A not-wip wip of the commission I did. one more gift then I can go back to drawing bb yaaaaa! Another CD cover for lalela, and I guess I didn’t succeed in making her look black again LOL. It’s a huge challenge because my anatomy is not that good already, let alone being able to understand and simplify/stylize ethnic features… I should’ve been able to do it because I was aware of what a typical black facial shape should be, but I think I haven’t painted faces for a while and got lost in the rendering (again) and forgot about THE IMPORTANT THINGS.
I bought a pair of heels at pmall last month that I absolutely loved even though it was like $90 LOL ): I was just overjoyed that they were my size (even though it still looked a little big) because all my trips to clothing and shoes stores end with “do you have this in size 5 or 4″ “no” so I guess I didn’t care about the price HAHAH. I don’t even want to wear them because I’m scared of scratching/damaging its PERFECT APPEARANCE LOL see this is why I just… buy shitty running shoes and tshirts lmao. I put off taking pictures of them but here they are :D
please ignore the random marks on my feet LOL I was sitting on them…
I’ve been thumbnailing the rest of chapter 5 (and soon chapter 6) this week. I usually don’t thumbnail ahead of time because I don’t want to have to waste time on making it neat enough to understand, since I know a year down the road I will have NO IDEA wtf I drew on certain panels. Also I change my mind a lot so thumbnailing ahead of time for me is really a big waste of time and does nothing. But now I’m doing it because this book also went through a lot of drastic changes as I illustrated the pages. Like as I was illustrating chapter 4, chapter 5 was completely changed at least 3 times, I put in and took out a lot of different aspects of the story I intended to present using this event on the ship, and in the end even though I’m happy with the final flow/transition of scenes, it got too long. A lot of chapter 4 and 5 pages look rushed and crammed, and I have to try really hard to fit the chapter in under 70 pages while avoiding making the rest of the pages as busy as the ones before.
Before I printed volume 1, I wouldn’t have cared because I would just let the story run until it hits the scene where I want to end the book, because it’s not like I serialized the series and have to conform to some format rules. That’s how I did book 1 and it just so happened that all 3 chapters balanced out to be nice 50- to 60-page chapters. But now that I realized a 170-page book with my current paper quality setting is just a few grams under the maximum shipping limit before prices double, the page per book limit is now 170. I don’t know how I’ll manage page count from now on but for this book, I ended up deciding to thumbnail the rest of the book as soon as possible so I can adjust the pacing. Optimistically, this experiment will succeed and make me realize that doing this ahead of time will help improve smoothness of story telling, panel layout AND let me control page count. Pessimistically, I will just end up changing so much of the story as time go on that the time I spent thumbnailing would be gone to waste as I expected LOL. If the latter happens I will have to try using a slightly lighter weight paper and see if it effects the printing quality. So far my manga book paper quality is the best in all of the mangas I own (even though this is not much…) so I think I have room for that.
I wish I could post some of the thumbnails because they look really bad :D it’d be hilarious to let people try to figure out wtf will happen in the next few months’ updates but at the same time it will probably ruin the story for them for a few months LOL
{ poki }
sorry but i don't understand XD your feet are so tiny or so enormous? (size 5 or 4 – dunno what that means XD)
{ Shilin }
tiny haha
{ Gokunobaka }
Is it only me od do you have SHOESOBSESSION?
I think it isnt your first post about shoes D:!
{ Helios }
Wow, talk about learning experience. I'm glad laying out the pages for printing is such a catalyst, it is a business now instead of a fun hobby. Or both C: The whole process is completely over my head, but I'm just here to ogle at the end results, lol. Aww, hope the story doesn't change so much that it's not BB-like anymore! On a related note, got my copy of the book today 8D It was waiting in my mailbox, like a kitty :3 ! …I swear that makes sense in my head.
Oh my, wear them shoes! Comfort is vastly overrated -twirls mustache-
{ JP }
You should do some Black Butler fan art!
{ Cassie }
How about scanning and keeping the thumbnails and later upload them once the page is up to give out a comparison of how it was suposed to be and how it turned out in the end? That would be totally awsome :D
{ Shilin }
haha the thumbs are done digitally, but I may just do that!
{ Ruina }
I remember watching the livestream for that picture briefly, and I still love how her make-up colors turned out! And all the reflected colors on the white fabric is gorgeous!
I love looking at other people's thumbnails. It's so cool seeing how their rough plans translate into awesome pages, and even see what they changed and kept from their original plans! :D I suck at storytelling at the top off my head, so I've been trying to work on writing out the script and thumbnailing beforehand too, but only to scratch them out and change things entirely like you mentioned… >.>; It never occurred to me that it could tie into shipping limit in the end though… I guess I'm glad I have no plans to print mine. 8D; But I wish you all the best in figuring everything out for volume 2! :D
{ Shilin }
ME TOO but I love the deciphering part of looking through thumbnails LOL. I remember nheira posted some on his DA journal and it was kind ridiculous how scribbly they were
{ R e a f u }
Very cute shoes, nice and summery 8D! Despite not hitting the usual physical traits that are associated with black ladies, she is very pretty. Out of curiosity, what sort of paper did you use when it came to printing out volume one of Carciphona that would nearly reach your max shipping limit? Good luck with working on chapter 5 and 6!
{ Shilin }
the paper weight I used was 70lb and coated; I think usually mangas would use much lower paperweights but I just dont want that see through effect some of my manga books have XD