Decisions, Decisions

Welcome back, Meat-Heads--Looks like Eric has quite the decision to make before he starts his day!

Ugh. Sometimes you just suck. I had a drawing day like that yesterday, and it was INCREDIBLY frustrating. I was going to do a woe-is-me, everybody has bad days post yesterday while I wallowed in my distaste with my work, but I thought HEY! When I get over the block, why not talk about it here! So that's what I'm gonna do.

So I was working on this page from Dead Meat #2, and I got to the last panel, and it just was NOT coming together. After slamming my head against the board all day like so:

I realized that the reason it wasn't coming together was because I hadn't taken the time to think out the panel. I mean seriously, look at the breakdown I did for it:

There's a general idea of what's going on, but no thought was given to any of the background, any light sources--nothing other than rough composition and loose stick figures. I shot a couple reference photos, but not many, and tried to hack it together with what I had. This is where I was when I gave up:

It's.....ok? It's pretty boring, and it wasn't really getting across what I wanted. So, I went back to the drawing board the next day literally (BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA...ugh...), and worked out a new breakdown for the panel, which looked like this:

See here, the emphasis is a lot more on lighting and mood, and played to more of my strengths, which the other composition did not. I felt that this change was a much welcomed improvement, and I completed the panel and I think the end result is much stronger than the other would have been:

So what did I learn? Well, I didn't so much learn something, as much as have something I already knew reinforced. I always used to brush off doing my breakdowns as something I could do super quick and get to the work. HOWEVER, what might not be the obvious thing is that the breakdowns ARE the work. That's where all your thinking needs to be done, where you plan out what you're going to do. The breakdowns are baking the cake, and the actual drawing is the frosting. Or the breakdowns are the foundation, and the drawing is the...roof... Or...The breakdowns are the...body snatching...and the drawings are the lightning storm that brings your horrible creation to life? Hell, I don't know, you get the idea, leave me alone.

Until next time,

Eat Dead Meat!