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tristikovart · 7 years

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A Retrospective of Role

Or “It really took 15 years to get from that, to this?”

If you’d like to share in my cringe have a look at my progress as an artist, then grab a beverage and a snack, because this is gonna be a looooooooong post.

So to go back to the beginning, I have always liked to draw; in particular I’ve always liked animals, so it isn’t much of a surprise that some of my earliest “original characters” were based on my team in Pokemon Yellow. However, it was another Game Boy game called Dragon Warrior Monsters which provided what turned out to be a lasting inspiration. It also only allowed for 4 letter names.

- 2002 -

If I recall correctly, I was on vacation at a lake in New Hampshire with CerebralZero, when I drew my first ever pic of Role:

She also apparently had scaly forearms and a distinct beak here too; those didn’t stay, but she did keep the wings for some time.

Given the context of DWM (monster battling), Role didn’t have a lot of background at the time... Though I did have some running gags with my friend Alex who also played the crap out of DWM, I only drew some of our monsters later on in a single rough sketch.

The first continuity I had after Pokemon. [shudder] This shit is really going back in time for me. Note that Role’s outfit makes no fucking sense; but surprisingly, while Sela at the far right looks like some DeviantArt sparkle-bird abomination, she actually is about as ridiculous as the Rain Hawk DWM monster she was based on (I think in-game she actually ended up in part of Role’s lineage because Rain Hawks learn the MEGA MAGIC skill, and thus she would pass it on to Role through monster husbandry.)

- 2003 -

For a while I gave her some kind of SWAT uniform thing. I’m pretty sure I intended her pistol to be the Enforcer from Unreal / UT Classic. She also went blonde for a while.

Using my sick dial-up internet connection at the time I found out that digital coloring was a thing, and I asked my folks to get me Photoshop Elements 1.0 at our local Staples. I also got a scanner, which ushered in an exciting new world of not being aware of the multiply setting, layers, or cleaning up line-art.

However, Role proved pretty good at rocking out in front of crappy jpegs BGs

- 2004 -.

During this time, I went through a bunch of character designs and continuities (itself amusing to look at; perhaps I’ll make a future post for the truly bored.)

All things considered, when I stuck to pens and prismarkers, I don’t think the result was too terrible. Note the blonde again.

IIRC her outfit above is based off of a pinup wallpaper of Jo from Altermeta gen 1. HOW’S THAT FOR DATED?

ARRGG back to the horrendous digital coloring. I actually did much worse coloring a little bit earlier, if you can believe it. Some basic digital art tips would have a gone a long way back then. Anyway, it was about this time that Role transitioned to a new continuity with one of the several iterations of Gyr, who was my go-to character for a few years. Note Role’s design stabilized around this time with the garish fuchsia eyeshadow, t-shirt, and brown “hair”.

BONUS ROUND: Ryhs Rhys (took me a while to get it straight) is also really fucking old! However, she disappeared for a time, while I kept drawing Role. This cast of characters stuck around for a while, and I drew quite a bit of them, including a number of silly comics, frequently involving my friend’s avatar, Raze, inducing mischief by being a self-important douche.

I certainly drew a lot of pinup art of Role; this habit hasn’t really changed… 2004 had a particularly productive stretch due to me going on vacation to Vermont, again at a lake (similar to where I drew her first pic) and having ample free time to occupy.

This trip was also officially commemorated with a 5 page comic about just that.

- 2005 -

I think this pic was actually late 2004, but either way I still think it stands out as pretty cool for the time. Note Role’s “hair” has transitioned to actual hair from its previous feathery styling. Note the lack of wings too. Also, IIRC the only time she was drawn with closed-toe shoes.

Otherwise 2005 is kinda light on dated pics of Role; probably because I had started drawing Ress more often (another good topic for a retrospective) and had also developed Maru and other equine characters.

- 2006 -

Check it out! Some signs of progress at last! The 2006 iteration of this cast focused on these three (and ditched the wings across the board), as well as folded in the other equine characters to some kind of mid-2000s city life continuity. Role’s shirt also gained a big 01, and might have been her old softball jersey or something.

Around this time, CowBunny, a fellow artist on DeviantArt, also drew me some really cool fanart! CB, if you’re out there, I hope you’re doing well!

I also drew the first (and a little slim) Oktoberfest Role picture, replete with god-awful shift-clicked mouse lines. Note the braids here.

- 2007 -

I had started school at this point, and IIRC I drew this sketch during my first semester, while riding the D-line from Brookline Village to Riverside, on my way back to my school’s temporary dorms at Regis College.

