One Piece- Ring Around fancomic
So for those of a fannish mind on my flist, just letting folk know that I've gotten into the manga (and anime, but since I have dialup that's not exactly as viable an option) One Piece. Yes folks, I've bounced fandoms from ninjas over to pirates. XD
Anyway, the point of this post is that one of the marvelous authors I've been following, maldoror_gw (who the lovely erjika recommended to me when I (and Maldoror, actually) was just getting started in Naruto) wrote a fun little nakamashippy story called "Ring Around," found here. *pimps*
I got inspired and ended up creating a 10-page comic illustrating this story, which can be found here.
Rating is entirely G and worksafe, no pairings but as Maldoror said in her warnings, there is definitely a lot of retaliatory kissing going on. *snerk*
There are two folders in there, because while line art is just the art with minimal edits, the other one I colored in Sanji's suit for contrast purposes, but since I kinda fail at coloring in the lines, the line art is up too. :P
Now cut because I'm going to babble a *lot* about process and the wonderfulness that is Maldoror and her writing ^_^
Right, so from start to finish this comic ended taking about 10 days to complete. I'd gotten inspired on re-reading a bunch of Maldoror's short OP stories, because she just *gets* the character interactions and canon OP zaniness so well. "Ring Around" totally zapped me for comic inspiration, and for the record, I rarely get the urge to do fanart for series or for stories I read though I tend to doodle in manga styles a lot. "Ring Around" made it easy, because the structure of the story is action-action-action, without too much introspection or lots of time spent in characters' heads which is the kind of story I tend to read more often.
Actually, because I'd hit a roadblock visualizing it, this comic was originally going to be like those four-panel comic strips, but then I left a comment for Maldoror who replied with a wonderfully descriptive word-picture of the action. It made things so much clearer, and I took inspiration (sometimes literally) from comments like "whirlwinds of marimo and angry cook" and her reminder that the foredeck and the galley are in line of sight, which I hadn't realized.
So I spent a couple days sketching out what I would like to happen, and drawing lots of reference doodles from the manga I had on my comp so I could more or less mimic the style and get a sense of characters' expressions. I know some people find the OP art style kinda funky, and I did at first too because even for a shonen manga, the style's crazier a lot of times than even Naruto or Bleach. But frankly I had an easier time semi-imitating it than I do with shojo manga. Hehe, my own art style is a bit too clunky to really do wispy CLAMP-y shojo anyway.
My little sketches and Maldoror's comments somehow had my comic ballooning in page count, so it went from originally being a few strips to being a five or six-pager to the final 10-page plus cover. o.O Also should note this is my first completely 'big' comic, since in high school and college I just did little strips and humorous one-shots making fun of situations I was in. o.O;;;
The end result comes from over a week of going at my sketchbook first with mechanical pencil, then after lots of erasing and sketching and such, inked in with my trusty Uniball pens. I decided not to ink in anybody's dark clothes, especially not Sanji's suit, since while the pen strokes work well for hair, it doesn't look as good filling in swatches of space and I decided to leave that for photoshop. Yay for Kinko's scanner, though it left weird green and blue streaks on the pages. >.>
Photoshop was my savior, really. Mostly because I screwed up Robin's face massively at one point inking her in. ;_; My excuse is that Robin and Nami both rock so hard, that they utterly pwn me and make it difficult to draw them consistently and so they look like *them*. Argh, it was so frustrating, because usually I'm better (which really is a relative term) at drawing women than men, but even with references Robin and Nami especially kept falling into the trap of generic shojo look that I had to keep beating away with an eraser. And Photoshop for that one panel, grr. So yeah, despite the guys turning out not too bad, I fail. ._.
And folks, ignore the backgrounds please. Practiced a lot of Merry's references, but distances between things and sizes and whatnot (gaaaah, all those damn *railings!*) are kinda...iffy. ^^;; But you can't have a story set on the Merry and not draw the Merry, who's a wonderful character all by herself (Merryyyyyy.....;_;).
