The premise is as follows: Xob (pronounced SAW) is an ancient lightning entity, that has been passed from person to person throughout the centuries. The power originally was used to protect the Hmong people of Southeast Asia. Tracy Lor, the current emissary of the Xob power, has decided to buck tradition and use these abilities to protect the world.
Think “if Buffy were in the Marvel Cinematic Universe” and you’ll have a good place to step into this original and fun story. The first three issues made up the first arc, showcasing Kyrun’s incredible imagination and love of the medium; coupled with incredible artists, these opening issues got enough attention that they were republished by the storied Antarctic Press in their anthology series, Exciting Comics from issues 25 through 30. Antarctic Press has been an indie publisher since the ’80s and are partially (nay, very) responsible for the introduction of manga and Japanese-styled comics into the western market. Exciting Comics is a their anthology series aimed at a more youth-focused market, a place where Kyrun’s Xob fits right in (he even got to draw the cover for issue 29!).
But that first arc is done and Xob has more to do, so with the fantastic new artist on the series, Dino Agor, Kyrun is launching Xob and her crew into a new adventure in a series has already become quite well-known and adored in the indie comics community.
What’s better is that there is a tier on this campaign where you can also pick up the first three issues as well (digital or physical), so you can catch up with the story as well. Xob is an incredible book that has taken off in ways that are surprising for Kyrun and very well-deserved! It’s a celebration of superhero comics as well as the underrepresented Hmong culture, blended in a truly entertaining way that sits with or rivals any superhero comics being published by Marvel or DC. I encourage everyone to check it out for all the purchasing options and the goodies you can get, too! The campaign runs through the end of the August, so be sure to get in while you can.
A drawing I did of Xob a few years ago when the series launched. It’s such a great design.
Sketch Friday #94 – Hilary Swank (click for larger version)
I never really pushed my skills with digital art. Generally, the art I’ve madedigitally––to me at least––looks like it was drawn digitally. However, the digital art I’ve seen on the various corners of the internet that I frequent tends to look quite tangible, fooling me to think it was created with traditional media. In these moments, an inner art snob I keep hidden in the back of my brain always pops out to let me know what a fraud I am as an artist. For years, I just quietly agreed.
My digital skills are atrophied for a few reasons. First, I don’t draw very often and, when I do, it’s for the comic which is pencil and ink on paper. Second, the majority of work I use digital art programs for is coloring, and with the comic I currently create it’s a very focused and limited use of these tools. Third, I’m not much of an experimental artist in general. The most adventurous I got was when I was a student, but even then it was mostly trial and error practice pieces. Only rarely do I get the nerve to try new things now on paper. To be fair, when I do it has been rewarding and additive (such as introducing more brush work to my toolset).
I have had the itch to stretch some artistic limbs recently, however. And I wanted to try my hand at working from reference to, first, see if I still could (I still use reference a lot while drawing comics, but it’s mostly small, focused details or posing the body) and, second, to branch out and see what I could do with some the very powerful tools at my disposal with things like the iPad Pro.
An experiment in actual ink wash of my dog. (click for larger version)
So, I decided to do some portraits. I tried thinking of some great faces that would be fun to draw. Out of sheer happenstance, one of the television shows our household was watching recently wasAlaska Daily, a wonderful (now cancelled) show starring Hilary Swank who, I must say, has a very expressive face, which is something I’m drawn to, artistically (pardon the pun). Specifically, her eyes are large and wide and, especially with her character in Alaska Daily, stab out at you from beneath her long dark hair and stone cold countenance.
So, through a Google image search, I found a thumbnail image that captured what I liked about her character and put that off to the side and, in Procreate (ugh; I still hate that name) on the iPad, I roughed out general shapes, shadows, and highlights over the course of a few nights until I felt satisfied enough to call it done.
Again, this kind of drawing is something I haven’t really done with any seriousness in a long while, so I wondered how soon I would get frustrated and call it quits. While it was a process, it was ultimately rewarding to see, bit by bit, a drawing that resembled an actual person emerge. And she emerged not through my usual tools; in fact, I felt that the resemblance really started to pop when I brought in brushes and textures that I either had never used before or rarely so––things like (digital) charcoal and (digital) watercolor for ink wash. It fascinated me to see that I still have a bit of those traditional art skills deep in me somewhere. It is also rewarding on a more superficial level to create a piece of digital art that, to me, doesn’t look like it was necessarily drawn on a tablet. Finally, I appealed to that inner art snob I keep somewhere deep down inside of my brain who, to my surprise, encouraged me to keep going.
