I've started more serious production on my comic over the past couple months and it's going... OK. Just ok. I'm really not happy with the pages so far. Now, to be fair I'm never much happy with any of the work I do, and they're not bad pages. It's just that they don't have the style, tone, or dynamism I've envisioned in my head for this story. With that in mind I decided to start doing some study drawings in an attempt to rectify the situation!
The woman below is not Bonnie... This is Sarah. Sarah is who you have to deal with when you f^ck with Bonnie. So don't f^ck with Bonnie.
(I hope my censorship has spared the overly sensitive eyes of some folks. But be warned, when the comic releases there will be f^ckin' cursing. Because the end of the world can f^ckin' suck sometimes!)
As I mentioned, this was definitely a study, I do not deserve full credit! In search of the style and dynamism I seek I've decided to crank out some studies where I am heavily referencing the artists whose styles I seek to emulate, but taking the steps to apply that to my own characters and learn what works and how it works.
For the first round of drawings I'm looking at art by Marcio Takara. I have a ton of his drawings I've collected off Facebook and Instagram over the past couple years as his work has caught my eye, and I spent the early evening building a Pinterest board as well.
The keen eyed will spot the Catwoman image I was studying as I drew. So again, this drawing is "after Takara" so give the man some props! Even doing a modified copy of Takara's work my own "style" and tendencies were still creeping back in and I just ran with it. What I'd meant to be a quick learning sketch lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes as my Procreate canvas tracked it.
I have a real problem with simplification! Drawing photorealistically in a way is easier, as you almost become a human copy machine. But making the choices of what and how to simplify and symbolize complex objects still comes very difficult to me. Takara draws with ease, almost like it's calligraphy. I do not. But I'll continue cranking out studies, focusing first on Takara and then moving on to other favorite artists along the way.
Some of the initial concept art of Sarah was one of my first posts ever to Steemit about a year and a half ago. How time flies! To save some scrolling back I'll just drop that image here again.
Sarah, and the Bonnie you don't want to f^ck with!
Now that I've explained the "pose plagiarism" and intent of my "study routine" I'll be dropping some future images in through Steepshot in case anyone wants to continue to follow along. As I'm looking at Takara I already am seeing the need to continue streamlining and simplifying, as well as exaggerating some shapes and anatomy to make character designs more recognizable when simplified and in silhouette. Looking back at my original Sarah concept art, I'm still happy with it and it hits many of the marks. I just seem to have gotten away from the intended look as I've sat down and actually begun the interior pages.
Well, I guess I'll go get a bowl of cereal. Hopefully I don't spend the next hour and forty eight minutes meticulously organizing the flakes in the bowl before pouring milk on them. (Simplify Bryan, simplify dammit!)