 Good morning everybody, it is now Tuesday morning. I had to think then, I was like, is it Tuesday or is it Monday? Ah, it's Tuesday, so I thought I would just flick through what I've done over the past few days. I kind of got a little bit distracted by another project because we had this party where it was a fancy dress and I made a mask and you will see that on Friday probably because I filmed making it and stuff, so yeah. I got a little bit distracted, so it was a bit annoying but it needed to be done because I needed a costume. But anyway, here are the thumbnails that we saw Mido last week and I'm not going to show you guys this one because I think it spoils everything but what I did then is took some tracing paper and drew out over the top of the thumbnails and did some sort of colour keys but I don't really like them very much. I didn't continue doing them because I didn't think it was really getting me anywhere. I think it was just kind of wasting time. Instead, what I did was I just continued trying to find the style of the actual comic that I want, the actual style of the comic that I want and just getting closer and closer to sort of finalising her character quite like this one. Looking at more styles and views around where the lighthouse would be. I did some studies of, I did a study of some water but I think that's more pool water. I don't think it should necessarily look like that. I think that was a bit of a silly thing to do but oh well, it was fun to practise that. I just wanted to draw water that looks like that and I think it looks really cool. Yeah, so I copied that girl again. Just trying, you know, I keep doing the same panel, like drawing it out and seeing what it looks like. Just experimenting. I wanted to see what style might look like on the white paper because obviously I'm not going to do the finalised pages on this yellow paper. So that was something I hadn't actually considered because the yellow paper actually makes quite a big difference. So maybe I'll find some yellow paper or maybe it looks good in white. I'll just have to keep, you know, trying to get that sort of dark feel. And then I started to do super rough panels. I took my thumbnails and I just photocopied them really so I could just have them as reference here. And what I'm doing is just drawing now out the pages but larger but really rough and then I went over some, some panels just for clarity for me later like readability because I like the way they turned out. So I thought like if I, if I fix them up a little bit that will help me later. So I'm just doing some rough pages of the thumbnail and then going over each maybe a couple panels just to help me out later because I think what I'll do is I'll scan these pages and then I will blow them up. So and then that will be like my rough and then I can go over that with a light box and do like finalised pencils. So the more detailed this is, the more helpful it is for me later but also I'm just trying to get like ideas and expressions down. So I'm not being very precious about this. I'm just going quite fast and then if there's something I particularly like that I've done, I've gone over it. Something also that I'm trying to figure out is the line of action. So if I had characters that were just kind of stiff in every shot instead of sort of bent a little bit this way and hinting towards where you should look, it wouldn't be very interesting. So I'm trying to remind myself to keep people sort of bent and maybe angles and shots and stuff. I think this is something I've struggled with before a stiffness and a certain like always keeping a close up shot or a mid shot is bad for me. I always do like mid shots. So I'm trying to push myself to stay away from that kind of thing. So this is the next page of this one. So taking it from the thumbnails that we did before, obviously the photocopy of have it here and I drew it out here and it was very rough. And then last night I went over it just because I think I still I'm still trying to find the style and I think any work that I accomplished now is going to just help me continue the process. So even though I said to myself, I'll do these as roughs, I've gone in and I spruce them up a little bit here and there for the reasons that I've said, I kind of repeat myself. Yeah, I like the way these looked. I like these panels. So I went over them. And I don't know if you can get the sort of suggestion that he is making because I discovered that I want him to be quite like a sleazy guy and she's socially anxious. So she's sort of maybe reading into it more than it is. We can get like that kind of glimpse into her character. I think I'm going to push that side of her a little bit more because because that is one of the key ideas of her character within the story. That is like a big point that I want to talk about is her social anxiety. So I don't know quite how to put that cross with just images. So I'm sort of working on that a little bit. Here is, I did the door of the lighthouse, smashed up some Pinterest images that I saw that maybe this door might look like. I was just dealing with him because I was thinking maybe she sees him, but then she sees him like turn into like this gross guy and then maybe she blinks and it's gone. But I don't know if that would be too literal. I don't want it to be like too obvious. I want the audience to kind of want the reader to pick up on things themselves and read into stuff maybe. And yeah, I think