#because 1. comics+screentoning which i do almost never | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

maiji · 6 years

Photo

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs (Part 4)

Previous process and wip documentation: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Read the pages for part 4 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post)

This is a rare glimpse into how I tackle action scenes!! It’s rare because I rarely do it. Action is honestly one of the hardest things for me to draw, and as I’m sure I’ve said here many times before, I have the utmost respect for shounen manga artists whose works are steeped in them. It’s a really impressive skill to be able to do it well - to create a cinematic, dynamic sense of motion that doesn’t dissolve into visual confusion and incomprehensibleness.

This was as interesting for me to document my thought process as it hopefully is for you to read and discover what the heck was going on in my head (a big honking mess, that’s what). There was much screaming and crying while working on this hahaha.

Aside from Hokushin’s beautiful face (lmao), Part 4 is packed with things I don’t usually draw. Specifically: action, things taking place in the dark, and corpses. For things taking place in the dark, I heavily referenced the dark room rounds from the tournament for Genkai’s successor in volume 4, because it involves action and Togashi used practically zero screentones in it and I didn’t want to either. For the dead rokurokubi, I looked up photos of skulls and drew on my memory of various horror comics I’ve read, like Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. (At one point I also googled photos of rotting skulls, but TBH I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time looking at detailed photographic references of corpse and decomposing bodies for obvious reasons, especially as I usually work on these comics late at night before I go to bed. The last thing I need is for images to get stuck in my brain when I’m sleeping.)

The rest of this post focuses mainly on action and redrawing things.

Script

The original script for this section actually ran a little further in the story than what’s shown here, but in order to convey the sequence effectively, I ended up stretching a number of key moments out and have booted the later ones to be completed for Part 5.

Thumbnails

In the thumbnails above, you’ll notice quite a few are redraws of the same page as I struggle - pages 31-33 repeat immediately in the rows after, page 37 was attempted three times, etc.

Page count growth

A script of 8 pages turned into 10 pages at the thumbnail stage, and then ultimately netted out at 12 pages in the final version that was posted. As you can see, effective action sequences generally take me more pages than I think they will. With an exception (documented below).

Thumbnailing/storyboarding things out should theoretically minimize the page count creep! But because I tend to treat my thumbnails as such a loose stage (to avoid later disappointment when I can’t recreate it as nicely in the final page), I rush through them. Unfortunately, action sequences require me to think a lot more carefully through the scene as a director - staging the shot and the experience of the motion and coordinating people’s limbs and all the items in the scene more carefully and whatnot than, say, just a couple of heads talking. So inevitably, when I rush to get ahead to the finished pages, that’s when I realize it doesn’t flow as well as I was imagining (or not really imagining it).

As a result, the actual “live” pages turn into constant mental checks and runthroughs of the panels, realizing it’s not flowing as well as I’d like, and restarting. By restarting I mean mentally reenvisioning the sequence, sometimes quickly doodling alternate thumbnails (I didn’t bother in this case, so I have no alternate examples from after I started redrawing), and erasing and redrawing and adding pages. I guess I could probably avoid this if I just stop and put more time into thinking through the thumbnails… but it seems like I end up revising no matter what. So, constant juggling forever.

The evolution of the key action sequence

In my head, the main sequence was:

Hokushin lands.

He gets up and feels something in the dark.

He discovers the rokurokubi corpse.

He turns around to discover a swarm of hands in the dark!

Ahhh hands!! Ahhhh!!

Then he gets sealed and stringed up. End action sequence, back to people standing - or hanging out, I guess - and talking.

I roughed out my panels and pencils for all the pages following my thumbnails instead of doing one page at a time, because I’m impatient and also tend to think of all the pages as a wholistic narrative and then drilling down to the details on each page (big to small perspective).

As I went back over each page and detailing the base pencil art more, I began noticing more issues with the flow of the action and the pagination. Things started really shifting and changing at point 4. Here’s essentially how my thinking played out as I drew:

He turns around to discover a swarm of hands in the dark! - WAIT he just sees the corpse and then turns around? I should have him sense something is behind him first to get you more into his head and experience. OK, insert another panel of him sensing and whatever. THEN he can turn around. This is also good because I can erase the panel where he’s turning around and give the first panel a bit more room so I can draw more of his body in the first one and make his startled falling back motion a bit clearer.

