2nd Year

A Few Ways I’m Developing My Zine, and Other Things I’ve Done This Week

| Rolo
Plastic Orca, Marker Pen on Paper

Zine week, it’s one page zine week. I am slowly getting used to the new lockdown way of life, it’s a weird world we’re living in now. I have found that focusing on one thing at a time is the way to motivate myself to do more work. This week has been spent creating a couple of one page zines which have allowed me to experiment with different mediums such as watercolour paint and marker pens. I’m still torn between the two mediums and I can’t decide which one would be best for creating my final zine. They both work well in their own way and neither of them really work for all 3 of the illustrations. For example, the plastic orca illustration seems to look best in brush pen, especially when it comes to creating a simple ocean background; but the advertisement anxiety illustration looks best with a combination of biro pen and watercolour paint. I’m starting to think that using mixed media would be the best way to proceed with the project. The one page zine format has also given me an opportunity to do some layout development at the same time as my media testing. It’s such a useful and economic way to work because if, when all of this is over, I want to print the zines, I’ll only have to pay for one page of printing which would save me a lot of money compared to printing other zine formats.

Planet Consumption, Watercolour and Biro Pen, and Brush Pen on Paper

I am going to be making the zine accessible in a digital format as this is the only way I am going to be able to publish my zine due to the lack of printing facilities. I will be able to split the pages of my one page zine digitally using Photoshop or InDesign if I choose to use the one page format for my final piece. Which I might not, because while there are many positives to the format, there are also some negatives, such as the fact it would limit me to a certain number of pages, and the illustrations would have to be rather small as I only have access to A3 paper, meaning each individual page would be reduced to A6. Ideally I would like to draw them each at a minimum of A5.

Advertisement Anxiety- Watercolour and Biro Pen, and Marker Pen on Paper

I really need to spend more time working on layout development too, because so far I have only tried creating double paged spreads with a front and back cover. While I do like these layouts, they are missing a few things such as text and I don’t want to just stick to the first layout idea I’ve had. I should experiment a bit more before deciding which layout will be best for my final zine. I’ve had some more ideas of how I could show conscious consumption since the start of the project too so I intend to create at least one more illustration which I would like to go in the zine, this is naturally going to change my layout ideas. I’m also thinking about adding a contents page, which are present in many zines and magazines, it would make the zine look a bit more professional. The addition of these extra pages would mean that I’d need to explore new methods of creating a zine because the one-page zine format just wouldn’t be viable anymore.

Well, that was unexpected.

| Rolo

This week has been a bit of a mixed bag, on the plus side I have just about finished colouring up the Skaadi side pose on Illustrator and Photoshop and I have also digitised some of the essential items that Skaadi carries with her. What hasn’t been so good is finding out that we yesterday morning that our Thursday class isn’t happening any more due to a teacher training day, and also that we’re off all of next week for a reading week; followed by a tutorial on Monday the 28th of October. Normally this would be fine, however, I still feel a bit rusty with Illustrator and Photoshop (having not been on a course doing digital art for over a year now) and I have so much I need to do and very limited idea of how to do it. I guess I am going to have to watch YouTube tutorials on Photoshop processes and figure out how to finish this project to a high standard.  

  • Coloured in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet.
  • A Family heirloom handed to Skaadi by her mother before she died.
  • A sword forged by the forest elves before their collapse a long time ago, this sword is oozing with elven magic. Skaadi found it after the sword called out to her in the forest.
  • Skaadi carved this weapon herself from the wood of an ancient ash tree, it was one of the first weapons she ever owned and she hasn’t parted with it since.

While I am rather shocked at how little notice was given about not being in Uni today, I have at least managed to do the digital line work and colour for the Skaadi side pose. I did this by scanning the initial sketch on to the computer, opening it in Illustrator and using the pen tool to trace the sketched line work, similar to how I created the line work on Skaadi’s dynamic pose previously. As I mentioned on my last post, instead of colouring my work in Illustrator as well, I exported the line work and opened it in Photoshop to colour. I found this process a hell of a lot easier than colouring it in Illustrator, partly because I have painted in Photoshop in the past. It is just so much quicker and allows me to spend more time on doing details and shadows/highlights, the use of which I have learned from researching how Fiona Staples creates them in the Saga comics.  This is subsequently also much easier for me to do in Photoshop. I have cautiously high hopes for how this project is going to go from now on, I do feel as if I am improving a lot with digital art and it is quite surprising because a year ago I wouldn’t have even attempted to get good at using computers for art. I do still love doing traditional art and digital could never completely replace it for me, however I am final seeing the benefits of using Photoshop and Illustrator to create and enhance art and hopefully I will continue to do so in the future.

Skaadi Side Pose

I do have one small qualm about the way I have painted Skaadi so far and that is that she doesn’t quite look alive yet, like she doesn’t pop out of the page or look like she is a living being, this is something that I really need to rectify and quickly because she is such a complex and active character and I want to portray that life and spirit in the illustrations of Skaadi. Hopefully over the next week I will be able to push myself to learn more about how to use Photoshop and also what alterations to make to Skaadi to give her that bit of oomph, all without my tutor’s guidance. As well and adding life to Skaadi, I really ought to figure out what kind of environment Skaadi is going to be in and design it. I mean, I know she lives in a forest and I know in my head what the whole world she inhabits looks like, I just need to show it in my art. It is certainly going to be a busy week.