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Tirn Aill the Comic, update journal
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[Jun. 14th, 2009|11:03 pm] |
A day early, I've been productive over the weekend :)
This time a proper filler, in the shape of goodies. I've created 3 wallpapers. For the first one I simply used the t-shirt design of Elizabeth, but numbers 2 and 3 are brand new. Go to the Gallery to download the size of your choice. |
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[Jun. 4th, 2009|12:36 am] |
The one thing I have been keeping myself busy with these past few evenings is editing the front and back cover parts minus the artwork. A couple of things I did was to give the logo and title-bar a different colour from the rest and change the part where the numbers next to the title go (to better emphasize that we have both a serial number as a volume number).
Now that I'm all done with that I feel it is time to work on the artwork part of the cover. We had artwork for 2.1 to 2.3, which we will be redoing, plus I had an idea for 2.4, which I sketched a few hours ago (when it was still the third of June). I've put up the sketch combined with the edited front cover to give you something new to look at. The shadowy figures in the back will be Elizabeth's brothers. Which means I can't finish the picture as not all brothers are mine. Apart from that I want the colouring to be a lot more elaborate and artsy than the comic's content will be (or even the old cover art is) so it will be a while before I can show you a finished product. But the sketch will give you an idea at least.
One of these days all this will be on print. The work will not be in vain. |
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[May. 26th, 2009|02:12 pm] |
Back to another troublesome brother. I guess peeling those potatoes wasn't enough to learn the lesson.
You know, old Hammerhead has te be careful if he doesn't want to end up a stick figure by the time he gets out. That he will get out has never been the issue. It's the way he and the rest are going to get out.
Can't wait to get these pages coloured. I've chosen a horrible orange spotted plastic for the table covers :) |
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[May. 18th, 2009|12:44 am] |
| [ | mood |
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We don't have healers, we have doctors :)
I was feeling pretty lousy today, still am quite sore, due to some heavy duty gardening I had to do yesterday. Smart me, I had already prepared this page earlier in the week. Need to do that more often.
For the most part this page didn't pose any problems. Nihal probably had to think about panel 2, but I felt she got it right quite quickly, being there when she drew it.
The only thing that troubled me were panels 4a and 4b, naming them that because they were supposed to be 1 panel, not 2. But 2 people drawing on 1 panel doesn't always go right, especially when the background (a reference to hold on to) is added later on. What it boiled down to was that sitting Brunette was either too big or too high in the panel, meaning that standing Pintail would have her head cut off. I could shrink Brunette or put her lower, cutting off part of that picture. Splitting up the panel seemed liked the best option though. |
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[May. 5th, 2009|12:06 pm] |
Page 12, though completed for some 75% weeks ago, the remaining 25% gaves me troubles.
The top half of the page is fine imo. The third panel could use some background filling, but as there isn't really anything to see I'll just have to take care of it when we start colouring the pages.
The bottom half, one large panel, is what gave me the troubles. Let's divide it into a foreground, a middleground and a background for clarification. The foreground is perfect, especially when I had Nihal add a certain 5 little details last sunday (how could we have forgotten about them, really *tsk*).
The middleground is what gave me the most troubles. For my mind too much is happening. I stare at the pencil lines and everything becomes a blur. Can't see the forest from the trees. To make it worse I still had to add characters of my own before I could try and start inking.
The background I'm still not sure off. First of all I don't know if I really want that many windows. Second, the perspectief would be allright if it was combined with just the foreground or the middleground. Put together and I feel the whole thing is a bif off (input would be much appreciated).
I think that when this part of the series is said and done, we need to delete middleground and background and redo it. Fortunately I was smart enough the scan the inked foreground before working on the rest, so I have to separate file. |
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[Apr. 20th, 2009|01:19 pm] |
I completely forgot to hit the upload button yesterday, shame on me. But here we go and again we're skipping a page. And again it doesn't hinder the flow of the story. Page 9 was a pretty mood setting page that just wasn't pretty enough. With that page we've also skipped over a couple of important details, so it just has to be redone. But we're not going to wait for it so we go ahead with 10, where Njord hasn't finished with Lizzie.
