Thursday 13 February 2014

Diving

An attempt at capturing, and losing, the rather abstract sensation of grasping a good theory or idea, by reference to a physical metaphor. I had a rough idea where this was going, but the images preceded the words, which were slotted in in the last five minutes.

I want to take part in a 24-hour comic creation marathon later this year, and so I'm in training. As with sports training, start off small and build up the muscles. So I'm going to begin with a number of one-page comics created from nothing in 1 hour. This is the first of these.

The training schedule will help with focus, stamina, and technique. Crucially, it's also a way to explore creating shortcuts. A key part of the manifesto I wrote when I started this blog was to find creative ways of cutting corners, and in a 24-hour comic that's crucial to getting a polished finish. I don't want to knock out 24 pages that look like they were done in a hurry, in an exercise jotter with a biro.

So here, I'm leaning on the internet and photos to some extent, although every panel's had quite a lot of hand work.Panel 2 is using some hand-drawn textures that i turned into brushes in Gimp, to give a sort of organic edge to it. I've just started playing with that technique - the image of the diver is 100% digital, and obviously is derived from a photo, but I reckon I can hone this technique to create something that looks much more hand-drawn without giving myself cross-hatcher's cramp under extreme conditions.

Total time taken, 1 hour and 10 minutes, so I ran over time here, and felt like I hurried the script. But I'll be back on the treadmill again soon!

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