{"id":335,"date":"2018-05-19T21:53:34","date_gmt":"2018-05-20T02:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/?p=335"},"modified":"2018-06-10T07:32:11","modified_gmt":"2018-06-10T12:32:11","slug":"the-scariest-part-of-making-a-graphic-novel-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/the-scariest-part-of-making-a-graphic-novel-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scariest Part Of Making A Graphic Novel (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Scariest Part Of Making A Graphic Novel<\/strong><\/h1>\n

(Part 2)<\/h3>\n

Fear is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t start their projects.\u00a0 For me, I had a lot of fears getting in the way of starting my graphic novel,\u00a0The Forgotten<\/em><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Two of my biggest fears holding me back were:<\/p>\n

1)My writing ability not being good enough.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2)My coloring ability not being good enough.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I talked previously about #1, (my writing)<\/a>, so this time I’m going to talk about #2 (my coloring.)<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

MY COLORING ABILITY
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n
(Not a talent I was born with.)<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When I first decided I wanted to make a graphic novel, I was convinced that my coloring ability was not good\u00a0enough.\u00a0 Pictures that I made were flat and dull looking and\u00a0pages that had decent composition and lineart were ruined and muddied by confusing coloring.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I was torn.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Some comics I liked were black and white and they looked really good.\u00a0 I wondered if maybe I could make a black and white graphic novel.\u00a0 I decided to do a test.<\/p>\n

My test was simple: draw 5 pages and color them in gradients\/half-tones.\u00a0 It didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to be good enough for me.\u00a0 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.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I finished the first page and this was the result:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I hated it.\u00a0 I didn’t even finish all five pages.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was confusing and seemed dull and bland (to me.)\u00a0 It became clear to me that my current skill level was DEFINITELY not good enough to take this project on.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Things like word balloons and fonts.\u00a0 The onces I made looked awful.\u00a0 I also learned that I had NO IDEA how to make it look like it was raining. O_o<\/p>\n

I would have stopped then and there.\u00a0 The fear was crippling.\u00a0 There was no way I could make a graphic novel (at least not one I’d be proud of.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But. . .<\/strong><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

But<\/strong>…I had so much fun making those five pages.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I had made up these characters on the fly and I wanted to tell a story with them.<\/p>\n

I decided to make a new test:\u00a0 I would spend a month learning all I could about coloring and then do ANOTHER pass at finishing those five pages.<\/p>\n

This time in full-color.<\/p>\n

I watched tons of coloring tutorials and read a couple books I found at the library about color theory.\u00a0 A month passed and it was time to try again.\u00a0 I gave it all I had and after averaging 8 hours of coloring per page I ended up with pages that looked like this:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It wasn’t the best.\u00a0 But it was good enough for me.<\/span>\u00a0 I decided that if I could color the whole book to look at least that good, I would be happy.<\/p>\n

Were they the amazingly colored pages? By no means.\u00a0 But they were some of the best ones\u00a0I\u00a0<\/strong>had ever done, and that was all I could ask of myself.\u00a0 The only person you compete against is your (past) self.\u00a0<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Which got me thinking… What if I waited to color my comic until it was already done being drawn?\u00a0 That way I could continue to practice and learn about coloring and maybe my coloring would get even better over time!\u00a0 After all, if I could improve in a month’s time, maybe I could improve even more in a year!<\/p>\n

Well, I didn’t know it, but it was going to take me much longer than a year to finish this project.\u00a0 (But more on that later…)\u00a0 In the following years while I worked on the script and drawing chapter 1, I was also studying and practicing my coloring.\u00a0 I desperately wanted to keep improving.\u00a0 Along the way I learned a lot about other things as well, like lighting and composition.\u00a0 I learned from watching and studying other artists who were fantastic with color, (like Jason Brubaker, the creator of reMIND<\/a>, and Minna Sundberg, creator of SSSS comic.<\/a>) and even got some personal critiques that helped me to see where my art was lacking and what steps to take to improve.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

And eventually I ended up to where I am now.\u00a0 Not perfect…<\/strong><\/h3>\n

…but better than before:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The key for me in overcoming this fear was realizing three things:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 I can improve.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

2) My competition is me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

3) I am the audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter what someone else thinks.\u00a0 When it comes down to it, if I\u00a0<\/strong>am happy with the end product, then that is enough.\u00a0 If someone else likes it, great, if not, no worries.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Scariest Part Of Making A Graphic Novel (Part 2) Fear is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t start their projects.\u00a0 For me, I had a lot of fears getting in the way of starting my graphic novel,\u00a0The
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,6,9,5,4],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coloring","tag-comic","tag-fear","tag-graphic-novel","tag-making-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinomitecomics.com\/staging\/5406\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}