Homework: American Way Page, Mark I

My next homework assignment was to do straight-up black brushwork, no diluted ink to make shades of gray. (Variations in the level of black on the image are due to my bad scanner.) This is a scene from the wonderful American Way by resonant8.



I thought that the black blacks would be easier than the grays, but in fact it's a lot harder to be confident about placing shadows when you can't experiment with lighter shades before you commit to dark, and I think the stickiness of undiluted ink makes it more obvious that I can't control my brush.

Dialogue changes were due largely to making this a self-contained page that anyone can follow without knowing the context (you should read the story if you haven't, but I was thinking about my classmates). I also wanted to set up Fraser and Ray's usual body language before I twisted it, but this may have been a mistake.

I'm doing an edited version for homework this week (I'll probably post tomorrow), which is better in composition I think, but possibly slightly worse in execution.

Still! Valuable learning experience, and it's one of my favorite scenes, so I was happy to work with it.

Homework: American Way Page, Mark II

Redo of my previous piece, a scene from American Way by resonant8. (The lack of outer panel borders isn't a stylistic choice, I just worked slightly bigger and it didn't fit in my scanner.)



Same style, different composition. In critique, my teacher pointed out that you really don't need to be zoomed out on what is essentially talking heads in panel 1, but in panels 2 and 3, the gesture is what is important, so zooming out and showing the whole body there made more sense. She also wanted to see more of Fraser's transformation, which was nice in that it allowed me to be a little closer to canon (by which I mean fanfic) in his movements.

A classmate pointed out that panel 1 was a golden opportunity to show Ray in the position Fraser ends up in the big panel, to play up how Fraser's mimicking Ray's body language. I think this was a good call. I didn't make it an exact mirror, but there are some similar elements.

I love when I get people who don't know DS at all talking about the characters. :D

I basically just redid panels 4-6, trying to improve them, but I think I ended up making them slightly worse. In general I feel like I've lost some charm. I should never revise. (Bad attitude!)