I have a few more samples from what I’ve been working on lately. Oh! And my children’s comic has a name now, too! “Jeannie Carnini! Clean Your Room!” Hee. I already know what I’m going to do with the cover, too, but that’ll have to wait until the interior is actually done as well. I’d say I’m about 3/5th’s there. Optimistically, I finish by the end of February. Realistically, by the end of March.

The character for the girl in this book, Jeannie Carnini, was a particularly tricky one. As you can see, these are some of my (many!) initial, horribly failed attempts (which actually starts on the right and works left):

You’d think I’d have learned by now that if I don’t like a face, I shouldn’t try to just erase and rework it. I really should just throw away the entire pose.

Usually, the problem isn’t where I initially think it is. I would erase and redraw the face, thinking, “WTF is UP? Nothing looks right!” I must have erased that stupid face about fourty times when I finally went to bed, woke up the next morning, looked at it once and realized in a flash of dumb inspiration that I needed to redraw the entire pose, and really the whole character. That wasn’t Jeannie Carnini on my page. That was some other girl dressed in her clothes.

So I drew another character, but I still wasn’t satisfied. Something just wasn’t sitting right, but I couldn’t pinpoint it.

Later that night,  I went over to my boyfriend’s because sometimes I need to work away from home, and we sat and discussed (he IS an artist), and I doodled, and thought about how Jeannie Carnini would REALLY stand, and finally I hit upon it:

First of all, the pose is better. She’s more awkward, less sure of herself, which is more her personality. I’m a pretty confident person about most things in life, and I tend to project that on to my main characters. But … kids are awkward creatures. Smart little snaps, but unsure in the way they walk and stand. I don’t know any kid that holds themselves with surety except for the bullies. And the brownnosers (which ah … I was one of those).  Or kids pretending to be mutant turtles on the playground. >_>; (I dug Raphael because he could swear and get away with it).

The other problem I kept running into with this character was that I kept whispering to myself, “simplify! simplify!” because it’s the style I’m running for, but it kept being either too much or too little (should have scanned in the overly simple ones. oops. too late now.) I would catch an expression on the first sketch, a few simple lines, and then I’d run in with a pointed lead and ruin it with detail. I needed to find that happy balance, and at last, by trying and trying and throwing away an awful lot of sketches but never giving up, and thinking about it and thinking about it some more, I finally got it. And slowly, as I get into the character, the easier she becomes to draw.  Not just in the face either, but in her body language as well.

It takes time to get to know your characters! I actually sit down and talk with them in my head. When I find myself struggling with their body language and expressions, I tell them, “Okay. What would YOU do in this situation? What kind of person are you? SHOW me.” And eventually they do.

Sometimes, it’s silly to admit, I play the actor, stand in front of a mirror and pretend to be my characters. And really, it’s the more subtle characters that are the most difficult. I struggle a lot with main characters because they need to be generic enough to appeal to anybody but also have a strong personality that is charming and engaging. Kind of a paradox, isn’t it? In this story, the easy character is the Frog Prince. He’s one aspect of a personality he doesn’t veer outside of. But Jeannie Carnini? Well. She’s an emotional, inquisitive, odd little girl, and sometimes she overreacts like the Frog Prince while other times she’s still and contemplative.

It takes knowing your characters to draw the expressions beneath the cartoon mask out, and truly reveal who they are.

And it’s made yet more difficult when you’re drawing in a new style! But hey, I think it’s worth it. It makes them real and breathes them to life.

The above are some of the pencils from the beginning of the book. I take an 8.5×11 sheet of 65 lb cardstock (I prefer a heavier paper because it doesn’t tear from all my erasing), fold it in half, and then I work on the right while I use the left space for reference drawings, thumbnails, and practice sketches. I’m having to think in a two-color space for this book, so there’s a LOT more planning that goes into it!  I’m particularly fond of some of my light studies in moodily lit woods. :)

Off to bed now! Tomorrow I have an interview with a temp agency. I plan on self-publishing this book, but that means I’ll be needing capital, and I don’t have good enough credit unfortunately to get a loan. Or heck, I get declined for high-interest credit cards. And I’ve never even owned one before! No credit is worse than bad credit, I guess? Anyway, ideally, I would like more web site and illustration work, but this agency is mostly office jobs. I do what I have to so I can continue pursuing my dream. :)