Building a better Amber
Some small updates and newsles.
Shortpacked! Book 2 should be arriving here at my house next week! All fifty boxes were supposed to enter the country around July 4, and transit from California to here will take 10-12 days. So, this coming week. Sweetness!
Comic-Con San Diego is looming large, and Blank Label Comics' booth, as seemingly always, is 1330. We should be right in the middle of all the other big name webcomics, same as last year. Preview night is Wednesday, July 23, and it runs until Sunday!
To the left are my preparation doodles for Amber's new look. It was a little rough, because I had some ideas of what I wanted, but what I wanted made things very difficult. For example, I thought she needed more stylish glasses, and glasses have pretty small lenses these days. Unfortunately, small lenses obscure the eyes, and it's really important to leave the eyes unobscured so she can still be expressive. I think I was able to make them small enough, but still big enough that her eyes can fit in them. It did help that her glasses were previously ginormous.
I also thought she needed a new hairstyle, but once you change the hair AND glasses, she basically looks like a new character. So I had to determine what of her old hairstyle she needed to keep. What elements, once removed, no longer keep her recognizable as Amber? I learned that covering her ears was probably the most important. You can see a sketch to the left that looks like her new hairstyle, but shows her ears -- I adored it, and the girl in the image was pretty cute, but it didn't actually look like Amber. Weirdly enough, covering up the ears again made it look like Amber again. Leaving the lopsided bangs was another visual clue that remains, as well.
The update was probably as much a surprise for me as it was for you. I was actually going to bring back the corset, but as I sat down to visualize today's strip, I realized that a different adjustment felt more organic. So, whoops, we got a new Amber.
Meanwhile, some day, Robin's hair may look like real hair, instead of a football being attacked by black balloons. Not today, but someday.
Shortpacked! Book 2 should be arriving here at my house next week! All fifty boxes were supposed to enter the country around July 4, and transit from California to here will take 10-12 days. So, this coming week. Sweetness!
Comic-Con San Diego is looming large, and Blank Label Comics' booth, as seemingly always, is 1330. We should be right in the middle of all the other big name webcomics, same as last year. Preview night is Wednesday, July 23, and it runs until Sunday!
To the left are my preparation doodles for Amber's new look. It was a little rough, because I had some ideas of what I wanted, but what I wanted made things very difficult. For example, I thought she needed more stylish glasses, and glasses have pretty small lenses these days. Unfortunately, small lenses obscure the eyes, and it's really important to leave the eyes unobscured so she can still be expressive. I think I was able to make them small enough, but still big enough that her eyes can fit in them. It did help that her glasses were previously ginormous.
I also thought she needed a new hairstyle, but once you change the hair AND glasses, she basically looks like a new character. So I had to determine what of her old hairstyle she needed to keep. What elements, once removed, no longer keep her recognizable as Amber? I learned that covering her ears was probably the most important. You can see a sketch to the left that looks like her new hairstyle, but shows her ears -- I adored it, and the girl in the image was pretty cute, but it didn't actually look like Amber. Weirdly enough, covering up the ears again made it look like Amber again. Leaving the lopsided bangs was another visual clue that remains, as well.
The update was probably as much a surprise for me as it was for you. I was actually going to bring back the corset, but as I sat down to visualize today's strip, I realized that a different adjustment felt more organic. So, whoops, we got a new Amber.
Meanwhile, some day, Robin's hair may look like real hair, instead of a football being attacked by black balloons. Not today, but someday.