Dark Productions Web Page Launched!!!

Dark Productions Web Page Launched! Woohoo!

Eileen is awesome :)

Little Samurai - Thumbnail Moments

I was thinking about writing down the way I work on my comic book because the process may be useful for my own reference later on and perhaps other artists can find my methods useful.

I used to fold a 8.5x11 page in half twice to divide it into 4 even rectangles and begin drawing my layout thumbnails into them. Ever since I studied film and animation, storyboards, painting, online visual references, and draw in Photoshop, I don't approach the comic book page the same way i did 12 years ago.

Instead, what I did was draw out each key frame or "moments" that I thought was necessary to tell the story. This page shows 153 of the original moments that I sketched. These serve as a starting point so they are quite primitive. If you look at my current layouts, you will see that some changes were made to improve storytelling.

Hiraku - Moments

Environment Design is hard

Environment Design is like pulling teeth for me. After 4 hours of noodling around with just one concept, this is what I came up with. Still not satisfied. It's problematic and I'm not even working with color yet.





I added a foreground element that it badly needed. Better, but till not satisfied. This still looks like lazy work to me. But perhaps it is because I'm comparing my stuff with great artists who do nothing other than paint.

At some point, I have to stop and call it finished. Does the image serve it's purpose? Yes. It tells the story. The story "reads" instantly. I understand what's going on. Do the rocks and mountains and clouds look great? Is it a masterpiece? Not really. Detaching and moving on...