Swole Mates Page 01 (Inked) (Patreon)

During the drafting phase, my main goal is to ensure that "big picture" visual elements such as composition, overall panel and page layout look and feel good when reading left to right. Generally I settle for "good enough" at this stage and there usually are still character placeholders left around to "block" out their positions in a scene. I don't go for "perfect" yet at this stage because I don't want to fall into the trap of "development hell", something you'll often hear in the gaming industry.

Now that I'm done drafting the 16 pages and cleared them in the "first pass", the second pass involves returning back to such roughly sketched, character placeholders like the one in the first panel above. These need to be more clearly defined before they can be inked. The time taken varies wildly depending on the subject and its complexity.

After about 3-4 hours, the first page is inked. The character elements have been "masked" out (white underlayer) so that they are primed for easy selection during the color application phase. Until all the visual elements, including colors and background are fully done, then will I start adding in the dialogues and speech bubbles.

My goal is to have the first page launched hopefully by the end of January 2022. The colored versions will be exclusively for Patreon supporters, while the "free" versions will be primarily grayscale and of a lower resolution.

Thank you again for your patience, I'm really happy to finally start the inking phase, and thank you for being a part of this project. Happy holidays!

Snares
Dec 2021