To reference or not to reference? That is my question. I’m working on yet another idea for a comic strip. It’s actually and idea that I’ve been working on for a while but I’ve gotten nowhere with. Primarily because of the drawing. That always takes the most time. That and my vision for how the art should be done doesn’t jibe with what I like to do.
I don’t much care for doing “Realistic” drawing or illustration these days. I find it tedious. It’s always the same. Decide what you want to draw, gather resources to help the drawing (photos, live models, computer models), use resources to execute drawing. I find that it is, at best, like putting together a puzzle.
In my younger days I used to enjoy this process but now I don’t. It was a challenge then but now it’s a burden. I was never especially good at illustrative drawing either. I’m not bad at it and do some realistic type work but on a small scale. Developing and drawing a comic strip like that is a much larger scale and I don’t think I have it in me.
So where does that leave me? I’m not sure. I still want to work on developing this strip but I have to clarify my vision of what it will be. That’s what the creative process is all about. Clarifying your vision. It’s a hard thing to do because it means that something has to get done. As everyone knows it’s not easy to get things done. Not doing anything is much easier than doing anything.
I’ve had some interesting ideas on the structure of the story too. Ideas I wish I could pull off. I got them when I was thinking about the new Apple iPad. There are a whole bunch of people coming up with new content for that machine but all I’ve heard of so far is basically repurposed content that already exists. I am thinking more about the structure of how a story is told when a person reads it on an interactive touch screen. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of new things in the years to come on the iPad and other devices like it.
I’m a little jealous of those who are developing new types of story telling for the iPad. It’s beyond my means and abilities to develop a comic for the iPad. That’s the sort of thing it takes a company to do. It’s bigger than the lone artist that I am. Sometimes I wish I were part of a team who could handle such big projects. But alas that is not the path I’m on.
Meanwhile back at my own comic strip I’m still struggling with how I should do it. I actually did do some illustrative and referenced character design already but I’m not sure if I want to gather reference for the whole thing. It’s almost like I know exactly how it will come out if I do it that way and it bores me to know that. That method leaves me less room for creating late in the game than I would like.
Of course I don’t have the method worked out just yet to get me where I want to go. So far I think I know what I don’t want to do but not what I do. I think I’ll do a little painting first anyway.
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