Break – Drawing time

Still having computer problems 🙁 Will need to take this whole week off while I get it resolved. Sorry for the wait and thanks for your patience!

9 Comments

Thanks for letting us know what’s up. Take care, & I hope your computer gets fixed even better than ever & in an easily affordable way!

Thanks for the sketch!

My goodness, you’ve gotten better! Compare this to the first few pages and the proportions are so much cleaner and precise.

I was thinking the same thing! (But I like the original pages– I think it’s cool to see the art progressing throughout the story, especially where the subject of quality of the art and proportions is part of the story itself.)

That’s one of the things I like about Not A Villain…and what I like about A Girl And Her Fed, too (another favorite webcomic). With both artists, you get to see their artistic abilities evolving, their unique styles coming into bloom, and it’s just really neat to archive-dive and see how much everything has progressed all in the span of one afternoon, when you may not have noticed all the differences in the much slower progress of page after page, week after week, month after month, year after year…

While it’s true that Spangler’s been producing her webcomic for longer than Aneeka has (the archives are huge, the storyline complex enough to match it, and then some)…the really awesome thing about what Aneeka is doing is that she has 3 different art styles she’s busy developing, the very simple flat-color line drawings of L.i.F.e., the more complex color-shaded drawings of the Game, and the oil paints/pastels of reality. (Yes, it’s all digital, but it’s too complex to be called a line drawing style; I’m not an art major so I don’t know what to call it, but it’s its own thing.)

None of the current level of skill invalidates the quality of the earliest stuff, either. Certainly, not when you look at it the right way! In the beginning of a story, the reader/viewer isn’t certain of what’s going on. Things are presented piecemeal, roughly, little scraps of sketches here and there, the characters aren’t yet fully fleshed out, the plot certainly isn’t fully unfolded, and even the setting still isn’t fully in focus.

It’s like the first season of a multi-season television series. Nobody in their right mind will ever claim that any Star Trek franchise had a perfect first season, let alone other shows like Babylon 5, Xena: Warrior Princess, Gotham…any new Doctor Who incarnation…but when you get to season 2, it’s better, and season 3 is really gripping your attention, and whoa, check out season 4…!!!

If you look at the earlier work of webcomic artists in that light, it makes sense that the artwork is less polished at the start. In fact, even more so than a television series, a webcomic is a VERY visual artform. You don’t get to have a blurry camera slowly bringing the scenery into full focus over a few seconds, but you can still get that effect over several weeks or even months.

So that’s how I look at the earliest work of my favorite series. That’s why with Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary, I start my archive diving at the very beginning, even though he insists on telling people don’t read that book first, no no, read book #2 because he thinks that’s where the art and the story all come together. I respectfully disagree; I want it all. I want the out-of-focus opening shot, the slow pan across the landscape…watching the graphic novel equivalent of the actors trying to figure out how to portray their characters…and I love anticipating the events that will trigger storyline conflict & character growth.

…Okay, I’ll shut up now. Just had to wax eloquent on why I like all the archives, even the earliest stuff…

Happy to wait! I love your story!

No problem, I’ll wait patiently as well. 🙂

I like Kleya’s hair.

I like how she seems to draw herself into reality 🙂

I like this; it looks very nice. The “first panel” peek as a place-holder is a good idea and certainly open to speculation and comment. Thanks, Aneeka!

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

Break – Drawing time