Wow. We had the last comic club meeting ever. It's pretty weird thinking that so many things about high school are going to be over pretty soon. I don't know. It's just hard for me to grasp.
Honestly, I've been pretty disappointed in the work that I've done these past two years. Or should I say "lack of work?" Get it? Because I haven't done much? Hahahaha.... But in all seriousness, I identified a main flaw in my work ethic. The reason why I've produced almost nothing these past two years is purely because I'm a perfectionist. I've been limited to this idea that everything that I draw or write has to be of the highest quality, so whenever I look back on my progress, I feel disappointed because it's not good enough. That leads me to scrap my ideas, start over, feel disappointed, scrap my ideas, start over, etc. etc. Sadly, I don't think that I'm suited for creating a whole comic singlehandedly. Not until I get over my perfectionism. But! That doesn't mean to say that I'll give up on comics. I think I'd work better in a team of people. That way, I'd feel committed to stick to an idea that we created, follow deadlines, and carry out my role because I don't wanna be a drag on the team. Plus, they can tell me how to improve, so I won't just scream "iT's NoT GOoD EnOuGH!!!" at my drawings and then sulk for like 3 days. Also, it's just fun working with other people. :) But if I can't find a team of people to work with, I'll still try to make comics by myself. It just won't be a coherent storyline. I'll just draw scenes that have been in my head for a while. It'll kinda be that one blog on tumblr. What was it called? "Excerpts from a book that I'll never write?" Idk what you call it. But who knows? Maybe after a few years, I'll find a way to connect all these scenes and create a plot out of it. This isn't gonna be my last blog post though. I'll still post after the Celebration of Learning to show what my final comic is gonna look like. And maybe I'll occasionally post after that just for fun. (P.S. Gwen, if you're reading this, I read your blog posts. I got you bud.)
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Yes. Hi. Hello. I am alive. It took me three months to make this blog post (partially because I forgot that this website existed), but I'm here now and that's what matters. (Can you tell how hard I'm trying to bs this?)
Before you keep reading, you can probably guess that I changed my idea...for like the 8 billionth time, but it actually turned out for the best. Here's why. In the first week of Expeditions Round 3, I was making some progress on a time travel comic. I wrote out the outline and script, but when I started drawing it out, I realized that my chapters were really really long. There was a bunch of dialogue, so I had to keep redrawing people from different perspectives. I didn't want the transitions in between actions to be choppy, so I kept adding panels in between to make it smoother. Overall, it was a mess, and I knew that I wouldn't finish drawing on time. My "solution" for that was to just cut up the chapters into smaller segments. Somehow, I managed to stretch four chapters into ten, which kinda worked? Kinda. I didn't have to draw as many panels, but the story turned out so...slow. Originally, I was supposed to introduce the main character and her family, and show a bad day that she had in school in only two chapters. But after editing the script, those two events took up nearly five chapters. Five. F i v e. That's half my comic already. No one wants to read that. Another problem was that I was tweaking my story according to what other people would want. I was trying too hard to make the story funny, suspenseful, exciting, and emotional all in one. It was just A Mess™. Honestly, I didn't really connect with the comic because I was writing about things that I don't know anything about. Solution? There is none. I'm quitting comic club. Bye. Jk I'm gonna talk about that in the next blog post when I actually have more things to show. Bye for real this time. Hey. Hi. Hello. It's expeditions round two, and things are going okay-ish for my comic.
I forgot if I talked about this in my last blog post, but when I looked back on my comic idea for interval one, I thought that it was pretty boring. There isn't much going on in the chapters, the main character doesn't have a really deep background, and it just makes for a bad story. So, I decided to start over with a new comic...again. No backsies this time though. The good news is that I already know how it's going to end, I'll have enough plot points to fill up ten chapters (possibly more), and I've been looking at resources for making better characters, chapters, etc. I've been watching this YouTuber named Jenna Moreci for advice. The only reason I know about her is because my mom watches her videos and keeps laughing at them from our living room. (Thanks, mom.) Honestly, I have no idea how good Jenna Moreci's writing is, but the advice she gives actually makes sense. Here's a bunch of stuff that I learned from her videos and other online resources:
Yeah. Das it. Hope that wasn't too boring. Hey. How you doin'? Ya girl finished her college applications. *insert fireworks and ugly crying here* I'm so glad that that's over because now I can work on comics. *insert more fireworks and even uglier crying here* I was looking back on my ideas for the independent study comic, and hahh....... Honestly, the plot was kinda boring. I need to make ten chapters out of this story, and I was really struggling to come up with plot points. Most of my ideas were made up at the last minute, which doesn't make for a good story now, does it? I'm still keeping the whole fairy tale vibe, but I'm adding a more modern influence to it. I don't wanna describe the whole plot here because I'm afraid that I'll switch ideas again hg;oehg;oihgo;wh. But to make up for that, here's one of my favorite gifs. I hope you enjoyed this mess of a blog post. See ya later when I actually have cool stuff to post.
