The Scariest Part Of Making A Graphic Novel

(Part 2)

Fear is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t start their projects.  For me, I had a lot of fears getting in the way of starting my graphic novel, The Forgotten.  Two of my biggest fears holding me back were:

1)My writing ability not being good enough.

 

2)My coloring ability not being good enough.

 

I talked previously about #1, (my writing), so this time I’m going to talk about #2 (my coloring.)

MY COLORING ABILITY

(Not a talent I was born with.)

 

When I first decided I wanted to make a graphic novel, I was convinced that my coloring ability was not good enough.  Pictures that I made were flat and dull looking and pages that had decent composition and lineart were ruined and muddied by confusing coloring.  I was not (nor am I currently) the best draftsman, but I was far more comfortable with my drawing ability than I was with my coloring.

 

 

I was torn.  I wanted to create a graphic novel, but I didn’t think I was good enough to color it, nor did I have the money to pay someone to do it for me.  Some comics I liked were black and white and they looked really good.  I wondered if maybe I could make a black and white graphic novel.  I decided to do a test.

My test was simple: draw 5 pages and color them in gradients/half-tones.  It didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to be good enough for me.  So I drew up 5 pages of my comic, (what is now the beginning of the prologue and the opening 2 pages for chapter 1.)

 

 

I finished the first page and this was the result:

I hated it.  I didn’t even finish all five pages.

It was confusing and seemed dull and bland (to me.)  It became clear to me that my current skill level was DEFINITELY not good enough to take this project on.  I had no concept for how to use values in a composition, the shading didn’t compliment the lineart, in fact it made it look WORSE, and to top it all off I realized I had OTHER problems to worry about.  Things like word balloons and fonts.  The onces I made looked awful.  I also learned that I had NO IDEA how to make it look like it was raining. O_o

I would have stopped then and there.  The fear was crippling.  There was no way I could make a graphic novel (at least not one I’d be proud of.)

 

But. . .

 

But…I had so much fun making those five pages.  Shading and adding the grey tones wasn’t the most fun, BUT coming up with the characters and drawing the pages was a true joy.  I had made up these characters on the fly and I wanted to tell a story with them.

I decided to make a new test:  I would spend a month learning all I could about coloring and then do ANOTHER pass at finishing those five pages.

This time in full-color.

I watched tons of coloring tutorials and read a couple books I found at the library about color theory.  A month passed and it was time to try again.  I gave it all I had and after averaging 8 hours of coloring per page I ended up with pages that looked like this:

 

 

It wasn’t the best.  But it was good enough for me.  I decided that if I could color the whole book to look at least that good, I would be happy.

Were they the amazingly colored pages? By no means.  But they were some of the best ones I had ever done, and that was all I could ask of myself.  The only person you compete against is your (past) self.  I was happy with how much progress I had made in a month, and realized that if I kept applying myself, I could definitely improve even more.

Which got me thinking… What if I waited to color my comic until it was already done being drawn?  That way I could continue to practice and learn about coloring and maybe my coloring would get even better over time!  After all, if I could improve in a month’s time, maybe I could improve even more in a year!

Well, I didn’t know it, but it was going to take me much longer than a year to finish this project.  (But more on that later…)  In the following years while I worked on the script and drawing chapter 1, I was also studying and practicing my coloring.  I desperately wanted to keep improving.  Along the way I learned a lot about other things as well, like lighting and composition.  I learned from watching and studying other artists who were fantastic with color, (like Jason Brubaker, the creator of reMIND, and Minna Sundberg, creator of SSSS comic.) and even got some personal critiques that helped me to see where my art was lacking and what steps to take to improve.

And eventually I ended up to where I am now.  Not perfect…

…but better than before:

 

 

The key for me in overcoming this fear was realizing three things:

1)  I can improve.

Seeing how much I improved after a month of hard study and practice, convinced me that if I kept at it, I could continue to get better.

2) My competition is me.

When I realized I was only competing against my past achievements, and not the achievements of others, it became clear that ANY improvement was a success.

3) I am the audience.

It doesn’t matter what someone else thinks.  When it comes down to it, if I am happy with the end product, then that is enough.  If someone else likes it, great, if not, no worries.