Now that ‘Discovering A Unicorn’ is finished, I need to decide what’s next. I’ll be taking a breather from the comic until after Christmas – mostly because I won’t have access to my Cintiq and so won’t be able to finish new pages during that time – so I’ll have some time to pick a story and prepare.
In terms of comics, right now I’m focused on introducing all of my central characters. Fortunately, I have stories plotted out for each of them – even some stories for characters that haven’t been designed yet – so the first task is prioritizing them. I keep telling myself that Mary-Anne should be next, but she presents a number of problems…
Mary doesn’t have an intro story… She has two. Two candidates, anyway – one is short and simple, while the other is longer, more epic, and quite simply the ‘right’ story. If I were to make a feature film centered around her, this story would be the opening 10 minutes. The problem with that story, is that I’m not currently capable of drawing it. I’m not comfortable with drawing environments in general, yet; I need to practice use of shading and thick shadows to enhance the mood of the scenes; and I especially need to practice motion-blurred action scenes. This story also features several incidental characters that I’d need to design, first.
For now, it’s looking more like I might just draw Rose and Violet’s intros first, and then draw the easier Mary intro.
Aside from comics, there are other projects I’m hoping to make some more progress on over the holidays – For the past two pages, I’ve gotten my 3D model of the interior of Daisy’s Diner to a point where it can be used as reference for the comic. I’d like to eventually get it and the exterior to a point where they can not only be used for 3D renders, but also toon-shaded for the comic to save me the trouble of tracing them (or, God forbid, have to draw them by hand).
Another project is my next 3D character – Daisy & Rose’s Aunt Mercy. I’ve already modeled her head as a morph target for Rose, so really all I need to do is model her habit and make sure all of Rose’s facial expressions can be re-used. The only real challenge with her will be the cloth simulation on the habit.
Commissions are another thing I’ve been thinking about. It would certainly be nice to make a little extra cash for Christmas, but again, I won’t have access to my Cintiq. I will have my Galaxy tablet with me, but there’s only so much I can accomplish on that. With the general madness of the holidays, it might be best if I just wait until I get home before opening up my commission list.