HANDS!! AHHH HANDS!! - Wait, I have hands coming from BEHIND him and don’t effectively show that before they just appear to grab his hair. Which I suppose they do, but when I review panel flow it seems jarring, like a poorly directed cut and something was missing. Let’s try adding some hands behind him in the panel where he looks shocked. Never mind, this looks dumb and he looks dumb and basically seems even more like an afterthought. Ooh, better idea: let’s have him dodge the first wave of hands. That’ll be kinda cool and more interesting. And then he can land and be like OH SHIT MORE HANDS FROM EVERY DIRECTION

Ahhh hands!! Ahhhh!! - Hmm, maybe I should add a page here to better capture his dodge sequence. So the panels will be hands, dodge, and then the next page is he lands, then he realizes there are more hands behind him. How crouched down should he be? I guess in the later pages I basically drew him in a practically fully upright position… eh.. Working this out...

*starts drawing extra page* … Mmm, thinking about this again, no. It stretches things out too much. Now it feels like he lands, the new page adds an extra pause that could be interpreted unconsciously as he thinks he’s ok, then he gets attacked by hands from behind. But that’s ridiculous because he’s a rokurokubi, he KNOWS the hands can come back around or whatever, and he’s a good and cautious fighter, the extra pause doesn’t seem to fit. Thinking this through, basically I need it to feel faster - he lands (typed “he hands” there first time around haha), and he doesn’t have a chance to react again before it turns out hands are coming from all directions. So, I’ll keep it to the one original page and draw the reaction to the sound of the hands coming from everywhere. Done. (one of the few instances where I reduce page count in an action sequence)

Oh yeah, I forgot about his arms and legs getting sealed. Er, add another page. OK done.

For comparison, below are photos of the pencils for pages 35 and 36 before the above process:

... and after:

Redraws

I generally try to avoid redrawing an entire image/page from scratch if I don’t have to. Even if I don’t like the overall drawing, I’m still terrified of effing up the parts that turned out OK the first time around. However, sometimes you gotta know when to cut your losses and start anew and save yourself time and grief (I’m definitely still learning how to know lol). I do have a few strategies to ease my mind - I often take photos of something before I proceed to the next step or change direction (which is where many of these wip photos come from). This helps calm me down because at least now I have a reference for what it was before I took the leap of faith to move forward. Another option is to just leave it and draw on a completely new blank page.

Page 37, where Hokushin is getting his head pulled back by the hands, was an incredibly rare instance of the pencils for a page turning out almost exactly how I wanted on the first try, so I was loathe to redraw or adjust it. This means I basically forced myself to shuffle things before and after to accommodate not having to change it.

On the flipside, page 40, where the shot backs away so you can see Hokushin tied up with the hands, is one I full-on redrew from scratch. I was having a hard time with his pose and how all the hands were wrapped around him and how everything was actually working. I wasn’t happy with the drawing the first time around, but inked it anyways to see if I would like it better the next morning (sometimes this works, to wait and look at it with a distanced frame of mind). Spoiler, I didn’t lol. However, the process of inking the entire thing helped me better hone in on what parts I liked and didn’t like, so when I sketched it out again I was better able to adjust.

This photo shows the original (with the words REDRAW :/ at the bottom), a sketch I did trying to figure out his posture and where all the hands were/how the wrapping actually worked, and then the pencils of the redraw.

Final miscellaneous things

The end page of Part 4 is once again a last minute addition that resulted because I was facing a blank page (again!) after adding the page where Hokushin gets his arms and legs sealed. I changed the spoken line multiple times. First it was a line that’s been pushed to the upcoming part 5, then it was the “You certainly found my “treasure room” quickly” (that’s on the previous page). In the end, I just wrote a completely new line for it. It seemed to work better with the panel and closing off this part at a good point.

