Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 page 4

Wow, my hand crapped up a lot towards the end of finishing this page as well as slightly toning pages 2 - 4. I've started to do light shading marks with the pen as well to add some detail. It's still not much and I definitely still have a lot to do but it's definitely better than my previous two attempts so far.

Page 5 moves onto what's happening in Curquill City! Look out for subtle details because they will become relevant in the story in either later pages or later chapters!

Flour sack assignment

11:27 pm pacific 

I finally had an assignment after having only a purchasing type of an assignment for my first class of the semester. 

Flour sacks! 

It was a little difficult to think of a character out of a flour sack. I had to go through several thumbnail versions before picking 4. I just counted 11 in my sketchbook and I think I roughly drew 2 or 3 in my notepad during break in my class. 

I played around with the idea of superhero poses, like The Flash or Superman but the poses ended up changing a bit...

The one with the kendo stick is supposed to be leaning back but looking at it now, I need more soft dark shadows. But I shouldn't over-do it either...And the drawing really reminds me of Zelda when you find an item. Cue the "da da dadaa!" fanfare! I changed the top tip things, nubs,....what are those even called?

more internet searching but not on storage and moving services

7:57 pm pacific

Yesterday I wrote about how I was stressing a bit over move-out day at the end of this semester. After talking with my parents about my findings and options, my current 3 options are:
- wait to hear back from my aunt with her talk with my aunt's friend who has a daughter who lives near san fran/ has a job near san fran to help me with moving out my items to storage
- have my brother pick up my luggage cases during his spring break and use the boxbee move & storage service I researched about yesterday..... except his car is full with his friends and his luggage.
-- I need to figure out what to do with my extra luggage , unless I move it to a mailing office? Since its on wheels are easier to moving than no wheels.
- my mom will call a shuttle driver about if he'd be willing to store my items in his garage ; I'm a little reluctant with this since we honestly only met the driver via a shuttle service last summer when I moved in fall semester.

For being in the deep freeze most of winter break, it seems pretty cold in the room right now. Not freezing but cold.

moved back in for Spring semester

8:13 pm Pacific

Ugh, now it's cold when it was so warm this afternoon. Well, then again, this is in comparison to the East Coast; it's freezing there.
Spring semester is starting up tomorrow; my schedule got changed twice because sections got cancelled. Instead of Mon-Thurs class, with Tues and Thurs as my 8:30 am classes, I've got Mon- Weds, with Mon and Tues as my 8:30a classes. I've got to wake up at 6:30 am too just so I can eat breakfast before walking to the shuttle stop. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't annoyed at this inconvenience.
I guess I'm in a tired mood; I wish I had known about clearing our freezer out before winter break so I would have booked a flight back a day in advance so I'd at least have a day to get groceries rather than 3-4 hours. Then again, if my original time for Mon class didn't get cancelled, I'd have a few extra hours before the class...but sadly, the section got cancelled and I wanted to keep the Thurs and Fri free, after my original Thurs class time got cancelled and moved to Weds instead. This would give me a few extra days for end of the semester packing. Which is a whole other issue I still need to make sure I deal with.
Do I go to the storage place few streets down from the dorm? Rent a car and drive there....but I don't have a cali driver's license.... And for the next 4 semesters I'm here that'd be an issue. Even if my current roommate offers, she's on her 4th year.
Other original idea was to use something called College Boxes but ugh, it's expensive! Registration fee, type of stuff costs (their boxes vs other larger boxes vs luggage)...but there's pick up and delivery.
I just found a site with pretty bad reviews on College Boxes. Delays and increased costs,etc. And there were bad reviews on Public Storage, the storage facility a few streets away from my dorm. Increased costs and bad storage. Time to keep searching for storage facilities.

Had a plot issue in one of my brainstorms for following chapters

3:20 pm eastern

more brainstorming :
original brainstorm of the path

Search route, didn't join:
-- during the search time, Lisa is sent to the training room to see what her abilities are. At the moment, the only known ability is 'able to breath in space' due to her abilities.
search route, did join:
I just got the sudden idea that this search mission is the first one where Lisa is allowed to leave the headquarters, with an escort, who really is like a watch dog over her. This would lead to her saving a young male adult from the burning building because she could hear his cry for help over the roaring flames.  Actually no I can't use this mission story line yet, she hasn't found out what her powers are yet so flight is impossible for Lisa.

