Yo Y’all! Ya Faye Baye Lady T. Been at it these last few months. I’m working on a new comic called the Smell of You that’s about Brud, a Lupozas with a keen (even for his fellow wolf folks) sense of smell and Daniella, a Corporean from Wreckie that follows a very strict routine each morning. Both are keenly aware of the other’s presence, but it’s not until Brud smells a disturabance in Daniella’s Routine that they try to connect.
I’m working through some other story ideas that have been burning through my head as I edit MagicalMashup! and working on other comics have given me the space to really enjoy the freedom of experimenting, learning, and embracing the art of telling shorter stories.
My current comic Collab project with @treya_Barton on ao3, Icthyo Mix-up is well under way and will be wrapping up in the next two months too. I hope y’all enjoying Dylan and Jamal working through their assumptions with heart! I’ll have a few art pieces for them once the comic ends too đź’ś.
Looking forward to sharing some pretty cool things I’m working on, but we can talk about them later once I have more to show. For now,✌🏾!
Yo Y’all! Icthyo Mixup, the comic for Jamal Turner the fashion photographer with a keen eye and Dylan Seawell, ocean conservationist with a super secret will commence posting in September!
Till then, check out my socials (in the sidebar on pc and at the bottom of my page for mobile) for art updates and Patreon for teasers on the two.
What’s Icthyo Mixup even about!? That’s loaded since the story of Dylan and Jamal has grown larger than the initial prompt, but at its core it’s a love story. To quote Treya “The story is a lesson on how to correct making the wrong assumption lol”. That’s what the comic part I drew will focus on.
(First Sketches I did for them)
It’s a labor of love between @treya_barton and I born from a silly prompt I threw out into the world and she ran with. By our powers combined we brought these two to life. Treya with the written word, and Lady T💜 with the artistic flair bringing many late night talks and texts to 2D life. I hope y’all enjoy seeing these two cuties fumbling their way through confessions, affirmations, and of course luvvvv.
Hey Y’all, I’m Lady T. and I make the New Adult Fantasy Comic MagicalMashup!
One of the core elements I decided before starting the comic is that it would be in color. I choose to go this route because, well for one, I LOVE color, but also because it would be a way for me to get in the habit of thinking about color and studying how using color can impact a scene.
A blind oc named Luel with long blue dreads that he keeps tied up a top his head. He is also a mage with a neat support skill.
Coloring a comic that I work on by myself is defiantly a whole extra thing, but I enjoy it and love to see my blackish (I don’t use black in the art for the comic as it’s a very stark and powerful color that commands too much attention in my bright magical world lol) lineart come to life!
When I first started drawing the comic I had a time trying to decide on the character and world color pallets. Due to how expansive fantasy worlds can get I quickly realized I’d need a way to organize my color choices. That is once I figured out what colors I’d be using that is…
Color is such a mindblowing thing that is as complex and vast a subject as it is beautiful. Up until I decided to make the comic, I had no need to keep track of color palettes, even for reoccurring characters. I could just fudge it and guess close enough and be good. That wouldn’t fly with a whole comic though. I started crafting my colors with the characters in mind first and thinking that the colors for each character should tell a little about their personalities.
Junah leaving home to start that independent life
Junah is an overall optimistic person that is very open and excitable, maybe too much so, but it is what it is haha, so I choose upbeat colors for her.
Kaelen on the other hand is more of a grounded person with a more reserved personality and so I choose colors that are more mature.
I had a lot of fun picking their colors, but then I had to think about shading and highlights… that’s when things got really interesting.
An introvert amongst extra extroverts.
When it comes to shading I used to just color pick the base skin tone and just use the color slider in ClipStudio to go down (add black) for shade and up (and white) for highlight.
(Original page from my practice comic MagicalBeginnings! ).
The old practice pages I did foe the comic. Still cannon, just changed my coloring approach to be more lively and magical feeling.
This works aight’, but I found that it felt flat in my newly designed colorful world. I was thinking of ways to improve on this when I found a Twitter thread started by a comic colorist names Marissa Louise talking about resources for learning about color for artists.
Now I thought I was color literate before, but wow did my eyes get opened to the possibilities I hadn’t thought of when it comes to color. I checked out all of the books and resources from the list I could and watched the videos recommended. Afterward, I revised my character sheets and started to look at where my colors were placed on the color wheel using this online Color Wheel. Being able to easily see the different color harmony rules affecting my color choices live was (is) so helpful for deciding what can work with your base color selections.
One way of keeping track of colors
Once I got my colors selected and was happy, I had to figure out a way to make them easily accessible as I’d be using them often. At first, I just made color dots on each character sheet from print screens of my color pics that I could reference, but copy-pasting them onto each page to color pick form was annoying (even if it looks cool).
