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Friday, October 19, 2007

A plea for clarity...



Greetings, fellow Imagesmiths...
I've been a long time follower of this particular forum and have a great deal of admiration and respect for the hard working artists whose works frequent this blog... but I've never bothered to jump into the tidepool myself.

While most of my cartooning work has been in the field of children's publishing in the past, I do some independant comic work for Heavy Metal Magazine (I know, I know... CRINGE... but it's the only large circulation venue I've found that doesn't feel the need to over-edit my work) to salve my creative itch. I've been documenting the progress of my latest story on my blog:
  • Slumbering Giant

  • I figure that this is as fine a place and as good a time as any to address one of my biggest obstacles to productive comic work...
    More and more, I find myself constantly revising and redrawing past story pages in order to make what I feel to be substandard imagery jive more readily with more recent and perceptibly improved page work. Because of this, I'm finding that I could potentially catch myself in a sort of creative mobius loop of continual refinement with no hope of an eventual finished product.

    How do the more productive among you comfortably justify preserving previous progress even in the light of current scrutiny? Is there some easier way to simply allow oneself to just "do better next time" in the interest of simply finishing a story?

    Thanks for any insights anyone can provide...
    In the meantime, I'm grateful to be counted among you in the struggle!

    8 Comments:

    At 10:54 AM, Blogger Chris Jones said...

    I have the same temptation to go back and redo old work that looks bad to me, but I just tell myself to move forward and let the old pages go. It's hard, but not really having the time to do it helps.

     
    At 4:01 PM, Blogger Greg said...

    Thanks for the input, Chris...

    I'm trying to really limit my "redraw" episodes now...
    I've recently put time constraints on my page progress in order to combat the urge to redo past work. Here's hoping that I can successfully impose your "not having the time" strategy on myself... even if by artificial means.

    It seems to be working so far...

    Wish me luck!

     
    At 8:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

    I'm very, very, very new to drawing my own comics, but I think of George Lucas whenever a sketch or an older panel doesn't look quite right to me now. Just look what he did to Star Wars four, five and six when he touched them up. Garbage.

     
    At 2:30 AM, Blogger Greg said...

    LOL...

    I couldn't agree more!
    Well said...

     
    At 1:31 AM, Blogger Ed Choy Moorman said...

    Tezuka redrew a lot of his earlier stories so, I dunno.

    I've been tempted to redraw things many times but for me, if a story is done, it's done. Drawing something again often takes the fun out of it. The drawings you made for that story were perfect for you to be making at that moment in time.

     
    At 12:18 AM, Blogger Greg said...

    Ed,

    An interesting opinion... thanks for weighing in.
    I'm aware of Tezuka's propensity for redrawing... he's one of the folks that fostered this problem in me!

    I'm beginning to think that the "midway" approach suits me best... as long as most of the finished work is still up to standard... I can justify only redoing the substandard elements to keep the whole result consistent.

    But I couldn't agree more about how redoing a drawing takes the fun out of it... it often takes the spontaneity and life out of the line-work as well;)

    G

     
    At 3:57 PM, Blogger Greg said...

    This comment has been removed by the author.

     
    At 10:58 AM, Blogger The Keeper's Notes said...

    I've gone back a few times to rework stuff I've done in the past...cleaning up old paintings in Photoshop, specifically. I've also redrawn a piece that was destroyed in a flood...I had a xerox of it, so lightboxed the pencils and inked it anew.

    I've also gone back to some old comics stuff from college and done some fixes on it, but ultimately, it does seem self defeating..spending so much time on something old, when that time should likely be spent getting better and working on something new.

    Still, I find it interesting when someone puts out a new art book, with some of the work revised, or fixed up, if the originals weren't so great for one reason or another.

    It's a delicate balance...a few revisions to some old pieces is allright, if you intend to publish them or post them, I suppose.

     

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