Work Perfectly & Completely

If you have seen the video I produced when I drew this comic the first time then you may have noticed that I completely redid this comic strip. I’m really proud of this strip for many reasons.

First of all, I feel like it was really good writing. I feel like God really inspired me and I realized something very profound. That realization is in the first panel of the strip.

Secondly, I learned how hard it is to make something well. My teacher always says that we should do things perfectly and completely even if we have to do it 100 times or 1,000 times. That sounds really great and inspiring but it’s pretty difficult to actually do. I liked the writing but I felt that the quality of layout and drawing in the first version did not do it justice. It took a long time to draw it the first time as you can tell from the video. In the end I still wasn’t happy with it. You can see the first version below.

I kept the original version as a rough draft but I completly changed the spacing of the strip. I edited out the last panel. I completely redrew several of the characters and redid all the linework as well as all the text balloons. I’m still getting used to the comic strip layout which is much different than your wider animation layouts.

Since I was already investing so many hours to make it perfect I figured I might as well go the final step and add color. Painting with color is one of the funnest stages anyways and I’ve been learning some great techniques including masking and adjustment layers (photoshop). Unfortunately the color came out terrible so I desaturated (turned to black and white) all the layers. I may redo the color yet again later on, but I need to learn color theory first.

Do things perfectly and completely ~ is really difficult.

Shaun