#rough dream

Rough Dream 1.0 - Chapter 1 (EN)

I’m working on the real thing. I’m doing the so called ‘name-no-name’ or sketch storyboard of the whole serie (It should be 21/24 chapters long, 7 or 8 volmes, as I felt from the start. Each chapter should be 48 pages long - because I like having all chapter of equal lenght - typical of western comics), and I plan to pubblish it. I found open-minded publisher. I will not show and contact them until I will not finish the sketches of the whole thing and the chapter one (they need to see at least the first chapter, also I don’t want to rush), but I will let you read the first chapter for free.

This is the detailed sketch of the first page. I just wanted to see how it could turn out in a more detailed form (the resolution is still too low), and if is readable enough. I don’t have so clear ideas of the third vignette yet, but I have an idea about how it is supposed to flow. I edited this page today because captions were unnecessary, and the commentators of the wrestling company already say (underline) what is needed ( I didn’t wrote about the Key Arena, but i think is necessary).

A problem I’ve read comics have is about the coldness of pre made balloons and fonts. So I decided to use the premade balloons and fonts as base, then i will trace them, to remove the coldness (the same reason I normally tend to draw straight lines free hand).

Yesterday I’ve read an interesting study about Japanese comics (RD will follow a shonen-like storytellyng with a western-ish drawing style that will allow me to make my characters more specific and recognizable each other), and it was interesting that the mystery behind the lack of background in some vignette, and why the same-face syndrome.

The open vignette thing was rather easy to understand (open vignettes makes you feel more part of the story, but also lead the eye more easily) but I didn’t realized that

- Lack of background was to emphatyze emotions in characters - in the prototype I drew a couple of vignettes without background for this reason, but I didn’t understand the importance

- Same face syndrome is a matter of psychology. When we see people, we can see clearly their face, but we can’t see our own face (except on mirrors) and we only imagine roughly the shape of our faces. Making characters so generic is a way to force the reader to identify with them. Background characters tend to be more characterized because artists don’t want people identifying in them. On this topic I prefer my way. I always wanted to see what could be the specific face of certain characters. In some cases is hard to distinguish them. Also I’m more drawn to more specific characters. When I see a group of characters that have different faces and body types, like those thugs from a Toriyama’s comic...

...I wonder about what story each of them has to tell, and I get more curious. Characters that look the same feel more predictable.

I practice hard at drawing faces, I want my OCs from Rough Dream (but also from future comics I plan) being one different than the other, both the face and the body type. For this I draw a lot of specific people when I practice. Then I redraw them from memory, their face gets modified by the failure of human memory (But also I try to draw the faces more pleasant and readable), but at least each character has his own face, his own eyes and so on.

I will read that study again, as is very useful to me. Then i will have a clearer idea about what to do, what to keep and what to do just following my preferences.

Rough Dream 1.0 - Capitolo 1 (IT)

Above I practiced at drawing Brian face (avoiding features, it was not the point of this exercixe) to get used to draw from memory and with basic forms. for those drawings, I used both my hands (not at the same time), because when I do this, I can memorize faster. I also tried to think in 3D, another of my weak points (I can think in 3D, but I still have trouble at drawing in perspective without any guideline. I also tried to match the mental image I have of Brian.

As I said, I suck at drawing from memory, because I rely too much on references. References and any other helps should be used to draw faster, not as crutch.  The problem with references is that reality follows stritch rules, one of them is gravity. Knowing gravity force helps to draw people standing in equilibrium, but gravity also makes any real movement look to still on paper, because you don’t really need much movement to make actions

Another thing is that I like to base my characters on real faces. But unfortunately reality doesn’t always translates well on drawings. A charismatic real face can look boring on paper.  Also have you ever tried to overlap real face? regardless race and sex, most face will overlap perfectly. Human brain iswired to allow us to recognize differences in faces in matter of MILLIMETERS, but of course you can’t draw millimeters. Same Face Syndrome also comes by relying too much on reality instead of enhancing small differences.

Since 2001 (when I first drew Brian - I still have the first Brian drawing ever done), I’ve decided that Brian had to be a mulatto. Blue eyes, light blonde hair (I like to colour it almost white. It’s it’s natural colour), youthful face and afro-american features (like the shape of his nose and his full lips). At that time I used to copy Toriyama’s drawings, so i didn’t considered much about how people perceived Brian from outside, but I cared a lot for his personality. And working on Brian’s personality was lots of fun.

Brian is the kind of person that doesn’t give a fuck. He is straightforward and loud. He is an idealist, rebel, stubborn, confident, childish, touchy, rude. He can be arrogant and an asshole, but he has more positive traits than you may guess, and in Rough Dtream they will show. 

The model reference is Mohammed Ali:

He used to be extremely expressive. His expressions are funny, exactly what I wanted for Brian. He was also an asshole, a rebel, loud and pretty much arrogant. Unlike Brian he didn’t flipped the bird, he didn’t say bad words (Brian’s favourite is “Fuck”), and some ideals are different. He had a roundish youthful face, but the volume of the face differs, with Ali having more prominent cheeckbones, so when seen from above, the volume of the face looks square-ish. Brian on the other hand is more roundish when seen from above.  Ali has a brachicephalic head, while Brian has a more mesocephalic to dolicocephalic head. Also Brian has a longer face. A small face with roundish details and a large cranium enhance the youthful appearance. After all, Brian is only 21 years old.

I studied Ali’s face for one or two weeks, tracing, redrawing and analyzing it over and over. I drew it with exaggerated features, and I even attempted some sculpting to get better grasp of volumes, and then I put it away and worked on Brian’s face using what I assimilated. I noticed that the more I tried to be faithful to the reference, the less I was happy. I studied some cartoon faces to see why they are so interesting:

Lampwick is too cartony for my standards (I have a more “conservative” style), but you can learn a lot by observing both reality and the exaggeration of it. Lampwick face is also based on the one of a real person:

Fred Moore, that choose himself on purpose as model. I can see a lot of Lampwick in this photo. Of course they aren’t identical. The similarity is more on the ‘feel’ than on the ‘look’.

I believe (nor to mention I learned from another user on DA and Tumblr) that every single detail of a character should be unique to him, not only the shape of the face. I think that everything must look interesting. If a face (without features) fails to catch my attention, I must redo it

On Brian’s face I added a widow’s peak to break the perfectly straight hairline (common on black males). I took from Ali the big teeth, because I feel they enhance the expression.

No mistake. Olav is a lefty. While drawing him and studying my OCs better, Olav felt left handed, so I decided to draw him this way. Also I’ve read somewhere that there is a higher percentage of lefties among redheads, so...