that would be fun, like a toy. And then last night I was doing this really rough one. As you can see it's super rough, so I'm just going to probably work on this. I have this panel here. It doesn't look like it, but this is like a triangle panel here that I've left empty and then this is a panel. But I'm not really sure what I want to do here. I thought I was going to have her in the doorway and then like the lighthouse inside. But I don't know if that's too weird of a panel, like too small or something for that shot. And I think this is very sudden, like you're outside, she's outside and then it's like bam, you're inside, but I don't... Is it too sudden? You guys tell me because I think maybe it works because you see her going to the lighthouse, you see him opening the door and then they're inside, I think that's fine, right? I always have this thing where I need to over-complicate shots, whereas if this was in a film it would probably be fine. You, as the reader, would connect the dots yourself, it doesn't need to be spoon feds. That's something I need to kind of figure out a little bit more, yeah. I'm going to keep working on these thumbnail-leaning rough-to-rough pages, so you guys can watch if you want, you can stick around. I'll be chatting to you anyway, I'm sure. It's been kind of tough because I think I got, well, I've been saying this the whole way through that I've been very intimidated by this project, but I think I got very bogged down with it over the weekend. I was like, oh, because I didn't do much drawing over the weekend because we had a lot of parties to go to and stuff, like social stuff, which is good, that's fine. I like being social, you know, sometimes it can be a thing, I can be a friend, and yeah, I just got distracted, I think, and I gave myself way too much time off from this, especially considering I gave myself that deadline. But I was thinking, you know, it's on track to be completed, maybe not in a month's time, but, you know, maybe that was ambitious anyway to begin with, considering it's quite a long story. I was going to make it much shorter before, so it's become this bigger thing, like I was scared of it becoming. But I think that's fine. I've got a friend visiting in a couple of weeks, and she's going to be here for three days, so I think those three days I probably won't get much done as well, so I think I'm going to just take that off the timeline and add it onto the end or something, because it's not exactly like this is a freelance project, and I have somebody waiting for this at the end in a deadline. It's just myself in post-deadline, where I just gave myself a bit of a challenge. But I also don't want to rush this, so if it happens two weeks later than originally I said then, I still think that's fine, because I'm working with my time, I want to have a good product at the end of it, and if it just takes a couple more weeks to make the project that much better, then of course I'm going to do that. I'm not going to look at myself and be like, well, I gave myself a deadline, you know what I mean? I think giving yourself a deadline does help, because it spurs you on, and it has done that to me, so I think that's fine, you know, it's done its job now, and I'm going to continue on with it. So it's all good. The challenges so far have been trying to pace out a story where you can't actually see the final project until it's done. So I've been reading through the pages, not reading, but like looking at it and thinking, okay, if I'm reading this, then how quickly have I scanned this, and does it make sense, and does it give enough to the reader to establish what's happening and how a character feels, what's going on, or is it just going to be a quick link, and you're done with this story. So I think, you know, once I've done these, I will have to go back and look and see how it flows, and see if there's enough, and obviously it's very difficult to look at your works objectively, because if you've worked on something for so long and you're in it, it's very hard to look at it, take a step away and be like, yeah, that's really good, because you know the ins and outs of it, you know exactly what's going to happen, like this ending won't surprise you, like it does the reader, so you can never truly get the pacing that the reader will get, because you know exactly what's going to happen. So I think you have to have a little bit of foresight and try and think, how will this be taken as a reader? Yeah, you have to try and look at it subjectively, even though it's impossible. So fresh eyes are always good for projects, and I'll probably get some of my friends to have a look at it, maybe Dean or someone, and maybe she'll help me out, but yeah, I think I'll only do that once I've done the roughs, because I think obviously the dialogue is just very, very short, so it's not that you can't really gauge anything from that. But yeah, I think everything in the comic is more about body language and facial expressions and reader's interpretation. It's definitely an underlying theme, a lesson to be learned. I don't know if it's a lesson or if it's just, you know, it's not really a lesson, it's just something that occurs because of the way the character is, and I think it's just an unfortunate happening rather than a lesson. But yeah, there's a underlying theme throughout, and I hope that it is obvious to the reader and not too obvious at the same time, because subtlety is king, right? That's