Hesitant progress is being made

I'm plugging along on A Thousand Miles of Wind, and it's going quite well. I am behind on my planned schedule, because of family trouble and a persistent and quite incapacitating neck-ache that strikes me at odd intervals - and since I much prefer a whole neck to a whole finished project, I've been forced to slow down.

But I'm not defeated yet!

Here's the first inked page of the comic - it's been scanned in two pieces, because it's drawn in A3-size and I only have an A4 scanner, so there's a strange break right in the middle of the image, right across the stairs, but ignore that part; when I scan this for real, it'll be on my school's A3-scanner.



This took me.... about five-six hours to ink properly, I guess? The leaves didn't take as much time as I feared they would, but it was still slow going, considering the architecture in general, and the stairs in particular.

A Thousand Miles of Wind - bits and bobs

Interesting fact of the day: storyboarding eats my brain.

It is the most important part of comic-creation, and while it might not be as time-consuming as actually drawing the pages, it is hard work - it tends to leave me feeling as if I've turned my brain inside out.

So why don't I show you a bit of what A Thousand Miles of Wind looks like right now? Here's the storyboard for pages three and four:


Usually, I write a plot-summary first, and then I write a proper script, then I do the storyboard, and then finally I revise the script to fit the storyboard - with A Thousand Miles of Wind, I did my plot-summary the usual way, but I've storyboarded and written the script at the same time, piecing everything together as I go along.

... It's all very scribbly on the page, but it's enough for me to know what's going to go in each panel and what it's going to look like.

Speaking of what goes in the panels, here are some background characters - only the old lady has any lines in the script - four of them, I think.



I just wrapped up the entire storyboard for the comic - it ended up being thirty-two pages, two pages over my planned maximum limit, but I am pretty happy with it, all things considered.

Now comes the most work-intensive part - actually drawing the thing.