I have to say, I love the first panel. I love the look, I was smart enough to draw and ink the background on a separate page so to not be hindered by the characters. Took reference from a book about medival times and castles so it's pretty accurate.
And I love the contrast of the itty-bitty Lizzie and her big bully of a brother. Does he scare her? Of course not. She is a princess, you do not tell her what to do!
I do believe it's normally not such a good idea to have a whole conversation in one panel, but to be honest, had we drawn individual panels I doubt the facial expressions would have differed much from one to the next.
I could have of course simply written less dialog, but I do like what I have come up with and it gives a little insight into the lives of our vampire siblings and perhaps a preview of what's to come at a later date. |
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[Apr. 13th, 2009|01:36 pm] |
Posted page 8 yesterday evening, but couldn't post here cause a certain housemate wanted to play games on the pc. Though I haven't really got anything to say about the page. It's a dialog page. Things we know still have to be explained to new characters.
I am comtemplating on what word to use to replace 'chief' and 'chieftess'. It's so EQ. I'm going for Alpha at the moment, but may Nihal and I can come up with a nice made-up word. |
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[Apr. 5th, 2009|10:15 pm] |
A day early, how's about that :)
Despite the fact this page needed some editing. Mostly my work though, I just wasn't happy with several panels.
Panel 5: You betcha she could take him on. We've got big plans for those 2 :)
Panel 6: Let no one say we don't occasionally variate in heights. And note, she wears high-heeled shoes. She's even shorter. |
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[Mar. 31st, 2009|04:14 pm] |
Happy birthday Nihâl :)
And well wishes. She's hurt her collarbone and could be out of the running for the next 6 weeks. Which means not being able to work or do anything, let alone work on the comic (I swear, 2.4 is cursed). Those of you who want to give her wishes of both kinds, she receives the Haloscan comments per email as well.
In the meantime, I got you page 6 wherein Birch finally has someone on his side. It had to happen some time.
With this page we felt like doing something a little different in terms of panels. If you have read our ""tutorials" you'll know we work with a sheet with set measurements when layouting a page. These measurements provide us with 3, 4 or 5 equal strips to be divided into halves, thirds or quarters. But we're not stuck to that. The sheet actually provides us with many more possibilities just by connecting the dots differenly. The same is easily done in CorelDraw and that program can tell me in an instant what the new measurements are (which I need when cropping the A3 scans). |
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[Mar. 24th, 2009|02:10 am] |
Enter the Mides Clan :)
I could have finished this page on sunday, all I had to was add a 4th brother and ink that last panel. But I couldn't get passed the things I didn't like about the rest of the page (plus I started kinda late even looking at it). In panel 1 Elizabeth's head and eyes were more human-like in proportion while her hand seemed huge. So I I drew her again, changing the pose and adding more space-filler.
Panel 2 showed an arm that just didn't look right (yay for correction fluid) and in panel 3 the face was too low (it showed a hairline and only the upper lip), so I completely redid it.
The last panel (which I was too tired for yesterday and didn't get to till this evening) had stuff wrong with it as well, mostly the torso of brother 3 (too stunted). Nihal's character, but as long as it isn't the face I should be able to fix it and it's just easier then to save it till I see her.
So, for a page I thought was as good as done I still had a lot of tweaking to do to. But it's done :) |
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[Mar. 16th, 2009|02:28 pm] |
Now before you scroll down to the new page I have to warn you first, we're skipping page 3 for the moment. Page 3 never made the trip from Nihâl's hands to my letterbox, as I did predict might happen when I started updating again 2 weeks ago. Nihal's job keeps her busy as ever, she recently moved house again and she is abroad on her holiday as you read this. So the chance of actually having page 3 next week, or the week after that, is pretty slim. In fact, she simply can't give any guarantee she can get her head round it until we meet up again. It just works best when she plans a day or afternoon for these matters which is hard to do unless we plan it together. Funnily enough I tend to be more productive when I'm on my own, less distractions and chatter-sessions you see ;)
Anyway, skipping page 3 doesn't disrupt the storyline fortunately (or I wouldn't have done it). Page 2 we see the bridge, page 3 we cross it, page 4 we've crossed it. You don't need to see the actual crossing to know they went from A to B, though of course a lot can happen during that moment, like Birch going hysterical or something a little less predictable. But because you don't really miss it and I really want to keep an updating rhythm I've chosen to go right ahead to page 4. Till page 13 I have things in my own hands and having that weekly deadline is good for me.
