ur comics are so absolutely gorgeous. im honestly in love with every single thing from the shading to the choice of panel layout to the posing. theres such a complex level of detail in every inch of your work.
that being said, im just curious why do you choose to make your comics physically and then scan them as opposed to digital art? would love to hear some about the process :]
I make digital comics too, plenty of em but I needed an art morale boost!! For myself. working digitally over the years has made me like art less in a way because i feel more divorced from both process and result, even if itβs also extremely joyful and fun. But also i felt i was taken things for granted that i didnβt want to be taken for granted. I wanted to really study the handcraft of screentones!! it has been so, so fun and so, so time-consuming to cut and glue even tiny pieces that would take 0.1 sec to color digitally, but it also forces you to think differently about color, values, and the material itself. I really loved that. It was so scarce i had to really consider which panels truly βneeded itβ and cut down on indulgence. Same with the inking. I couldnβt keep adding pointless details and redrawing panels because it was inked and done. Sometimes thereβs smears on the page, sometimes I dribbled ink on it snd needed to color something black to mask it. Itβs just a whole different wheelhouse that was extremely rewarding to me at that moment! I wanted to be really challenged by the material in that senseβ¦ and man was Iβ¦.
I also chose a mixed media paper to which the tones didnβt quite stick so I had to keep re rubbing them and using scotch tape in places or scrap it altogether. Also, I donβt want to evoke βtraditional is bestβ on a high horse or go back to βreal art vs degenerateβ talking points that I hate, but I do think taking time to learn the hows and whys behind something thatβs been so automatized as illustration(now even moreso, depressingly) helps in both rekindling your love for it and gaining new insight and new respect for craftsmanship as a whole. I feel this way about any craftβ¦. I think, in general, I want to never take things for granted. And when I feel that happening I want to change my approach, if that makes sense.
Then again, this whole project was extremely indulgent in many ways. Itβs not that indulgence is wrongβ¦ all art kinda is. This is bsically long chats with my bf and our headcanons and thoughts on FF7 gender and identity construction. Anyway whenever i feel stuck in my art i like to try something different and kind of go back to what makes me love art in the first place, and for me itβs the process thatβs so fun. Itβs also fun because working with tones you definitely admire traditional mangakas +assistants more! And you can find new ways to use tones and scrap-tones and issues and solutions by studying your favorite comic more as a craft. I dug it. And I had plenty of fun in the studio with my friends doing tone workshops and playing around with them.
