Strip 3 is up, strip 4 is uploaded and ready to auto-post next week. I started coloring strip number 5 today, which shouldn’t take half as long as the others. Given that I’m awfully behind on my schedule for coloring (and finishing the first episode) I’ve taken to planning the next episode in my head when I have free time to think. I’ve made some headway in constructing the plot. I’ve had the general outline planned for many months (a year?) but I’m starting to do the problem-solving where I figure out how to make what I want happen happen.
I’ve learned a lot while executing this first episode, the most important lessons being:
- I need to spend a lot more effort drawing & inking (it makes the coloring process so much easier)
- Coloring takes way more time than I had previously planned, extra time spent drawing/inking or not
I’ve been bitching a lot about the coloring process and how to make it work better/be more efficient. I’ve been talking with a friend of mine, going over some ideas. I also found a nice tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpGXndjI6HU. The main idea was to use the wand tool, then expand the selection by a few pixels to make sure you penetrate fully with your paint bucket. It was stuff I already knew (and my friend had suggested), but watching it performed made it sink in a little better. The real problem was that my lines were sometimes a single pixel wide, so expanding the selection would blow out the color too far. That combined with my horrible line-closing tendencies make bucketing a dodgy solution (for now). I should also mention that the use of the dodge and burn tool to shadow/highlight (as deftly demonstrated in the video) was something I was thinking about as well, though my success with it so far has been shitty so I’m not adopting it just yet.
Declaration Time: Episode 2 is going to have thicker lines, better color, and better backgrounds. I’m hoping to kick it off 2-3 weeks after episode 1 ends, which should put it at October 30th or November 2nd. The date will depend on how quickly I can pick things up after finishing coloring the last two strips. I’m going to be away from my (second) office this weekend so I’m going to see how much I can get done during the week.
I’m also still watching the shit out of Lost.