Last but not least, I somehow broke my pen inking this part lmao. Fortunately it’s a Muji pen so I only broke the tip off the cartridge somehow, probably in my intense scribbling/shading at some point. It’s not super clear in the photo but if you look closely at the point you’ll see this thin line coming out of the tip of the pen - it was this metal filament that basically scratched the paper without any ink coming out. I had to make an emergency run to two Mujis, neither of which had the black refills, so I ended up just buying two pens with similar thicknesses. Worst case scenario, I would have just inked with my blue cartridge, since the scanning would turn everything black and white anyways... the original pages would have just looked weird.

Phew! Hopefully it worked out and isn’t a totally incoherent mess!

#yu yu hakusho #comics #fanart #hokushin #wip #process #drawings #yyh north bound #art by maiji/mary huang #action sequences #redrawing #art supplies

5 notes · View notes

maiji · 6 years

Photo

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs (Part 2)

See Part 1 process and wip documentation

Read the pages for part 2 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post)

As a story progresses, I tend to become more comfortable with jumping ahead and around in my so-called process. This is mainly because the idea of getting deeper into the action is exciting and I want to get to drawing the pages as quickly as possible. The downside is that it usually results in a lot of “oops” and rework on what was supposed to be a final page.

Here you’ll see that script/pagination/thumbnailing and final pages are all starting to drift even more than in Part 1.

The (last version of the) script

Earlier versions were even more point form and incoherent with typos. But, it only needs to capture enough that I can recognize key actions, points of dialogue, the mood, things to draw in the panels, etc. A few specific items to point out:

“[new part 2]”: The script originally had no exposition on rokurokubi - it went straight to Hokushin telling Raizen he was leaving. It occurred to me later, after I’d started thumbnailing, that inserting a few pages of storytelling narrative right here would help to further solidify the kaidan (traditional Japanese ghost story) effect and mood. More importantly, it creates a baseline reference for what the reader will know about rokurokubi for the purposes of this story. I was lucky that Part 1 and Part 2 were cut neatly enough that this wouldn’t be jarring.

I’m still not entirely happy with the text for this section, mainly the “features of note” about rokurokubi. Not just the fact that it’s oversimplification and slight adaptation of actual Japanese folklore - which can’t be avoided unless I want to write a historical essay here. I’m mainly not super keen on how each of the three items has been phrased. It’d be nice to make the three points more parallel in terms of length, but I couldn’t seem to edit, increase the number of points (by splitting them up), or reorder it effectively without negatively impacting other aspects of pacing and information reveal. More points would draw out the pages longer than I wanted, and some points were clearly sub to other points. The final here is the “good enough” version. JUST GET IT DONE ALREADY SO THAT IT CAN GO OUT INTO THE WORLD.

Sooo many word choice changes. The biggest one, done at the last second, was “They are almost always female” to “They are rarely male”. Other phrasings I debated - “They are very rarely male”, “They are almost never male”, etc. Lemme tell ya, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds… Anyways, the main reason for this was because after I drew it and ran the text through my head, the originally-intended juxtaposition of Hokushin on this page with the word “female” felt too subtle. I felt it would create a brief moment of cognitive dissonance that didn’t serve the flow of the story, so I changed it to create emphasis on the same gender instead with the rationale that it will flow more smoothly and allow the reader to focus their attention on the fact “males are very rare” more than the mental hiccup of processing the juxtaposition. DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?? It made sense in my head.

Anyhow, I’m sure there are people who will disagree with many of the decisions I’ve made, but at least you can see what I was trying to do.

Thumbnails

As mentioned, these thumbnails were done BEFORE I decided to insert the exposition at the beginning.

The first two rows on the left hand page are actually the same set of pages - you can see little arrows pointing down or to the right whenever I’m dissatisfied with a thumbnail and attempt to redraw it.

