Funding Shades Of Men - Update #6

Hey there,

I though I'd give you a quick update as I'm making my way through page 123 of my original comic Shades Of Men.

Here are screenshots from the most recent steps.

I'm pretty happy with the thumbnail I did. The pose looks great to me and the lines flow naturally. I originally envisioned a more compact crowd around our main character but it feels more readable this way. Also it's too late to change now. Gotta go with it! ;-)

Above with an added red line layer.
No it's not a super hero mask on Lev!?! I must admit it could have been cool... but I actually needed to fine tune the eye area for the line work. I was lacking some details on the face expression.

And that's the line work for panel 1. By posting this work in progress here, I see many areas of improvement. The final version will probably have several updates. For example, proportion issues, lines I liked from the thumbnail that disappeared, etc...

Let me know what you think so far. That's your chance to influence that final version!

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In this next section, I wanted to share my process to structure the plot. Below is the screen shot from my chapter page break. I create this messy document for each chapter, dividing it up into 11 parts (1 for each page) and summing up the major plot points or actions I need to include for each part.

As you can see I already completed the first 2 pages and working on page 3. I have a slight delay in the actions as I'm basically treating the "reaching for weapon" from page 2. I have to crank it up a bit!

We're still early in the chapter so I have room to rearrange the rest. Also with an action scene it's easier to skip certain parts, unlike a dialogue scene especially one with reveals.

This being the final chapter, I do want to wrap it up properly. If needed I can still add a few pages to smooth up the action. That's a last resort though because each page takes me way to much time (10 hours...) and I want get this thing done for my own sanity! ;-D

I'm keeping the final product in mind and hopefully have a few more supporters by the end of the project. Below the possible book render from the fundition campaign.

Thanks for following along.
Hope that enticed you to read some more.

See you on the other side,

Jrej

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