Another way I used to keep Track colors, way to much going on though …
I then found out about saving color swatches into palettes in ClipStudio and BOOM!! Game changed. (ClipStudio palette, admittedly not as organized as I wanted).
Clip studio swatches!
I would have stuck with ClipStudio if I hadn’t started using an iPad to give myself more time to work on the comic when not at home, but switching to Procreate offered the same options for being able to color swatch and the color picker tools were a bit more intuitive for me since I knew how I wanted to approach color for my comic.
I really like the snappy ness and convenience of working in Procreate. Keeps me from getting to buck wild.
The main difference I found was that CipStudio offers more spaces in their swatch palette for more colors than Procreate, but honestly, I’ve found simplifying what I have to be the better option for me. Keeps things manageable and I’m able to work faster this way.
Ahhh yes name codes color pics <3
You still get a good bit of options and you can also make a secondary palette to the main one in Procreate, so if you must have more you still can.
Anywho I’m curious about how y’all do your color crafting. Do you use color in your work or stick to monochrome? Fall somewhere in between? What made you decide to go this route? How do you keep track of all of your colors or values that are used repeatedly in your work? I’d love to hear your thoughts/process!
TLDR: There’s a lot that goes into the decision to work in color. I talk about my process from starting with flat color to learning how to incorporate harmonies in my palettes thanks to a few resources and how I use said colors as references in my work. I’m curious to know y’all’s thoughts on the subject.
TLDR at the bottom 🙂 as I like to talk and am very aware.
As MagicalMashup! is my first long form comic (that I’ve posted online) I’m constantly learning new things about making comics and the most effective ways to use my time. I started creating my comics in ClipStudio (drawing and layouts), Adobe Photoshop (color correcting and formatting), and Adobe Illustrator (text placement and word bubbles) on my The Panda City Yiynova MSP19 Tablet Monitor hooked up to my PC at a desk. The Yiynova tablet screen monitor was my answer to Wacom’s Cintiq back in 2012, as I didn’t (still don’t) have the cash money to sink into a high end graphic display tablet. Options were still slim for anything that wasn’t Wacom for graphics tablets, but some competition had started to show up. I jumped on the research wagon and decided to go with the the Yiynova display tablet from Panda City bc price and reviews by a few artist bloggers at the time.
Once I figured out how to hook everything up and got the correct drivers installed, it worked like a charm (still up and running now actually) for almost a decade (baring a few minor hiccups with updates that were sorted out through reading a few forum posts). The only thing I missed that Wacom had was the tactile feeling the screens have that makes drawing on the screen not feel like you’re drawing on slippery glass :V, butttttttt a large screen protector can help with that. The other thing I would have liked was having the customizable side buttons on the Cintiq display mirrored on the Yiynova. The Yiynova pen also wasn’t as sturdy feeling in the hand and needed a battery to operate, but I got used to it and I only changed the battery like 5 times in the time that I’ve had it so eh. For the price I paid (sub $600) those things were just slight QOL things and I was too busy being mad excited for being able to draw directly on a surface I could see my hands doing the work.
My messy work area but you see the setup
(Not the best pic of my setup, but I forgot to take a new pic for the post at home.)
As much as I love my tablet screen monitor set up at my desk and swivel arm attachment, I work a day job and spend about half of my day not at home. Once I started getting serious about making my comic and planning my time out accordingly, I just kept lamenting on how much time I could be spending between breaks and when I’m not at home getting more work done if I could travel with my tablet screen. I was chatting with a techy friend of mine who told me about the 2018 iPad and how it was a cheaper model of iPad that had access to the Apple Pencil. I went over to a tech store, tried out one of the displays, and fell in LOVE. Bought it my next paycheck. It is so dang neat and portable and I can go on, but yeah.
I loved it, but after drawing on a tablet screen that was 3x bigger than the new tablet it was a bit rough. Not to mention the main program I was using at the time ClipStudio does not have the best interface for small screens, so I Iooked around the App Store and that’s when I found Procreate. It’s not specifically geared towards creating comics like ClipStudio, but I’ve been able to use it for that purpose just fine. The creators of the Procreate app release updates with new features often enough to make a difference too and it’s a one-time buy app as well. Since using the app, they’ve added a text tool and animation assist and I look forward to what new things they decide to roll out as well. They have a community tab that has a forum and gallery too!
