Behind the Scenes of 'The Gift'
I have only just recently realised - I'm officially 40+ now, so it was about time - that I challenge myself constantly. I didn't really understand that before, but I push myself all the time. I'm a creature of habit and I'm not at all adventurous. But when it comes to skills, I always want to grow and get better. On the one hand, it means I put myself under pressure (which sometimes crosses over into stress, self-doubt and performance anxiety), but on the other hand, I get bored when things are too easy. It's my own modest version of "My mind rebels at stagnation" ;).
I tend to push myself for Hoggywarty. A Hoggywarty piece is always a gift for someone, and nobody wants to gift someone with a dud. It's also become, with snapecase, my Snapey Outing of the Year, so I have to make it count. I've also noticed that making fan things I feel freer somehow than when making, say, my Gawain comic. Fandom is less 'for real', if you like. It's playful because the thing you are making does not entirely belong to you. I dare to be more silly and more creative in fan art, I think. I take more risks. As a result, my Hoggywarty pieces are often things I am genuinely proud of (though I am invariably very worried that their recipient won't like them).
This year, because I was in an existential crisis, my first thought was to go easy on myself and do a pretty portrait or something. Or two portraits with a narrative link, because I didn't want to look like a slacker. But soon enough I realised that I didn't really want to go easy. I wanted to make a silly comic that would make people laugh after the awful year we've had. Of course, the trouble is that I'm notoriously slow, and comics, however simple they may look, are not easy to make. For one thing, you need a story, and then you need to figure out how to tell it, and how to render it. Fortunately, and idea presented itself in October. (Just the one! I don't seem to have head space for more than one idea at any given time?!)
The Idea and the Story
Like Minerva in the story, I happened to be in a shop looking for nothing in particular, when I found this little plate that reminded me of a friend. Said friend would be appalled if I were to suggest that she stand in for Snape in this tale, if only because she considers herself a Ravenclaw through and through and is most definitely not a greasy-haired ex-Death Eater. She is, however, very snarky and sarcastic when provoked, so - there is a certain character resemblance. (She does not know this LJ exists, in case you wondered ;p.) So, my snarky and lovely friend is a hobby seamstress and crafter, and once told me that she used to embroider insults in cross stitch. Reader, that is so her. It also explains, I hope, why I was reminded of her when I found these hand-crafted porcelain plates in candy colours, sporting obscenities like DICKHEAD and FUCKITY FUCK. I normally have a very low tolerance for vulgarity, but these struck me as hilarious. I bought one of each for her birthday and spent the next two weeks hoping she wouldn't take them the wrong way.
As the Snape-and-Minerva version started to form in my head, I went back to the shop and bought a Dickhead plate for myself. I needed it as a model and an inspiration, and because I am crazy that way, I now think of it as 'Snape's plate'.
Look Mum, I Wrote A Script
I must confess: I am the most unprofessional comic maker you have ever come across. I never work from a script, which explains a lot about the problems I encounter while creating. Once upon a time, when I was on my first serious attempt at making a comic, I did write scripts. I stopped doing so when I realised I couldn't turn them into comics, because apparently my brain is either writing or drawing, and when writing I have no idea how something is going to look on a page. There's too much text, it's not visual enough, I have no idea how much of the plot goes onto one page - that sort of thing. I only really started getting somewhere with my comics when I started to sketch and write at the same time. Some dialogue is born on the sketch pages; bits of dialogue that demand more reflection are developed in notebooks.
The Gawain comic, for example, is a sprawling thing made on a page-by-page basis. (This is Very Bad, don't try it at home.) There is no script delineating the action, apart from a very broad outline with a few major storypoints (which I never consult). Usually it works. I think I would be wholly incapable of working from someone else's script, which is one more reason why I should probably never attempt to go into comics professionally.
Great Balls of Snow, my previous Hoggywarty comic (2016-17), did not have a script either. If I recall correctly, the story simply didn't solidify until I was actually drawing it. But this caused a big problem. I was on a deadline, and I had no idea how long the story was going to be and within what timeframe I could get it done. Because I was writing and drawing it at the same time, I had to figure out a process that would allow me to shrink, expand or amend the story and rearrange panels as needed, but without redrawing anything or changing lay-outs. That's how I came up with the idea to forget about pages and to draw all panels on separate sheets. The comic clocked in at 43 individual sheets, A6-size for the smaller ones and A5 for illustrations that needed a bit more space. It was a fun and exhilarating way to work, but I still missed two deadlines, and until the last panel was drawn, I wasn't absolutely sure that the story flow would work.
