Ivy & Pine Process: More Thumbnails [03.15] (Patreon)

Well that was a really long week apologies for the silence around here, this part of the process is always tedious an not very exciting. I've got thumbnails for the first 14ish pages of Pine & Ivy now. Possibly more but I'm not 100% sold on them yet.

I've noticed there's a weird part of this process where every time I start a creative project I immediately forget all of the things that happen along the way.

Since the thumbnails aren't that interesting at this stage I'm also attaching a screenshot of my time tracking app Toggl, that I use to keep myself honest about the work I'm actually doing vs. the work I THINK I'm doing.

Poppy & Oak took the long side of 77 hours to complete. And that's all the time I spent at my desk with a pencil, pen, stylus in hand, but also the time I spent trying to think of how to describe it and put it on gumroad, collecting and naming all the images, formatting the PDF, rearranging the sketchbook pages for the gumroad versions, figuring out where I left that one file, cutting up promo images etc.

It does not include the time I spent thinking about it on a walk, struggling to figure out how to make the front half of it more interesting before I finished it, or even the time spent in the shower (my best thinking place) talking myself through the story initially.

My point in bringing up all this is because I'm always trying to find ways of cutting through the anxious part of the creative process, the part where you're stressed because you don't know how the thing is going to turn out and are worried that it will not be as good as the last thing.

I find it kinda comforting to look at this and remember that some of the work is planned, but much of it isn't. There's a subconscious part of your brain that's working to figure out these creative problems as you go and you simply have to keep working  on what you know how to solve and know that the rest of it will all fall into place eventually. 

I'm hoping in the future I can be smarter and remind myself that never once have I figured out a comic all in one sitting and then worked all the way through until completion. It's always tempting for me to look at this and think "77 hours? That's two weeks! I could finish a comic in two weeks if I tried!" and then I remind myself that there's a lot of unrecorded time in that process which cannot be accelerated, that's just sitting with an idea until you figure it out.

That's my monday rambling, I hope you're all doing well! <3 Thank you for supporting this clumsy process and I'll be sharing some rough sketch pages soon!

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Happy Friday everyone! This week certainly got the better of me, partially because of a certain mischievous cat in my life that decided to eat the most toxic plant in the garden. Thankfully she's doing fine and is back home from the pet hospital.

Finding myself stuck in the car waiting outside the clinic without my sketchbook I decided to try to sketch out comic thumbnails on a hardware store receipt. At least it got the process going. I hope to have thumbnails and for this comic this week.

I'm starting to appreciate that no creative project is ever made these l under ideal circumstances, though. The writing process is unavoidably clumsy and that I rarely figure out the whole comic at once and invariably add and change things as I go.

So you lovely people have the dubious privilege of watching me struggle. 😅 I will try my best to soften my ego to handle the humbling experience of figuring out the work in front of you all!

I'm interested in trying to figure out how to fit more character development into something that's truly a vehicle for celebrating sexy sex. For the record, I like drawing porn that's just porn, but I also want practice and improve other storytelling skills.

I hope you enjoyed reading my ramblings and have great weekend!
💖
Winton