- 2008 -

Doodles of Role (and Maru and Ress in the upper middle) done in various notebooks from school. Note during this time she also developed a bit of a cleft beak for some reason. You know, I still don’t know why despite having one in the original drawing, I always drew her without a defined bill since then (until 2017.) Inspiration from depictions of Chocobos, perhaps?

- 2009 -

Beergirl Role is back! And dammit if this doesn’t hold up pretty well (which I should be glad of, given that I purposely designed this pic to have tattooed on my side!)

- 2010 -

At this time I was preoccupied with graduating college, and then involved in my first job, so while I have a nice picture of Ress from this time, I didn’t get to Role until the following year.

- 2011 -

But hey, she looked pretty good, so I’d say the wait was worth it. Note that I finally got rid of that fucking eyeshadow. Like, it finally occurred to me that I could use other colors. Or Kelly might have just told me it looked like shit.

- 2012, 2013 -

Didn’t draw Role much (if at all?) during this time, as I started another job, started collecting firearms, and chiefly: Started the modern period of Avania! (The history of how Avania came to be is yet another retrospective topic I could go into detail on, if there are interested persons out there.)

- 2014 -

Well, 2013-14 sucked because the start-up I worked for had gone belly-up and money was tight, but never the less I brought Role into the “present” with the third beergirl drawing. Her hair is lighter in this version, but she kept the braids even when not in fraulein-mode, and apparently I liked the way she looked with glasses in that old sketch.

Otherwise I spent most of this time making 3D models of most of the Avania characters to play in Unreal Tournament 3. I even made a model of Role, though I didn’t iron out all the rigging issues, and she was rather out of place among all the other characters I had modeled.

- 2015, 2016 -

I started a new job late in 2014 and I’m still there, so things are looking pretty good. However, I had been working on the Avania comic, and any side art had pretty much been exclusively with those characters. Several times I had thought about adding Role into this now all-consuming continuity, but with one of my design choices being limiting the setting to three sentient races, it meant Role as she was wouldn’t fit neatly into the setting, and so I held off on incorporating her.

- 2017 -

However, early this year I decided that it was high time I found a place for my oldest, continuously drawn character in a setting that I have set out to make a fancy, published (at least digitally) comic out of.

I’ve already been posting sketches of her new design, but say goodbye to the old, and hello to the new Role!

Her old design will always be with me (and I mean literally, given the tattoo) but I’m very happy to actually give her something to do now besides get drawn looking pretty. I’ll probably do some finished art of her new design at some point, and maybe even remake her model for my next Avania UT3 release (though it might end up being UT4 at this point--another project somewhere on the distant horizon.)

2018 UPDATE: Role’s latest incarnation now has a fully rendered pinup! This is her design for the Avania comic (launching summer 2018) so be sure to stay tuned if you’re a fan!

Though her previous designs haven’t had much in the way of military themes, I wanted to keep her overall look recognizable. As such color color scheme has remained the same, and I figured her braids would continue to be appropriate in the new context. As she no longer has a lion’s tail, I decided to braid that as well so as to keep the tufted and ribboned look. One other thing that has evolved is her personality; though she past wasn’t ever particularly defined, Role always seemed fairly happy, friendly, hard-working, and a little flirty. In light of her new history growing up in dire times and serving during the final days of her country, her old personality has matured to one of responsibility and self-sacrifice, but has not been entirely overwhelmed!

I’ve really enjoyed Role’s evolution over the years, and I’ve especially enjoyed her recent iterations and the depth that I’ve finally got around to developing for her character and backstory.

If you actually read this incredibly long-winded exploration of my artwork, then I hope you enjoyed it too! If that’s the case, let me know if you’re interested in seeing more posts like this exploring some other long-running characters, or all the early concepts that went into making Avania.

It has been a pleasure sharing my drawings with the internet at large, and I look forward to continuing the habit; cheers!

#artists on tumblr #retrospective #anthro #thicc #OC #tristikovart #role

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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August 10th-August 16th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from August 10th, 2019 to August 16th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

What is your process for planning out the paneling/layout of each comic page?

kayotics

I’ve finally gotten my process down to a process that works for me. For Ingress Adventuring Company https://www.ingress-comic.com/ I start with scripting the whole chapter out. Step two is thumbnailing the whole chapter out, so I can figure out pacing and paneling. I started to do thumbnailing on sheets of printer paper, which has been easier to figure out my drawings and to see how the comic flows on paper. Once that’s done it’s pretty straight forward. Panel borders in pencils > rough sketch & balloon placement > letters and tight sketch in pencils > ink letters > ink bubbles and borders > ink the rest of the page. Then I scan it and do the colors. With the thumbnail process I kind of do the chapter twice in pencils but it ended up being way easier in the long run, since I hate doing panel layouts and doing that work in the beginning is way easier.

