I’ve done sixteen pages of new drawings, mostly easy and straightforward – sloppy drawings that needed improvement, etc. But a handful of new pages too, that I hope begin to push this project in the right direction.
A common pattern when I’m revising work is that I tighten up, perhaps too much. In the first (few) rounds of drawings it’s easy to be loose because I know any individual drawing stands a decent chance of being redone. But now, I’m redrawing specific panels where I’m aiming for a specific effect. So I’m more careful. Is the effect jarring or interesting when an especially loose and an especially tight panel happen to appear next to each other?
Today, as I’m rereading the comic again, I’m not sure that I see the need for big structural changes. Is the looming problem I sensed on my previous reread in fact just a feeling that this comic didn’t turn out as well as I hoped? I need to keep going, I need to keep my focus on this project. At least long enough for some possible solutions to present themselves.
Simplification is part of the answer here, probably. I’ve cut a few pages, I’m always pleased when I can do that, and maybe I’ll cut more. The colors could probably use some amount of simplification too, the comic has a number of different sections and in most of them the colors are different. Which delineates them, but also risks disorienting the reader and likely comes from my ongoing disorientation around how to approach the colors.
Here are a number of different options I’m considering at the moment.
