La Pucelle Doujinshi!

Here is page 1 of a La Pucelle doujinshi I'm making. I had to scan each half seperately. As a result most of the panel borders and their lines got messed up a bit. Nothing major. I should be able to correct the problem next time. I think this is a good start though.

Read from left to right (not right to left like the japanese do), the american way! IN AMERICA!!! XD

Attached is page 1. In order to fit under the TMF file size limit, I had to reduce the quality a bit. I hate having to do, but, whatcha gonna do.

There are some bonus pictures also, and you can see these either on my DA page here:

http://thesis-d.deviantart.com/

or, if you prefer:

http://www.tickletheater.com/showthread.php?p=341013#post341013

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Artwork/manga by & © Damien Jones

Prier/La Pucelle © Nippon Ichi Software
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Great job CE. Very cool and interesting artwork.

Thank you. It probably doesn't help that most people probably have never heard of this game, so it would be harder to follow along.

I would love to be able to produce a comic strip like that. I've tried, but to no avail. It's really hard. So hats off to you, CE, great stuff.

Thank you.

What is it you were trying to do? Maybe if you went back to the idea you'd be able to figure out how you can make it work for you.

Also, can you do me a favor and tell me what colors the tones are showing up in? They should all be showing up in varying degrees of black or grey. However, on my laptop last night I was looking at the tones, and they appeared dull, almost like a beige or tan color.

This is most likely because I have a good flatpanel monitor (for my desktop), and the laptop is older so the colors on it aren't as good as with my desktop that I'm on now. So I'm wondering whether other people's resolutions and color settings are allowing them to see the tones in the correct colors.

The colours on my monitor appear normal, black and whites, shades of grey.

I took inspiration from the Iraq campaign. I'll let you know the story side first, helping to set the scene. It starts with one man, holed up in a badly damaged house an abandoned Iraqi town; houses everywhere are reduced to rubble. Our man has limited weapons, and has been tracked by some militia. A rocket is fired on his position. Our man returns fire with a GMPG and hits the rocket mid-air. I wanted to begin the escape and evasion sequence, but my limited capacity for drawing from my imagination halted my progressions. I have many ideas, but it's the actual pen to paper without anything to look at to draw which gives me most problems. I would like to draw our man bursting through rubble, lobbing grenades, causing mayhem to escape. That is the next sequence, but as I say, it's giving me a hard time! I think my ideas would be great to share if only I could draw them!

Sigh, thats a relief. I was worried people, for one reason or another, may not be seeing the tones correctly, or the colors on any of my work, for that matter. If I color something blue, but it appears purple on your screen, for example, then thats a big deal (to me anyway). Nothing I can do about it though, since its their monitor.

I see. What you're doing is pretty complex because you're trying to visually display too many things at one time. I can see how it would be a burden on you, now. Did you ever figure out how you would create or alocate the panels according to this sequence? A typical comic page has up to 7 panels. If you really wanted to show off an explosion or something, you might take up half the page doing that, and then the rest with the evading and escaping. I don't know you want it, but if you formulated the panels, you'd be able to edit things as you invision them, or think about how many panels this will take up.

Well, I thought that if as I was drawing, I'd adapt the size and shape of the boxes, because the story wasn't planned, it was basically draw as I thought! But I do have more than seven panels on my page. Now that I have the basic story, I think I'll have to draw the important bits that REALLY tell the story, and see where I can fit them. I was kinda hoping I could use several pages for it, because it seems to be a fairly big plot. But thanks for the ideas, I think I'll do the explosion big, because it's meant to startle the enemies and readers, and set the story off big time.

I've got just one more question: how do you draw faces effectively? That is one major weak-point for me, I can spend hours trying to make it look like a face, and not get it right!

I still haven't planned how I want page 2 to look, but the ideas for what I want on the page are already there, so I know what you mean. In your case, for a big explosion, it would be better to devote half a page or maybe even an entire page to it. It really depends on how dramatic you want it to be.

Like, with this page for example, she's chasing the ghost, she catches up to it, and in the last few panels we see her jump in the air, and the last three panels are close ups of the ghost and her. The actual "impact" when she hits it, will happen on page 2. You may want to lead up to the explosion or maybe even start off with it. It depends on what sense of speed you want.

As for how I draw faces, its really hard to give advice on how I do things, since I'm completely self-taught. Because I'm self-taught, I cannot recommend any good books you might look at, since I've never really read or used any. A good anatomy book should help you. Whats important is that you create the framework for the face before you draw in any kind of details. Alot of artists draw disproportionate features and limbs because they draw without the faces being anatomically correct to begin with. Sorry I can't be more helpful. I'd suggest studying human anatomy and looking at books. The only way you're going to learn is by seeing how it's done right and then practicing with it.

I'm completely self-taught too, so I know where you're coming from. I guess I'll just spend some time drawing faces, it's the only way I'll get better! Thanks for the tips anyway.

It'll be nice to see page 2!

EDIT: I reckon I'll start off with a quiet atmosphere, then have a big explosion to set off the mayhem; I think it'll be a great way to get into the story, to get and retain the attention of the reader!

Thats a good idea. Maybe you could have the enemy playing cards or BSing with eachother and then the explosion. A scene like that would be very good, because it takes the audiance out of the comfortibility of the situation forcefully.