Inked 5 spreads (meaning 10 pages!) today. I think I just broke my own personal record.... and I'm going to keep going!

Here's one of the pages inked today, and LOOK! They have backgrounds! (the bane of my existence). Antonio and Shylock having a mini face off... oh the drama!

Pencils for page 162-163. It's one of the lighter comedy moments, and it's nice to see poor Lorenzo and Jessica get their 15 minutes of fame. =)

Merchant is chugging along quite nicely. Thumbnails are done, and all I have to do is to pencil and ink the pages remaining!

Here's page 104-105 of The Merchant of Venice with some gag dialogue inserted in. (Real script not being so silly)

The fun thing about drawing romantic scenes in a 'manga' is that I get to go crazy with all the sparkly girly tones in my library. I think the hardest part is knowing when to stop toning, and I think here I managed to push the crazy girly tones to the max, enough to be romantically sparkly and cheesy, but not quite enough to turn into a grey tone mess....  ^__^

I have to say, there is  nothing quite like drawing characters with long flowy/wavy/curly hair to really force me to improve my hair-drawing skills.

Page 108, with some gag dialogue inserted instead of the actual script. ^___^

I just realised that I really really really love billowing hair and romantic heroines. No comic of mine is complete without at least one (or more) classic shoujo trademarks... XD

Finally, I've gotten round to uploading the first 8 finished pages of Merchant! Enjoy the angsty elf bishies!

Working on Merchant pages is indeed a very absorbing and interesting challenge. As it's an old script for a theatre play, you hardly get any stage directions whatsoever like in comic scripts today. So far my experience with drawing comic pages would be based on my own stories, where I've already mentally directed the 'movie' and jotted down notes on place/ camera movement etc. In collaborations with Fehed Said (of The Clarence Principle fame), he's a very hands-on writer who is very into discussing camera angles, possible panelling and pacing with me, so in a sense I'm getting very clear idea of what's going on visually.

However things are a little different with Shakespeare scripts, as it's mostly pure dialogue. So other than cues from Richard (our writer/Shakespeare adapter)  like "Belmont exterior", or "A street in Venice"... I'm mostly left to my own devices as to how to stage my characters as they spout their lines. On one hand, while it can be incredibly frustrating as there are times when I'm just bashing my head against the wall trying to imagine the scenario, on the other I also feel an incredibly sense of glee/ high/ accomplishment when I manage to pull off what I see in my head.

**Click on the images to view fullsize!**

Finally after 12 hours of inking, I finished a layout for Belmont. +o+ I'm quite chuffed with how it came out. ^__^

The final WIP before adding blacks:


I like inking my blacks on a seperate layer, so when I'm done I can hide/unhide it for a quite adrenaline rush of "Before & After" loveliness!

The complete inked background:


Now off to ink the rest of the page! >__<

In a way, I'm using MOV to challenge myself to draw more things I don't usually draw... like building and sodding backgrounds. The perspective on this one nearly killed me (even though it's a simple 2-pointer).

I'm sleepy!

Click for larger image.

An inks in progress of Merchant of Venice. It's a love hate thing.... I moan about having to ink so many bloody details, but at the same time I do it to myself because I'm a closet loli inker.

This is most likely going to be the last teaser page from Much Ado that I can show, as I'll be done with my pages by the end of this month! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Not for release until May, so I have to be patient - but I'm so close.
Thank you all for the support you've given me throughout. It's your lovely comments that motivate me to carry on.
So, a nice angsty one for you - but no text! MUAHAHA - so hopefully, unless you know the play, you won't know what's going on here.
But you can enjoy the pain all the same. XD