Since the text tool wasn’t around when I first started making the comic in Procreate, I needed to find something else besides Adobe Illustrator as I was not buying that again. That’s when I found Affinity. Affinity is comparable to the Adobe creative suite at a fraction of the cost. They have tablet and desktop versions of their apps Designer and Photo with Publisher that’s just been released for desktop. Affinity Designer was exactly what I was looking for to edit my typography for word bubble typesetting and branding. It also has vector tools as well!!! I could go on about them, and just might at a later date haha.
Even with the program switches to software with a better interface for a tablet and using the 2018 iPad, the screen was still to dang small for me. I looked into upgrading and was fortunate enough to find an Ipad Pro 2017 within my budget on Swappa (I love this site for finding used tech for resale by owners as they authenticate merchandise and allow reviewing).
Upgrading to the Ipad Pro line was such a shift for my productivity. I could work on larger canvas sizes with more layers, everything loaded faster and crashes were a thing of the past. The biggest upside was of course the 12.9in screen size and amount of gigs the tablet came with, but I was also pleasantly surprised with the number of applications available for content creators that have good design and work well.
Working on iPad Pro, laying out ch 2
(can work on the comic like anywhere now)
There are a ton of options for creator setups and I have no idea what mines will look like a few years from now, but this is working out so far. What kind of setup do you all have for creating and what programs or tools do you use for making your comics or novels?
TLDR: I started off tied to my desk using my budget graphic display tablet with ClipStudio and Adobe products and then switched to a mobile setup using the Ipad Pro Procreate and Affinity Designer. What’s your content creator setup and what programs/tools do you use?
I was looking through my DeviantArt page of old for some references to the clothes I used to have the denizens of my comic MagicalMashup! wear when it hit me. As much as I’m into fashion, the clothing choices of old that I made didn’t change much form pic to pic.
Ah the yellow dress of oldClassic yellow dress and gray sweats. Boob window yellow dress and classic Kaelen with the v-neck
Looking at my protagonists Junah and Kaelen specifically I found that they were always drawn wearing the same dang thing. Even when the world they exist in is one that changes each day. I’ll give my younger self a little credit since at least Junah had some variation, but Kaelen? Nahhh, he always wore the same v neck shirt and jeans with oversized cloak (still does to this day, but the shirt got stripes and cloak got even BIGGER).
The cloak hungers muhaha
Thinking more about it, I’m sure it’s just something that developed from watching cartoons/Anime and having it embedded in me that characters have A LOOK. That one look is a big part of what defines and makes them recognizable. IDK why I thought young Lady T. was doing something that current me just started making a conscientious choice to change, but sometimes you can surprise yourself when looking back through old work (like how I’ve drawn more comics than I remembered lol).
Ah the strawberry dress is so Junah
For my current series MagicalMashup! Fashion changes based on the region, so some folks do have a more static look, but for the most part the story takes place in the cultural melting pot of the world between the magical and practical sides of the world in the Nation of Lufiriya. Attention to what people wear in the in the city is pretty important as it adds to driving the point home on how diverse the people of Lufiriya are as opposed to some of the more closed nations. Not only that, but the extra bits of characterization you can get from attention to wardrobe is pretty swanky. So, for me, clothing changes would be necessary for the students at IMMMA! Well most of them. Kaelen as a character just really is the type to have a closet full of the same clothes with that one acceptation. It’s less fuss and time spent getting ready each day (young me understood that much about his character I like to think lol). Junah on the other hand…If she can dream it she can make it and wear it, so I had to put a little more thought into her outfits.
Yaro with the understated cloak turned sash.
It’s true that making the decision to include clothing changes is more work, but I feel like it’s worth it to make the world feel like it has a sense of passing time (and let’s be real, more reason to show off body parts I like to draw [shoulders and collars for dayssss] the most). Though instead of trying to go buck wild on the fashion sheets, I just came up with a few outfits per reoccurring character with an alternate Hair style or two (hair really is a whole other ball park though). An element specifically to this comic that I have had some fun designing is how each characters mage cloak manifests. As MagicalMashup! is a story that centers around mages, I want to keep a few of the recognizable elements to that character archetype in the story, so personality accommodating mage cloaks were born! (The cloaks can literally be a sash if it fits that character better or a cape, depends.)
With all that musing I’m wondering how other creators tackle fashion in their works. Is it an afterthought? Do you keep it simple? Do you have a character look book? Examples are welcome : D!
TLDR: Looked through my OLD DeveiantArt page for fashion refs on characters only to find out how stagnant the clothing choices I made were. Compared young me to old me and how I had some things right and some not so right and how I got really into how changing clothes as it signifies progression of time. Oh and how much I like to show off collarbones and shoulders.
**What’s ya’lls approach to fashion and/or signature looks in your works?**
(First Sketches I did for them)
