Art of the Ez

Thumbnails of inked illustrations for The Valiard Mansion, an upcoming novel published by Golden Bell’s Polar Press.

Theodore and Ruth here — but I won’t reveal anything else because it’s spoilers. ;)

We're planning to have over 150 traditionally inked illustrations in the novel across its 140,000+ word count. (That's roughly the length of Pride & Prejudice!) The book will be released as a hardcover and it's looking amazing so far!

Hi folks!

I'm so excited to reveal some thumbnails of the illustrations for The Valiard Mansion, my illustrated novel. We're planning to have over 150 traditionally inked illustrations in the novel across its 140,000+ word count. (That's roughly the length of Pride & Prejudice!) The book will be released as a hardcover and it's looking amazing so far!

We're also going to release clips of the animated trailer soon, as well as making-of videos, so I'll keep you guys updated on that.

Thanks to everyone for joining me on this long, long road to getting Valiard published. Some of you have been with me since 2013, which is insane to imagine!

You’re pretty safe going with any Wacom tablet. Even the smaller ones work fine.

For software, I highly recommend Clip Studio Paint. It’s only $49 and regularly goes on sale for $25.

There are free alternatives, but I’m not sure what they are. I’m out of the loop. There’s software nowadays that used to be free but isn’t anymore, and then there’s something like Photoshop CS2 which I’ve heard is free now.

It’s weird! Haha!

But yeah. I personally use Clip Studio Paint, both at work and at home, every day. Might be a steep learning curve if you’re new to digital art in its entirety, but there are loads of tutorials available online.

Hmm! There are actually websites catered specifically to publishing comics for free. I just don’t know what they are. I don’t mingle in the comics arena much. Those sites DEFINITELY exist, so Google, Google, Google. ;)

But you’re pretty safe with starting a Tumblr blog or Facebook group for your comic and allowing folks to download them as PDFs. (I host my PDFs on Dropbox.)

Just know that once you publish something online, whether it’s free or not, your comic is “self-published” and big traditional publishers won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. (They will still be willing to publish OTHER comics you’ve made, just not the one that’s already online, even after you take it down.) So bear that in mind and you’ll be fine.

You can ALWAYS draw and create entertainment on the side, thanks to the Internet. You can share your work with the world! Will you always make money off of it? No, that’s not guaranteed. But if it’s something you love doing, then it’s worth it.

I managed to build a solid career in animation without the relevant qualifications, and by using the Internet to network, but that’s because I’m in South Africa where the requirements aren’t as strict. If I had to go to the US and try to work at Disney or DreamWorks, you can bet they’ll be asking for my art degree. But here in South Africa, they only care about how good you are at your job and how well you take and apply instruction.

So it depends where you are in the world and which industry you wish to enter.

However, like I said, you can always do art and create stories on the side. Although I’m very happy working in animation, my real dream is to be a writer, and that’s what I’m doing “on the side” in the hopes of finding my way there. So we’re in the same boat. ;)

That’s a fun question! xD

Ruth would be a budgie.

Theodore would be a beaver.

Gangfield would be a pygmy donkey.

Adam would be a sloth.

Dennis would be a rat. (Ba-dum tssss!)

Wow, I didn’t know there are actual courses in Digital Art nowadays. I had to drop out of Graphic Design (I forgot the exact course’s name) at Tuks after a week because I couldn’t paint traditionally. That’s when I switched to LLB.

You’ll undoubtedly get a good education at WITS no matter what you study. It’s a decent University. From the website it looks like BA Digital Arts provides a basis and then you get your Masters in animation or whatever else you’re into. Seems solid enough.

However, a trend I’ve encountered in Art courses in South Africa is that the Graphic Design and Web Design aspects are fantastic, but Illustration tends to be lacklustre. So it depends on what career you want at the end of the day.

I’ve always wanted to draw for animation (at present I work as a Character Designer in animation). Everywhere I've been, I found that the lecturers were worse at character drawing than I was, even with my lack of experience at the time, so I didn’t actually learn anything from them with respect to my current career.

This is nothing against said lecturers and teachers. I sought a mentor with a niche skillset that’s terribly uncommon in South Africa.

However, what I did get was access to the vast Tuks campus library, where I learned a LOT about drawing, animation, character design, figure drawing, and period costumes. Almost everything I know today, I learned from books I found in the campus library.

Art’s tricky that way. If you study Fine Arts, you can just learn digital methods on your own. If you study Digital Arts, you can just learn traditional methods on your own. Heck, if you study BCom, you can learn Digital and Traditional methods on your own. Either way you can learn both and learn them well. Depends on what degree you want in your CV and what art field you plan to enter. It also helps to network while studying — that’s the biggest edge you’ll get over non-arts-graduates like me.

I do believe Fine Arts will be the more difficult course, though. Folks teaching there tend to be draconic and clamp down on students something fierce. Digital folks are more your laid-back hipsters. But hey, WITS could be different.

Keep asking around, though. Try to find students and graduates who actually studied art courses. They’ll fill you in far better than I can. My view of things is a bit jaded because I’m an outsider looking in. But at least I don’t suffer from confirmation bias, which is an epidemic amongst art students, lemme tell ya! xD