Production is moving forward on the sixth and final chapter of Long John. While I feel I’m already behind on my own, perhaps arbitrary, schedule at this point, I’m deep in the thumbnailing stage as we speak.
There has been a bit of discourse lately––specifically on the great comic-creating podcast, Comic Lab––about thumbnails; specifically the observation that, apparently, many people don’t do them at all. What that means is that instead of working out page and panel layouts as small rough drawings to use as a guide for the actual drawing of their pages, many artists just work everything out on the page as they go.
It’s a complicated conversation because there’s no wrong way to make comics (unless, of course, you steal them or hurt someone)––as long as they get done and are the best you can do then it’s all good. Also, I don’t want to go so far as to be prescriptive about process––find the process that actually gets comics made for you, whatever that may be. Just get them done). Prescribing a process would not only be hypocritical of me as a comicker but also as a composition professor. However, especially for narrative comics like comic books and graphic novels (as opposed to classic newspaper style comic strips), thumbnails can be a crucial step to actually get things done, which is the number one issue many people who want to make comics face. In my eyes, thumbnails are as (or more) important than scripting simply due to the visual nature of the medium, and I rely on them heavily.
Typical thumbnails I do for my comics, layingoutfourpages at a time. I usually thumbnail based on the outline I make for the chapter instead of relying on a script first, though it depends on the scene. They are normally pretty loose and sketchy. Click for a larger image of this set from Chapter 5.
Process in academic composition (and just writing in general) has been heavily researched and forms the basis of my pedagogy and my own comicking process. No matter what your process is––and no matter how many steps it takes––it all tends to sort out into four basic (and recursive) stages: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing. To that end, I see thumbnails as distinct from penciling. The act of pencils is where you’re actually laying down guiding lines on what will ultimately become the final page itself. It’s the equivalent of what we call the “drafting” stage of the academic writing process. Drafting is when you’re actively creating what will be the final product.
I view thumbnailing as part of the “prewriting” stage of the process. In prewriting you’re doing everything that gets you ready to start drafting (what composition teacher and theorist, Donald Murray, calls a “signal” to start writing), which includes research, jotting down ideas, and, in the case of making comics, scripting and thumbnailing. This stage isn’t about the final product itself, it’s about getting you to the point where you can honestly say, “I’m ready to make the thing.”
Sometimes my thumbnails canbemoredetailed. For a few of these panels I even worked out the perspective a bit so I could have gone through the process before needing to do it again on the actual page. Thumbnails can be about practice as much as capturing ideas. Click for a larger version of this set from Chapter 5.
I thumbnail every page of each book and when I’m done, I print them out and hang them above my board and use them as a guide for the actual penciling and inking of the pages. “Guide” is an important word here because what ends up on the page can be different from what was thumbnailed, but the point of thumbnails is working out the general ideas be they detailed or really sketchy (I’ve done both). For example, the panel posted for this post is a bit more detailed than other thumbnails I’ve done because I also used it as an opportunity to work on character design. Other times, I’ve used the thumbnail as an opportunity to work out the perspective of a shot so that I had the memory and practice of that when I later sat down to draw the actual page. Most of the time, though, they are very loose and sketchy because I know how to draw Long John, I just need ot know what he’s doing in the panel and where to put him. The point is that you should look at a thumbnail and not say “THAT is the page” or “I’m going to do EXACTLY that”––instead, you look at a completed thumbnail and, with hope, have the confidence to say, “Okay, I can do that” and use it as a launching point for working.
A process is only about getting you to the point where you can get something done. It’s not strict and it’s not a rule––it’s about being kind to yourself and building toward something that you can show the world and be proud of instead of taking a running leap off the edge and hoping you land on the other side. While you can sometimes––even often––reach the other side that way, it’s never a guarantee. That’s where preparation can come in handy and be there as a tool for when you need it.
