(click for DA page)

Page 1 of 5 - That's one large shelf.

This is a new snippet from my rather strange red-white-black comic project Where Red Apples Lie. This short story is 5 pages long, consider it as an excerpt from a larger story (which I've not published). I hope the layout should be clear, albeit the story is somewhat ... subtle (as are previous installments in the series). The story has a lot of double meanings and interpretations, will be interesting to hear what people make of it!

To get some context you might be interested in first reading some of my previous snippets (see the DA caption for links).

I tried using my new Android Tablet with Sketchbook Pro for sketching the pages. I then imported the sketches into GIMP for rescaling and recropping. Final art was painted in MyPaint and all text and speech bubbles were made in Inkscape, using GIMP for the final composition. I might update my comic tutorial a bit since I think I've streamlined my workflow a bit here.

I'll be posting new pages in this thread. Comments and feedback are appreciated as always!
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Griatch

That shelf must have taken a lot of work! It looks like part of a mandelbox. I like the low wide angle - it gives a dramatic appearance. I think your character needs help from a taller person. Well painted as usual and I particularly like the reflections.

Griatch lives!

This is superly detailed, just really. I'd get mad and give up if I was doing that picture.

I think the head/neck looks a little weird, but that could be the angle.
And her hand that it reaching seems to be the wrong hand, I don't see her thumb or I do and it's too long and I can't tell.

The perspective (I'm no expert on this) seems to be odd, but that could be the angle.
The floor looks to be pointing down little bit, and the shelf seems to be a little twisted.
But knowing previous with this girl, a little skewing can't hurt.

Very impressive work! Keep em' comin! :>

I really enjoyed the perspective in this drawing... and the details!

I do wonder, though, why she doesn't just use her other crutch to knock the can down.

She and I must be related be cause I didn't think of that either.

Like Mokonfan, I think that there is something wrong with the perspective, but that could well be intentional to drag you into the space, which it does. The shelves are stocked with bits and pieces and there is a highly polished floor with some reflections. One could criticise minor bits and pieces but the intent of the image is crystal clear. The girl is trying to reach a red jar that is out of her reach and leaves the reader with "WhatNow?, WhatNext?" feeling. Great Work.
I hope that you will put this new series together soon, I am looking forward to reading/ seeing the completed article.

The artwork is great, but wow, I have never seen shelves stocked that high, unless it was with overstock from the shelves below. One would need a sliding library ladder to shop there...and yet in this particular story, it doesn't really surprise me. There are a lot of odd things in the red apple world.

The perspective, the details, the reflections! Wow!
Sensational!
Wickedness drawing the can so high!
Well .. indeed, some items are inaccessible even for basketball players!

Impressionate work Griatch!

I love the scratch marks on the floor the reflections. So superb Griatch.

(click for DA page)

Page 2 - Things get easier with a little help.

Thanks for the comments everybody, some interesting feedback here!


I found that using the tab for the initial sketch (drawing directly on the screen) gave me more incentive to make many small. Not sure why, maybe it's psychological but it feels faster and more direct to just put the pen down and draw something at a given spot on the screen. Never heard of the mandelbox, but from knowing how a mandelbrot looks I get the gist, I think you may have a point there.


The angle of the neck is tricky since she's both portrayed at a difficult angle as well as stretching her entire body to try to reach (while holding onto her crutch). Most is hidden in shadow, to contrast her better to the shelf, but I'll look over her again to see if it's iffy.
The perspective is indeed odd. We are mostly used to seeing 1-point perspective (one vanishing point, if you have done any perspective work). This is 3-point perspective. It means the floor, horizontal shelves and vertical shelves all have their own perspective direction. The result is a sort of fish-eye effect is accurate but twist things to look a bit bigger. Admittedly I did the perspective rather loosely (the program on the tab doesn't have a proper way to set perspective points outside the page like e.g. MyPaint does), so it may not be fully exact everywhere. Then again as you say a bit of skewness is not unusual in the world of Red Apples Lie.


I think it's rather hard to knock something back out at you without getting everything around it raining down on you as well. The true method is explained in today's page though.

@wbool
The perspective is indeed intentionally warped. See my reply to Moko. I think it will take quite some time before I publish something that merges the various snippets into their complete whole. As it is short, contained novellas like this is what my schedule allows (plus it allows me to practice this style). I was worried this first page didn't offer enough "pull" for a front page, I'm glad you think it does.


Those are some huge shelves, yes. The concept is explained in today's page.

@Akros
Indeed, basketball players would get some good training in here!

@Rod
The scratches were honestly leftovers from sketching that I found fit so well into the surface that I just let them remain.

