Snowflake Challenge Day 11

[potofsoup]

Day 11

In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it?

Oh man. Guyz I love talking process, it's possibly my most favorite thing.

I'll do a fuller process post on Patreon after narratives are done, but here's the general gist:

First, I do brainstorming on my Google Tasks, which I basically treat as a place to dump small text files, since it's synced with my phone.

For the Maia-Saura MTH comic, where the prompt is the Flag Speech, here's my first Google Task:


Which then becomes this when I was getting out of my car after my morning commute:


Then, later, at a boba shop, I open up my laptop and actually type some words:


At this point, it's pretty much all dialogue, and all stuff that I know I'm going to throw away. I'm just working my way towards the feel of the thing.

After I get a general sense of what should happen in the comic (Tony wants to make fun of Steve because he doesn't really know him, Steve gives flag speech, Tony and Steve become friends), I open up a file (making sure it's sized correctly), and slap down some rough layouts in pink. I'm too lazy to find those for this post, but it's literally some panel boxes and ovals of where people might be. At this point, I'm very consciously working without a script. All the words that I'd typed up previously was done without taking images and layouts and speech bubbles into account. There's not a lot of real estate for words on a single page, and the words just flow differently.

As evidenced by the final panel version:


Anyway, after I slap down the rough layout, then I start inking. That's the longest part of the process, because this is where I:
- draw the same face 5 times to get the emotion right
- draw people on different layers and resize/move them around until they're in the right relationship to each other
- suddenly decide that there needs to be another row of pensive!Tony
- finalize all of the dialogue
- after much whining and despairing, draw rough backgrounds as needed

Some of this can be done while watching TV. Other parts ... not so much. Boba is great. Whining to friends is great. There's always a moment in this process where I'm like "none of this makes sense anymore." This usually happens after I've re-written the same dialogue 3 times and I'm zoomed in to the top right corner of some panel. But that's when I have to just tough it out. I tell myself: Just finish the damn thing and you'll never have to see it ever again.

Then comes the easy part -- the colors / rendering. idgaf about colors, so I just slap on the most basic stuff while watching some shitty TV. Crime procedurals. West Wing or Brooklyn 99. Musicals. One layer for the people, one layer for the background, another layer for the midground if there is any, and then do any tweaks as necessary:


And then I post it online and run away and never look at it again! :D :D :D!!

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating?
Usually, the reason it's not working is that there's something structurally wrong. So what I do is step up a tier in the process and ask myself what I was trying to do there. (so if a panel isn't working, I look at the page, if a page isn't working I look at the adjacent pages). Usually it turns out I need to draw something completely different in the panel, or I need to change the panels in the row, or I need to shift some content to the next page. All 3 of those things happened with this comic!

Comments

[minoanmiss]

*wallows delightedly in your process*

[potofsoup]

<3 <3 <3

[mystrana]

I love reading other people's processes, thank you for sharing!

[potofsoup]

<3 <3 <3

[norsellie]

This is super interesting to me! And I am thinking about how I can apply your trick of stepping up a tier to my writing. Hmmm...

[potofsoup]

Yeah, stepping up a tier is definitely one of those brainhacks that help me immensely, in the "oh, this isn't working for me -- probably a deeper structural problem". Similar to "I'm procrastinating, so probably the thing I'm procrastinating on is too big/anxiety-causing" or the "this conversation isn't working because we're speaking on 2 different registers".