This is a weekly recap of what has been going on in my professional life. It’s to keep track of what I’m up to and to give you a peek at what it’s like being an independent creator.
Last week is a bit of a haze. I can feel that I’m doing too many things at once, and stuff is starting to fall through the cracks. Working on saturday has effectively wrecked any idea of what part of the week I am in, and so the plan in my head for what I’ve done and what I will be doing is a little jumbled. I don’t like it. Thankfully I draw daily comics! There’s a memory aid for ya.
On monday I finished the sketches for Kars. It was fun storyboarding again, I like to do it and I’m glad that people are starting to find me for jobs like that.
On tuesday I rushed to finish an Off-Stage comic. I wanted to do a full page but I just didn’t have the time, so I pushed it to next week (tomorrow – hopefully!). The new countdown widget on the site is definitely helpful in these case.
On thursday I visited Kars after work again to discuss the feedback KLM had given on the storyboards the day before. I was pleased to hear they pretty much liked everything, and Kars and I brainstormed some cool design ideas for a few instances. Now I was ready to move on to ‘production’. These won’t be the final assets, but rather more elaborate mockups of how the game could look. I’ve worked out a few so far, of which you can see a WIP version below.
I don’t often use such detailed rendering, and I’ve noticed that I quickly put too much effort into it. The idea was to paint fairly realistic scenes (just a bit of a Pixar slant) in quick brushstrokes. I find that I blend too much; still gotta practice throwing down gradients with just sharp opaque strokes, like the style reference I used:
I closed the day out with a concert and continued working on the mockups on friday and saturday. Then I spent some time with friends together with the girlfriend.
Next week: anxiety and deadlines.