A lot of things happened in November that kept me from finishing this up. Had 250 new vocab flash cards, a new puppy, handling bookkeeping for my dad, I think there was more but I’ve already forgotten.

The second half of the two-page spread. Such a mysterious clothing shop… The story takes place in an intentionally vague location, but it’s clearly the Canada/America region and yet it sells a Japanese serafuku? And it’s not even a cosplay story… how mysterious… As always, I implore you to not think about these things too deeply.

I said I wouldn’t do two-page spreads anymore, but I lied. I’m a slow worker, so it takes two weeks to do four full-body images. I also did alternate colored versions, though since I’m using the multiple/glow layer technique it didn’t really add to much to the time. I’ll include them below, though.

I don’t usually color the dialogue text, but I did it this time just to make it more clear who’s talking.

First page since I updated the website. Still trying to find a good balance for some things, like how much to blur layer I’m putting over everything. Also tempted to add a noise effect to everything, but I don’t know. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

In theory it should be a unisex store, but most of the assets I could find were for women’s clothing, so pretend the menswear is off-screen.

This took so long to do because I had to do three backgrounds… I tried various techniques including a new coloring process to make things go faster, but in the end the background are the killer. They’re so difficult to, I completely messed up the scale of everything.

I’ve been looking into Sketchup, Acon3D and Snaptoon but the models get kinda expensive. I could use cheaper/free models and arrange the settings itself but it’s kinda pointless if I’m going to be spending hours finding assets and setting them up… Speaking of the backgrounds, I ended up blurring them because everything was feeling too busy so here they are below.

On the topic of the new coloring process, I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about it yet so we’ll see if it sticks. Kinda feels overworked and cluttered, with the background coloring completely blown out… Maybe I just need to play with it a bit more. I’m really bad with the add glow and glow dodge layers. Everyone always uses them well but when I do they always look overdone and blown out.

Took a few shortcuts this time, such as silhouetting them in the last panel, so it went a but faster. Thanatos’ face was cuter when I didn’t shadow the nose though… regrets.

This page took quite a long time, since I had to do two backgrounds… Several upcoming pages are gonna test me like this. Why do I make layouts that require scenery? Why can’t I just draw everything on blank backgrounds? (Because it wouldn’t look as nice, obviously…) But when I have to draw something with too much detail, my brain starts to short circuit. My brain’s vram is 512mb… Not even 1gb. And I can’t even upgrade it… What’s worse, I didn’t remember to check my layout, so most of the second one is covered… All that work for nothing. I’ll add the full backgrounds below, so it’s not a complete waste.

It’s a very busy page, isn’t it…? I hope it managed to get across what I was aiming for. If it makes you feel a little overwhelmed and anxious than I’ve succeeded.

For this one, I tried to skip inking and just used a tidied up sketch, in order to try and save time… The first couple of panels look a bit messier, but I think I got the hang of it by the end.

I’m always trying to desperately think of ways to make creating this faster… Each panel is essentially a full color digital illustration, if you consider it usually takes me 6-8 hours per illustration, at best I can have a page finished every other day, and that’s if everything goes well which it usually doesn’t. Complicated backgrounds will immediately increase that time too. The fact is, a single person really can only do so much on their own. So I keep trying to take short cuts, like cutting down on blending, or random details like hair strands or gradients, but then I usually end up experimenting and trying different things out anyway so it usually results in a net zero. In the end no amount of changes to my workflow will fix my personality.

That first panel of Remiel is probably the closest I’ve managed to get to what he looks like inside of my head. He (and a few other male characters, really…) should be more of the “ikemen” archetype, but since the dawn of time I have only ever been able to draw femboys. Enjoy it, it’s probably the last time I’ll be able to manage it.

I had totally forgotten I had drawn an aquarium until I was revising previous art… After which, it felt like it would make an interesting backdrop for their chat. It seemed like a It took me an entire day just to draw the aquarium… u.u I don’t have the one I used as the original reference anymore, and it was also sized for a betta fish rather than an angelfish, so please forgive me if it’s the wrong size for that kind of fish.