For The Gift, I decided I would write a proper script, for once. I can't stress enough how unique this is: a Sigune script. There's only one in the world XD. Naturally I didn't stick to (all of) it. But it was useful in the way I needed it to be: I broke the story down into panels, and arranged the panels on pages. It worked well because the story is short, and I could fit its 18 panels onto 5 pages quite easily. As always, I still had to compress some of the dialogue. I feel I have reached professional levels of Dialogue Compression at this stage in my non-career.
Choose Your Weapon Medium
I decided early on that I would do this story in watercolour. Like many people who are actually not very good with colour, when left to my usual devices I focus on lines, line thickness and black. I've become quite comfortable using to my trusty brush pen and its flexible tip, that can handle a lot of line variation. If you add (water)colour to this kind of line work, though, it will be obvious that colour is only playing second fiddle, or was added as a kind of afterthought.
I didn't think I could manage entirely without lines, but I consciously tried to keep them thin and simple. 'Simple' is perhaps not the right word, because with lines like these, you have no margin for error. Every wobble is there to stay, and every mistake is glaring. You can't thicken a line or do some cross-hatching to hide it.
I worked hard on the poses and expressions, and on the... choreography, if you like. I hope it worked. Just like I have difficulties with perspective (and little hope of ever resolving them), I also have trouble drawing objects in relation to one another - to make them exist on the same plane, as it were. My brain fails at 3D. (Likewise, I find it hard to gauge size based on measurements - I'm wondering if this isn't all related to my discalculia somehow. But I digress.) I did do my best to make these two characters dance around one other: Minerva comes running after Severus, she catches up with him on his left, he turns to face her, she gives him the gift, she moves past him from the left, she leans in for the kiss, and she is off, leaving Severus standing under the mistletoe.
Oh, and I finally thought of looking for reference of what glasses look like on a face in profile. I love Minerva McGonagall, but boy, drawing those glasses on her nose from all angles has always been a pain XD.
The original pencil sketches were drawn in an A4 Moleskine sketchbook. They were then scanned, darkened in Photoshop and printed out. As you can see below, there were some panels where I wasn't happy with the expressions and I drew alternatives in blank spaces on the same or an adjacent page. I took care to draw them in the correct size, so they could be placed directly where they belonged using the lightbox.
As you can see, Dumbledore was originally wearing a hat, because I love a good witch hat. But afterwards I thought it was a bit odd that he should be wearing a hat in the staffroom, so I removed it.
The image of Snape and Dumbledore in the sofa was one that made me cackle like a crazy thing, alone in my study, but I'm not sure that it's clear to everyone that Snape is carefully arranging the humbugs around the 'Dickhead' before presenting the plate to Dumbledore.
For a moment, I considered inking with a fountain pen, because I'd recently cleaned my Montblanc and discovered that it actually is great to write with when it isn't clogged (I'm ashamed to say I never actually learnt how to take care of fountain pens; I recently discovered some great tips online and lo and behold, all my leaking pens were never 'broken', but only in need of a good clean. I've passed the tips on to my best friend and now we Skype each other squeeing over how great our pens are and what an utter joy it is to write with them). Fortunately, I remembered just in time that fountain pen ink is watersoluble, and the combination with watercolour paint would have been Comic Carnage. So I went for a number 0.2 Copic Fineliner instead.
Life in Watercolour
I have never done a comic in watercolour before, and with good reason. I'm rubbish at it. It's one of the tragedies of my life that I adore watercolour and have an intense admiration for people who paint entire comics by hand, but that I'm so bad at it myself. Even so, I can't let it go. I have long accepted that I'll never be a colour virtuoso, but I'd like to be, you know, passable. Of course the trouble with watercolour is that you can't correct it. What's done is done, especially if what's done is in a darker hue.
So what I did is, I took an online course in 'Watercolours for Comics'. I listened to Spanish artist and colourist Sergio Bleda and did the exercises, and tried to apply them. It's funny because I really tried to stick to what I'd learnt, but there were too many things I did wrong after years of bad habits. You don't unlearn those after a few hours of class.
