Tag: diary

Circles of Magic are here

Well, I can say it’s done. Recently I saved final pages of Circles of Magic comic. First chapter would probably be titled „Shadows on the sky” (pol. Cienie na niebie”). Last two things that have to be done is finishing map of High Mountains and Shadow Pass, where the first chapter takes action and prepare cover art for some kind of promotion.

Circles of Magic comic 1

Now what

As a aspiring author who spend last year creating I have less than any clue what to do now, except for starting next book. There is couple of options and I want to use them in right order. It probably includes sending few e-mails and researching among publishing possibilities.

In the end my main goal is to share this comic stories with as many people as possible and it will happen, sooner or later. I’m planning to share hi-res PDF version with every newsletter subscriber (when it’s available), so if You’re interested, don’t forget to fill form somewhere on this website.

Circles of Magic comic 2

Next step would be translation for non-polish readers. Again, no experience and I can’t tell any dates for this.

Post mortem

One more thing . I have plenty of thoughts after completing project and I think it would be a waste not to share them. I had so many problems, so many obstacles and made a lot of serious errors during work. And it happened even after reading many comic creator’s blogs, Scott McCloud books and researching around different comics and graphic novels. It may be a good source of knowledge for any aspiring artist like me, and a good reminder for myself, to not do same mistakes in future.

This is rather lazy post, considering how long it took to complete my „I wanted to make something with my ideas” thing. But content is here, it’s done and we’ll have eternity to talk about it and share it. Woopi.

Good night!

Drawing finished! Just ten months later.

After 10 months I finally may say I finished drawing first chapter of Circles and I’m ready to proceed with colors. It was a really busy time, with a lot of walls that I had to crush through with my developing comic skills. A lot have been learned and these are the things I wanted to share.

Drawing Circles - Time

This panel totally gets it.

Drawing Time?

10 months is about 3 times more that I thought it would take. With 35 pages, it’s 3,5 page a month! Excluding weekends, it is over 6 days for a single page drawing. Sounds ridiculous to me now and I’m sure I’ll spend some time now analyzing what went wrong with my plan :)

Statistics. I was spending around 2-3 hours after work and sometimes few more during weekends. I originally assumed I can easily finish drawing single page in one working day which is around 8 hours, which is 3 to 4 days and I would have finished chapter in 105-140 days – four months.

Drawing - Life

drawing and Life

So what happend? Life. All random things, family, vacation, being sick, friends, jobs and just simple low-battery state. Everything combined took half year of off-the-job time for me. When I think that out, it is not really that strange anymore. It’s not day job and this shows how much time combined with energy I actually have in my bank. How much I need in future. For now, I’m just medicore at production planning. Lesson taken.

Anyone is different and I’m pretty sure someone would actually complete my original plan of four months. I’m just saying that we are not machines and math is cruel. Always add some reserve time.

Drawing - Circle

Circle

I’m so happy anyway. I have still whole coloring to do, together with few other things like translating, organizing for web publishing, creating cover etc. Couple months more of this adventure. Probably most difficult thing with Circles, up to this moment, was being consistent. Not only to draw characters the same way for 35 pages, but to not wander too far from january drawings with october drawings. 10 months were enough for me to evolve a little as an artist and comic maker, and I just do things differently. After 30 pages I did one really big redraw of whole chapter and recently second, significally smaller. And I’m still doing small changes to dialogues.

For all aspiring authors and comic makers like me. Don’t procrastinate or hesitate too long. Planning is one more things we have to learn and we should learn that fast, so other plans could be planned properly.

Have fun during november and see You probably during promised coloring stream!

Just a little recap of drawing process.

Kamil