It has begun!
I'm now two weeks in with the pencils for Death Jr:Manga. Pencilled about 10 pages so far and I'm just about to start with page 11 as I'm writing this. Starting with page 1 was real tough though and I had to stare at the blank paper for hours. The problem when you are doing a different genre from what you are used to is that it takes a long while to get the proper mindset.
I'm typically (and preferably) a shonen/action-oriented artist so my ideas are pretty much geared to the adventure type of stories. With Death Jr Manga, the focus is more on the character relationships and not really on the action (but there's going to be some spiffy fight sequences in the story!) so I have to downplay my basic instincts in illustrating and writing this story.
For the Death Jr Manga, I'm going for a more minimalist approach in drawing so backgrounds will be trimmed down to the basics. Not much rendering or hatching or details. It will all boil down to what is necessary to convey the story. And so far, the barebones approach is working just great. Without the burden of having to spend hours on backgrounds, I can focus my attention more in illustrating the characters themselves and writing the actual dialogue. Not really an easy task when you have to make sure that the characters are talking the way they should be talking.
I'd also like to note that making character sheets before starting this project saved me tons of extra work and frustration!
I'm going to be pencilling the entire book then be inking the pages afterwards in one mad stroke. I'm sure this process will keep the inking consistent throughout and will give me ample opportunity to make pencilling corrections later on.
We'll be sending the first 10 pencilled pages of Death Jr (fully lettered) to Backbone Entertainment this Monday for approval. All the characters have been redesigned for this project as well so I hope they'll like the designs too. Cross your fingers for me!
Anyway, time for me to get back to work. And here's a small pic from the first page of Death Jr Manga:
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haiandlow) wrote,