a lie, story is king, but yeah. That's the saying, by the way, in case you don't know that, story is king. It's a thing, it's a thing, guys. Yeah, I think as well I'm really enjoying the process of this, so I actually look forward to getting up and working on it, which is great. Good morning, everybody. It is Wednesday, so this is the morning of this video's upload. So, hi. I thought I'd just show you what I did yesterday because obviously I filmed a lot yesterday and I showed you everything that I did over the past few days. I think it's really cool that some of you have said that I've helped, all these videos have helped you be inspired to start your own comic, and I think that's really cool. And definitely wish you luck with that, and I'd love to see your process. So if you're doing a comic or something or images on Instagram or Twitter or something, then just tag me, my stuff's below. It'll be really cool to see because I really like comics as well. I like reading people's comics and stuff. So yesterday I showed you all this kind of development work. I'm pretty sure I showed you these pages. I think I showed you drawing this bit, and then I carried on doing these panels. I couldn't remember the name of panels, and I was like, and I was like, no one listened to me for advice. I can't remember anything. So I realized I was being quite stiff here with the way that I was drawing out these rough pages, even though I said the more detailed, well, the more work that I put into each panel, the better it is for later on because I will have more, more references to go by. So I'll make everything later on in the project easier, but I just started doing just kind of ignoring the backgrounds, trying to get the positions of people and their faces down because I think the backgrounds, once I start doing more different backgrounds, it will become easier. So I just need to do some more studies of backgrounds and things that the place will look like. So some more definitive guides for me to follow when I come to do the final piece. What I did with this guy is that I took some really funny photos of myself because I was stuck on how to draw his expression. And instead of just finding one online, I just kind of posed really funnily and I will not show you the photos because they're hideous. Yeah, I tried to kind of have the scoffing expression that he has over here and it made it much easier. So I suggest if you guys are like, oh, I have no idea how to draw that, then just reference yourself and obviously just put the expression into that character that you've made. And then I added another page here because I thought that it went too suddenly from him showing her the possibility of renting the place to her renting the place. So I added a page and it was really quick, but then it also has like another little thing in it that might be a little nod to the reader of the situation and we're going to explain what that means. But and then handy removals just to make it clearer. I don't know if I'm simplifying it too much, but I think I don't want it to be too confusing. So I think as well as the pacing is a little bit like suddenly she's there, which is fine because if your mind can connect the dots and that's fine. But if you are kind of confused, then I don't really want that confusion. I wanted to be clear that he was showing her around possibility to rent the place. And then she said, yes, and she's renting it. I want that to be clear to everybody. Then page six is a new spread. And obviously I went back to my thumbnails, which are back here. And I scanned the page again. I scanned this page and it came out a bit light because obviously I've done it with pencil. So I went back and I sort of doodled what it says here just to make it clearer for myself. And as I was doing it, I was like, oh, I haven't really figured out this part so well yet. So what I've done is I've just changed it slightly because as I was working on it, I realized it didn't work. So that's fine. And it really the but doing this step helped me get to this step. So it's really good. So I'm hoping that this step will then help me get to the next step where I refine it even more and it will be really useful. She's in her kitchen and she's talking to somebody on the phone. Again, we don't know who it is. It's up to the reader to assume, decide and. Yeah. And then this is kind of where it starts getting spooky. I mean, here she kind of says some dialogue that is hopefully a little bit like, oh, not not spooky, but it helps the reader to see where her mind's at, I guess. And yeah, that's where I'm at at the moment. So I'm going to try and do more. And this is says page six, but because of the bonus page, it's page seven. But this is taking ages. So I'm a bit scared. I'm trying to catch up with myself because, as I said, last week was a little bit of an all over the place week work wise. So I'm trying to catch up on the work here. And I think I think I'll be fine because I think after that, I get a bit more detailed with the thumbnails and stuff. So I think it should be good. I'm I'm ready to go. I'm going to work on this one now, which is page one. I was showing you that page, but I meant to show you that page when I was referring to that. That's fine. My voice is like this morning. How relaxing, right, guys? Listen to my croaky, croaky voice coffee. What's everybody's average of choice? Because I'm always like, oh, grab a drink. I like coffee, obviously. I