#this was my first project using clipstudio and a tablet

[cursedcola]

First venture into digital art - I...spent more time on this than I care to admit lol. The completionism in me wants to do the whole twst cast as Pokémon trainers and then write lore (aka morph the plot into a full playable region with Yuu, Grim, Deuce, and Ace as the main cast).

But I must resist (the voices omg they're so loud)

[ra9zine]

Meet Jatta, our next lovely artist!

What are the links to your social media so people can find you! Dinagastuff.tumblr.com Instagram & Twitter @ladydinaga

What first inspired you to draw? I think it was W.I.T.C.H. comic which I loved a lot when I was a child. Akira Toriyama and Arina Tanemura have been one of those biggest inspiration to me start drawing comics myself.

What programs do you use to to draw? My favorite for drawing is Paint tool sai and I edit my art with Clipstudio Paint and Photoshop elements 9

What kind of tablet do you use? I had one old  Bamboo Wacom tablet several years but on these days I have Wacom Cintiq 13 Hd (which I call "Cindy" I love this screen tablet very much.)

What is your favorite thing to draw? I love drawing feelings. So, maybe face is one of the favorite thing to me to draw...

How long have you been drawing for? Hmmm. I was 12 when I said to myself I want to be a comic artist and I started to practice drawing comics and human anatomy back then.....  so, 15 years. (Oh gosh I feel old)

Are there any particular artists that have inspired you over the years? I said few comic artist before and I would love to continue the list: Lettie_bug on instagram. I have followed her 5 years and I just love her Stasis comic. Her artworks are really pretty.

Did you go to school for art or are you self taught? Would you recommend a formal education? I went to one of the Finland's oldest art school named " The Liminka School of Art" I was two years there and those were really good years. We had really much fun there and I got manu friends there. Plus in small country like finland I got a chance meet amazing comic artists.

Do you do Commissions? Are they open? do you have a link to your commission page? I have take some commissions and I would love to take more but right now I am super busy with our webcomic named "Heartblood"

Maybe in close future? We will see.

Do you have a website? (Patreon? Etsy? Webtoons? Youtube? Artstation? BigCartel? Tictail? etc?) Yes, we have patreon for our webcomic, which I am doing with my friend.

And link to our comic

Do you sell merch or prints anywhere? Maybe in the future, I am not yet sure what kind stuff people want to buy from me.

Do you have a webcomic? whats the link to your webcomic? how did you get started? Any tips for future webcomic artists? https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/heartblood/list?title_no=201409

If you want make a comic, just do it!   You get better by doing. If you are not sure about what you want to draw ask a friend or someone to write some story for you. (Like I and my friend Inna are doing with Heartblood)

Do you have recommendations for networking? Yes! It's really important! Talk to people!

I want to get better for speaking to people. (Sadly I am pretty shy.....)

Is there anything we missed that you might want to share with your followers? I love Detroit Become Human game and I am super excited to be part of this zine project!

Do you have any final inspirational words or tips for your followers? I hope you don't stop drawing if you  enjoy it!!❤

[anyamorozova-blog1]

Semester 2 / Reflective Essay

Part 1: COMICHAUS Project

General

The Blasphemy comic has been quite a hit and miss for me. Despite all the initial excitement I had about it, I think my final result is still pretty far from what I would expect from myself performance wise. Nevertheless, I find that both Semester 1 and Semester 2 comics-related projects have both been a great practice before the final, Semester 3 comic. Both of the projects gave me enough insights for being able to distinguish my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to illustration process. In both projects, I made exact same mistake, which I hope I will not repeat in the third Semester. It is, in fact, spending too much time on the first pages of a comic. I tried to follow Phil’s advice, and maybe start working on a few pages at the same time. The result I achieved was pretty disappointing, and was mainly linked to the way a divided my time among all the parts of the strip. I quickly sketched the positions of figures throughout the entire comic, and never dedicated enough time for the backgrounds, which were left to be drawn the last. Ironically, the backgrounds were the trickiest, so it is visible that they look rushed in some panels. In its turn, it is even possible to notice that some panels were done at different times, which ruins the overall visual structure of the strip. It also did affect the style consistency . It is especially visible in my submission on the initial deadline, at the end of March. Some panels looked okay-ish, and then there were absolutely hideous ones.

