Manic Pixel Dream Girl 1 drawings: second draft

I’m currently in the later stages of completing Manic Pixel Dream Girl 3, so it’s a nice time to look back at MPDG 1 and see how much my process has (or hasn’t) changed since then.

In this post I’ll talk about the second draft of drawings I did for MPDG 1. In case you don’t remember or you didn’t read it, you can find my post on the first draft here. And now, onward!

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My “complete” second draft for MPDG 1 actually only goes as far as… ALMOST the end, but not quite what the end ended up being. So there are seven “frames,” the first of which is above. I’m really impressed with my own organization… Since this, I’ve gotten a lot LESS strict with myself about creating “official” drafts. There are good and bad things about that, and I actually want to write a post about that later this week, but for now I will stop being openly agog at my own former drafting abilities.

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The image above is pretty close to how that part was in the final version. Only I originally envisioned my reaction as progressing horizontally, like it is in this draft. That’s kind of a pattern you’ll notice. I’m so used to reading comics in print that it’s easy to forget, in the draft stage, that I’m not drawing for print; I’m drawing for the internet, which means the mechanic by which readers read is scrolling, not page-turning. And as I think I’ve mentioned before, I try to model myself after amazing especially-for-the-internet comics like this one by Hallie Bateman and this one by Emily Carroll. (You should read that second one aaall the way through to see what I’m talking about!)

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Again, the gallery of influential game ladies started out horizontal, and then I changed it to a staircase to fit the verticality of the medium. I do kind of wish that I could have allowed for the image of me looking at the gallery with my back to the reader, though. I like that (which I had in most early drafts) better than me walking down the stairs, but oh well.

To be fair, I probably would have liked the one of me walking down the stairs better if I had done a better job drawing myself walking down the stairs…

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I was originally going to include a much wider range of my own childhood, time-wise, than I did in the final version of MPDG 1. Above I highlighted things about me that were symbols of my “uncool” social status; from left to right, the picture of me is aging from about 8 to about 14. In the end, to keep things clearer and simpler, I made the series more or less chronological, with minimal (and pretty straightforward) flashbacks (flashforwards? I don’t know.). Anyway, the first installment only covered from the age of 8 or so to 11.

It works (I think) that the kinds of things that single you out as being “different” when you’re a child tend to change as you grow up. So what alienated me from my peers at 8 wasn’t necessarily what did it by the time I was 14. Ditto for 18, 22, etc. Categorizing things the way I did above would have smoothed over some of those changes, so I’m glad I didn’t end up doing it that way.

For the record, the final series is organized like this: Part 1 is 2012 then flashback to ~1997-1999 (elementary school); Part 2 is 1999-2002 (middle school); Part 3 is 2012 then flashback to 2002-2006 (high school); and Part 4 will be 2006-nowish (college & after). So structurally, 1/3 and 2/4 are similar, but visually 2/3 and 1/4 are more similar. (Or will be, in the latter’s case.)

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The “prim and perfect” other girls were always more or less how they are above. In the final comic, I added a contextual scene with a couple of them in a bedroom decorated how I imagined “normal” girls’ bedrooms were decorated back in the late nineties. I don’t think I actually ever went over to a “normal” girl’s house as a child (I had one or two close friends who were almost as weird as I was), so it’s all just conjecture, even now…

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I have no idea what the above clearly-not-finished frame was supposed to be!

Oh wait I think I do. When I started writing MPDG (as a whole, not in parts), one of the incidents that stood out in my memory was this: The other girls were always talking about the Spice Girls, and my only exposure to them was when I heard them playing in a mall or a restaurant or whatever. I’m still kind of bewildered as to how the other girls even found out about the Spice Girls, or that liking them was the “right” thing to do as girls.

Anyway, I pretended I liked the Spice Girls, or at the very least that I knew who they were and what their music was like. Once I sat on the end of my bed (I’m pretty sure that’s what’s in the frame above) and wrote in one of those journals that was more of an activity book that a secret of mine was that I was “the Spice Girls’ biggest fan.” I had maybe ever heard like one of their songs maybe twice. It was insane! Why would I lie TO MYSELF to make myself seem girlier or more normal or whatever? But I did.

I struggled for a long time with how I would incorporate that anecdote into MPDG because I felt (and still feel) like it was emblematic of so much of how strong and internalized those young feelings of alienation can be, and were. Finally, I found a way to imply the story without beating the reader over the head with it, or telling it in a blow-by-blow style like I just did in the last couple paragraphs. Here’s what I ended up doing, and I’m really proud of it. I think the particular experience of translating that memory from rambling to subtle has been one of the most important lessons for me in storytelling, and how different comics are as a medium from straight text.