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Griatch

Excellent work as usual, the reflection and flooring in general is breath taking.Like the little comic strip and what a call supermarket that would be.

griatch: first reaction: wooooohoooo, more of the unknown girl - at last!!!
quite apart from me being a real fan of hers by now and always wanting to see more of her, i think this is really stunning work. i honestly think that everything just works here. the composition of both the first picture and for each square of the second is spot on and you have done such a fantastic work of all the reflections in the first image! the facial expressions work very well and i think you show impeccable judgement when it comes to amount of detail - there's always simplification where it's needed and detail where it's needed.

Oohh, soooo that's how she gets her can!

My only issue with the second page is that the kid looks a bit mature in his face for being a younger child, although he could be just very short and be a teen and yet a kid.

I was most impressed by the speech capitation placements, I watched a video a little while back by Mark Crilley about adding them and since then I kinda look and watch for the stuff. You had them in perfect flow.

I love the expressions in this, they're all very well made.

Nice work! I look forward to what happens next :>

(click for DA page)

Page 3/5 - Breathless Monologue

@he4rty
Many people seem to enjoy the reflection in the floor. Whereas real-life shopping malls do have scanners for scanning goods here, it's not quite at this level of automation quite yet.

@AnMal:
Thanks, good to hear the Unknown Girl has some fans, she's one of my personal favourite (and oldest) characters. Composition is almost more important than art for a comic, so I try very hard to get that right (using a combination of Inkscape with bitmap programs helps a lot for re-arranging the text until it works best). I'm glad you find the amount of detail fitting; again this is a matter of finding the right balance between workload and conveying enough information.

@Moko:
It is a good point about the kid's face, I guess it's a matter of perception though, I think the kid looks kinda young there but I can see why there would be other views of this. As for the placements of the speech bubbles, yes that is indeed something of a science; there is a lot of litterature on how to best do that. I'm glad the flow works so far, one of my biggest concerns when making these snippets is always redability and that it is easy to know where to go next, so to speak.
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Griatch

Cool pictures Griatch

Like the cartoon too. Can't wait to read/see more

The child looks much more like a child now, before I was reading with a more mature "voice" in my head, not I hear a kids voice...Is it weird I hear different voices for characters?

I think my favorite panel is the last one, artistically.
I think there might be a bit too many bubbles, although trying to fit a story in 5 pages will need a lot of information in it to begin with. - I don't really read comics except random things I see on deviant-art so maybe this is normal.

I like how so far the only red things are things she wants. Gives it more interest.

Nice work so far!

Thanks sallyanne, glad you like it! The story and its pacing is the most important thing for me when making these snippets so it's good if it spurs further reading.


It's a good sign that you "hear" the voice of characters -- in fact that is exactly what I aimed for and why the child is speaking in a long breathless and slightly "babbling" way. Kids who can't wait to tell someone about things they know tend to speak like this sometimes, I've noticed (I know I did as a kid).

I'm interested in hearing why you think there are too many speech bubbles. I'm personally not too concerned about the number of bubbles per se; I'd be more worried if you felt it hard to follow in which order they should be read, or if they were hard to read or otherwise confused the story. Red Apples Lie is not intended as an easy-going comic, most of the text is very deliberately chosen and my goal (successful or not) is intended to give the reader a lot to "do" and hopefully consider on each page.

The ratio gfx-to-text varies a lot between different styles of comics, there is no "normal" ratio I think. Many modern western-style comics have started to take on a more movie-like style in the last dozen of years, with large images (often only 1-3 frames per page) and only small amounts of text, remniscent of movie scenes and cuts. Manga, which often are released in large anthology titles can often also take their time, spending tens of pages to establish scenes and extend moments.
While movie-mode comics can often look spectacular they tend to contain very little story per page - buying some flashy comics I sometimes get the feeling of nice surface and very little content. Read a comic from the 70's-80's and you'll find densely packed small frames (at least 5-15 per page) with plenty of text, captions and internal monologue. Sometimes entire sub-plots could be handled on a single page! I try to find some sort of personal middle way here; which is why comments like yours about the bubbles are so valuable.
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Griatch

Well I can say that if you were aiming for a chatty child then the bubbles really do express that.
For me to read it, it seems like there are too many capitations (Not words, just the "bubbles") and for me it seems to take away a little bit artistically. But I'm a person that likes to see a lot from looking more than reading so this is probably a preference.
From what you said you aimed for I think in that case it's well done! - I think my critique maybe had a bit of preference, but I hope I still helped somewhere.

in this particular case, I think having lots of separate speech bubbles conveys the feeling that the kids is babbling on and on. At least that is what I take away from it. So seeing the kid yakking on and on does indeed create "too many speech bubbles" for a reason!

(click for DA page)

Page 4/5 - Watchful surroundings


Interesting points. The number of bubbles are intentionally numerous, so it's good if the chattiness does come across.

That is the impression I'm looking for here, indeed.
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Griatch