When I was submitting the ComicHaus project for the first time, I knew it was not going to be a successful assignment for me. During the drawing process, I never checked coursemates’ works in the BOX (some people submitted it earlier, and there was an opportunity for seeing others’ work). When I saw most of the submitted assignments during the Skype feedback session, I was impressed with the consistency most people can maintain. I am still trying to find my particular drawing style, and, as I mentioned previously, it does affect the consistency of my work. Fortunately, we were given extra time to touch things up and submit an improved version if we wanted to. It was the time for me to save this sinking boat of shame and try to redeem my skills in my own eyes. To some extent, I did succeed, but the again, there are still pages that I am not happy with: especially, Page 5 and Page 6. Those two are a visual representation of an agony. The pages 1, 2, 3, and maybe 4 are okay-ish, but still far from what I would like to see from myself. The updated result overall looks better than the initial submission, but there is lot of space for improvement.

Characters and Linework

For Blasphemy, I first started with a few simple character sketches, both traditional and digital. I did not give myself enough time and thinking space to maybe develop the characters a little bit further, as I had a few interesting ideas about them. The one that involved combining both main characters into one seemed the most exciting, and I was quite ready to go for it. However, I then decided to abandon such concept just to not make the production process even more complicated. The proper character development progress began when I started off with the first page.

I was not keen on the idea of drawing traditionally perceived humanoids from the very beginning, so I made them look very much like humans, adding a few different features to them (pretty generic though, I must admit; things like elf-ears are probably the most common ‘addition’ to any alien character ever existing + most of my friends who saw the first page had an immediate association with Startrek, which is not necessarily a good thing). I also was willing to give ‘my’ aliens a bit of high-tech vibe (taking some inspiration from Ghost In The Shell)... The plan was big and ambitious, the result has not quite hit the bar. It would be smarter to keep things simpler, but achieving more quality by doing so. I started off full of excitement, but when the reality along with the other module deadlines reminded about themselves, I had to wrap the initial plans up keeping in mind that I should be smarter with my timing next time. (On this note, I managed to organise myself as much spare time as possible during the summer period to make sure I dedicate myself to the final project at the very maximum.) The other characters are… pretty much just characters. The good thing about the Blasphemy comic, however, is that I did not use any references for the characters. I drew them completely out of the head, and I was nicely surprised when I found out that I can draw hands pretty quickly. I am not very keen on the drawing technique I utilised during this project (personally, I don’t think I would buy my comic). For the upcoming projects, however, I would like to go for a little bit more stylised drawing approach, and I am working on it at the moment by practising some random sketches on paper and ClipStudio. 

I drew both this course’s comic projects digitally, and I find it a useful approach, but there are significant drawbacks to it as well

1)      It makes [my] drawings look very stiff. I am personally a fan of more brave, rough linework (Otto Schmidt is a good example in this case), but I find it difficult to achieve that when drawing digitally. I find my pencil sketches much more live, as they got a certain flow to them. I can’t say that I can achieve that right now with a graphics tablet. I usually set the line stabilisation bar to the maximum, to make sure the linework looks properly, but I find that it also slows down the process a wee bit and therefore makes the linework more artificial to an extent.

2)      Zoom is still my worst enemy. It can be particularly seen in the first panels of the first page, and then obviously, once the time starts running out, I make those horrible wacky backgrounds to fill up the empty space, which is essentially a huge contrast to what has been done in some other panels. Again, no constancy here either.

The original pages were not drawn in black-and-white scale: I used different tones of purple, which were later converted into b/w in Photoshop (see first two pages as an examples below):

Converting the pages into the b/w scale, however, did help with making the ’uglier’ panels look a little bit more decent.

Conclusion

Taking everything listed above into account, I think that Blasphemy has been a good practice for me, because I once again (after the first Semester 1 comic) did distinguish my main weaknesses in the multiple page drawing process. I also think that I should not underestimate traditional illustration when it comes to the final project. I am considering an option of doing all the pencil work traditionally, and then use digital inking/colouring to finalise the comic strip.