It has taken me so long to finish the Prologue because I became frustrated trying to draw with a drawing tablet. I attempted to go back to drawing on paper and scanning, but it just took too long so I gave up. Salvation came when, at long last, those hip folks at the Apple corporation made it possible for me to ditch the drawing tablet and draw directly onto the screen of my iPad Pro with the miraculous Apple Pencil. I hate for this to be a blatant advertisement, but I swear, after trying out many styluses I went into an Apple store to try out the Apple Pencil. I was completely blown away. It felt like just like drawing on paper.
Hooked, I sold tons of books and electronics (Bye, bye, iPad Mini. You will always be my first...) and saved up for a month to buy an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil combo. I'm an almost complete set of Tintin books and a JAMBOX mini speaker poorer, but it was all worth it, because now, production on the Success! comic has sped up considerably. I can draw at home, in the library, in coffee shops, anywhere! Thank you, Apple!
Now, my process for doing a page goes roughly like this: I format the music in Finale, then upload the file to DropBox. From my iPad, I import the music file directly into Procreate and start drawing. When all the drawing is done, I use Photoshop on my Mac to clean it up and add the speech balloons. If, however, the page features a lot of dialog without music, I do the panel layout and text in Photoshop first, then do the drawings. It sounds complicated, but using this method it only took me a few weeks to finish this scene. I can almost guarantee now that, weekend warrior though I am, I'll be able to crank out a scene a month.
This scene introduces Nicholas, the wily, sleazy, crafty, social climber of the two brothers who form the focal point of Success!. I had a good time drawing this scene, although the party scenes really stretched my imagination. I had to come up with so many different kinds of people. To get those right, I looked to my heroes Phil Foglio (Myth Adventures) and Sergio Aragones (Groo).
The challenges in this scene included getting the look of the gallery consistent, drawing the bricks (Oh, so many bricks!), doing the backgrounds through the gallery windows, and getting Nicholas's facial expressions and body language right.
See you next month!