Please note that because I have reordered the story a bit since this version, this version of the comic will reveal some things to you that aren’t necessarily spoilers, but the information won’t come up until much later in the current version of the comic. This is especially true for the information in the Prologue. Most of the original Chapter One is just the stuff that happens right before the current Chapter One begins. Therefore, if you don’t want anything to be ruined for you, I suggest not reading the original pages. Just look at the art and read my ramblings about the changes.
Now that I’m done with final exams and settled back at home, I can start writing these longer posts about my old comic pages again. So, here we go!
Here begins the second installment of my series on the original pages of this comic book. Personally, I really like the layout of this page and how it tells the story, but the art is just not up to par and that is what I want to talk about with this page. Between the first and second drafts of my comic, my drawing ability did not change much. However, I created several techniques to improve my drawings, which I now use in the second draft.
For instance, I believe I mentioned before the difference between how I inked my comic then and now. On this page, I used my Micron pens to ink the lines. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my Micron pens. However, when I use them to ink a page I’m so focused on making sure I stay exactly on the pencil lines that it seems like all the life has been sucked out of my drawings when I’m done. Nowadays I draw all my pages in pencil, scan them into the computer, and use a program to darken the pencil lines to black. Let’s compare two drawings of Durilda.
I did, of course, redesign the look of most of the characters in-between the two drafts, but these two images also illustrate how much the different style of inking influenced my drawings. Just look at her hair. The original drawing looks stiff and fake while the new design looks far more realistic. The rougher look of the pencil also makes the new version of the comic feel more medieval to me.
One of my original templates: Durilda and Diamonda’s Head Template
The other thing that I did to improve the quality of my drawings involved creating templates for every character. I used templates for their heads in the original comic, but that didn’t keep my characters looking consistent enough. When you see more of the original comic pages, you’ll notice that each person starts to look less and less like themselves every time I draw them. I have always had problems with drawing the same characters consistently so these templates help to fix that problem. On the above comic page, you can see that the girl character does not look consistent. For instance, her shoulders are much wider in the third, fourth, and fifth panels than in her first and final appearances on the page.
Well, that’s all I have to say for now about this page. I’ve covered a lot of the major changes I’ve made to the comic within these first two posts and so the rest of the posts will likely be much shorter.
Until next time, enjoy looking at these images I’ve included below of my templates that I currently use for Durilda and feel free to ask questions.
The Legend of the Forgotten Isle 