hii!! with you posting some snippets for your comic i am left to wonder
what's your process like? from writing to piece composition to coloring... the pages are so pretty and meaningfuly thought out
ive kept this in my inbox for a bit cuz i was on that grind but i can answer it now since ive had practice answering it for the exams i just got done with hehe. but thank you for the kind words !!!!
the first three chapters of pareidolia were kind of done differently from previous narrative works i did for my schoolwork (which like, i havent posted all of them online anyway but). in short process wise instead of like:
script > storyboard > illust > lettering
very bare bones "script" > "scriptboard" > storyboard > illust > REAL script writing > lettering + edits as i see fit
i think one issue ive had in my previous narrative works (that you havent seen since i didnt post them LOL) is that i have a tendency to write too much text when the page conveys that information, making some of the text redundant. somehow it's easier for me to determine when text isnt needed if i actually have the images in front of me, and also, it's kind of easier for me to script through images initially than just text.
this process had some issues and ill probably change the order of the scripting stage to be right after the storyboarding stage, because i realised as i was doing stuff speech bubbles take up a Lot of space. so ill be trying that going from chapter 4 onwards :D (i had to solve some cramming issues by drawing extra unplanned spreads lol) but otherwise i really liked this workflow. i know on the pages ive posted so far it can be hard to understand my Text Problem but pareidolia gets a lot more prose heavy after a certain point due to reasons you'll see as chapter 1 proceeds. but anyway
first off i think this order of things allowed me to really hone in on trying to compose pages to be communicative without relying on the text to do that because that also allows pages to be more effective in general imo! it's a very fun challenge for me, with this project ive been forced to think a lot about page economy in order to make it more manageable. there's definitely been pages where ive written script for, put it on the page, then realised it's better without anything there...
when it comes to composition in particular ofc i think of the above things, trying to be effective. ill elaborate a bit on the "scriptboard"; it basically is just a bunch of uniform square boards where i sketch the general script, and then try to pair as many squares together which determines what ill try to achieve in the storyboard spreads.
you get the idea hopefully! when i compose i just try to ask myself, how can i make these panels together interesting. LOL. (often this involves throwing symbolic plants in there)
i can be less helpful with colours bcs truthfully its very vibes based and the hardest part for me to figure out. i will say though i colour script the entire chapter at once, and make sure i can lay out all colour keys together so that there's a nice cohesiveness, and i try to ensure there's also proper transitional pages between palette shifts.
