Workworkwork/Playplayplay

The monotony of summertime has taken over my life. I haven’t been nearly as productive as I should — a byproduct of turning in revisions merely days after I was done with school.

There was the launching of My Mental Breakdown, complete with a ton of new illustrations for each story and for Micah, Danny and Andrew. I also came up with a new story idea which I have since grown bored of.

Yesterday I began to approach the daunting task of assembling a book trailer. C has requested it from all authors, and since mine is a 2012 release, there’s no real rush. But the sooner I get it done, the sooner I can start using it as a marketing tool. Yesterday I made absolutely zero headway. I felt defeated by it and I didn’t know where to turn for a good example; I hadn’t found any that used illustrations. Illustrations done by myself were the one thing I knew for sure needed to be present in my teaser. I’d been back and forth on whether to just gather images that I’d already done or to make a batch from scratch, which would unify them and allow me to be that much more precise in creating my trailer.

Needless to say, I decided today to do new images. I also realized there was no use trying to do something I knew I wasn’t good at, so I settled on doing all the images in b&w manga-style. I did five sketches today, and as soon as I started hand-inking one of them, I sighed and resigned myself to the fact that I’d need to use a computer program for the lines and toning.

Following the five sketches, obviously my initial inclination was to FASTFASTFAST DODODO ALLALLALLALLALL OF THEM NOWNOWNOWNOW SUFFOCATEDIE. I have decided to try to stop that. Since there’s no rush, I have absolutely no good reason to rush through the illustrations. When I had done the lines and initial toning for the first one, I wanted to just run on into the second one and the third and so on. But I stopped myself and came back to the first one and have been working on making improvements on it. I have no intention of starting the second or even calling this one complete.

Plus..the video is currently only 20 seconds long. I am aiming for 40. xD I have all of the text that I want in it, meaning I have to add in 20 more seconds worth of images that I’m only giving a half a second a piece. Aaah, if that math is right (though I doubt it is), then I’ll need 40 to fill that time and that means 35 more! D: I have my work cut out for me. I’ve complained that I’ll basically be illustrating the whole damn story. D: Only sensationalizing every part so they’ll look cooler.

Here’s what I have so far:

BUT! I think it’s looking good (I just wrote that word backwards before getting it right…bedtime for Mary). I even used a reference for Tokie’s bandana, so it doesn’t look stupid. I had the background gray while I was working on it, but the black is pretty striking. I might do a gradient for all the images though. We’ll see…for now, black is good. And then it’ll go with the rest of the video. Sotoka looks great, by the way. He’s always been really easy for me to draw as long as he’s stylized. Danyil, on the other hand, is one of my most difficult characters to draw. Him and Julian definitely tie for first place, but sometimes Julian’s worse. I don’t even think it’s because I can’t draw old people. I just know exactly the sense I get from Julian and if I don’t get that right on paper, it’s a waste.

Although now I’ve retreated enough from that intense editing of RE I’d engaged in for the last five months, and I can appreciate the story more again. Thinking about it, working on something for it, that’s kind of a reprieve for me from other stress (and there’s a lot of it). I just hope that all this work only ends up helping me, so that it’s not in vain. Because right now, I don’t see all too many benefits from all this work except that maybe it keeps my mind a little more solid.

Anyway, the other day I started this group picture of everyone playing in the rain and I thought about making a new OMS layout for it, and it would be all profound because it would go from the dark gloomy rain it is now to a “PLAY IN THE RAIN!” attitude.

But after I tried to shade it and liked the flat version more, things went downhill. “My Mental Breakdown” was such a complicated layout to code and I think it took a lot out of me. So when I wanted to start tinkering with this rain picture in HTML, my head all but exploded.

Well, that’s about all.

It’s safe to expect some book reviews from me soon. I think I’m going to get my ass off my computer chair and go finish Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, and I found this book on the Nook earlier called Angelology that I think might be worth purchasing. 😀