Page 12 of Redemption
( Chapter 1 - Beloved )

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Well, what a surprise! I didn't even set out to finish this tonight, let alone think that it might be done.

I apologize for the lack of...anything, lately. I've been in a slump. I'm sure it's an old song for an artist to just be totally and completely disgusted with oneself and one's work. I think mostly it's that I put so much work into my WoW fan art, and so much thought into my WoW comic, and neither has been accepted by/displayed on WoW's website. I went and wrote up my commission list, but no one's going to want to comission me for anything, lol. Just like Blizzard doesn't give two shits about my fan art because so many people out there are much better than I am and my work is just laughable and, I'm sure, quickly dismissed. I'm not even sure why I did the WEWY things either because I knew it was way off the mark. Practice, I suppose? I don't begrudge anyone or expect anything, really, but it just takes a toll when you put so much effort into something for nothing at all.

So, it's been a bit difficult finding the drive to do much of anything—art and finding a job at the top of that list. No one I go to is hiring; no one looking wants an inexperienced college drop-out. It just feels like I've been bombarded with rejection from all sides lately, and I don't even know yet if we'll have the funds to cover all the things we'll need to live on our own again in a few weeks. Part of me just can't bear to go through with the application process because I know I'm selling them a faulty product. It's like I want to warn them that I suck and apologize for asking anyone to hire me but I really really need money right now. ><

I just can't seem to draw when I feel like a worthless, disgusting lump of crap. What's the point in doing anything when it will probably suck and take me nowhere? Why do I bother working on this skill that won't do anything for me and no one appreciates? I don't even know why I worked on this tonight. Everything seems so useless.

So anyhow, I've had the top part of this page done for a while, like since the beginning of April. Funny that I would have made my self-imposed one-month deadline had I not been in such a slump. You might recognize the first panel as a copy, paste, and slight blow-up of the middle of panel 2 on the previous page, except I turned down the sun a bit to hopefully convey the sunset progressing. Panel 3 brings back my new love of copy/paste backgrounds. -_- But it was fun shading the whole thing to try to make it look like the sun was setting. I even added some extra highlights and shadows to that building cutout on the right side to make the lighting jive with the rest of the scene.

Oh, I tried something new with toning this that I think might continue. Up until this page, I've been using digital screen tones which resemble the halftone pattern seen in printed manga. Solid colors would be represented by "dot" screen tones, with varying ratios of white and black representing varying shades of gray.

Yeah, screw that. I'm just going to use solid colors from here on and leave the digital tones for special effects. At least, that's what I experimented with here, and I'll probably keep doing it. It looks cleaner on screen, anyway.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on Lucrecia's name. I used the same font called Dali which I have been using for Vincent's thoughts over the past few pages, but the L was done in a font called " the King & Queen." You'll also notice the dreaded cliché Photoshop glowing text, onoes! =O It just didn't look right when her name was there plain in just uniform Dali. I felt that her name should be dressed up a bit when Vincent says it to himself, like he really savors that curling L and the very notion of her glows in his mind. Or something. Actually I just wanted the white glow so that it stood out a bit from the surrounding texture. Lucrecia's name isn't something that would just blend into everything else for him, I think. It's special for him.

I think to fix my other problems I should just draw more instead of less. It hurts me so much sometimes when people don't bother to look at my art, or feel they'd like to comment/fav, or whatever, but really I suppose that's my own fault for not offering much for people TO look at. If I published things more often and diversified a bit, then I could be seen by more people and find more appreciation. It sounds rather selfish, but really, art is my form of communication, so of course I want to communicate to as many people as possible. It isn't even that important to me that someone likes my stuff as much as it is that they understand it, and I suppose it's just natural to make the assumption that understanding=enjoying.

Most of this should probably be in my journal, but please enjoy/understand page 12 and the rest of Redemption.


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