Waiting Hands on Eyes

I posted a journal update on DA a couple days ago and forgot to put it here as well. Oopsie~

Mostly I’m just rambling about comics I’m reading, stuff about Ensanguine, and how shit be doing in my life right now. Click through to read more! :P

Ayooo.

So half of my senior year is finally over as of last week, and while things are still needlessly stressful, I think more of my time can be devoted to comics. No promises though. I’ve been doing a lot more reading than I used to and its been pretty time consuming. Anyways, I got a new laptop for Christmas, my first laptop ever. It’s really suped up since it’s meant for business use. Only problem is that the screen has better resolution and brightness than my desktop compy, so I can see all the mistakes in my comics more clearly. I’ve spent a bunch of my time fixing the recent pages, but I think at some point I’m just gonna have to deal with the imperfections. :[ I don’t have Photoshop on here yet, but I’ve been doing okay without it because I’ve finally got the hang of using Paint Tool Sai. I actually quite like it, even though I have to resort to using two other programs in order to panel and insert text. Guess free programs can’t be perfect. 

I actually started part two of NA two nights ago on an impulse. I was in a pretty foul mood following a disappointing exam grade, and so I just channeled all that anger into a comic page, I guess. xD It came out SO good compared to my usual jawn. It was one of those pages were instead of taking the easy way out with things, I forced myself to go outside my comfort zone. So there’s like… buildings! And a color scheme! AND FEET! Also, I think I’ve decided on a name for part two… for a while it was in between “Sangfroid” and “Ensanguine”— both from similar concepts, but could totally change the way I worked the story— and after a lot of consideration, I think I’ve decided that Ensanguine would be a better title to work with. As much as I like the way “Sangfroid” looks in writing, the pronunciation isn’t great and the actual meaning of the term doesn’t fit well- I don’t want to have to keep stressing that it’s suppose to be in reference to the literal translation of “sang-froid”, cold blood. Ensanguine is pretty flexible, but to the point. Let’s call it a working title for now, though.

My sister has been letting me borrow and read a couple of comic series she owns, which I think has been helping me a bit with pacing and transitions. I think a lot of the issues I have with my own comic stem from my lack of experience with comics that weren’t other webcomics, Sailor Moon, or the Archie Sonic comic back when I was in grade school (this tumblr pretty much highlights why this is a very very bad thing.) Mostly I’ve begun to read a lot of manga, like early works from Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku) and I’ve just started reading 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa, which is amazing. But I’d like to get more acquainted with western comics, namely because my style is more western (though it obviously evolved from a heavy anime influence.) The only one I really know is The Watchmen, which had been a pretty big influence on another story I’m working on. I dunno.

I’m still hearing back from colleges at this point. As I think I mentioned before I’ve been offered half tuition to the college my sister attends, and I’ve gotten accepted into a few others, but I still got ‘til April before I’ll know the decisions from all my schools.

So, that’s all I’ve really got. 5 months until graduation. Hopefully I’ll survive that long… >:I

~Grace