also like water. I like Diet Coke, but I have I've had a really bad problem with Diet Coke before, where I just couldn't stop drinking it. And I think it is actually just really addictive and full of bad stuff. So I try not to to drink that so much. I think I have like one a week now or two a week. I used to have like a Diet Coke a day, which was really bad. I used to think like, oh, I have to go to the shop now to get Diet Coke because I run out like I would specifically go just for that, which is really kind of sad. But I mean, I'm not judging anyone who really likes Diet Coke, by the way, because I'm just saying that I've been there. It's the it's kind of bad for you, so I tried not to. Honestly, you don't know whether to stop and wait for this guy to stop hammering or not. Because how long can you hammer for? And if he's hammering a wall, then he might just be putting a nail in. He's stopped. Everyone waits in suspense. Nope. Every time. You have that thing where you're like, yeah, he's fit. They finish them, stop making noise. And then it's like 10 seconds past and you're like. And then they begin even louder, which is great. Thanks, hammer guy. OK, well, I'm just going to continue talking and hopefully he'll shut up. Yeah, so I'm just penciling out the panels that I have here. And I realize that this one is a little bit foggy. I'm like, I don't even know what I wrote. I did here because when you do the thumbnail, some of them you do just scribble down. And at the time, you're like, oh, I'll know what I mean. And then later, you're like, what is that? What is what? So I think some of them are a little bit up to my interpretation, but that's fine because I've got these four clear ones. I think I'm going to add a panel here of the phone because I because there's one where she picks up the phone and there's one where she slams the phone down. But I think that looks like she's slamming the phone down. So I've changed it to this one where I've just have the phone by itself. Oh, there's an over complicated explanation for changing around some thumbnails. I don't care. OK, so right. So if there's a long one here, I'll just fill up this space. This is just like a rough of where the panels are going to go as well. So I need to figure that out. I realized as well, the first few pages that I have, all of them have like establishing shots as the first panel, which is kind of a bit repetitive for me. Like, I'm not sure if I need to change it up somehow, but I don't think I can because each little thing leads into the next establishing shot, and I think that's just the way the story is flown. Well, these bits, so I'm a bit stuck. I need to draw up this panel as well. I was like, I was scared of how I was going to approach that panel. So I just left it for now, something I have to go back to. So like establishing shot, establishing shot. I start with like four pages of establishing, but I think it's OK because it is still the beginning of the book. I see the book being about the book is 16 pages, probably 17 pages now. So probably about 20 pages with front cover and like the end sheets and stuff. So that's quite a good size for a comic book, right, guys? I think let me compare it. So I have two books here. One is Vacancy by No Brown Press. They're quite a popular, I wouldn't say indie anymore, but they used to be indie publisher, but they're kind of more traditional publisher now, but they do a lot of. And this one is I counted it is 16, no, 12 pages. So that's kind of the thickness that we're looking at. This one is also my friend's Shahn's book. I will link her stuff down below. She has a patron as well, and she's currently working on a comic. That sounds really interesting. So if you guys want to check out her stuff, I'll link her. This was like her fantasy comic that she did. I won't spoil the ending. But yeah, this was 37 pages. So this will be also it's A4. So I don't think I'll go for A4. I think I'll go for no. I think this is slightly like bigger than A5. So I'm not sure what that size is, but yeah. So yeah, it's going to be sort of that little tangent there of comic sizes. Also, I was talking about this book last week and I totally forgot that I just have it in the house. So why didn't I bring it over and speak about it? But it was making comics that I have, not understanding comics. I think understanding comics is more the business aspect of comics. So if you were to approach a publisher or print them yourself and different things like that, then it would have more information. But this one is more the structure of comics and writing and stuff. And it's it's really, really helpful. It's like Chocoblock with information. And yes, I need to probably reread it now because it's really helpful. And it's it's really, really good. Honestly, if you guys are like, oh, I don't know where to begin with comics. Then I know it's a lot of reading, but you can also have it just as reference. So if you're stuck on something, you can probably just flick through to that bit. I'm going on about this a bit much, aren't I? I'm doing the hard self for some reason. Yeah, so I've got my script here. I'm working off that still. Even though I've done my thumbnails, I just I need to double check with the script what's going on. And I thought like I'm going to write out what they're saying here. So I can as I go, I can read it through and get the pastings because they did that I added that page that I said before because I realized