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You’re probably tired of reading this by now, so it’s a good thing I’m at the last panel.

This is again mainly an example of something I ended up changing from primarily horizontal to primarily vertical. I also didn’t include the ending in this draft, which may be because I wasn’t sure what it was going to be yet? Or maybe I was SO sure I didn’t feel the need to storyboard it. I don’t remember.

Anyway, there it is! The second draft (and first FULL draft) of Manic Pixel Dream Girl, Part 1. Hope my lengthy explanations have been helpful rather than irritating and/or tl;dr. Till next time!

What Is Happening: Clip Art & Crustaceans Edition

That’s right: It’s time for another installment of What Is Happening! Here’s some of what I’ve been up to in the last week or so.

1. Uh… Crustaceans: There is seemingly no end to the weird shit I am going to have to learn to draw for this Secret Project I have mentioned a few times before. In this case, it isn’t necessarily that I’m going to have to draw any particular type of shellfish; rather I’m incorporating crustacean-inspired design elements into some stuff, so I’m practicing drawing them to internalize their parts and the ways their anatomy hangs together:

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I drew the above things (two terrifying crab-like creatures and I guess a tail?) based on a couple pictures in one of the amazing clip art books—yes BOOKS—that I discovered this week. Which leads me to the next thing that’s been taking up my time…

2. Clip art books are the best thing that has ever happened to me: They are seriously awesome. First of all they only cost like barely anything because all the pictures contained within are in the public domain. Second of all, they are better than the internet because you can have them all in one place and let’s be honest—for visual references, Google image search is ALMOST ALWAYS totally useless. Unless you’re looking for something incredibly specific.

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Clip art books are definitely better because I can have pictures of unicorns and men coming out of other men’s heads and overly ornate suits of armor and terrifying crabs without going to the trouble of knowing what I’m looking for before I find it.

For practicing drawing random things, and for fast visual inspiration in well-defined categories, I cannot recommend these more.

And also here is this picture of a woman dancing with a bear, which is going to be very useful in my artistic career:

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3. Victoria: I did another character design for Secret Project. This is Victoria:

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I haven’t figured out what her costume is going to be quite yet, but I have done a design of one of her swords that I’m pretty satisfied with:sword-1

She’s going to carry two of those, which may be very slightly different from one another. They are going to be proportionally ridiculous, in the style of Cloud Strife’s Buster Sword. But TWO TIMES that. Because there will be two swords.

4. 25-minute nude sketch: Here’s another one from my Art Students League life-drawing class. Like last time, I made this with pen and compressed charcoal:

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That’s all for the moment—I’m pretty deep into the next piece of Lost In Hong Kong and the first draft of text for part 3 of Manic Pixel Dream Girl, but I’ll blog again soon, promise!

Comic I Love: Tom Kaczynski’s “Beta Testing The Apocalypse”

A great way to get me to read something you wrote/drew/whatever is to put the word “apocalypse” in the title. I kind of love every kind of fiction that imagines apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic worlds, and I’m always interested in weird and different interpretations of that concept. I guess it isn’t particularly original of me, but I think that’s great because it means there’s always more apocalyptic fiction to read!

So anyway, I basically bought this book, “Beta Testing The Apocalypse,” because of its title. Sometimes I’ll just go on Amazon, or walk into Forbidden Planet or whatever, and just pick a few comic books at random. I figure that way I’ll end up discovering awesome stuff at least half the time, which has turned out to be a low estimate, actually.

And it was during one of these wide-net-casting sessions that I found “Beta Testing The Apocalypse,” by Tom Kaczynski.

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“Beta Testing The Apocalypse” isn’t REALLY about an apocalypse, or apocalypses, as we usually talk about them. It’s more about the ongoing “slow apocalypse” that, according to some (like me! hi there) is HAPPENING EVEN AS YOU READ THIS.

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Kaczynski’s conception of the slow apocalypse, which he conveys with a series of vaguely connected short stories, centers around cities and their surroundings and how we (humans, that is) interact with urban development, suburban sprawl, traffic jams, apartment buildings, city sounds, and so on.

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Even though this stuff obviously adheres to a strict definition of “comics,” I found myself thinking of each story more as an illustrated narrative. I know that’s kind of a tricky or at the very least blurry distinction, but Kaczynski’s style involves a pretty dedicated commitment to setting scenes with lyrical descriptions as much as imagery, which is something I associate with the space between “regular” fiction and comics.

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I kind of expected to feel like these stories were heavy-handed anti-technological bullshit or something, but instead they’re super nuanced and layered. Their message isn’t that cities and technology are necessarily bad or evil; rather each story looks at how humanity is changed by its relationship to cities and the rapid development of technology and so on. Sometimes that change is negative, but usually it’s just different, and it’s always presented in a balanced & ambiguous way.

