#cabbagejournalss

i began with a sketch on paper i divided into pieces, and used those pieces as a template to cut out more pieces from a giant sheet of acrylic-painted paper. so there’s really 2 megatrons

everything was made with acrylic paint except the moon. the moon was stained with tea 🫖 i cut out nebulas and star shaped pieces and assembled them together on a purple space background. it was all made by hand, by a real person, who genuinely enjoyed doing it

now we must discuss the colors. i still kind of like it but this made me realize i'm probably better off working in grayscale. i have a better sense of the values and creating a sense of distance, and i am not a quitter but i need to reduce the number hours i spend hunched and agonizing over these assignments. i find myself dreading adding color when i work even if it’s not for class. it's not good for my body or mind or work ethic.

in crit, there was some confusion about why the landmasses change color in the last panel and whether it was the same space depicted in the previous panel. i made this change to emphasize the shock of the final moment. but the relationship between panels 2 and 3 is further muddled by the crab’s position and the tail in the distance, but suddenly the eel is there in panel 3 and the crab would have had to stay in the center to get eaten and wait i thought the eel was far away how did it get there so fast? i can’t deny these are good questions. let’s just go with “eel really big”

recently i read the fantastic comic bitter root for a graphic novel class and GOD!!! THE ART!!! moment i laid eyes on the first page i knew that look was exactly what i had been trying to achieve in this project- the brushy lineart and shadows, the vibrant color palette and textures, all of that is exactly what i want to be able to capture in my own art. bitter root is awesome please read it.

during those two years, dr. charlotte b. wigglebottom finally got her name, so i don't have to call her "the entomologist character" in my head anymore. i think twig and holly came into development just before the first piece was made, originally named jesse and juniper. i decided to give ollie a lackadaisical brother and sister, and just to torture him further, make them significantly taller than him. there may be another sibling who left farm life behind, i'm not sure yet, but these three serve as just a glimpse at the long and winding branches of the pollinator family tree.

i had a hard time with the first piece because i struggled with capturing light dappling in through the tree branches. i used a technique i learned in painting, to add the shadows in first and then to build the light after. i got around this by adding a dark color filter over the flat colors and then erasing where i wanted light. i definitely like the new one better but i still have a lot of work to do to better capture these effects. i also decided to scrap the little mushroom critters, which was unfortunate but i felt like i had a lot of tiny details already in a very busy composition.

cake tragedy. should have made the new one as violent

i'm pretty happy with the improvements in the new background, in particular the shape of the tree. i referenced upa and revival style outdoor backgrounds (blessed be pinterest dot com). i've been very drawn to these backgrounds as the kind of feel i want to give this world, i really like the use of abstract and exaggerated shapes and giving color the authority to determine the mood of the scene and shapes of objects (ex from camp lazlo and powerpuff girls).

the truck scene was easily the weakest point. that was meant to show qb wandering into traffic and originally i used a real photo of a truck because i think it's funny when real pictures are used in cartoons, but it just looked like i couldn't be bothered to draw a truck.

the layout also isn't ideal and the speech bubbles not as easy to follow. it feels "squashed" because i was trying to show her addressing them directly by centering everything, but the bottom panel feels awkwardly shoved into the composition. the perspective does a 180 to show doc and maya's reactions to the news. i didn't feel too bad cutting this because they have an argument about it on the next page.

the new one shows off the hazomat (laundromat for hazardous material) which i wanted to explain to the audience without bogging down the pacing with boring expositional dialogue. i drew safety posters to suggest the presence of radioactive material and bolts' no-nonsense attitude concerning her business. i'm quite fond of "SSA".

i kept snide detergent and qb reading a book beyond his programming. astrophysics for the fragile ego comes from an ancient mermay comic (circa 2021), and feels more appropriate for the outer space theme than of mice and men.

i really enjoy using black and white in comics. i had the chance to speak with an industry professional recently about my work and he recommended using more values to distinguish space since i'd only used two grays in the work i shared with him, so i pushed it here and i'm pretty jazzed about the result. i want to get better at working with color but i really like how grayscale looks too, not to mention it's a timesaver.

i probably made this backwards, i drew the comic and sort of wrote the dialogue around the action with the scant ideas i had going in. i usually like making stuff up on the fly like that, but i struggled making it sound natural and not awkwardly shoving words in to fill the space, which was compounded by his thick southern drawl and trying to come up with just the right phrase or pronunciation he would use (this probably could have stood a quick google).

this was received well during crit, which i was surprised about because i was sure i did the assignment wrong. it was agreed that the part between panels 3 and 4 where he awakens the plant monster needed to be clearer; my professor pointed out that it's hard to see that he's still holding the flower so i should have made it stand out more, maybe by keeping it white, which i had considered while working on it and then just. didn't

i gotta draw professor pollinator more often, he's so much fun! i made him a few years ago when i wanted to make characters themed to specific scientific fields and he's very dear to me. i wanted him to look like a plant so he's round and bulb-shaped with short wavy hair like sprouting leaves (bulbs for reference below). i struggled a bit with placing and sizing his finn from adventure time teeth so they're a little inconsistent but maybe i could work that into part of his charm.