Anyway: I did design the characters in a sketchbook for reference and chose a colour palette. Half of this step was a bit backwards because I'd already done all my pencil drawings, so this was character design after the facts ;). Normally I should have used these as reference to keep the characters and their costumes consistent. I should also have noted which pigments I used for each. Then again, as you will see, I deliberately ended up using a purply colour rather than a grey for Severus's 'blacks'.
Whenever I choose a colour palette, it turns out I recognise only two colours, and they are red and blue. Fine, I will admit there's such a thing as yellow, but it should never be left on its own. I've been told there are other colours, but I don't know if I should believe that.
The next step was my own and felt inexplicably thrilling: I cut a bunch of strips of masking tape and stuck them to the watercolour paper to mark the borders of the panels. Then I stuck wider strips of tape all around the sides, to keep the margins white.
I did as Sergio Bleda said and mixed my paints in sufficient quantity (or at least, what I thought was a sufficient quantity). Then I could start painting. This is the part where most of my bad habits kicked in: I was supposed to paint from light to dark. That's normal for watercolour, but... I don't do it. I'm inclined to say that it's because I really don't master colour and I need confirmation that it's going to look fine. Basically I do all the layers of a part of the painting, instead of doing the entire painting layer by layer. I honestly tried to do it correctly here - I did do the background colour first, for example, and that felt so much better than doing it last as I usually do - but I repeatedly caught myself running ahead and detailing things when there were still basic layers to do.
I have to say, I felt very accomplished once the painting was done, even though while I was working on it, I often thought, "whyyyyyyy did I want to do this? This isn't for me! I don't know the colours of things!" The thing with watercolour is that it's just fun to mess around with paint and water and brushes - I adore brushes - so even if you're not very good at it, you want to have another go. Playing with the pigment on paper, with the lovely transparencies... It's just hard to resist. Then, when at the end for once the masking tape comes off without taking the top layer of your paper with it, you think this was a job well done, even though cabepfir would have done it 20 times better.
The Next Step?
Around this time last year, I mentioned a Secret Snape Project for 2020. Well, it didn't materialise for plenty of good reasons, most of which have to do with 2020 being what it was.
Here is what I'd planned to do: I wanted to make a sort of Snape Zine, bundling my Snape comics and some extra material. I feel less annoyed by not having made the zine in 2020 now that I've made another comic to add to it.
So, the zine would contain:I don't know how much interest there would be in such a bundle, but I'll put some feelers out. If someone has any experience with producing actual books and selling and shipping them to people, and would be inclined to offer counsel or help, the undersigned, having no business sense, would be most grateful to hear from you :).
I tend to push myself for Hoggywarty. A Hoggywarty piece is always a gift for someone, and nobody wants to gift someone with a dud. It's also become, with snapecase, my Snapey Outing of the Year, so I have to make it count. I've also noticed that making fan things I feel freer somehow than when making, say, my Gawain comic. Fandom is less 'for real', if you like. It's playful because the thing you are making does not entirely belong to you. I dare to be more silly and more creative in fan art, I think. I take more risks. As a result, my Hoggywarty pieces are often things I am genuinely proud of (though I am invariably very worried that their recipient won't like them).
This year, because I was in an existential crisis, my first thought was to go easy on myself and do a pretty portrait or something. Or two portraits with a narrative link, because I didn't want to look like a slacker. But soon enough I realised that I didn't really want to go easy. I wanted to make a silly comic that would make people laugh after the awful year we've had. Of course, the trouble is that I'm notoriously slow, and comics, however simple they may look, are not easy to make. For one thing, you need a story, and then you need to figure out how to tell it, and how to render it. Fortunately, and idea presented itself in October. (Just the one! I don't seem to have head space for more than one idea at any given time?!)
The Idea and the Story
Like Minerva in the story, I happened to be in a shop looking for nothing in particular, when I found this little plate that reminded me of a friend. Said friend would be appalled if I were to suggest that she stand in for Snape in this tale, if only because she considers herself a Ravenclaw through and through and is most definitely not a greasy-haired ex-Death Eater. She is, however, very snarky and sarcastic when provoked, so - there is a certain character resemblance. (She does not know this LJ exists, in case you wondered ;p.) So, my snarky and lovely friend is a hobby seamstress and crafter, and once told me that she used to embroider insults in cross stitch. Reader, that is so her. It also explains, I hope, why I was reminded of her when I found these hand-crafted porcelain plates in candy colours, sporting obscenities like DICKHEAD and FUCKITY FUCK. I normally have a very low tolerance for vulgarity, but these struck me as hilarious. I bought one of each for her birthday and spent the next two weeks hoping she wouldn't take them the wrong way.
