tonycliff

No Rulers

Some lessons carve a groove in your brain. For whatever reason, this is one of those for me. In animation school, one of our teachers taught us that you might use a ruler to draw straight lines in your roughs, but never use one for your final, clean lines. That is what I have done ever since. Even for the finest, cle...

Timelapse - The Main Top and the Horizon

Want to see some rigging get drawn?

This is an hour's work, sped up to 10 minutes (that's as much as my video editor will let me do). More than anything, I just wanted to test out the process of making timelapse videos.

Featured within:

• Arches drawing paper.
• Sakura Pigma brush pen, "fine." 2021-03-24 23:25:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Basically the Same

…in case you were wondering how the pages from this post turned out.

For the pirate page, I drew the bottom panels on another sheet (which you can see in a post from last week). For the dancing image, I wanted to mess around with inks and w...

Tips Two Ways: Research and Dip Pen Nibs

Quickly: Dip Pen Nibs

I was experimenting with dip pen nibs earlier this week and having mixed results, so I asked Twitter for some pro tips. 2021-03-20 23:04:36 +0000 UTC View Post

First Week of Inking!

Exciting! The pages are turning out better than I expected. I’m using a combo of Pentel brush pen, Microns, a Pigma fine brush pen, black watercolours, and my trusty ol’ Prismacolor Ebony Black pencils. It has been fun and rewarding, so far. I tried using pen nibs, and they put down nice lines on the Strathmore Bristol, b...

Inking Begins!

Not an easy page to begin with, but I wanted to try that watercolour effect. It’s not as masterful as I’d like, but I just need more practice. The colour will hide a lot of the gracelessness. :)

There are a few spots I would re-draw, and I’m making a note to add kelp dangling from the scythe, but otherwise this is...

Power Hug

Above: favourite panels from this week’s batch of work.

Still roughing in Chapter One of DD4, which has come out to 45 pages. Only six pages left to do, which I’m hoping to accomplish next Monday. After that? Well, probably a little bit of experimentation, then it’s time to start drawing these pages.

WHAT IF

A quick test, wondering if I should try a mixed media approach for the “line art.” My lightweight, bright white drawing paper takes watercolour better than I expected. It warps, but probably not so much that it would interfere with the scan. 🙂👍

Progress on Roughing-In.

Above, a select few roughed-in pages for DD4 (as before, apologies that they’re so hard to see). This is my favourite part of the process, I think. At this point, each page has so much potential. Nothing is set in stone. Every sketchy line could turn out a hundred different ways. And yet, at the same time, unlike with thumb...

Making Connections and Communicating Subconsciously

Years ago, I heard this great recording on CBC Radio 2, where the host reviewed a Mozart work passage-by-passage, pointing out the repeated themes and talking about how mathematics informed (or could be rationalized onto) the music. I took away a strong feeling that the principles that are used to build music apply in similar...

Ouch.

I’m just extremely pleased with this pose. That is all.

Learning from the Best

I'm in the process of roughing out and/or blocking in the first chapter, getting a few pages down every day. Unfortunately, it's a part of the process that doesn't give me much of anything to post, both because the drawings are so fuzzy and because that blue line doesn't photograph well (by design).

So I read some comic...

The Seal is Broken!

They may not look very glamorous*… yet… but I have roughed/"pencilled" out the first three pages of DD4. Going straight from the thumbnail, I have "broken ground" on the clean line art.

This is only really post-worthy because it is emotionally significant. I was talking to a friend today—let's say "Suzie"...

BOAT INTERMISSION

I was having a hard time progressing on the first few DD4 pages, I think because I didn't know my boat situation well enough. So I took some time out to do some boat research and make some choices in those regards. To paraphrase Stephen King from ON WRITING, often writer's block is simply a manifestation of a lack of research...

Thumbnails and Roughs!

Over the past week or so, I thumbnailed out the first "chapter" of DD4, doing a lot of writing as I went. It was pretty successful!

I'm going to take the entire first chapter to final art before continuing with the rest of the book, as an experiment. I'm scared about this approach, because it's different, but it offers ...

How Often Should I Post?

Like it says on the tin: how often would you like to see posts on this Patreon campaign?

Seems like Patreon sends out an email every time I post something, so assuming you are in full control of when/if you receive those emails, and it's not a nuisance, do you have an opinion on how of...

Working Methods: to Fight or to Embrace?

A while back, I wrote a series of posts talking about how much I would like to change my method of working. Now, I’m sitting down to make progress on this comic and I find myself proceeding in a very familiar fash...

Costume Design Continues!

Thinking about Mom a little. Born and raised on an Ionian island, she eventually met a visiting Englishman, fell in love, and accompanied him back to his family Estate. She feels affinity for both her homeland and her adopted home, and has invested herself in thorough adaptation. She wants the same for her daughter.

So ...

Costume Designs for Young Delilah

This was frustrating for a few days: I knew I'd need a few different costumes, and I had a bunch of reference at my disposal, but I didn't know exactly where to aim my efforts.

After a bunch of semi-productive but aimless sketching, I thought to set my story beats in order and consider what type of costume I'd need for ...

Is it bad form to go with your first ideaaaarrrrr?

The design for the Pirate Captain is challenging my design discipline. At various points in my education, I was told to "never go with your first idea." Get your first idea out of the way, then keep working until you find something more interesting or innovative. Amass a panorama of options, then pick the best.

But I du...

Back on the Design Wagon

The purpose of the "Character Design" process is to create drawings of characters to which I can refer as I am working on pages. Primarily, this is so I can keep everyone looking consistent as I go, and if everyone looks consistent, the book is easier to read. Ideally, readers are not distracted by having to stop and ask, "wa...

A Small January Message

Two things:

First: a big, big Welcome to everyone who has joined as a patron over the last month or so. You've all given me so many reasons to be optimistic about this endeavour and about this work, and I can only hope to repay you for that gift.

Second: a request! A weakness of m...

The "Scene/Sequel" Writing Approach

THIS WEEK I have been putting my story notes through a writing process originally referred to as the “SCENE / SEQUEL” approach. If you are a writer and are curious about new ways to approach story-making, I recommend just giving ...

See the Scenic Sights!

Been trying a few different landscape and environment studies!

• The first two: I'm making a few studies based on photos that my dad took during my parents' honeymoon in the Eastern Mediterranean back in the late '70s. My intention is to directly reference at least a few of these photos in panels (I'll ask if he min...
  2021-01-18 23:58:06 +0000 UTC View Post

The Value of Studies

To shake out the cobwebs, I've been doing a few studies from research images. The first, above, is from Edward Dodwell's Views and descriptions of Cyclopian or Pelasgic remains in Greece and Italy. The second is f...

Current Madness Level:* Claire Danes in "Homeland."

I said I was going to try new things, so I'm trying new things.

The current First Step in Making A Book is to accumulate a denuded forest's worth of assorted notes (a small number of which are pictured below). They are often written in no particular order, often conflicting, and generally a mess, and that's a good t...