shoulder, which made things feel a bit cleaner and more well defined. The hair is developing a bit more, here, and more of the anime style shows up in the method with which I shaded her face over as a way of not showing too much of her face this early in the story.

[Jules]

Thanks for sharing your progress with us. I find it fascinating I would never do a webcomic, but I love any creative process. This will be interesting.

Crimeny! Thanks for posting the Pose Maniacs link! I just came back from playing nearly an hour. What an incredible resource!

[Charles Jones]

Thank you for the encouragement!

I thank Ben for introducing me to Pose Maniacs. Isn't it great? The amount of great reference material in there is almost overwhelming.

[Charles Jones]

I wasn't ENTIRELY happy with the hand, but much like how I altered her tanktop's strap to hang loose rather than kill myself trying to make it look JUST RIGHT, I decided to be sneaky and change the type of phone I'd chosen to put in her hand.

I wasn't too happy with her pinky finger at a certain point, but still wanted it shown. Therefore, I went with a specific model of phone I happened to be familiar with, and which came to mind for this specific purpose... hiding as little of the hand as possible while still masking parts I wasn't happy with. Heehee.

Her thumb still needed work, so I tinkered with that a bit. I'm still not happy with the end result, but I can accept it. She no longer has mutant-huge thumbnail, so I consider it a compromise of acceptance of my work... if that makes sense.

She needs a little extra cleanup before final use... some darkening of lines here, some erasure of stray marks there... but, aside from that, I think she's pretty much done! On to the next panel! I'll post some of that later, as I go.

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

You got some good advice, Charles and she's looking good! I was thinking it was a pen in her hand at first ... yet can really see it as a phone seen in profile now that I know that's what it is. You're right, hands are not easy! Are you re-tracing, using a light box?

[Charles Jones]

Thank you!
Unfortunately, I don't have a lightbox handy. I intend to buy/build one at some point in the foreseeable future, however; it'd be really nice to have.
No retracing, here. In fact, I'm trying to avoid it altogether. Half of the reason I started this project was because I'd like to improve my artwork. I'm not against retracing, but I feel that too much sort of defeats the purpose.
Still... I do like the idea of a lightbox for editing purposes, as well as for tracing work for stuff like backgrounds and whatnot (which I intend to do separately and insert digitally).
I hadn't considered that the lack of detail and small size of the phone could be problematic, but I may want to consider revising it a bit, somehow. Once you pointed out that it bore resemblance to a pen, I couldn't stop seeing a pen in her hand! *laughs* I'll look into that, for sure.

[Charles Jones]

I'd like to avoid changing the way the phone looks TOO much. I don't have any real reason for this, other than maybe some weird, subconscious aversion to changing MAH ARTZ ONOEZ or something. I dunno. But when I think about it, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to give it a bit more bulk, as you say, if for no other reason than to provide space to give it some obvious detail that makes it more... phonelike? I shall explore my options!

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

It shouldn't take much, just a couple of short lines angled slightly inward, from top and bottom, and another line perpindicular to what you already have drawn, to show a bit of the front of the phone, sketch in a few details. If it were me, I'd draw as large as I could fit on my scanner, in order to fit more detail in, and reduce the images digitally after they are scanned.

A lightbox should be easy to make, you could even use a sturdy cardboard box with translucent plexiglass on top. I have one made of pine that I think is home made (thrift shop find!) I also have a plastic "Barbie" one, a toy for little girls to use for fashion design, I guess :)

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

Another idea ... if you used a light box, you could make a grid on clear film and place your paper over that to draw ... less erasing and the grid could be re-used indefinitely :)