WIPs

I really like how Hokushin turned out in the last panel here; I like the pencils more than the final inked version. It’s also another example of changing text up to the last second. In case it’s hard to make out, it says (along with what happened to them in the final):

First thought bubble: Ugh, whatever… (moved to the next page, seemed to work better as the end exclamation for this sequence of thoughts before he turns his attention to something else)

Over Hokushin’s head: Aaaargh (moved into the thought bubble)

Second thought bubble: He’s not my responsibility anyways! (no change)

First arrow: *already feeling bad* (no change)

Second arrow: *too responsible* (dropped, since a previous panel already said “too responsible”. Too redundant)

Next to Hokushin: All he did was tie me up in a tree (no change)

The above panel “And at night...” was a thrilling and scary thing for me lmao. I don’t usually tackle large patches/fills of black, since many of my comics are scribbly in style (pencils, hatching) or colour. I’m too lazy for screentones, traditional or digital. It’ll be interesting as parts of the story coming up will involve poorly lit/dim/dark spaces. I’ve been reviewing how other artists handle it, particularly those with styles driven by pure-ink or minimalist type approaches. Two immediate examples from Yu Yu Hakusho that I’ve been going back to are the dark room fights during Genkai’s successor trials (I’ve taken a similar approach here), and the haunted bedroom case in volume 19. Hardcore cross-hatching seems like a likely route, but that freaks me out when I have to do it over faces. I’d like to minimize or avoid screentoning out of principle, but I still want to create a clear mood, so we’ll see how it goes...

This was my view while inking this page - holding the book in one hand while inking Hokushin with the other. Using the more freehand, sketchy inking style for this comic was so helpful in terms of reducing my inking anxiety and allowing me to work faster.

It’s always great when you can find a reference for period armor (because I find armor very difficult) that is so close to the pose you’re already drawing. There are some small differences - for example, Hokushin’s head is turned more to the right; his left arm is turned and raised more as he’s pulling the sword upwards. But it’s close enough.

Also, spotlight on a few of the books I’ve referenced over the course of working on North Bound in general and this part specifically.

Clockwise from top left:

日本服飾史女性編 and 男性編 (History of clothing/costume in Japan female and male editions). This marvelous set of books highlights Japanese fashion throughout history. I’ve actually been referencing these photos for a long time before I ever picked up these books - you can see them at the Costume Museum’s website here, alongside helpful line drawings and translations of some of the details. But the books allow me to see a lot more detail.

Hokusai manga vol 1 (this book is published as part of a set of 3). Sketches by Hokusai. This one focuses on “The life and manners of the day” and includes drawings of youkai, including rokurokubi, as well. You can check out the drawings online at places like The Pulverer Collection Online Catalogue.

Action references!! Real Action Pose Collection 02 (focuses on sword fights) and my favourite Samurai & Ninja Action Scene Collection. Not used as much in Long Limbs, but was helpful in some of the other chapters. The time frame is really much later than what I need for ideal clothing references, but it’s helpful for things like movement.

Kekkaishi volume 32. SPOILER a key flashback takes place about 500 years ago, which is actually a few centuries off give or take from but at least it’s closer than the Edo period. I’ve been looking at it for houses, some clothing.

Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix - Civil War parts 1 and 2. I reference this so much while working on North Bound in general. It has scenes with peasants and commoners and some appropriate street and interior environments, not just stuff focused on the aristocracy or warrior classes. Just have to remember that they flipped all the artwork in the English version lol

Bunch of Yu Yu Hakusho manga and anime references from the end of the series, mostly for Raizen, the kudakusushi and just to check against things he or Hokushin said. The actual clothing and environments are not helpful at all lol

Last minute edits

After I posted, I discovered a few mistakes (of course). I used to freak out a lot and drop everything to fix it. Now I just sigh and laugh (and still freak out a little bit, depending on the mistake) and then decide what’s important enough to fix and what is like, “Oh well, whatever, move on with my life”.

I feel that seeing other artists share their frustrations and mistakes helps a lot of people feel better about it when they realize IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME TO EVERYONE (including professionals. There are errors like this in professionally published series, like Yu Yu Hakusho, too). YOU’RE NOT ALONE.

So, these ones bugged me enough that I quickly redrew them on the computer.

#yu yu hakusho #comics #fanart #hokushin #process #wip #art supplies #sketches #art by Maiji/Mary Huang #yyh north bound #raizen

6 notes · View notes