Behind the scenes of Volume One

I'm not allowed to show the actual pages, so here are some unfinished ones, thumbnails, layouts, color tests and whatnot :)

I only ask that you don't repost or share them elsewhere. I'm doing this as a little token of appreciation to my patrons <3

..starting out drawing these pages, I realized I had no idea how to draw backgrounds, what perspective even was, and somewhere along the lines I had forgotten how colors work lol.. so the first pages ended up looking very.... post-apocalyptic xD

so I was all "wait wait, we can't publish this crap, plz lemme recolor chapter one!" which was... an improvement, but still not where I wanted it to be xD but at least the palette improved

^ these are enlarged versions of color thumbnails I did of the chapters. Here's one example of how that usually went:

(hidden Bone tribute in 4.06 >u> )

Also, I felt it was ok ish to show you guys the layouts for this part of this scene, since it's a scene I think many of you are already familiar with from the written novel, where Sam discovers that Spike has green eyes. ...which you also saw in the header image of this post xD That one's very close to being a finished page, but there's still quite a bit to be done with it..

...actually not sure if I'm allowed to share that at all  o__o'

..or any of this  . _ . 

hm..

*shrugs in rebel*

^ "with only a touch of self mockery"

(honestly I don't get why I somehow saw Saunders as "thicc" here.. all I see are that his shoulders are dislocated lol.. ouch.. Cue another redraw xD )

Real talk though, I'm actually glad volume one isn't published yet and that I asked for more time to do this thing properly. Publishing it the way it looked would have been an absolute disaster. Seriously. I have a vision for it, and that was definitely not it. The page layouts, sure! But not the ... well... everything after the thumbnailing xD

I have not stopped working on this though! I'm sketching layouts/storyboards for the rest of the series, with volume two near completion, and in between I'm working on learning the skills I feel I need to get at least decent at to not fekk up volume one, which is ironically helping me be less of a stubborn perfectionist. I just don't want to rush this and risk publishing something that feels like... selling a gold-painted dry turd as a lucky charm... o _ o   if that makes sense?

Cuz I tried too hard with the first attempts and lost the vision I had, and somehow the perfectionism made it look ... really bad. No for real, most of it was shit. When you see what I actually have envisioned for this series, you'll agree xD 

But anyways... fairly pleased with the layouts anyhow. Scene setup, timing/pacing etc.. just not the majority of the artwork, and certainly not the backgrounds and coloring.

yet. >u>

But asking for more time ended up being a wise decision. So I'm glad I trusted my gut on this one.

I'm still perpetually touched and grateful for the incredible patience of everyone who's waiting for it, and the fact that there even are people waiting for it <3 

Thanks for being a constant motivational boost <3

And please know that your pledges help me out a ton as well <3 

*hug*

I hope you found this post interesting though :) I know I always like seeing the process of how comic book artists work, so I hoped it might be a bit interesting for you guys too :)