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Also, the longer stories are interspersed with one-page short-shorts about noise.

You should read it.

Lost In Hong Kong: Introduction

If you know me, you know that I lack a sense of direction. (It isn’t BAD; rather it is NON-EXISTENT, like this.) I get lost a lot, including in my own neighborhood(s) pretty regularly.

As you might imagine, I get lost even more in unfamiliar locations. Sometimes funny or interesting stories come from times I’ve gotten lost, alone or with others, in exotic places. So I’m making a small series of comics about some of those times. It’s called Lost In, and I’ll be publishing it here as I finish pieces of it.

Oh, and not all of the stories will be about me getting lost because of my directional issues; though some will, there are many reasons we humans get lost. A lack of direction is only one.

Here’s the introduction to Lost In Hong Kong, my first story in the series (click to enlarge):

Lost In Hong Kong: Intro

All Hong Kong cityscapes are based on photographs Tom & I took while on our trip there. Painted with acrylics & water; inked in pen as always.

The next part of Lost In Hong Kong will be available soon! I’m already working on it. :)

Kosher Salt 2: Sketches

Not being classically trained in comics (is there such a thing?), I’ve been learning as I go. Every time I make a new comic, I learn like a gazillion things that I try to apply the next time I make a comic. So I think my stuff kind of gets exponentially better over time, or I hope it does anyway.

On the other hand, learning-by-doing also means (and I have absolutely mentioned this before) that I seriously hate some of my work that I made not even that long ago.

My second Kosher Salt strip, which you can see in its published version here, is a great example of a comic that taught me a great deal at the time, but that I also hate. Quite a lot.

Luckily, I actually prefer the sketches I did for KS #2 over the final product, so writing this blogpost won’t totally suck. (In case you’re wondering, my main issues with the final comic have to do with poorly implemented color, inaccurate portraiture, and clunky lettering. Moving on.)

When I first came up with my idea for KS #2, I kind of had the phrase “super Jews” floating around in my head, and I thought maybe it would be funny if I gave them, you know, the superhero treatment.

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But this is a good example of a visual concept that I didn’t end up using AT ALL—not any element of it.

The problem is that the “super Jews” that this comic covers actually irritate me a great deal. And imbuing them with even metaphorical superpowers seemed like I was elevating their proselytizing brand of Jewishness over my own more unassuming brand. Which goes against the whole point of the comic. So I brought them back down to Earth.

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The drawing above is basically what I ended up using, though I threw it into a larger scene, as you can see me start to build on the right.

Below I figured out, on my third try, how I would actually format the comic. (Oh, and note how I approximate the title card in my process sketches. Super precise as you can see.)

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I actually didn’t have the “I’m so scared” thought bubble in the final text that I submitted to my editor, but I thought it would be funny, so I added it on the fly.

It’s too bad I have so many issues with the art of this strip, because I like the narrative arc. In fact, when I collect these into some kind of bound something-or-other, I may refresh the art for KS #1-3 to be more up to the standard I established once I’d figured my shit out, more or less. (KS #4-8)

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I kept the ending almost exactly the same, except I got rid of the closeup of my face after you see me hunched over in my coat. I think that when I drew the final one, I felt like another shot of my face wasn’t necessary. Either that or I just was having too much trouble getting the eyes right. The world may never know.

What Is Happening: Gears & Gals Edition

Now that I’m doing art full-time, I am (not-surprisingly) drawing A LOT. So I think I’m going to do a regular feature on this blog just kind of taking you through some snippets of what I’ve been doing, maybe every other day or so. May I present to you the first of hopefully many such posts. Enjoy!

1. Elements of Steampunk: For this thing I’m working on, there are a few parts that rely heavily on the steampunk aesthetic, so I’ve been doodling steampunk visual elements to get a hang of them. I am definitely not like “into” steampunk at all, and I often actually dislike it, but daaaamn is it fun to draw:
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2. Julia: I also am finally happy with one of the primary character designs (not steampunk!!) for that same secret project. Below, meet Julia:

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She’s wearing chunky heels on the right, but she’ll usually be wearing flat lace-up “booties.” God I hate that word. What I mean is, you know, ankle-high boots. Can I just say that instead?

3. 20-minute Nude Sketch: Moving on… Today I started taking a life-drawing class at the Art Students League, which I’ll be doing two mornings a week to keep those particular muscles warm. Here’s my favorite thing I did in today’s class:

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I drew the outlines freehand with pen, and did the shading with compressed charcoal. It was a 20-minute pose.

More soon!

