Well changes are actually starting next week. But close enough!
A few years back, I inherited Syn’s Intuos 3 tablet… and it changed the way Wayrift was created and looked forevermore. This year, she upgraded her technical arsenal to include a Cintiq and I was gifted with her Fujitsu Lifebook Tablet PC! Needless to say, there will be more changes to Wayrift in method of production as well as format because of this.
Firstly, I’m proud to say that Wayrift will be going 100% paperless starting with next week’s update! This has been something I’ve wanted to accomplish with Wayrift eventually — I’ve always done my best to be environmentally conscious about my online projects. All roughs were always drawn on the backs of used sheets of paper, for example. And I have always recycled where I could.
But this year, with the Tablet PC, I will be working on learning how to do all steps of comic drafting digitally so that no paper is involved at all. I’ve already roughed and inked one week’s worth of comics this way and I feel with a little practice, you guys will never know the difference. ^_~
Secondly, due to the fact that pages are going to be inked and roughed digitally, the format of Wayrift may go through some changes as I try to figure out how everything works. Lately, I’ve felt that some of the newer pages felt a little too cluttered in both number of frames and amount of text. In the next few weeks, I’m going to be experimenting with this.
Next week, you may notice that the dimension of the page feel a little shorter than what you’re used to — more square shaped rather than rectangular. This may or may not become the standard. But fewer, larger frames are easier to draw directly to the screen and easier to produce at the rate of three pages a week. Fewer frames per page may also allow me more time per frame, meaning more detailed frames than what I’ve been doing recently (especially background wise).
So that’s the end of 2009 news for Wayrift. Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!
Forward into 2010!