it was a bit too fast. And here I think like maybe I should add another dialogue. I'm not sure. So this phone is like an old fashioned wall phone. And I had to kind of I had to look up how to draw them because I completely forgot. Do you remember how great these were? And you've had to like stand near the phone and they pull the cable towards you and hope that nobody was around for your conversation. If you're trying to have a private conversation with a friend or something, it was like, nope, good luck to you. Maybe we first got the cordless phone and I started doing this habit of walking around the house. You know, when you speak on the phone, I have this habit now of just walking and talking because I think I hate talking on the phone. So I get quite nervous. So I just I just start pacing. And also, I'm sorry if I have a reply to your comment. And if you commented on my last video or something, I try I try to keep up with the comments. I know I don't have that many subscribers or whatever or comments even. But I get a bit bogged down with stuff like that. So I try to do it like Sundays, but I really do appreciate everybody's comments. And I really it really spurs me on to create more. And you guys, some of you say that I'm inspiring you, but you guys are inspiring me. So it's kind of working both ways. So if you you left a comment, that's really I really do appreciate it. And I will try and get back to you. Honestly, I try to respond to everybody because I know how it feels to leave a comment on somebody's channel and be like, oh, they haven't responded. I don't know. I don't take it don't take it personally if they don't respond, obviously, because lots of people get like hundreds and hundreds of comments and they can't respond to every single one of them, but I don't. So I can. This is a weird hand, but that's OK. I can fix it when I come to do final final life sketches. It's really strange sitting here talking to the camera because it does feel like I'm just sitting here talking to you, whoever you may be. And it's quite nice just chatting with you. Oh, also, I need to tell my friend James that there's a funny link down in the comments that I wanted to send to him. I was just like, oh, I'll say it in my video because he watches over and he was like, OK, do it then. And I was like, all right, I will. So yeah, James, the funny video that I said is in the comments. And if anybody else wants to check it out, that's completely fine, because it's hilarious. I keep going on and on about how intimidated I am by this project, but I am so intimidated. And I'm so worried that it's just going to be not scary and it's just going to be super cheesy and just, you know. Yeah, my camera died. So what I was saying is I want to make a typography specifically for this comic. So I need to figure that out as well. There's all these little things that you don't really consider until you're on, you know, in the process of things. I mean, I don't really think I don't think typography is something little that you have to consider. I think it's quite a big thing to consider. But in the past, I usually left it last minute. So this time I want to really figure that out and spend some time dedicated to doing that and the speech bubbles and stuff. So in some of the pages, I have the speech bubbles popping out of the panels, which can kind of break the fourth wall, like only very, very mildly. I'm not sure if I want to do that or if want. Sometimes I want to do it to make, like, show the uncronctibility of it. But yeah, just all the process of working stuff out still. It's all a very long process. But I'm getting there steadily. Each page that I make is a massive progress. And I can see... I can see where I'm at, which is really good. I really want to work on the style a bit more because I'm not happy with the way, you know, some of this stuff, final, well, final stuff, but some of the design stuff looks during these pages. But I think I'm being a bit silly there because obviously these are just supposed to be rough. So they're not going to look that great. But I think you can kind of get an idea of how the comic's going to look on working out the style for sure. But I think once I have the panels down, I can really pinpoint one and work with it to create a certain style. So I think that's it's going to be mega useful. I'm just going to probably edit this vlog now so you guys can see this. It's probably going to be mega long, but I hope that you guys enjoy that because I know I quite like watching other vlogs like this and listening to them and just doodling whilst I listen and looking over and watching every now and then. And I hope that it's been helpful to you and thanks for spurring me on, guys. It's been really, really cool to know that you guys are backing me up here. So thanks a lot and I will see you next week. So, yeah, the next step in the process will be to completely finalize the style, finish these, all these pages or the rough pages. And then I can get going on doing the the the lines because I don't know how I'm going to approach doing the final lines yet because I'm not sure if I'm using the tracing paper or not. So that is going to add another step to the process. So I need to figure that out. I haven't figured that out yet. So it's kind of the chicken or the egg situation here. But yeah, I'm going on again. Thanks for watching, guys. Please like and subscribe for more content and I will see you next week. Yay, bye.