Buffy’s Willow Rosenberg for Jewcy’s Network Jews: sketches

The managing editor of Jewcy is a friend, former co-worker, and fellow Buffy fan, so when she asked me to write something about Willow for their weekly Network Jews feature, I of course said I’d do it.

Usually when I make comics, I write out the copy first. Sometimes that involves scrawling rough ideas over entire pages of carefully blocked-out panels that I had intended to fill with storyboard drawings, and sometimes I sit in front of a Google doc for hours, and sometimes I do what I did for my Willow comic. To see what I mean, here is the first and only rough draft I made:

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Irritatingly, I actually like the first Willow portrait I drew (above) more than the final one. Sometimes that happens. Oh well.

Anyway, I guess I had been watching a lot of Buffy in preparation for this piece (my fiancé and I are constantly rewatching that show), so my ideas about Willow’s relationship to her Jewish upbringing were pretty fresh in my mind—enough so that I could basically just write the whole thing in longhand from beginning to end.

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For the most part, anyway. Usually the part of any comic that is most difficult for me to write is the part where I have to get to some kind of “point.” Like, it would have been really easy just to list things about Willow and then say, “Oh, and she’s also Jewish,” but not make any meaningful connections between anything. To a certain extent, that’s what I did in my first Kosher Salt comic, which is one of the reasons I don’t really like it in retrospect. (Also because, as you can see if you clicked that link, the image quality is absolutely God-awful. But that’s besides the point.)

With Willow, I didn’t really have any meaningful connections or conclusions in mind when I started drawing the comic, so I just kind of wrote whatever was in my head, and then went back and corrected stuff—by hand—when I decided it wasn’t quite right or was actually horrible.

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But as you can see, the pictures actually stayed about exactly the same from draft to final piece.

Also, you may notice that I don’t have a draft for the final few frames of the comic, when Willow visits Tara’s grave, and the final drawing of Willow’s hand crackling with magic. It’s because I got frustrated with my obviously haphazard above method and decided just to write the rest of the copy into a GoogleDoc, after which point I drew straight into the final draft.

Oh! Another decision I made that isn’t evident in these drafts was to color only the characters’ hair. Usually I’d reluctantly admit that I did this because it was easier than coloring the whole thing, but in this case it really was totally deliberate. This comic was, first and foremost, a short essay. The focus was supposed to be the words. So I wanted the drawings to complement, but not overpower. Willow’s hair is so distinctive that I thought (and I think it worked!) I could make it clear that these were drawings of HER, not just anyone, by only coloring her hair. Then I decided to do the others’ too, so it would be clear who Buffy was. After all, these drawings are pretty simple and otherwise it might have been hard to tell…

Artist I Love: Nicholas Di Genova

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I found this tiny little booklet in the back of the Union Square Forbidden Planet.

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Designing monsters and uncanny animal things is something I’m interested in learning more about, and it’s surprisingly hard to find resources on the subject.

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But Nicholas Di Genova‘s stuff has such a level of obsessive virtuosity to it that it’s the perfect thing to have around for inspiration. Like, maybe someday, if I work really hard, I can be like 4% as good at this as this guy is!

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Or not.

Life changes & exciting new things

Hello!

You may have noticed that I have been keeping a low profile for a couple weeks (also known as “neglecting my blog” but why use such language?). So here’s an update on what’s been going on:

First off, I left my day-job, and I wanted to spend the last couple weeks tying up all my loose ends there. Especially being secure in the knowledge that, when I was finished, I’d be able to devote ALL OF MY TIME to making art & comics & (hopefully) comics that are art.

So now that’s what’s happening: I am going to try my luck at being a full-time artist & illustrator for awhile. If it works out, I’ll be doing it forever. Obviously that’s what I’m hoping for, because as you may have realized, I really really REALLY love drawing and painting, and I want to be able to do what I love.

In the next few months (and hopefully much longer), I’ll be working hard at getting myself off the ground art-wise. I have loads of ideas and plans for various graphic memoirs and paintings and even fictional comics, possibly zines or booklets, definitely prints, and so on. As I work on those things, I’ll be posting progress sketches and the like here, as usual, as well as notes whenever something is published.

If you want to help me fulfill my hopes and dreams & be able to continue creating stuff indefinitely, first of all that makes me really happy. :) And second of all, here are some things you can do:

  • Follow me on twitter.
  • Read this blog & share any posts you particularly like.
  • Get in touch if you need illustrations or other artwork done and you think my work would be a good fit.
  • Keep up with my portfolio, which I update regularly with finished versions of things that I post here while they are in-progress.

Otherwise, just keep being wonderful and supportive, which I assume you are if you made it to the end of this post!

Thanks for reading & wish me luck!
Elizabeth