Social Update

So things have progressed again quite significantly and there was also a large setback.

So setback first:

I did the maths and realised that the canvas size on all my artwork to date was way to small for the final print size required (when checking against the Amazon guides). To combat this i create a new guide to be placed in all images, with a finer grid for helping me keep text straight and of course at the proper required size (double the size of the page to allow for crisp artwork at printed size). Naturally this meant that the 20 pages that were done, needed to be re-done. However this gave me an opportunity to resolve some further issues.

So now the progress!:

Firstly in those first 20 pages there was dialog issues where I had people saying things that didn’t reflect their appearance (this will make sense when i release pages).

Next up the armour was so complicating to draw that it was almost entirely different in all pages. So i went back to the drawing board and initiated a new process for each scene.

First i draw all the characters and the props at all angles. Then i have a reference. Then i get the text and frames on the page and with the space thats left i can draw in the artwork. The pages didn’t change too much from a positioning perspective but the characters changed dramatically to help speed up the artwork process whilst maintaining a high quality.

I also fixed the style (as my first page looked very different to the last one i’d created stylistically). So now i’ve decided to focus on clean strokes for outlines, ten simply using block colours before adding a multiply layer for shadows and a screen layer for highlights.

This also means that if i needed the novel to be grayscale, then i simply remove the colour layer and everything still looks great. Thinking ahead for a double win.

Also i had a go at using procreates time laps feature and posted a video to facebook. With only 4 shares i managed to reach 480 viewers in only 2 days! For me that was epic and sets the standard for future posts. I didn’t post to this site or anything so there would be no conversion of traffic into subscribers or followers. I don’t even have a facebook page so this was straight from my personal profile. Naturally this gives me a better idea of the sort of infrastructure i need to set up to start to build a following.

Its all learning.

So now i’m going to keep drawing up the pages until the new year. I’ll also be posting regular support artwork weekly until 2018 to keep friends, family and facebook engaged. By then i should be at least 30-40 pages ahead and will be able to post a spread a week (maybe in addition to support artworks and videos) knowing that i have stockpiled many weeks of artwork in advance buying me time to complete the first book before i run out of content.

So keep your eye out