 I realized there was a forced story plot involving why Lisa would even go to the city later on. I have another story plot where Lisa meets Rose Water for the first time, but masked. She heads to a city with a watchdog (member of the group who is to watch over her or watch her since the trust isn't established fully yet) but I didn't decide why she went to the city.

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 page 3

I debating on toning my panels, but I would need to do some reading up on that before I would proceed. I plan on having page 4 reveal even more of the main character's current whereabouts. This applies mostly in terms of the people keeping an eye on her. Either by the end of the next page or beginning of page 5, Curquill City will be introduced and the events that are about to occur there. The name of the city itself holds no meaning as it's a name I had come into my head one night, many months ago.
I feel like I should tone the panels; they look blank. But if I add more detail into the panels, there wouldn't be that much blank space.
What sort of patterning is inside an interrogation room anyways? Shouldn't it be fairly blank and/or bland?

planning out the next few pages

8:07 pm eastern

brainstorm for page 6+

I'm playing in my head scenarios of the aftermath of Curquill City's bio-bomb. I can choose to either have the disarming succeed but at the cost of trust in Spark Shock due to the events that happened in the room with the bio-bomb and Buster. Or I can choose to have the bio-bomb detonate, end up affecting the citizens and creating a lot of tension between Spark Shock and the group and possibly the whole group. The second path would hint the creation of human mutation, supernatural abilities, etc. The first path wouldn't though...

Chinese Lunar New Year is coming up soon!

1:19 am eastern

For anyone following my Twitter, they could probably tell that a horse is involved. This year's the Year of the Horse! And as my usual tradition, I attempt to draw the animal of the year  with a human counterpart. It's really by accident that I started this custom. During the Year of the Dragon, I was hooked onto an anime called Nurarihyon no Mago and fascinated by the hairstyle of the clan head. It ended up getting incorporated, slightly, into the human dragon's counterpart. 

Teens of Valor - chapter 1 cover

I finally got the chapter cover art finished! It took 3 different versions to figure out what I would be satisfied with. In the end, my original two ideas were thrown out the window before I came up with this idea as I was trying to fall asleep the night [of Jan 3rd]. I was rather restless that night due to the many ideas running in my head and the upcoming snowstorm.

Teens of Valor - ch 1 page 5 rough

10:15 pm eastern 

I've started working on page 5 but I'm conflicted on the next few panels.
I can either choose to include a few scenes where members of Team M mention seeing a "poor guy in an awkward situation from mistaking someone for his sister".  This would lead into Cogs to recall the main character's 'testimony' (so to speak) about her brother and cousin and therefore asks for a description of the said person.
Or I could go with a different route and not have the brother get picked up from Curquill City yet.

I'm stopping for today though since my wrist is starting to ache a little so to prevent further issues, I'll be letting it rest.

Figuring out more things for my comic.

7:48 pm eastern 

I think I figured out an option for the debate in my head over value and tone. Naturally, if I had all the time in the world, I'd do both but since I can I have to settle for one. I think my answer will be local value! It'll be better than everything being white with black lines/ outlines. 

Additionally that'll help differ the hair on everyone's heads. I found out black hair does indeed mean inverted ; white lines black fill. 

Changed up my portfolio site and some housekeeping

10:57 pm Eastern

I spent a good amount of time trying to work with the Dynamic View template Blogger has for users for my portfolio site since I really liked the flipcards and the slightly minimalist appearance. However, for some reason, images within the posts weren't showing up. Luckily there's the internet and through the Internet, I found out the reason was due to blog feed option being set as something other than "full". Some of the images showed up for my posts but I'm missing about 2/3 of them from the blog posts. I may have to play around with the posts themselves since the first row got the images back. That could wait. The major issue I had for most of the night, until I fount out which end the issue was coming from, was my Twitter feed not showing up on my porfolio site. At this point, I hadn't checked back with my main blog to see if that was still showing the feed. I could have sworn I saw it working earlier today though....
Anyways, instead of the feed , I was getting " Tweets by @Lillian Lily Chen "  and  the script for the widget! Because I saw that script, I assumed it was the template's fault rather than Twitter. Again, I hadn't checked my main blog at this time to confirm my assumption. I spent hours searching on the web for a) another template, b) how to add a Twitter widget without using the usual code for the widget and c) if it was possible to add a Twitter widget at all into the Dynamic View template. I didn't get a clear answer to C but if this was around 1-2 years ago, it would have been a no probably. I then finally decided to check Twitter's forums for documentation and issues, hoping to see if it was because of either the template or Blogger instead of just me. A few threads down, I see many threads mentioning the same exact issue I have. I then checked my main blog and ta da  , it was missing its feed too. Turns out there's an issue within Twitter, rather than Blogger and Twitter is already aware of the issue. According to the responses some people have been suggested/offering, the domains need to be typed into the widget settings? I have no clue where in the code it needs to be typed though. not a programmer or computer science person.There's also a clear browser cache suggestion. I might as well try that first before anything else.