As the Snape-and-Minerva version started to form in my head, I went back to the shop and bought a Dickhead plate for myself. I needed it as a model and an inspiration, and because I am crazy that way, I now think of it as 'Snape's plate'.
Look Mum, I Wrote A Script
I must confess: I am the most unprofessional comic maker you have ever come across. I never work from a script, which explains a lot about the problems I encounter while creating. Once upon a time, when I was on my first serious attempt at making a comic, I did write scripts. I stopped doing so when I realised I couldn't turn them into comics, because apparently my brain is either writing or drawing, and when writing I have no idea how something is going to look on a page. There's too much text, it's not visual enough, I have no idea how much of the plot goes onto one page - that sort of thing. I only really started getting somewhere with my comics when I started to sketch and write at the same time. Some dialogue is born on the sketch pages; bits of dialogue that demand more reflection are developed in notebooks.
The Gawain comic, for example, is a sprawling thing made on a page-by-page basis. (This is Very Bad, don't try it at home.) There is no script delineating the action, apart from a very broad outline with a few major storypoints (which I never consult). Usually it works. I think I would be wholly incapable of working from someone else's script, which is one more reason why I should probably never attempt to go into comics professionally.
Great Balls of Snow, my previous Hoggywarty comic (2016-17), did not have a script either. If I recall correctly, the story simply didn't solidify until I was actually drawing it. But this caused a big problem. I was on a deadline, and I had no idea how long the story was going to be and within what timeframe I could get it done. Because I was writing and drawing it at the same time, I had to figure out a process that would allow me to shrink, expand or amend the story and rearrange panels as needed, but without redrawing anything or changing lay-outs. That's how I came up with the idea to forget about pages and to draw all panels on separate sheets. The comic clocked in at 43 individual sheets, A6-size for the smaller ones and A5 for illustrations that needed a bit more space. It was a fun and exhilarating way to work, but I still missed two deadlines, and until the last panel was drawn, I wasn't absolutely sure that the story flow would work.
For The Gift, I decided I would write a proper script, for once. I can't stress enough how unique this is: a Sigune script. There's only one in the world XD. Naturally I didn't stick to (all of) it. But it was useful in the way I needed it to be: I broke the story down into panels, and arranged the panels on pages. It worked well because the story is short, and I could fit its 18 panels onto 5 pages quite easily. As always, I still had to compress some of the dialogue. I feel I have reached professional levels of Dialogue Compression at this stage in my non-career.
Choose Your Weapon Medium
I decided early on that I would do this story in watercolour. Like many people who are actually not very good with colour, when left to my usual devices I focus on lines, line thickness and black. I've become quite comfortable using to my trusty brush pen and its flexible tip, that can handle a lot of line variation. If you add (water)colour to this kind of line work, though, it will be obvious that colour is only playing second fiddle, or was added as a kind of afterthought.
I didn't think I could manage entirely without lines, but I consciously tried to keep them thin and simple. 'Simple' is perhaps not the right word, because with lines like these, you have no margin for error. Every wobble is there to stay, and every mistake is glaring. You can't thicken a line or do some cross-hatching to hide it.
I worked hard on the poses and expressions, and on the... choreography, if you like. I hope it worked. Just like I have difficulties with perspective (and little hope of ever resolving them), I also have trouble drawing objects in relation to one another - to make them exist on the same plane, as it were. My brain fails at 3D. (Likewise, I find it hard to gauge size based on measurements - I'm wondering if this isn't all related to my discalculia somehow. But I digress.) I did do my best to make these two characters dance around one other: Minerva comes running after Severus, she catches up with him on his left, he turns to face her, she gives him the gift, she moves past him from the left, she leans in for the kiss, and she is off, leaving Severus standing under the mistletoe.
Oh, and I finally thought of looking for reference of what glasses look like on a face in profile. I love Minerva McGonagall, but boy, drawing those glasses on her nose from all angles has always been a pain XD.
The original pencil sketches were drawn in an A4 Moleskine sketchbook. They were then scanned, darkened in Photoshop and printed out. As you can see below, there were some panels where I wasn't happy with the expressions and I drew alternatives in blank spaces on the same or an adjacent page. I took care to draw them in the correct size, so they could be placed directly where they belonged using the lightbox.