So the Holiday Fair happened yesterday. That was pretty cool. (Both figuratively and literally since, you know, it's the bay area and it's always cold and where am I going with this again?)
Anyway, here's a list of all the things that I learned at the fair yesterday. Some of them are art/comic-club-related and some are just here for funsies.
So yeah that's it. Also, I don't know if I already posted a picture of the Hunny Bunny stickers, but here they are. So I made some progress with the stickers this weekend. At first, I wanted to just do stickers of food with faces on them. (I just kinda realized that that could be interpreted in a really creepy way. Like, a watermelon with a human face carved into it. EwWwWW!) But I decided to add some bunny stickers to the mix. I'm not finished with them yet, but here's what I got so far. I'm kinda worried that I'm gonna mess up the sizing and the resolution somehow,oh and it's all gonna turn out crappy ahhh why do I make myself worry like this?
Another thing that I'm worried about is that I won't be able to color the ice cream stickers properly. I know almost nothing about color palettes, so I might end up picking really bad colors. Yeah.... The good news is that the bunny stickers weren't that hard to make. They're going to be mostly one color, so that's pretty manageable. Although (oh my goodness another problem), I won't be here during the Holiday Fair. I got a doctor's appointment, so I'll just have everyone else sell the stickers for me if anyone wants to buy them. Maybe I'll bother audrey into selling them in my place. Yeah. Good plan. That's all I got. Byeeeee. (Btw, this site is so dead now. What the heck happened?) I'm back at club now. *insert confetti and explosions and fireworks here mwahahahahaah* It was pretty great. I got all caught up on the club fair thing and decided that I'm gonna be making some stickers (*insert more confetti and explosions and fireworks here mwahaha*) and possibly some drawings for the candy grams?? (*maybe insert more confetti and explosions and fireworks here mwaha???*) I already have some ideas listed out. At first, I was gonna do a series-specific sticker pack for things like "Yuri!!! On Ice" or "Haikyuu!!" or some other series with exclamation marks in it. But then I thought, "You know what? I kinda don't wanna embarrass myself by being a huge freaking weeb out there." So I just decided to draw food stickers with faces on them instead. Yeah, I'm not sure how I got from point A to point B here, but it's happening. (I guess that I decided on food stickers because I doodle them all the time when I'm bored. Hahhh.....) As of now, I'm thinking of doing three different sticker packs with maybe five different designs each.
I don't want all of them to be specific to Christmas or New Years' because then people would stop buying them after the holidays. Gotta keep my designs good year-round, you know? The only problem is that the chord/cable/idk for my tablet is torn up. My cat tore it up two years ago, and it's finally broken. (The chord. Not my cat.) I'm planning on fixing it up again or just buying/finding a replacement. Hopefully, I can start drawing digitally again before the club fair. So yeah. That's it. Oh wait. The food stickers reminded me of this really intense gif of a potato peeling itself. Look it. Okay. Now that's it.
K. Thx. Bye. Dang that was a long title. But anyway AhHhhhHHHhHhHHHH I'm sO sORrY tHaT I haVEn'T bEeN gOinG tO CluB. I aM ThE m e A Ne S T. (mOrE scReAmINg)
I promise that I'm gonna go to the meeting next week. My applications for CSUs, UCs, and USC are going to be due this Thursday/Friday, so I'll definitely have a lot more time for comics by the next meeting. As you can probably tell, I haven't been working on my comic lately since there's just been a LOT on my plate, but I think that I've learned some important stuff about storytelling. My mom and I watched this movie, like, a week ago. (That was my one break from essay-writing. I swear I wasn't just slacking off.) It's called "Ancien and the Magic Tablet." Basically, it's about this girl whose family is involved in a dispute over self-driving cars. BUT! It gets interesting because this entire problem is paralleled in her fantasy-based dream. So like, if she runs into a problem in the real world, she dreams about it in this magical fantasy setting. You know what I mean? So, it's basically cars and coding in the real world mixed in with magical kingdoms in her dream world. It's pretty interesting, but I'm just describing it badly. BUT. (This "BUT" indicates some minor spoilers by the way.) The movie emphasizes action which kinda ruins the characters and the plot. First off, the main character is so focused on DOING things that she doesn't save room for THINKING. Like, there's this really big secret about her family that she could have uncovered just by Googling a mysterious relative's name. But for whatever reason, she didn't think about that?? Also, she's really slow on the uptake. She just seems so carefree about everything and doesn't really realize the gravity of the situation. She kinda just goes with things and gets into crazy adventures even though she doesn't really understand what's happening. Second, her sidekick isn't even really a character. Yeah, he has a name and a background and all of that, but he really lacks personality. When she pulls him into her antics, he doesn't ask questions. Like, there this one scene where she was literally running from mysterious men in suits. He just happened to be there, and when she told him to help her drive away, he just does it?? He didn't even seem too phased about it either. He just goes along?? And he does this ALL THE TIME. Idk if you can call that a personality, but it seems like he's a plot device that's needed to keep the action going. You know what I mean? It's like the writers didn't know how to transition between problems, so they just threw him in there for a quick solution. And third (ooh this one really gets me), there's this one really really long action scene towards the end of the movie. It's this all-out battle that takes place in the main character's dream. And remember, it's supposed to have some sort of real-life parallel. BUT THE ACTION SCENE TAKES WAY TOO LONG AND IT'S WAY TOO EXTRAVAGANT SO I WAS JUST WONDERING "HMMM. I WONDER HOW THIS IS PLAYING OUT IN THE REAL WORLD? HMMMMMMMM......." There was legit a giant robot fight in the dream, and I was just so confused as to how that translated into the real world?? Like, did some really tall people start fist-fighting?? Did they take a break to play some video games about giant robots?? Don't make this confusing scene that's only tangentially related to the story just so that you could throw in some more action. So yeah. This whole post was just me ranting about a movie that you guys probably didn't and won't watch. But still. There are some really big lessons (yet kinda obvious) lessons to be learned here.
