Radiant Comics

One panel at a time. That’s how I’ll have to do it. I’ve been working, again, on my pesky web comic. I’m closer than ever to making something I actually like. But the assembly line nature of making comics is bringing me down. Pencil, ink, letter, and color are the relentless steps involved. The step that is killing me right now is the coloring step. Only because it is digital and I’m tired of working on screen.

I’ve already broken my panels off of the page. I no longer draw a normal page of comics because it’s too small. I want to draw bigger than that. So after I do my layout I draw each panel on a single sheet of paper blown up to as large as I’m comfortable with. After scanning and coloring I’ll put them all back together into a page.

Each panel can then be it’s own individual piece. I will make some into prints or paintings and have those linked to the piece in the strip. It’s a labour intensive process. Much more so than when a panel is just a panel. Each panel having to stand on its own and work well on the page is not an easy combo. Plus none of it is as literal as a normal comic. What the hell am I doing? Yeah, that’s the question I’m always asking.

It’s the computer coloring that’s bothering me right now. There is a tediousness to the process that is annoying. I miss the surface of actual painting. That and the method itself I’m using to color these panels I find dull. I like the end result but getting there is a chore.

Now that I finally bought my new computer I’m almost ready to figure out how I’m going to integrate video into my web comic. I have some ideas but haven’t tried any of them out yet. A video camera would help but you can’t have everything. I’ll have to use the video function of my still camera to start out with. Lo-Fi is the new Hi-Fi they tell me.

One thing I do know about the video portion of my web comic is that it will have to be more literal than the drawn portion. Video is generally literal just by it’s nature but I need something to ground this whole thing because the comic strip is pretty far out. I have to remind myself to stay on this planet sometimes.

I am planning on getting a LCD drawing tablet for my computer. One of the tablets where I can draw right on the tablet’s LCD screen. The tablet is a screen. That might take some of the tedium out of my coloring process as it seems more natural. And I can put it on my drawing table to work on it as I do all of my drawings on paper. I don’t have it yet though so I’ll have to soldier on.

I think I’m going to break my process down even further. I’ll pencil, ink, and then color one panel before I move on to the next. That way I won’t have to stare at a computer screen for so many hours in a row. I’ll get a handle on this yet. But that’s the report for now.