adamwarren
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More WORK STAGES from a (semi-)recent short story!
🕑 Added 2023-09-04 13:00:05 +0000 UTCAs I desperately flail around for Patreon content after completely expending my post buffer last week, I recalled that I've only shown Work Stages for pages 1, 3 and 6 from that Harley Quinn #29 back-up story I wrote and drew for DC earlier in the year. (Ackshully, I finished it last year, but whatevs.) So, take a gander at my process for pages 2 and 4 from "Hyena Anxiety," a surreal and/or nightmarish lil'l episode featuring of ol' Harl confronted by a series of upsetting variations of her pet hyenas Bud and Lou. Story and line art by me, colors by Alejandro Sanchez.
Overall, a fairly enjoyable experience, but sweet Jesus was this story ever time-consuming to grind my way through. Then again, I was reverting to my old, old workflow of roughs/tight pencils/tighter inks on full-size comics artboard, a wildly inefficient process I abandoned way back in 2000 after struggling through the miniseries Dirty Pair: Run from the Future (as discussed in a recent text post).
Not much time for commentary, but...
...cancellation by bad-mouthing hyenas? Lordy loo!
Since the story featured a different scenario on (almost) every page, skipping ahead to page 4 shouldn't be very hard to follow:
Yeahp, seemed like an obvious joke to call back to the real Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
Alas, couldn't access the PDFs for the lettering without investing more time in Photoshoppery than I cared to spend, so you'll have to check out the final, published version to get the complete narrative experience. On the lettering tip, note that I was playing around with a truly "manga-style" approach, in that I drew the word balloons directly on the art; the results weren't perfect (IIRC), but the technique was well worth testing out.
NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?
Comments
Jack Hallows
that expression of Bat Girl is telling! Harley must of showed batgirl damsel in distress like emp and flaunted those photos on twitter hahaha
Sabrina Pandora
Before Dee lays out the roughs, she digitally throws all my (often excessive) verbiage onto the page before she sketches out the bluelines. This way, she has a sense of the scale we'll be working with, and we can shape the word balloons to suit our needs in regards to the art, which gets sized in the process (zooming in or out as needed on the panel). That also means as we work, I'm staring not only at the art to make adjustments or requests, but I'm also (obsessively) rejudging my verbiage, to ensure that it is clear, concise and effective. Which it usually is not, and will get edited again before the final large proof is ready. I've had sufficient success with this method that I ask it of all the artists I work with, and they seem okay with it. OG Bud and Lou FTW, and recognition of the challenge of making two hyenas look like classic vaudevillians!