Having said that, page 4 isn't completely finished either (yes, you may sigh). Nihâl had drawn her characters and I had inked them some time last year. I only needed to fill in 2 blanks this Sunday. Which was a little tricky as I had to draw something I only had a vague picture of in my head. But that wasn't all. As I was looking at the page I felt there was too much room in some panels and at the same time I missed something. When I realised what it was, I cropped one big panel and added a sketch in a new panel (plus I shuffled with the order in which the panels first lay). As this is something Nihâl will have to fill in, the sketch is all your getting at the moment. But it should be clear enough for you to see what I'm trying to portray.
So there you have it... Page 4.
And I seriously need to redow the last panel. |
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[Mar. 9th, 2009|03:59 pm] |
I swear I had inked and scanned the panels yesterday, but panel 3 was so dirty with smudges and it was already so late, I didn't have the energy to start cleaning it up and finish the page. It's not the first time I've run into that problem so basically I either have to fork out for some high quality inking pens and bleed-proof paper, or I need to stop being such a lazy bugger and ink with the aid of a light-box again. As I have an infinite supply of cheap paper and a super-duper light-box (A4 size, ca. 2cm/1inch thick), it's going to be the 'stop being such a lazy bugger'.
All that put aside, I am very happy the way panel 2 turned out. Nihâl had left me with just the sketch of a bridge (based on one she saw in Ghana) so I had a lot filling up to do. Continuing with the rocks and semi-dead trees (we're heading for the autumn) I felt I needed to add a lot of detail, being so close 'to the camera'. Normally this would take forever to ink (and admittedly I would have given up half way), but I decided this was an excellent chance to try out the brush-pen I bought last month and boy, did it go fast and smoothly! (Any comments on the panels is much appreciated cause I really feared I wasn't going to be able to use the thing properly).
The pen is, alas, to broad for the middle-shot characters (the shot we use the most) and the ink bleeds like hell on the (infinite supply of) cheap paper, but I'm definitely going to use it use wherever it's possible :)
On a last note, as you can see I've changed the dialog font. Last year I have been looking at different fonts as I wanted one that had European characters (we are, after all, European and the Dutch language does contain some of those characters). After some try-outs and much internal debating, I decided to go for Cloudsplitter LC (www.blambot.com). Lower caps yes, I do kinda prefer that, it's less 'shouty'. (Once again, any comments are welcomed, though obviously I'm not going to change the font if just one persons hates it ;)
Once I start editing the previous pages and their dialogs, I might look for a second font for the Tirn Aill language. Our elves do not originate from Tirn Aill and have their own language. I want to show this difference in a nice way (provided it doesn't make things look messy).
But for now, page 2. |
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[Mar. 2nd, 2009|02:02 am] |
So here we are, the first installment of series 2.4 and straight up I've hit a snag. I'm not sure yet if this is how I want the Mides castle to look or if I want to add some decorative stuff at the the top of the towers and such. It could still look a bit more real in my opinion. I deliberately didn't ink the page yet, not until my mind's made up on the castle. But I did put a lot more work in the pencil stage than I usually do, so I don't feel bad about putting up this version :)
As for the next installments, I can't promise things will be smooth sailing. Like, Nihâl has done her things for page 2 till 13, with the exception of page 3. She might not be able to get that page to me on time as it coincides with the holiday she is taking. We'll have to see how that goes. Further more I still have a lot to do for some of these pages, but I'm going to do my best to get them done on time for each deadline. To take some of the pressure off though, we're going back to one update per week instead of two. As long as we're updating again right?