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

Afraid there's no scripting for https://oldmanandtheseawitch.tumblr.com/. It's all pretty much in my head but I go over it literally every day, and I have a few roleplays archived to keep things on the right track, but that's about it. Thumbnails are done in big batches. Last batch was about 20+ pages done at once. Thumbnailing is also where I figure out composition and such. Just detailed enough to give me the idea of what I want, with enough leeway to do as I please on the page itself. Thumbnails done, I make a batch of empty pages, and go in and make all the panels for the 20+ pages. Since I already know the composition from the thumbnails and I have digital guides set up on each page, that's super easy. With all of those done, then I just go back in, do rough sketches for each page. Cleaner than the thumbnails but not too clean yet. Once the rough sketches are done, this is actually where I'll add text and balloons, so that I know what the bubbles will be hiding and don't have to waste extra time. After that, I do as much in large batches as I can, usually cleanup sketches, then inks, maybe flat colors. But after that point, I just have to sit down to work on individual pages until they're done. And voila!

authorloremipsum

http://signsofthreecomic.webcomic.ws/comics/ For Signs of Three, I always start with the script, get the basic idea of what I'm going for in the page. Then panel layout and gesture sketches of people and the environment. THEN! BEFORE I START DETAIL SKETCHING! I LAY IN THE SPEECH BUBBLES. Seriously speech bubbles are critical to controlling how readable your page is and so so many people don't seem to see that. They must lead from one bubble and panel to the next in an easy to understand way or your reader will get lost and confused. So I always make sure to put bubbles in during thumbnailing. After that it's just basic refining the sketch, lining, coloring, and shading.

AntiBunny

Typically in AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ I thumbnail a page first to decide what needs to happen. After that I look at those event and decide panel layout based on how best to depict them, factoring in what needs to fit, who needs to be there, and how time will pass. I'd say time is the most important aspect, followed by emphasis, and then content. Typically bigger panels depict more time passing, but that's not a concrete rule. A big panel can depict a very short moment in time. The amount of population has a big play in that as well. A lot of action in a big panel can be a short moment in time that's just heavily emphasized. A big panel with very little movement depicted is great for dwelling on a single moment, which is great for slowing down the pace of reading.

heroesofcrash

I used to not have a script at all, but now I tend to write out scripts in advance. I keep a four-panel format in mind (2x2) when I write a strip, but I'll sometimes combine or split panels depending on the flow of the story. (I'll place some sample strips below, showing a "default" 2x2 strip, and a few that combine or split panels based on that structure) I then draw guidelines in Manga Studio (I have the CD, not the digital version that became Clip Studio Paint) for where each panel will be. I put the dialogue in each panel, sometimes editing for space or to fit it nicer in a speech bubble. I can usually visualize how a speech bubble will generally fit in a scene; it's easier for me to draw around the bubble than to draw first and add the words later. After I sketch out the panels, I may move the words around to fit in the scene a little better. I may even tweak it a little when I draw the speech bubble around the text, if I don't like how the text fits in the bubble or how the bubble fits in the scene. As I mentioned earlier, here's two strips. One has four panels (which is the most common for me), the other has six. The latter is made by splitting the upper right panel into two skinny panels, and breaking the bottom half into three panels rather than two. Not only does it give me enough panels to do a complicated visual gag, but having panels with a similar layout next to each other makes the action easier to follow, and thus makes the gag flow better.

Desnik

For http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/, I make tiny thumbnails to quickly go through layouts. I tend to have a few different ideas and doing small/quick is a lot easier on the revisions

LadyLazuli

For Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) I've gotten into the habit of thumbnailing each chapter extremely roughly in a sketchbook, then bringing the pages into Photoshop and shifting the panels around to improve the flow throughout the chapter. I put in rough dialogue bits to anticipate balloons, then I get going on rough sketches and color placement in Procreate, then clean up and paint the sketches, then bring them back into Photoshop to finalize the page. It's honestly really haphazard, just because I tend to change details and dialogue around a lot, depending on what I feel is working/failing - but that core chapter flow doesn't change too much, just so I don't get caught needing more pages in one part. So... I keep the roughs very rough, but I adhere to them quite strongly? The details are where things get experimental (edited)

JUNK

I am a fool who hasn't been doing thumbnails lately, so my process is the typical script>sketch>inks>tone.