As you can see, Dumbledore was originally wearing a hat, because I love a good witch hat. But afterwards I thought it was a bit odd that he should be wearing a hat in the staffroom, so I removed it.
The image of Snape and Dumbledore in the sofa was one that made me cackle like a crazy thing, alone in my study, but I'm not sure that it's clear to everyone that Snape is carefully arranging the humbugs around the 'Dickhead' before presenting the plate to Dumbledore.
For a moment, I considered inking with a fountain pen, because I'd recently cleaned my Montblanc and discovered that it actually is great to write with when it isn't clogged (I'm ashamed to say I never actually learnt how to take care of fountain pens; I recently discovered some great tips online and lo and behold, all my leaking pens were never 'broken', but only in need of a good clean. I've passed the tips on to my best friend and now we Skype each other squeeing over how great our pens are and what an utter joy it is to write with them). Fortunately, I remembered just in time that fountain pen ink is watersoluble, and the combination with watercolour paint would have been Comic Carnage. So I went for a number 0.2 Copic Fineliner instead.
Life in Watercolour
I have never done a comic in watercolour before, and with good reason. I'm rubbish at it. It's one of the tragedies of my life that I adore watercolour and have an intense admiration for people who paint entire comics by hand, but that I'm so bad at it myself. Even so, I can't let it go. I have long accepted that I'll never be a colour virtuoso, but I'd like to be, you know, passable. Of course the trouble with watercolour is that you can't correct it. What's done is done, especially if what's done is in a darker hue.
So what I did is, I took an online course in 'Watercolours for Comics'. I listened to Spanish artist and colourist Sergio Bleda and did the exercises, and tried to apply them. It's funny because I really tried to stick to what I'd learnt, but there were too many things I did wrong after years of bad habits. You don't unlearn those after a few hours of class.
Anyway: I did design the characters in a sketchbook for reference and chose a colour palette. Half of this step was a bit backwards because I'd already done all my pencil drawings, so this was character design after the facts ;). Normally I should have used these as reference to keep the characters and their costumes consistent. I should also have noted which pigments I used for each. Then again, as you will see, I deliberately ended up using a purply colour rather than a grey for Severus's 'blacks'.
Whenever I choose a colour palette, it turns out I recognise only two colours, and they are red and blue. Fine, I will admit there's such a thing as yellow, but it should never be left on its own. I've been told there are other colours, but I don't know if I should believe that.
The next step was my own and felt inexplicably thrilling: I cut a bunch of strips of masking tape and stuck them to the watercolour paper to mark the borders of the panels. Then I stuck wider strips of tape all around the sides, to keep the margins white.
I did as Sergio Bleda said and mixed my paints in sufficient quantity (or at least, what I thought was a sufficient quantity). Then I could start painting. This is the part where most of my bad habits kicked in: I was supposed to paint from light to dark. That's normal for watercolour, but... I don't do it. I'm inclined to say that it's because I really don't master colour and I need confirmation that it's going to look fine. Basically I do all the layers of a part of the painting, instead of doing the entire painting layer by layer. I honestly tried to do it correctly here - I did do the background colour first, for example, and that felt so much better than doing it last as I usually do - but I repeatedly caught myself running ahead and detailing things when there were still basic layers to do.
I have to say, I felt very accomplished once the painting was done, even though while I was working on it, I often thought, "whyyyyyyy did I want to do this? This isn't for me! I don't know the colours of things!" The thing with watercolour is that it's just fun to mess around with paint and water and brushes - I adore brushes - so even if you're not very good at it, you want to have another go. Playing with the pigment on paper, with the lovely transparencies... It's just hard to resist. Then, when at the end for once the masking tape comes off without taking the top layer of your paper with it, you think this was a job well done, even though cabepfir would have done it 20 times better.
The Next Step?
Around this time last year, I mentioned a Secret Snape Project for 2020. Well, it didn't materialise for plenty of good reasons, most of which have to do with 2020 being what it was.
Here is what I'd planned to do: I wanted to make a sort of Snape Zine, bundling my Snape comics and some extra material. I feel less annoyed by not having made the zine in 2020 now that I've made another comic to add to it.
So, the zine would contain:I don't know how much interest there would be in such a bundle, but I'll put some feelers out. If someone has any experience with producing actual books and selling and shipping them to people, and would be inclined to offer counsel or help, the undersigned, having no business sense, would be most grateful to hear from you :).