K.O. Conner

I've had a short fuse with drawing since April. It's like the moment I hit any kind of obstacle, I want to quit. The only thing that's helped is to push 5-10 min past that initial feeling. It's been working with my fanart, but has been much harder with my comic.

I was stuck in this last scene for awhile. I realized I wasn't doing two panels justice and they needed to be a splash page. It was awful because my expectations were too high and I felt like it should have been easy. I must have tried 20 variations over a few days. I got 2 to work.

Because of this, I screwed up another page layout. I think it was worth it, but I was a little worried about the amount of splash pages in this issue. There are 4(ish). I'm aware that sounds like a terrible idea!! As long as I don't screw up the pacing, I'm good.

I'm also concerned about hypothetical page turns. I added the running gag back in after adding the new page. I hope I made the right decision. I already cheat a little because I start each issue on the second page, unlike most floppies.

This is how I used to draw circa issue 1 (more below).

Lettering

I think most people use Photoshop for digital lettering, but I use InDesign because it's much faster for me and fewer files.

For web, I have to use pngs. I've been stuck trying to get InDesign to export pngs that don't blur raster images. I finally found the solution on a forum. The solution is to export to PDF then stick it in photoshop...

UPDATE** Turns out you can throw the PDF into Acrobat and hit export to png and it does the whole thing. Not to brag, but I figured that out myself. Wish I knew this months ago...

I recently read The New Space Age and observed how Beaudoin's word balloons would sometimes go over tops of panels. I also read that bubbles can be important with eye flow, so I'm trying to be more intentional about where I place them.

This is also the part where I find errors. I try to use restraint when editing because I think most old work should stay old work.

There are some things that I have to fix, but I try to keep it to what my current skill level was at the time.

But there's the other side. I can look at pages and feel like I can do better. I don't know how much to edit and when to move forward. I want to move forward. Am I choosing my battles or am I lazy?

PSA that colouring is a lot like drawing. Change is gradual, not overnight. Still a long way to go!

Back to Thumbnails

I caught up to my thumbnails, so I did a bunch this month.

I seem to rewrite my scenes when I thumbnail them. This can get me into trouble because sometimes I forget what I was trying to do in both the penciling and lettering stage because the script is different.

My future writing might need to become a dual process.

Writing

For the next issue, I ripped into a scene with dialogue I wasn't happy with. It was saying what I wanted to convey, but I was trying too hard to make a character sound intelligent. Too wordy for no reason. I'm hoping this rewrite will feel more human and I hope I made good decisions.

I think my writing has improved since I started. I'm in a weird spot where I wrote this so long ago and my art has been catching up. Some days I love this project, other days I worry I'm wasting energy on something old.

I went back into issue 1 and rewrote some narration. I used the same phrase too close together and needed to fix that.

I scrutinized over my first sentences. I'm seeing mistakes. That's something.

It's been extremely discouraging, not gonna lie. I have never felt worse about this. Always wondering if there's something I'm not seeing and this will blow up in my face. I know this is not a good way to market, but I worry. At the end of the day, I'm hoping this will be 200ish pages of a good time.

Ending Thoughts

I'm feeling shaky in all of my abilities right now. The good thing is my illustrations are achieving what they need to achieve and I know spotting writing mistakes is actually good. It just SUCKS sometimes.

I'm feeling better after re-writing the entire opening narration. Thinking a lot about this. This story won't be perfect, but I know I have something to offer.

I'm now at 158 pages and 5 covers. I will see this to completion even if it sucks. Even if I make wrong decisions. Even if all this work never amounts to anything. It will be okay. I can't control if it's good, I can only make the best thing I can make.

I got 2 pages done.

There’s something about having the will power to work on a long term project. I can work on a big project like my Supergirl / Invincible crossover. I can do a new character design. It's different mentally.

It’s hard to reopen the thing I failed at drawing earlier and try again. It's hard not to be discouraged seeing all the areas I need to improve in. I know that once I get past a hurdle, there's going to be another one.

All I want is to make stories, but I’m tired right now.

This is a marathon and everything else is a sprint.

It's going to get better.

I started with a loose story concept and some general things I think these characters would talk about. My idea was that Supergirl would chase a villain through the Phantom Zone, but they both end up in Invincible's dimension by mistake. Everyone thinks she's a Viltrumite at first.

I think there's a lot of story potential there:

• Cecil would try to access the Phantom Zone under the guise of helping Supergirl return home, but he'd actually want to use it as his own super prison.

• Round up all the escapees, but get trapped in the Phantom Zone themselves and have to survive

• Get bailed out by both sets of supporting cast members

• Kryptonians vs. Viltrumites

I almost gave up on the whole thing after a failed attempt at drawing this pose. Always try again the next day. It's never that dramatic.

I made some alterations to the Supergirl WOT suit. I added a longer collar, two fingered gloves, metal gauntlets and plates on the boots, and a metallic "S" with a new shape. I also thought the purple-y blue would be cool new look.

It was challenging to balance all of the logos. Altering them to be blue and white helped A LOT.

These poses were also super hard to do. Whenever I corrected anatomy on one, I had to change the parallelogram again and it would mess up the other character.

My new favourite setting to draw is the White Room.

This panel is meant to be a fun meta thing. I used Cory Walker's (co-creator of Invincible) Supergirl designs and referenced this image of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel (creators of Superman).

I made this video bc I was sad to erase part of this pose for a panel.

I learned how to tween in Photoshop. Before this, I would move pictures manually. Looks way better now and it was easier than I thought it would be.