Peptober Day 7: Sneak Peak Crop

I've had a potential story in my head for the last 3-4 years. It was one of those ideas that just seemed too hard, too messy, like there was no entry point into the story. That all changed recently when I was struck by a flash of inspiration and I sat down to pen a draft of the story. Expecting it to be around 15 pages long and not sure how it would go, I was surprised when 32 pages flew out of me in the space of a few days.

This was a first for me. I have never written something in that short space of time. But the time it took is really just a shorthand way to explain I was in that elusive flow state. I didn't have to force myself to make it or slog through. The story is ‘inspired' by a work situation I was in a few years ago. Disclaimer: any likeness or similarity to living or dead persons is purely coincidental. 

I can’t share much now. But the above is a detailed crop of the comic. One of the technical aspects that helped this comic flow out of me was writing it digitally within Procreate. I set up a file that had over 100 layers and used each layer as a new page. This way I could flip back and forth in the story if I needed to reference a previous panel, drawing, or wording. This meant I had to draw at a lower resolution for the pencils. Then when I was done, I simply pasted those lower resolution pencil files into a higher resolution file to digitally ink over the top of. This mostly worked, although I had some difficulties in simply increasing the DPI, which caused some minor formatting headaches.

Actually, I could write more about the process of making this comic, and will probably come back and revisit it in a future post. This comic marked probably about 4-5 personal achievements/advancements with new techniques. It’s not often I get to say that.