A Return, with Gifts (of a sort)

As predicted, things were not as manageable at they appeared to be. I had hoped it wouldn't take me this long, even being realistic about the amount of free time I would have to finish these pages, but obviously my hopes were not fulfilled. Better that I take a break and renew my interest than to do the pages dispassionately, I think.

That said, here they are finally are: the first pages of Heterochromia. Each of these pages, by the way, are under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license: you can share, just remember to link ^_^

Also: Pages are read right-to-left, in the style of "unflopped" manga.

And now, commentary on the individual pages. Really, it's just the same that's posted with the pages on my deviantart gallery, but it seems appropriate to post it here too. Just warning you so time is not wasted rereading should you decide to visit the gallery. (It seems worth noting that the pages were posted on different days, thus my references to "Tomorrow, hopefully," and things like that. I also ask for critique on my pages, which you can post here or at my gallery.)

Heterochromia: Page 1
Actually, this may get shifted to the second page later on, because of the way things are printed, but that wouldn't effect how you read it online.

Anyway, I really like how this page came out. There are a couple things I wish I could fix: in the second panel, the guy (Tamino, you will later find out) looks kind of stiff. That panel still has merit, though... can you see those folds?! And most people were able to tell it was a guy--another victory. What I'd actually like comments about is the screentoning. This is one of the first times I'd done it (and the only time I've published something with it). Anything that could be improved? The style of toning I most like is that of Matsuri Hino's work (MeruPuri, Vampire Knight). I'd like to work towards that, but I consciously went a little lighter than hers generally is, simply because I didn't want to get carried away with that overlapping style. I hope I was successful, but like I said, I'd love outside input.

Heterochromia: Page 2
In truth, this page has been done for a long time. When I had all the pages done for print, I also did a screen version of this so that I could show people my process of making comics (I had already finished the first page, so I wouldn't have been able to show steps like sketching and penciling) When I screentoned the first page yesterday, I looked at this and thought I might try to redo it, to keep a more consistent style. Today, however, I realized that I don't really know where I would begin making it different, so I might as well give you what I've got. This comic is to help me learn, anyway: no reason to try to make every page perfect. That said, there are definitely things I like about this page.

For one thing, whenever I show it to people, their reaction is always, "Wow! Look at her eyes!" I hope that's what you thought, too. The effect I was going for was to show that she has sectoral heterochromia--that is, the centers of her irises are different colors from the main color of her iris (obviously, her eyes are very stylized... heterochromia doesn't appear as swirls like that in real life) Showing different colors like that is difficult to do in black and white, especially making it stand out in manga... there's always the question of whether that's just the way the artist has chosen to stylize eyes, or if there actually is something different about her eyes. I considered trying to get a shot of someone else's eyes in, first, to show how "normal" eyes look, and then you see the difference in 7321 (Pan, you'll learn in the next couple pages) 's eyes. Obviously, though, with only one page preceding it, that wasn't much of an option. Maybe there'll be cover and chapter art to clarify in the future. It'll probably be commented on later, too. We'll see, we'll see~

Heterochromia: Page 3
Although I generally try not to be negative about my art, I feel obligated to note: I am not happy with this page. Most of the drawings are tolerable (though, what is Tamino's hair doing in the fourth panel? Why is the inking so much thicker in the first?) but figuring out the screentones took forever and I'm still not happy with them. It feels like an exercise in "fill in clothing, fill in background" rather than any interesting shading or effects. I did try-- but in the end, they just made the page look unbalanced. So, this is what you get, I'm afraid. I've never been stuck on a page so long; while the other pages took one to two days to do (with already an idea for the toning), this one I ended up working on four or five days, each day starting over because I was unhappy with the result of the day preceding. Thus the time gap between pages-- I had been hoping to post a page a day for the first five days (the number of pages I already have done) but got way behind on this (unfortunately, I couldn't just skip it and move on... have to post these things in order for you guys ~_n ) I don't think the next page will take as long, because I am already fairly happy with the tone that was on the printed version (another source of frustration on this one: I didn't like how the tones turned out in the print). Tomorrow, let's hope.