"Mood for Love" Part 2: Drawing the Episodes
Now that the script was completed, I faced my next big obstacle: drawing the episodes. A primary reason I entered this competition was to improve my illustration skills since publishing a longform webcomic is one of my eventual goals.
I didn't really know where to start with the comics process so I decided to find someone who did. Thanks to the YouTube, I found Walter Ostlie, a featured author on Webtoon, who makes amazing tutorials focused on content specifically for Webtoon. Watching his videos gave me the all the basics on formatting and workflow that I needed to go in the right direction. The rest I would have to figure out through experimentation.
There was definitely a learning curve to creating webcomics. At first, I spent a lot of time double checking and second guessing the basics which took up more time than I expected. Considering I had already constructed a very tight timeline, I worried that I wouldn't keep to my schedule, but I knew at it would pay off in the end if I had a proper set up at the start instead of running into obstacles down the road.
Creating an episode followed this process
Sketch thumbnails and place text boxes
Refine the sketches
Ink the sketches
Apply flat colors
Apply shading
Apply additional effects
Of course, it feels inaccurate to write out this list so neatly because it took a lot of trial and error to execute this process effectively! Even with all my prior research, I had to actually make the webcomic to build the instincts that would make the process flow efficiently. Here are some realizations I had:
Do not move onto inking until your refined sketches look like the final images you want. It took way longer to refine and ink the sketches than I anticipated so it was tempting to jump straight into inking, but then I found myself fixing the sketches with my inking brush and having to do another pass at inking because all the fixing and erasing looked too sloppy
Master the gradient tool to make quick backgrounds!
When it comes to doing the base colors, get super good at your selection tools and paint bucket. Also this part of the process may seem unnecessary but separating elements by color makes it a lot easier to make quick selections later on
When working between multiple panels, working with one color at a time because switching between colors is surprisingly time consuming (it adds up!)
Since I was also experimenting with my process, I had SO MANY PHOTOSHOP LAYERS. It was brutal on my computer. I don't really think I could have avoided this at the beginning since I just didn't know any better, but eventually I got a lot smarter about how to group my layers.
Developing shortcuts became the key survival strategy to meeting my deadlines. I decided to go with monochrome color palettes for the second and third episode which helped me catch up after the first episode where every panel was basically it's own gallery painting. I found anatomy references online to help me push through difficult character poses. I also downloaded special effects brushes to achieve quick nature textures and effects.
In the next episode, I'll discuss the burnout and other emotional tidal waves I faced throughout the process.
Lessons Learned:
Use the Internet to teach you - usually things are only daunting because you don't know where to start not because they're actually difficult
Refine your process through experimenting and just constantly ask yourself how you could accomplish a task more simply
Develop shortcuts! Yes, you may have to compromise on some quality, but that's less important than missing your deadlines entirely and ditching the project completely.