Blaugust 4 - comic process

cw: nsfw-ish talk. just in case someone's reading over your shoulder! ;)

Forcing myself to do both blaugust and finish my comic for noah's ark. I'm currently in the middle and going "oh my god I'm the worst artist alive I'm terrible everyone will figure out I'm a fraud and my art will never improve" yadda yadda but that's because I'M used to it. But soon I will remember I'm a genius and rise once more to the top.

Planning

The theme is I'm not allowed to draw this! so I wanted to draw an instant loss/hypno story because EVEN THOUGH I LIKE THEM... I'm too scarlet to actually... MAKE ONE... which is dumb since I really admire (read: I'm insanely jealous of) people who can make pwp. I'm MUCH too rambly and even when I try... It's all about FEELINGS (ugh).

Honestly, this is very very tame... but the stories I make are always so dark lol I don't know how this happens... I can only make loveable abusers...

Design

I usually start with one word. "Girl cuck", "BJD liker" "Girl who will be TF'd/hypno'd". I usually have a pretty strong idea about designs, and I'll stick my first few ideas. I knew one had to be homely/plain, I wanted one alt girl and a "sporty" one. Their personalities could be refined later.

Honestly, my silhouettes could use some work. I do like each of the girl's shapes/faces/hairdos and there's enough contrast in their values, but their clothes could've used another go over.

But then, would it have worked? Complex designs are annoying... I'm too animation-brained...

And clearly, I was thinking about Tsubasa from hndr line... o)-(

Writing

...I'm a pantser. I have one idea, and then when I do thumbnails it goes in another direction. If I plan too much, it makes my brain feel like it's already done... Which is a problem...

I script in obsidian. I don't do anything fancy. I knew I had 8pages to get this done. Which is hard... but that's why we write instant loss. Who needs build up?

Roughs

All that matters is placement.

This is an animation trick: zoom out of the canvas until it's tiny, and then do your roughs.

Text placement + clean up

Text placement comes first. It helps me place the reader's eye movement.

Text drives me a bit mental. I'll usually keep changing it right until the very end. They can say anything I want! That's so much freedom! You can see the say something horrible here fillertext LOL

I don't know if I like tiny, tight little speech bubbles or big ones with lots of space... Both have pros and cons... But I know I prefer vertical rather than horizontal.. I think I focus more on the shape of the entire text rather than the text itself...

I usually try to draw as "on-model" as I can. If you've worked with other people in any artistic industry... No matter what anyone says, the closer to "finished" it looks, the more time you'll get on actual feedback.

But if I'm working alone, this is good to go.

Ink

The truth is I jump around a lot. My normal breakdown is difficult to easy. If I do all the hard stuff first, the easy panels... are easy LOL This is about a mid-level difficulty (no full bodies but a lot of drawing, I did reuse some of it).

This is probably a dumb animation thing, but I can't have a speech bubble without a character's mouth being open.... (< lipsyncing traumas) I still catch myself thinking about mouth poses for syllables... They're not moving!! They ain't speaking!!

Shading + Greyscale Values

Nothing much to say here... I'm still working on my values. I think I'm slowly getting better.

Gradient Maps

I'm beginning to understand the power of gradiant maps...

Gradiant maps... I'm not too good at them. Walk in the Sun's backgrounds was my first proper go with them. A dear friend, Molly is the master at maps!! Their work is delight for the eyes... If you haven't read one of their comics, you're missing out!!

Hi! I’m making The Drake’s Sword, free to download. I’ll also share it here so you can read it. It was an experimental comic for me, a possible beginning to something I may or may not pursue in the future, and a comic I’m still really proud of to this day. 🐉 🗡️ msmollym.gumroad.com/l/iphfa

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— Molly Mendoza (@mollymendoza.bsky.social) 21 May 2025 at 18:16

12/17 CW violence and sexual themes

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— Molly Mendoza (@mollymendoza.bsky.social) 21 May 2025 at 18:16

Don't you wanna live in those worlds?!

I have around a week left and about 3 pages left 2 go.... let's do our best!!!

Aside

I might make a blaugust post about how I'm feeling about tw/cws post-itch.io... I've been seeing murmurings before by nsfw artists I follow how cws have been used in harassment towards them/placing cws on their work has led to it being removed since it was so easily searchable... I might have more to say about this then I think!

And yes another CSS update. I finally got the comments to not overflow... peace + love!

Listening to...

--xoxo becky