Today I don’t have a single sketch to update with because I’ve been pushing myself to try new art techniques and make yonkoma about Teeny Tiny Thorin.  So far I have 11 strips planned and the first one will be posted next Tuesday! (It’s pretty much done but I’m futzing with the art, still.)

So what is a yonkoma? If you didn’t click the link to the wiki above I’ll tell you. It’s a four panel, vertically-aligned gag comic. I used to make these so I’m already familiar with the rhythm of thinking in four panels. It can be a bit of a challenge compared to regular comics! 

Sort of like short story writing compared to novel writing.

I’m not strictly following the traditional Kishōtenketsu story structure because in a lot of these comics I’m mirroring the movie just with the twist/gag of Thorin being teeny-tiny. 

I thought it might be interesting to post some of my progress and sketches today as it is Sketch Thursday? Warning, this gets long and there’s a lot of pics.

Characters

I’m stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying to draw as much as possible directly in Photoshop. But I still suck at it. XD I broke down after trying to draw Gandalf a dozen times and drew him with paper and pencil then scanned him into Photoshop to ink and adjust.

My first attempt at digitally drawn Gandalf:

Giving up and drawing him with pencils from a screen reference. This is a 5-minute sketch:

Scanning him in and adjusting hue in preparation to ink:

Inked Gandalf:

I’m still futzing with him because the Thorin I drew… is so much better. -_- Now I have to up my Gandalf game!

I tried to do the same thing with Thorin but this time I grabbed a screenshot of the reference I wanted to use first (I don’t usually use reference photos this much but I’m trying to recreate scenes from the movies with these comics):

There’s the face I want! I tried drawing it on paper first. Oh gawd. This is so bad. Five minute sketches are sometimes terrible ideas. XD 

Blarg. Go home, Thorin, you’re drunk! Also, at this point, I still wasn’t sure what style I wanted to draw in yet so he wound up a mish mash of how I usually draw him combined with trying to draw more realistically like the screen cap.

Dutifully I scanned this wonky fast sketch into Photoshop then started inking, while looking at the screen cap for reference. Then something clicked. I could move things around in photoshop! I didn’t have to stick to the pencils like I do when I ink traditionally. I started pushing black around, erasing things, in some places I painted more than I drew and after (WAY TOO LONG) a bit I came up with the best Thorin I’ve ever drawn! (IMO):

I like to think it’s close enough to the reference people can identify the scene in context of the comic without being a direct copy. It’s not my usual style but I really like how it turned out!

Backgrounds

There is a reason I have set past comics in deserts and cloudscapes; I hate drawing backgrounds. I’m impatient and more interested in characters and their expressions than I am in drawing a tiled floor with the right perspective. -_- For this comic series, however, I decided to challenge myself and this is a good comic to do that with because I’m recreating scenes from the movies so there are plentiful reference shots I can use!

I think if I were doing an original comic I’d use something like SketchUp to create settings and use those because, boy howdy, it takes forever to draw backgrounds.

So this scene (which I am using in Teeny Tiny Thorin #2) is supposed to be Gandalf introducing Bilbo to Thorin.:

 However, because Thorin is teeny tiny I cannot use this shot as a reference because Thorin is too small and won’t show up ‘in camera’. So I searched for an empty shot of Bag End’s front hall I could use.

Ahhh this is the shot I need! And, as I’ll probably need to use this shot a few times I started a new file just to recreate as much of the hall as I can so I have flexibility with how I place it in panels.

Many layers, different colour overlays for each layer, pulling on ancient knowledge I learned in a drafting class back in the 80s, and I have a start on the hall. I wish I would’ve thought to take a screen shot before I started erasing the pink and blue lines so you could see how I had them stretched all the way across the canvas so I could match up angles. The next time I have to draw something like this, I think I’ll find a good perspective grid I can overlay. I might still do that for this pic and make adjustments because I can see places where I didn’t eyeball the angle quite right.

Anyhow, now that I had a basic hall I could test character placement to see if I could recreate the scene with a teeny tiny Thorin:

Ahh! It looks like it is going to work! Gandalf’s head will be up with the chandelier (which I sort of sketched in pink) so I might have to move him closer to the camera but with this shot I can get all three of them into view!

Anyhow! I’m hoping to get one strip a week out, likely on Tuesdays (instead of coloured art), and it looks like I have enough material to have this go until the New Year. Unless I get bored. XD Which happens. But I’m so looking forward to some of the later strips that I don’t think I’ll get bored!