roughs for page 4 of comic

10:41 pm eastern

It took a while, but page 4's roughs are finally done! I'm missing the panel boxes but those are to be placed in when I get to inking. I need to figure out what I'm going to do, tone or value..or maybe even slight tone with black fill-ins. Page 1 finally got uploaded to my deviantART though. I'll have to upload page 1 to my facebook page too. Or maybe I can just share the link of the deviation to my page. Actually, nah I think I'll upload the page with a link to the dA version for anyone who needs to zoom in more. I did that with an earlier version of the comic. I don't know how many people actually appreciated it though, but I'd like to think it's a nice gesture.

Why is there snow on the ground again?

11:38 am eastern

Ugh, I thought the weather was suppose to become warmer after yesterday and it snows. There's snow on the roads again and a slippery icy condition warning. And I think my home's heating is being unresponsive again; my room feels cold. My laptop feels cold! Well, I suppose it's better than being too warm but trying to type on a cold laptop doesn't help with my room already being slightly cold.

I started thinking about toning again for my comic. It would help bring a little more to my panels rather than just lines. Or I could do a number of things; fill in black for darker local value objects. I'm not sure about how black hair would work in terms of lost detail, unless it's an inversion sort of thing. I'll have to look at Japanese manga to see what they do. Or I could do quick values on the panels but I'm mostly worried about time. I want to get a lot of pages done before my winter break is over, in about 2 weeks, but I don't want the art to suffer either.

Changed the font and text type for my comic ...

1:42 pm eastern

I mentioned, on my Twitter, about how I was thinking about using all caps for the text rather than the usual 'upper case for the beginning of each sentence, lower case for rest'. Due to that decision, I had to change the font as well since my original font didn't sit well with me when it was in all caps. It honestly... made me think of those people online who write in all caps, either to just get attention or completely forgot that caps locks was on.
Wow, my eyes are dry.
Well, time to upload/update my previous and upcoming posts of the pages I changed the fonts for. Then lunch.

A lot of planning involved, indeed!

4:48 pm Eastern

I'm glad I found a book writing tip guide a few months back that suggested keeping a log of your characters! I should have done so earlier because there are a number of characters I currently can't recall their names. Additionally, by filling this out, I can flesh out my characters a lot more too! 

It's also a great record of everything from age, alter egos, personalities, speech patterns, etc.
I can also see what sort of characters I tend to lean towards upon creation and character profiles.
After spending the past two days being stuck on page 4...and playing a few online computer games... I'm back into the developing mood!
I wonder if I should start another series on the side while working on my comic; it worked last time for the most part. I always feel the need to multitask, which in this case is working on the comic while catching up on shows.

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 page 2

I actually completed this on Jan 2nd at 1 am but I'm planning on releasing a new page each week so if I do post pages in between the week, with the exception of page 1, they are roughs.  Page 2's scene doesn't happen in the previous version until much later so to speed things up, I've condensed it. 

I plan on redesigning the chapter cover later today. At the moment, I'm leaning towards my 2nd idea of having the main character in the center spotlight with the group of people who found her in the shadows, staring at her, suspiciously. 

/edit 1/4/14 11:24 pm Eastern

I've updated the comic page with an addition of a clock in panel 4. 

/edit 1/11/14 4:35 pm eastern

Reuploaded page with an edit in the text. I was missing a story detail that would help show there's the existence of the character's brother and cousin. 

/ edit 1/14/14 3:19 pm Eastern

I've filled in the hair to add a little more variety so it wouldn't be just white with black lines. 

Playing around with chapter cover

10:09pm eastern 

The original plan was to have the surrounding edges have several of my other characters emerge from the shadows, suspiciously staring at the main character. 

However, what I have now is unsatisfactory. I'm starting to reconsider my other idea of having two sides of the main character. A mirrored sort of thing.