Shenzhen Fast - More Rough Work! (Patreon)

My workflow lately has been to wake up early (like 6:30am), meditate, and then work on my tablet for awhile before I head to work! This has proven to be one of the most stable periods of time for me (compared to anything I can manage to get done after work/chores/socializing). 

Now that the 2018 "two year in review" comic is done, and the Self Care zine is ready to go to print, I'm sinking my teeth back into Shenzhen Fast. 

I spent this week moving my rough thumbnails into Clip Studio. I've dabbled with it before, but I think this is the first time I'm going to try to use their native "comic layout" tool. It's got some interesting features, I just haven't quite been able to leverage them yet! So this will be the first time :)

This comic is very different from anything I've ever done before, in terms of writing. I think it's going to be very text-heavy, and I'm still working out what that text will be. It will also be very reference heavy... my task next week will be to go through all of my photos and do some additional research, pulling out reference that I can use to base my drawings on and pasting them in where I need them. It's made my really sympathetic to anyone who does comics regularly that rely on a lot of reference. I think this is actually harder than making something up wholesale :0

I'm also going back to this tracker:

With which I've had... mixed success! I LOVE the board above it, where I write down what was primarily occupying me for a given month, which I have found helps me to forgive myself when I look back on the year and am wondering why I didn't finish this-or-that. This daily tracker helps me to track EFFORT (rather than outcome) towards my goals. The boxes above it are just a little visual progress bar of what I'm trying to do. 

I used to also put red 'X's on days that I didn't get to complete anything, but I found that a bit demoralizing so I'm going to do without. When I miss days, there's usually a good reason that I don't want to beat myself up over /:)

That's my process update :D More to come!