poppypari
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Midnight Stasis Test Page (+ramblings on the process)
🕑 Added 2022-10-13 00:08:59 +0000 UTCIf you hadn't noticed, I finally made up a title for this story and changed the tag for it accordingly.
As such, I'd like to properly introduce y'all to my next series, Midnight Stasis which will come out...who knows when! I'm still in the pre-production phase, of which y'all have seen bits of via the references I've been drawing of characters. My best guess is maybe sometime in the next six months (highballing it so I don't jinx myself www).
I've learned a lot from NPCs and my editor so I'm trying to get ahead of the curve with some preparation while I have the luxury of time. I don't think y'all understand how embarrassed and stressed I was when I first started working with Manta because I didn't know about, well... anything webcomic related. I'm still not the best, but I'm certainly better than last year. That said, the biggest things that tripped me up back then were getting a title graphic, establishing which fonts I would use for the series, and getting shortcuts/brushes for the most commonly repeated assets I used.
To get some of those things established, I made a tester page based on a scene in the story!
Last night I made the title logo and took the opportunity to draw a cleaner version of a design that crops up multiple times in the story. I spent more time on it than the logo itself so I'm really going to use it for all it's worth lol! Not to toot my own horn, but I think it looks pretty neat :) I'm such a sucker for that filigree sort of look and it just seemed so fitting to have it on a clock (also it's hands down the easiest to free-hand, but shhh).
But I digress. Today I got a quick page done and tested out a new brush while I was at it that I think I may officially switch to for my line art, at least for this series if not for NPCs too (sorry editor for changing styles every arc haha). I tried to include all forms of fonts I'd end up using: dialogue, narration, and SFX. There are occasional instances a different sort of font would be used, but I have a few I already use that I don't see a reason to change out. The SFX font is the same between comics, but I've gotten some new dialogue and narration ones! The big thing to take into consideration was sizing. I remember getting a lot of comments about it being difficult to read the text on a phone when the original iteration of NPCs came out (back when I posted on WEBTOON and Tapas) so I made an effort to make it a bit bigger, but I'll have to actually look at it on my phone and see how I fair with it LOL. I couldn't really translate the sizes between series though since 1) fonts aren't all universally sized so 11px for one is HUGE in one font and minuscule in another and 2) I'm working under different canvas sizings due to the fact Manta and WEBTOON have different dimensions they post webcomics at. WEBTOON requires a much smaller canvas size so all my usual font sizes are way too big for the page. After playing around, I got a good setup going and have the photoshop action shortcuts set up for everything so at least my text will be consistent!
Now I just need to design all the patterns that will show up throughout the story and make brushes for certain assets that I know will show up multiple times! Woo! God, I hate preparing stuff. And I still have to do this for the upcoming arc of NPCs... ヽ(´ཀ`」∠) 彡3
Besides that, I'm still working on the outline and worldbuilding, but I've just about got the main plot beats nailed down at this point. I'm doing my best to keep this thing contained to 50 episodes and I'm pretty confident in getting the main story done by then with some ideas for short/side stories if people like the characters enough. We are NOT doing a nearly 200-episode monster like a certain story.
AND FOR ANYONE WHO REMEMBERS FOXCROSS DON'T SAY ANYTHING DO NOT SAY A WORD!!!!!! I KNOW, I KNOW, I HAVE A BAD HABIT OF PICKING UP AND DROPPING PROJECTS AND WORKING ON FIVE OF THEM AT DIFFERENT POINTS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR!!!!!!!! IT'S WHY I TRY TO REMIND PEOPLE THAT I MAY NOT FINISH SOMETHING! I CAN ONLY DO ONE MAIN THING AT A TIME AND ALL MY SIDE-PROJECTS ARE FREE GAME OTHERWISE! I WON'T EVEN GUARANTEE MIDNIGHT STASIS WILL BE READY TO PUBLISH IN THE NEXT YEAR! I JUST KNOW IT'S MY NEXT SEMI-LONG-TERM PROJECT AFTER NPCS ENDS!!!!
Comments
I'm happy you've enjoyed the peaks into the process! Honestly a lot of it is just tedious and boring stuff. Research, minor adjustments, illegible notes, and storyboards, etc. etc. haha I try my best to be upfront about it though since they're all little bits and pieces I personally wish someone would've told me about when I first started! Like the advice "just do it!" only gets you so far because then you realize "oh god I did it, but I don't know what I'm doing at all." :,,)
It's definitely been innovated on bit by bit! I know for a fact that in Korea, typography for webcomics has really changed over the years. They really do take advantage of the vertical format in a way that's really neat! I've seen some cool stuff here and there. There's a lot to consider and a lot to improve on in the field, though unfortunately, I am not all that well-versed in these things haha. It is really cool though!!
n loonasharp
Fr!! I have a big font collection and I always have to read the t&cs before I purchase/install any font because I don't want to risk accidentally using an unlicensed typeface for my commercial work. Comic type is its own genre (even if underappreciated IMO) and you only have to look at panels before the letterer has gotten to them to see how much lettering can add to a page!! Maybe it already exists, IDK, but hopefully one day someone will make some good variable typefaces for comics (I'm looking at Blambot 🤔). Although that'd probably have to be combined with webcomic hosting getting more sophisticated as to support variable type for readability/accessibility. And it'd definitely factor in an additional workload irt publishing so IDK how sustainable it'd end up being, but it's a cool concept! And who knows -- when webcomics first came around they were laid out like traditonal pages, and became "scrolling" over time, reflecting the way people read on the web. So maybe there are ways that comic text can be innovated on too. This is a total tangent orz... I really love talking about type
Granni
Yooooo that page looks ✨amazing✨!! Love the title and effect, it's beautiful! It's super cool to read about the things you've learned while working on your comics, and what you've had to adjust or change. It's always a little hard to imagine each tiny piece that goes into making the beautiful comic we get to read, so it's an exciting look into your world and process 🥺💖