MJ Massey

I start with my storyboards, which are just skethcy first drafts of the pages in a sketchbook. I have a vague genreal story outline, but this is where I really figure things out--both the layouts and the script.

In my head, I tend to see things as if they were an animation, so I am usually trying to catch that sense of movement in the comic panels. I try to keep things interesting and thinking outside the typical grid layout, usually resulting in some pretty crazy stuff. It's easier with action scenes, but I try to mix up everything. I do my final pages on 9x12 bristol (I used to work on 11x14 but that was...too big for markers), but there are many times where I will scrap the storyboard and do something totally different for the final page, or add or take away things. But it's good to have that first draft down as an idea, it's easier to adjust from there if I need to

FeatherNotes

@LadyLazulii love your process ahhh!!!

LadyLazuli

@FeatherNotes MERCIIII

Nutty (Court of Roses)

For Court of Roses http://courtofroses.thecomicseries.com/ I mostly sketch out thumbnails, scan them in, and lineart/color. Like most of y'all, I have a general story outline, and specific scenes get more detail as I work closer to them. If there's a scene that has emotional hits and I want the right dialogue for it, I'll script it. If there's lots of exposition and detail, I'll script it. Just, largely winging it on my end!

Tuyetnhi

I usually work from loose script dialogue for a chapter, to get the feel for the page, then start thumbnailing. After thumbnailing tho, I redraw the thumbnails on csp, sketch, then change/define panel layout or render till finish. Often, my thumbnails don't give me enough info till I start the page. And that's good for me since it's still under a set guideline but I don't feel rigid on "Oh gotta make it exactly like this" or some sorts. Same goes with dialogue/scripts too since I tend to go back and correct panel layout if i don't think it was strong enough on the first go. Idk, I treat it more of a fluid process that I can go back and fix due to how I digitally paint/render things. Still the process depends on the page i'm working on, how strong the thumbnails are, dialogue, and color scheme theme I had with certain pages. Most of it is 40% gut feeling tho. Images shown here how I got OIYD! Ch. 2 - Page 15 to be to its finished form. [thumbnail-> Rough sketch -> add with color -> final render with dialogue]

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

I took scans/notes about each step of the BICP page-making process back during chapter 5: http://www.bicatperson.com/comic/step-by-step/ ...and then again, seven years later, during chapter 28: http://www.bicatperson.com/comic/the-webcomic-page-making-process/ The art has gotten better, but the actual workflow...basically hasn't changed. (If it ain't broke...)

snuffysam

First I have the script for the entire book, which I'll have finished ahead of time. At the start of each chapter, I'll divide the upcoming script into pages based on how I want the comic to be paced - e.g. making sure the setup and punchline to a joke aren't on different pages, making sure there's not too much dialogue to read on a single page, etc. Then, when it comes time to do the page, I'll split things up into panels. That's pretty easy - I generally want to keep things to one line of spoken dialogue per panel, or one "action" per panel. Sometimes there'll be beat panels, sometimes two people will talk in one panel, but that's the general rule. Next I... put together the panels. I don't really use thumbnails to work this stuff out - important panels or panels with more dialogue are bigger, less important panels or ones with less dialogue are smaller. I try to make sure panels don't intrude on each others' vertical space, because i've always found that complicates things in a web medium - but that just means there's less for me to worry about. I make sure the panel layout is different from the previous page, and if there's an action I need to emphasize I'll do something weirder than just a rectangle. If there's not enough space on one page for the panel sizes I want, I'll make it a double-length or triple-length page. As for the actual artwork - I try to make sure the reader's eye line is led along the page. So panels on the left would have the characters generally facing to the right, and panels on the right would have the characters generally facing downward and to the left. I try to leave enough space for word bubbles - and in general, the characters on right panels will be placed lower than characters on left panels, because i want the speech bubbles to move downward as you read across a row. And, well, that's basically it!(edited)

authorloremipsum

finally someone who considers the eyeflow (am joking, mostly)(edited)

snuffysam

i didn't always, but a reviewer once told me how one specific action scene was really difficult for him to parse because the eye flow was just completely in the wrong direction, nearly every panel. so since then i've been making a conscious effort about it :p it's tough when there's two characters up against a wall and you need the page to flow the other direction from how they're standing though, lol.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble #comic tea party #ctp

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