But yeah, there you have it. The whole experience kinda consumed me, but it was so much fun doing it. And there might be another couple of short fics calling me the same way, but I need to recover from doing this first...:P For those of you who were actually interested enough to read to the end of this babble, hope you have fun reading (or re-reading) Maldoror's awesome fic and her many other awesome fics, and some fun reading my little comic. ^_^
Anyway, the point of this post is that one of the marvelous authors I've been following, maldoror_gw (who the lovely erjika recommended to me when I (and Maldoror, actually) was just getting started in Naruto) wrote a fun little nakamashippy story called "Ring Around," found here. *pimps*
I got inspired and ended up creating a 10-page comic illustrating this story, which can be found here.
Rating is entirely G and worksafe, no pairings but as Maldoror said in her warnings, there is definitely a lot of retaliatory kissing going on. *snerk*
There are two folders in there, because while line art is just the art with minimal edits, the other one I colored in Sanji's suit for contrast purposes, but since I kinda fail at coloring in the lines, the line art is up too. :P
Now cut because I'm going to babble a *lot* about process and the wonderfulness that is Maldoror and her writing ^_^
Right, so from start to finish this comic ended taking about 10 days to complete. I'd gotten inspired on re-reading a bunch of Maldoror's short OP stories, because she just *gets* the character interactions and canon OP zaniness so well. "Ring Around" totally zapped me for comic inspiration, and for the record, I rarely get the urge to do fanart for series or for stories I read though I tend to doodle in manga styles a lot. "Ring Around" made it easy, because the structure of the story is action-action-action, without too much introspection or lots of time spent in characters' heads which is the kind of story I tend to read more often.
Actually, because I'd hit a roadblock visualizing it, this comic was originally going to be like those four-panel comic strips, but then I left a comment for Maldoror who replied with a wonderfully descriptive word-picture of the action. It made things so much clearer, and I took inspiration (sometimes literally) from comments like "whirlwinds of marimo and angry cook" and her reminder that the foredeck and the galley are in line of sight, which I hadn't realized.
So I spent a couple days sketching out what I would like to happen, and drawing lots of reference doodles from the manga I had on my comp so I could more or less mimic the style and get a sense of characters' expressions. I know some people find the OP art style kinda funky, and I did at first too because even for a shonen manga, the style's crazier a lot of times than even Naruto or Bleach. But frankly I had an easier time semi-imitating it than I do with shojo manga. Hehe, my own art style is a bit too clunky to really do wispy CLAMP-y shojo anyway.
My little sketches and Maldoror's comments somehow had my comic ballooning in page count, so it went from originally being a few strips to being a five or six-pager to the final 10-page plus cover. o.O Also should note this is my first completely 'big' comic, since in high school and college I just did little strips and humorous one-shots making fun of situations I was in. o.O;;;
The end result comes from over a week of going at my sketchbook first with mechanical pencil, then after lots of erasing and sketching and such, inked in with my trusty Uniball pens. I decided not to ink in anybody's dark clothes, especially not Sanji's suit, since while the pen strokes work well for hair, it doesn't look as good filling in swatches of space and I decided to leave that for photoshop. Yay for Kinko's scanner, though it left weird green and blue streaks on the pages. >.>
Photoshop was my savior, really. Mostly because I screwed up Robin's face massively at one point inking her in. ;_; My excuse is that Robin and Nami both rock so hard, that they utterly pwn me and make it difficult to draw them consistently and so they look like *them*. Argh, it was so frustrating, because usually I'm better (which really is a relative term) at drawing women than men, but even with references Robin and Nami especially kept falling into the trap of generic shojo look that I had to keep beating away with an eraser. And Photoshop for that one panel, grr. So yeah, despite the guys turning out not too bad, I fail. ._.
And folks, ignore the backgrounds please. Practiced a lot of Merry's references, but distances between things and sizes and whatnot (gaaaah, all those damn *railings!*) are kinda...iffy. ^^;; But you can't have a story set on the Merry and not draw the Merry, who's a wonderful character all by herself (Merryyyyyy.....;_;).
But yeah, there you have it. The whole experience kinda consumed me, but it was so much fun doing it. And there might be another couple of short fics calling me the same way, but I need to recover from doing this first...:P For those of you who were actually interested enough to read to the end of this babble, hope you have fun reading (or re-reading) Maldoror's awesome fic and her many other awesome fics, and some fun reading my little comic. ^_^