Productive day yesterday, more or less. Yesterday’s lunch break (in my undisclosed coastal town) saw me take a pack lunch over to the beach, for a bit of reading while I sat in a change of scenery. I’d brought the bike, and so it was nice to be able to pack up some things I might need, like a beach towel, a portable seat (just in case…. I did not use it in the end…), my notebooks, and some reading materials on the ipad (I was reading a bit of Paradise Lost, in fact), and carry it in the bike basket. (Actually I did use the portable seat… but not for sitting. I used it as a stand for the camera that took the shot above right.)
What am I doing on The Project? I’m mapping out and editing one of the stories. It has turned into quite a 
long one with lots of complexity, relatively, speaking. This means that I need to be careful about designing the layout on the page, and actually try to get a good sense of how everything fits so that I pace things properly, and page things out in the right way. So I am thumbnailing carefully, going beyond simple thumbnails and doing a first pass rough of the page. It slows the writing down, but will save a lot of time later on. Also, when I turn myself back into the penciller/inker and come to draw all the pages carefully, my job will be much easier, and quicker, as I’ll have the directions in the written script and the page layout sketch to guide me. I’ll be able to focus more on being the artist and less the writer at that stage. See the right for a laid out page.
Actually, using the brushes application on the ipad has been very valuable for this. I’ve not used it much in recent times, and so it was fun to rediscover it. I’ve been using paper and pen the last several weeks when I’ve had time, and that’s great, but then there’s this intermediate scanning stage. Working on the ipad (with a decent stylus for good drawing control) cuts out that step. Also, I can be a lot freer as I work, knowing that I can move things around, resize, etc, a bit more quickly that if I was using pen. I do a rough in pale blue (not a crucial choice), and then do another layer on top in black that keeps the bits I want. Then I hide the blue and email myself the page… Works very well. Then I drop it all into the same program into which I’m putting the script for the story. I’ll tell you more about that later, since I’ve made a recent change I’m very pleased with.
-cvj