And then a last little thing. 3 wallpapers have been added to the gallery, which may be downloaded. |
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[Nov. 20th, 2008|04:27 pm] |
So not in a week's time but a month, but I finally gotten around (read remembered) to put things in their right order. Seeing as chapter 1.9 is more of less a stand-alone chapter I decided to put it like that on the site as well. If you click 'FIRST' you will be directed to page 1 of chapter 2.1, rather than 1.9. You can still, of course, view the collaboration between Tamara and me through the archive. Within that chapter the links will not direct to series 2 as you can simply get back to the main page by clicking one 'COMIC' in the menu.
As for the continuation of chapter 2.4, I'm afraid I still haven't got any news on that matter. Nihâl has moved back to my city and she has started a new job which I believe is going very well. But we haven't been able to set up a meeting yet. The way things are looking, we might better start a new story beginning of this year, where we will write the script together, but all other work will be done by me *insert disbelieving snigger*
This could be another chapter in steries 1, chapter 1.8 would be a good one as, like with 1.9, it only involves characters by me. But writing a series of shorter stories might be a good option as well, so we could in fact start with 2.4 and use those stories as fillers at times when things have gotten delayed with the main story. |
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[Oct. 24th, 2008|08:41 pm] |
THE END! And now you know what happened before our guys got kidnapped by those bugs. This one was a tricky story, it had to tie series 1 with series 2, but the fact of Pintail making contact with Hammerhead and doing her request wasn't a big enough story to fill 48 pages. Yet because of that fact we didn't have the full 48 pages to use on a big adventure.
As said, Tamara and I will give this chapter the once over and Tamara wants to give the last 4 pages a go in her own style. Which reminds me, I should mail her the necessary info.
Apart from that, some time next week I'll do a bit of shuffling, putting this story in front of series 2, where it belongs, chronologically speaking.
And then, well then, I don't know. Haven't spoken to Nihal yet. Though you can probably count on it 2.4 won't be starting this year. But you never know what happens next and I will be working on separate little projects myself. Just keep on eye on this site, add our LJ page to your friends list or check out my personal DeviantArt account. |
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[Oct. 13th, 2008|10:36 pm] |
Page 47, one more to go.
Notes on this page, another dialog page where the dialog came before the drawing. Trying to keep a page interesting when only 2 people are talking can be challenging, though I did have facial expressions to go by, relating to what was being said. Talking about what's being said, yeah I know, that last remark is kinda below the belt (quite literally when you think about it). But, though we like to make fun of everything and everyone if we can help it, we are after all female comic book artists. And with the lack of the Nicandus tribe in this story, I had to do something to draw attention to that fact. Though my gals are still a lot nicer than those of Nihal ;)
As for the rest of the page, I hope you think it's funny, seeing as I came up with it all by my lonesome. As I was writing it, and I probably shouldn't be telling you this, it cracked me up. Now it's never a good sign if you laugh at your own jokes, but in my defense, I was alone at the time. |
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[Oct. 6th, 2008|01:46 pm] |
The reason I was late this time, was because I didn't like 'the new outfit'. As it happens that outfit is some 18 years old and after I had drawn it for this page, I realized just how out of love I had fallen with it. I decided to leave it at first, as I won't be drawing this character a lot for the time being, but in the end my perfectionism won and I spent most of yesterday redoing that part of the page.
The joke in the top bar (I had to watch an Sex & the City episode to get it correct. Pure punishment of course ;) was one Nihal and I had come up with end of last year, though for a while I wasn't sure if I was going to keep it in. The sort of humor displayed here is a bit more mature than most of the comic. Till a few years ago we felt we should be make the comic suitable for teenagers and up, but personally I stopped caring about that cause lets face it, we are waaaaaaaaayyy past those teenagers that once got the idea for this comic and some of the storyline has always been rather grownup (I mean, a troop of women asking men to come round to make babies?) so why beat around the bush?
Hence the last piece of dialog, you most have wondered, right? |
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