Spooky Fortress WIP

Man, Red Spy certainly seems to have recovered from my last comic staring him like a true champ, good for him <3

Anyways, this will be heading to my scraps as soon as I'm ready to post the final version, but for now I just wanted to share with you guys how I actually go about with the whole illustrating process (Animation on the other hand is a completely different ball game with it's own set of rules, ironically I find that I animate much faster than I illustrate, but more on that later), so basically the rest of this description will be dedicated to mostly technical mumbo jumbo with a few nuggets of shenanigans mixed in for good measure, so sit back and enjoy <3

FUN FACTS ABOUT MY ILLUSTRATING PROCESS:

1) I've already mentioned this before in other submissions, but I work big, like stupid crazy big (This part is true for animating too), with this particular comic being 24in x 120in, however I always draw at least 50% zoomed out which allows me to achieve fast, bold, and even lines which is ideal for quality control and detail work

2) I use a SHIT TON of layers whenever I use Photoshop (I've been known to have up to 30 layers for a single illustration, not including ones that have been merged together or comics with multiple panels), which is hysterically ironic when you consider how much of a purist I am with layers while animating in Flash (NO ONE MOVIE CLIP SHOULD HAVE MORE THAN FIVE LAYERS, 7 IF ABSOLUTELY NEED BE >:I), but there's a very good reason for these polar opposites, and that's because I work differently when I'm dealing with pixels vs vectors. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but whenever I work with photoshop I become paranoid like you cannot believe. Why? Because you can't manipulate lines and colors like you can with a vector program.

Whenever I draw, I am constantly resizing and reshaping the lines until I'm ultimately satisfied with the outcome, which can take longer than you'd think, so really I'm more sculpting than I am drawing, however the downside you have when using pixels is that you may get a more detailed and finer line than you would with vectors, but every time you shrink or expand the image you decrease the quality of the work. Vectors can be shrunk and blown up to however the hell you want and they never lose their quality. So basically whenever I open a file in photoshop I am instantly aware of this handicap and I go BANANAS with the layers, because there's always that self doubting voice in the back of my head that says "SHIT SHIT SHIT, WHAT IF YOU FUCK UP?!" so to counter it I make a bazillion layers as a form of a safety net, that way I can't say "WELL I LIKED THAT LINE BEFORE I ERASED IT, AND NOW I CAN NEVER GET IT BACK, EVERYTHING IS RUUUUUUUUINED!!!!!" Now when I'm drawing in flash I become the complete polar opposite, I'm all "Shit line, I just totally owned you" because I don't have that technical fear to worry about, which is why I can animate 15 seconds worth of character actions in the same amount of time it would take me to complete one fully finished illustration. And that's why I became a professional animator and just illustrate for fun <3

LOL I'm such a paranoid anxious neurotic mother fucker when it comes to my work, I cannot live without the undo button </3 (DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW I DRAW ON PAPER UHSFIUHFIUSHFISUHFISFUH).

3) I treat backgrounds the same as my characters, which means they start off as quick gesture sketches, then more refined sketches, then fast precise outlines to give them the same bold look as my characters. An environment should be just as lively and dynamic as the creations living within them otherwise the whole piece will look flat and dead

4) I doodle more than I actually show, I'm always testing out new gestures or different angles dealing with perspective as a form of practice, but most of the time those doodles never get used and are never seen by anyone other than myself, so I decided to leave in some of the test expressions for you to see. With these I was trying to figure out how the face would react with different stages of the mouth, but none of them fitted what I was looking for so they'll just remain references instead of becoming finished designs

5) I have no fucking clue how to color, no one ever really taught me how (OH HI ART SCHOOL), and until recently I honestly never really had a passion for it, but I'm trying to push myself to further my experiences, the same thing happened with backgrounds, I always used to hate drawing anything other than people and animals but now I've learned through trial and error that just because something's inanimate doesn't mean it still can't have personality, so now I'm on the path to try and translate that into coloring, it is a long path indeed </3

6) I haaaaaaaate drawing detail, yet I still enjoy it somehow, it's complicated. I dunno, the thought of investing so much time into one piece is just so god damn tedious to me, but I still do it, I still have that sadistic drive to make my vision come to life, no one ever said artists were sane normal people after all. But then again this is another reason why I'm an animator <3

7) I am highly dyslexic, so growing up my entire life I tended to hate just about anything that meant having to deal with words or text, but just like with everything else I eventually evolved into a conscious being and decided, what the hell, lets give this whole "reading" thing a try, so as of lately I've been really trying to push myself on custom made fronts for my work because A) default fonts are shitackular, and B) I've really developed a love and appreciation for handmade alphabets, so now I see fonts more as a characters with their own unique designs instead of just seeing them as words with a single purpose which is to give information, and the whole experience of making them has really become quite enjoyable



FUN FACTS ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR COMIC:

1) I actually started this thing around the 24th of October and was hoping to get it done for Halloween. HA, GOOD ONE, ME FOLLOWING A SCHEDULE <3 Christ I draw so damn slow ughguhgughgugh BUT AS LONG AS I GET IT DONE BY THE 6TH THEN IT'S ALL COOLS GUYS <3

2) This is another "It happened to me while playing TF2" comic, however I've hidden most of the sketches and later panels so as to not give away the ending, you're just gonna have to wait till it's done <3

3) I've invested more effort into this than I had planned, which is good cause I need more awesome shit in my gallery, but dear god is it eating up my time </////3

4) I think that dead spy head is hysterical, BUT IS HE REALLY DEAD?!?!?!? D:< Such suspense!!!!

So if you managed to get through that monster of a description, congrats! You are now five minutes closer to death, you spent your time well my friend <3

And that's about it for now guys, so until next time enjoy!