Ya'll probably knew this already, but again, I'm kinda slow and need to be reminded all the time. See ya on the flip (wherever that is). Hahhhhhhhhhhhh....
College apps are hard, man. But you probs already knew that. Unless, you're like an application god or whatever then you're in a great spot, aren't you? (pls help me) But yeah. Sorry for the really late blog post. I didn't participate in the last club meeting since I was busy with my personal statements. Again, hahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........,,,,,,,..........,.,,............,,. Anyways, I didn't really work on 7 Days of June either, but I did learn something really important that'll change the course of the story. I learned that if you want a real good plot twist, you shouldn't just throw the readers into a completely different direction. You should actually, you know, add details and stuff in the beginning so that when people get to the end, they slam their heads against their desks because they didn't realize it earlier. Or something. Idk what I'm going for here. So, don't be like "Oh my goodness! It turns out that after 35 chapters, the killer was this gardener that..we.,,.did not.,,.introduce until now..,,,..." Like yeah, that's surprising but it makes it seem like you just lost your story along the way and didn't know how to end it so you just settled for a cheap ending. You guys might have known that already, but I didn't since I'm pretty slow with this stuff.,.,.,,. Btw the amount of alternating commas and periods makes me question my role in the English language. Idk what this post was. Have a fun three-day-weekend. Or just have a great day if you're reading this after that. Yuh. AHhHhhhhhHH!!! Get it? It's Halloween. So I started off with a scary story that's made specifically for digital artists. Because we have a bunch of digital artists in the club. So it's scary. But more so for comic club members and okay I'm gonna shut up about this now. Anyway, Happy Halloween. I hope you all enjoyed it. I certainly did since my Halloween costume was this a paper bag with this face on it. Yeah I'm not gonna take a picture of the actual bag that I used. I'm lazy like that. Plus, I need to finish up this blog post real quick so I can get started on homework and college apps. (Hahhh!!@1 ಢ_ಥ)
Now that that's out of the way, Imma start talking about my comics aka the real reason why I wrote this blog post. I don't know if I mentioned this in the last post (and I'm not gonna check it either), but I actually came up with a prequel idea for 7 Days of June. It's gonna talk about how the god in 7 Days of June was selected as a replacement, and I used some conversations I had during club as inspiration. So yeah. Whoo. You guys helped me expand on this universe so yay. (That's all I can say about this though. I can't go spoiling prequels when I haven't even made the first story yet. That's a bad decision, Jelly. Why would you do that to yourself?) As for the main story, I kinda realized this big flaw with June's character. He's a bit too nice honestly. I mean, I didn't want to make him into a Mary Sue or anything, but I accidentally gave him a perfect sense of morality in the beginning of the story. Like, he has all of these problems with his family, his job, and money, but he never gets mad or upset. He'll occasionally sigh and think about how tired he is, but that's it. He never shows negativity. All he does is think, "Well, I should work hard for the people I care about", and that's that. I thought that all the flaws in his life would make up for this trait and make him a more interesting character, but that's kinda stupid; a character's personality makes them interesting, not their problems. And I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't be interested in a character whose personality is 100% admirable from the very beginning. I feel like that'd just rope readers in to this endless cycle of pitying the character for their problems, cheering them on for choosing the right thing, etc. I wanna see readers get pissed off at a character for doing something stupid or selfish from time to time, you know? So yeah. More big lessons for Jelly here:
K. Thanks. Byeeeeeeeeeeee. |
AuthorI talk about comics and also about school but mostly about comics that are being halted because of school. Archives
January 2018
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