Still Going...

4AM pages are rolling on again!

Stable/Unstable.

So it's back to re storyboarding 4AM. It's probably the 8th time doing the FINAL storyboard or something. So they clearly weren't final ones...

I just wasn't happy it was going to read well enough. Working in such a loose and kind of surreal way is proving quite hard. It's continuously trying to balance 'make your own mind up' between 'unreadable'.

Anyway. I've really got to get back into doing pages. It's just like walking a thin line. Sometimes you just tackle one page at a time and get through them like that and it begins to come together. But other times you topple and loose your way; Thinking of all the pages that need to be done as one thing so you don't know what to do first.

But it's been so sunny and lovely. The past few weeks have been a series of strange events.

 

3:59AM/Tired Eyes

So i'm not taking the completed 4AM to the london book fair. It's been decided.
It's getting fairly obvious that it's not going to be done in time to a standard i'll be happy with to send to print.
It's okay though i think a promo piece will be just as good as i'm not going to sell the comic to punters i'm pitching myself and my work/ideas. Which i can do with just a snippet...hopefully anyway.

The promo piece is going to be a flip over book. With no back cover, just two fronts that you flip over to read the other half. The one half is going to be a few pages of portfolio work and the other a few preview pages from 4AM. Cleverly going to be called 3:59AM (thanks to Joe for the title :D). The portfolio side is called Tired Eyes (after this blog) and there will be a double spread in the middle explaining about 4AM and about me as an illustrator.

So it's on with that for a while. Time to break out InDesign again. Ouch.

A Bit of Rest Bite

Playing with ink.

Limping Along...

Well my major project 4AM is slowly coming along...
I have a more final storyboard now so it's a case of getting through the pages as quick as i can without compromising the quality. CAUSE I AM A PERFECTIONIST.

Hopefully it will all come together in in time. Otherwise i'm taking a promo book to the london book fair instead. There's no way i'm taking this if i'm not proud of it, there'd be no point.

4AM is on....

My main project 4AM is now properly under way. I story boarded this as an animation during the summer but over the last few weeks i've been trying to turn that story board into a narrative comic one instead and then do page page layouts from it. It's proven really difficult to translate the two mediums so that they read the same.

I still am not totally happy with it, but only because there is a lot of pressure for it to be good! I've never attempted something like this before as it's going to be about 40 pages.

Really not sure if i'm going to get it done in time! But there is no way i want to rush it either. So we shall see.

One thing that is bothering me is how to colour it. I thought i knew but i'm not happy with the results. I planned to colour it loosely in ink on separate layers to the line art but now i'm not sure. I don't want to computer colour it. Feels like a cop out and not how i like to work. The whole point of this was to find a way to use how i draw/paint as a comic.

The image above is just a mess around. The image is from the story, but the colouring is not how it's gonna be. Just trying something as a kinda promo...

Anyway.

I've given myself 6 weeks to do all the artwork before i then need a week to arrange it ready for print. Then leaving 3 weeks to print.

I think this all might be a very stupid idea.

Inky Experiments...

Just doing some quick ink thinking...