Click on the cover and start swiping to read!
See, I CAN make a book that’s not lesbian romance! I have range.
But seriously, I finally finished this! That’s really about where I am. I think it turned out as well as it was going to, and I am pleased with that. I did realize while I was making this book that this isn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing, artistically. I mean, repetitive framing, lots of closeups, no real challenges in terms of setting…I do want to be testing myself more in that regard. That being said, this was a thematic book, and the choices I made were in service to the vision I had at the outset. Like, I purposefully omitted visual effects like blushing because I wanted this to resemble the character’s experience. The “plainness,” as I see it, is deliberate, and it did speed things up.
Not a lot changed in terms of my overall process, though I did have some hiccups in terms of hardware. I learned that I need to be nicer to my laptop if I want it to perform at its best; I hadn’t realized I was running it that hard. I got a graphic artist glove, too, which was pretty cool to work with. Frees up a lot of screen space from my handkerchief. I started using it after having to do a reset on my laptop as an attempted fix, and it seems like the lines got thinner? I noticed a change in how it looked like lines were being laid down, which was honestly welcome. Once more, I kept it black and white for ease in home printing, for the zine feel. I need a new printer, though, because mine is officially dying. Hopefully that new printer will be able to do color better. The main change in the look of this book is that I switched to a simpler style, and it turned out ok. I want to experiment more with shapes when I’m drawing figures now, and I remembered that I actually don’t like drawing oval eyes. Ovals are hard, and I’ve drawn better eye shapes. This project gave me some good notes as I refine my style, and I continue to seek a better balance in cartoonish and detailed elements I want to include.
So, first off, besides Kelly, I totally didn’t base these characters on anyone in real life. Right? Except my friend, who I showed her character design to and she approved it. So that’s the story we’re sticking to. Any resemblances to actual people I know are more about what they represent to me, the feelings I have and the kind of relationship I want with them, and aren’t reflective of our real life situation. Not that it’s based on anyone, besides me and my friend. The basic premise of this book is something I’ve thought about for a while, and it was a more recent thought about how I could use this to explore certain anxieties of mine that brought me to this version. I recently wrote a blog post about how and why I’m not fully comfortable with this book, so you can read more about that there. Suffice it to say, it was a bit too directly personal for my liking; maybe, when I’ve done more work on myself and I have more confidence, I’ll be able to see something else in this piece. Beyond that, I don’t think I liked the lack of narrative structure. It got boring partway through because nothing was developing, on top of the repetitive action. I don’t regret making a book about these feelings, but I do think I should put such feelings into a narrative format in the future. And maybe not with a main character that has my face and hair and clothes and mannerisms who somehow looks cuter, because that’s not fair.
Life in the Gutters 