adamwarren
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WORK STAGES: Behold the (mostly) completed opening double-page spread from THE CHASTE AND THE CHAINED!
🕑 Added 2023-07-21 13:00:11 +0000 UTCUghhh.
Behold the terrible majesty of the opening double-page spread of pages 2 and 3 from the first story of fantasy test comic The Chaste and the Chained. Running waaaay behind tonight, so here's a quick rundown of the Work Stages involved.
First off was a digital rough sketched in Clip Studio Paint on the ol' Wacom. Didn't track the worktime involved when I sketched this several months ago, but this probably took at least 4-6 hrs of drawing, counting earlier rough sketches:
Next, using my new Epson printer, I printed out these roughs at the size of DC artboard, lightboarded 'em onto the Bristol, then did an tightened-up underdrawing in H pencil lead. (By this point, I was tracking my worktime, and this stage took 4.5 work hours.) After jacking up the faint pencils in Photoshop to make 'em readable, here's a scan of the taped-together pair of artboards:
Then I proceeded to use both pencils and inks, as in latter-day Empowered, to produce the finished artwork.
Alas, I screwed up very early on and didn't ink the cult leader's word balloon before drawing the g-d cavern background; oops! Here's a quick, crappy mock-up of his text, using the notably poor selection of available CSP fonts:
This stage took 18 hrs and 45 minutes of drawing time to finish both pages. Tack on the underdrawing-related stages, and the worktime totals up at around 24 hrs; tack on further the 4-6 hours of analog and digital roughs, plus the 3-4 hours so far I've spent scanning and tweaking this g-d piece, and this g-d spread took well over 30 hours of worktime, scattered over several weeks of intermittent windows of availability.
Note #1: With a maddening array of other matters gnawing away at my availability and attention--including this timesuck of a Patreon, for one thing--I'm experiencing great difficulty in racking up enough uninterrupted work hours at the ol' drawing table to claw my way through challenging pages like this. (More on this issue later, if I get a chance.)
Note #2: This spread technically still isn't finished, as it would further need to be either colored or toned in B&W to separate the various planes.
The verdict? The results look artistically dandy, sure, but the process of drawing full-size comic pages via this approach is far, far too slow and time-consuming to be even remotely viable for future work. (More on this issue later as well, as I tried out some different techniques on the successive pages that show a smidgen more promise.)
Wellp, hope you enjoyed the largest and most demanding double-page spread I've drawn since 1999's Dirty Pair: Run from the Future, folks! (Too bad the test is arguably a failure, though.)
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
Aidenke
The pages look incredible, but I definitely hope you can find a much happier balance between tools and process so that you don't have to climb such a mountain for every page. Still, this is super promising to see what this next concept can become, and thank you for sharing the fun with us along the way!
KranberriJam
While it's amazing that you post so much here, please take a break!! Once a week is more than most creators on here post.
RanmaChaos
Don't force yourself to post stuff. Take your time and post when you're ready. I once a week update telling us what you're doing is enough for me. I trust you produce amazing content.
Tim Price
It feels wrong to "like" this post, as if I'm condoning this being such a painful experiment.
Balopor
It’s ok if you spend less time on this patreon if it’s a time suck - I contribute so you can make art
Hal Phoenix
Serious Art Adams vibes coming off this piece
Eric
The art looks good.
Burninator
30 GD hours? Pretty sure those cultists just tricked you into sacrificing your life force to power up their ritual. At least it looks cool.
