Saga: A Webcomic About Depression

2015-05-09 02:42

The next chapter of Saga has been posted! I'm getting the process down now. I can draw a comic on regular paper, convert it into vectors and have it look reasonably good! I learned what to do and what not to do from the first one. Learning is fun!

I'm working very hard on getting into a good relationship with my computer again. Using it as a fun tool, a symbiotic partner, vs. a machine that runs me. Learning how to make the characters express things is fun, too.

This comic took about 4 hours from start to finish. First plotting out the dialog, then the wireframes of the people. Google image search for poses to use as a guide for postures. Finalize the sketches using a mechanical pencil on plain old computer paper (I think I'll move to Bristolboard when I get annoyed with the paper creasing up when I erase on it) then direct outlines (with an attempt to be clearer than last time) with a Micron pen in 08. I followed this by trying to scan the art into vector on my iPhone using Adobe Shape without erasing the pencil marks (just to see if it would work (if it did, then less work for me! - surprise! it didn't - but I wonder if I could use photocopy blue next time and see again?) erasing the pencil lines, then re-scanning, setting the line thickness to very large.

I did the line work at a friendly coworking space in Portland, Oregon. It was nice to have people around me working on hobbies well into the night. An ideal way to spend a Saturday night. I like to do a solitary activity while surrounded by people, and maybe join in the conversation every once in a while. I left the space at 1:00am.

When I got home I couldn't wait to see how much better this comic would turn out than the last one in terms of clarity, brevity and color. I made a color scheme in Adobe Illustrator from the last comic and used it to color this one. In the end I brightened up a bunch of my original colors. Then I compressed the panels together, split it up into artboards, and exported it to this site. I hand-coded a new set of HTML pages for the new chapter of the comic, updated the Archive file and added this entry. It feels so good to create on the web again. Goodnight!

2015-05-09 18:35

The very first version of the comic is up, in color! It took a while to do this, for obvious reasons.

One of the reasons it took so long to get the pages onto the web was because I needed to figure out a process for scanning and coloring the panels. The thought of scanning in page by page into Photoshop and tediously cleaning everything up made me overwhelmed and even more depressed. The distance between starting the comic and having it on the web seemed so large.

I did a bit of research to see what had progressed in the land of Adobe, and I was pleased to find a suite of mobile, desktop and web tools that could make the job easier. I developed the process below, and it made things much faster!

Process: draw in pencil, ink with micron pen. Use iPhone and Adobe Shape CC to scan outlines and convert to vectors. App syncs to Adobe Creative Cloud. Open Illustrator CC on my Desktop, find all vector files in Library. Select each panel, Object > Path > Outline Stroke. For each panel, go to Object > Live Paint > Make. Then color panels. Arrange panels into horozontal three image stories, Object > Artboards > Fit to Selected Artwork. Then File > Export > Use Artboards. Save at high resolution into a folder for the comic. Upload to this site!

2015-04-29 17:35

I'm happy to announce that I finally found what I was looking for. A static webhosting provider. Now I can easily make webcomics and webcomic updates without having to worry about running a server or a database.

Working with static HTML and CSS means that I can update my site and keep it up for a longer time than something dynamic. I decided to name my comic Saga, because with depression my days can feel like years. I feel like I've been through dark oceans and deep pits. There aren't a lot of writers and comic artists exploring the effect technology and isolation might have on people. I'd like to start.

2015-04-29 15:30

I've never been a particularly good writer. I keep wanting to show vs. tell. Although I wrote fiction when I was younger, I made far more comics. Since then, depression has gotten the best of me, and I'd like to be able to express what it is like to have it. Today I finished coding a sample site for the comic I'm going to be posting. It is written with code originally based on Sequence, a content management system for comics and fiction. I modified the code to host static files so that the comic can stick around for longer.