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The First Chapter of Dronefall is Now a Comic!

I’m a novelist—most of you guys know that. I’ve studied and practiced that particular mode of storytelling for around 15 years now. That creates a lot of habits and expectations when I sit down to work on a story.

But I’ve been thinking about branching out into comics for a long time. And it was while I was working on thinking up an idea for a newsletter freebie that I decided to finally commit to finishing a project. That project was “A Reason to Run: the comic.”

The idea was, I wanted to give my readers a view of my story they couldn’t get just from reading my books. I set my sights on the first chapter of the first book of the Dronefall Series. I wanted to adapt it to the comic medium. But I really had no idea how I was going to do that.

How Do You Adapt Novel Text To Comics?

Of course, this is what I asked Google—actually, I asked Pinterest first, because I typically do, but when I didn’t find what I needed there, I took it to Google. And guess what? I also didn’t find a lot there.

So, is this not something people do? Clearly, they do it—novels do occasionally get graphic novel adaptations, after all. But I was able to find very little guidance on how to do it online. And so, I realized I was going to have to log off and use my own brain.

That’s a good thing to do sometimes. Kids, you don’t need people on the internet to do all your thinking for you. God created you with a brain that can think on its own. Sometimes you have to step away from other voices and remember you can figure things out for yourself. It’s actually one of the best things you can do for your creativity.

But, having said all that, I thought it was too bad there were hardly any tips for how to do this on the internet. So, I’m going to share my insights with you. Read on.

My Process

Being an extremely visual writer who for some reason always knows exactly what compass-point everything in a given scene is facing, I had a lot of very strong imagery in my head already. This process would probably be a lot longer if you needed to make a lot of character and setting design decisions before you started. I dived straight in without writing out a script or anything. I just started story-boarding the whole thing shot-by-shot like a movie.

Don’t do it this way.

It was getting really long and tedious.  I was many pages into my thumbnailing when it occurred to me that comics are not films. So, that’s my first tip.

Tip #1 Comics are NOT Film Storyboards

Comics are their own medium. It’s possible to use way too many panels to show an action. It can actually make the action more confusing. I also didn’t want to make this a 30-page project. This was my first time trying to complete a comic for public consumption. I wanted it to be manageable.

So, I scrapped the thumbnails and started rethinking things. I needed to think about what parts on this first chapter of Dronefall One actually needed to be communicated. What could I make clear? What could I get a casual reader interested in without a lot of exposition?

I ended up selecting two passages of text that would end up appearing on the pages. One was that iconic intro about the Blindworm and train-jumping. The other was the conversation my MC Halcyon and her friend Reveille have as Halcyon is making a run for it. Off of that, I could build my pages.

Tip #2 Draw your thumbnails—worry about page layout later

Now that I had the text to use as a framework, I started drawing new thumbnails. At first, they were just a string of rectangle panels. I didn’t bother thinking about layouts and different panel shapes or sizes until I knew what panels I actually needed to tell my story.

By rethinking my thumbnails in a much less play-by-play progression, I flew through the thumbnailing process and was ready to move on to page layouts. 

Tip #3 Decide how many pages you want to draw

I managed to condense the whole of chapter one into eight pages. I was able to guesstimate the number by knowing about how many panels I would probably be able to fit on a page, and then starting to mark out potential page-breaks in the thumbnail sketches.

Staying flexible at this stage is helpful. None of the panels were set in stone yet. A lot would shift around and evolve as I got into sketching my tentative layouts. I ended up dropping and combining a lot of panels. I wanted to stay sensitive to readability and composition in the sketching phase.

Tip #4 Stay noncommittal in the early stages

Comic art is more than just a string of pretty pictures. It’s about telling a story.

Once I was satisfied with the layouts, the scary part began. This was also the point where I realized I was going to do the whole comic in traditional media—also a scary decision. I went out and bought the biggest pad of Bristol board I could find. I don’t know a lot about comics, but I do know you’re supposed to work much larger than your print-size. And with all the pictures within pictures in the medium, I knew I would still be getting into some pretty small details if I wasn’t careful.

Tip #5 Work LARGE

The original pages of this comic are 17inx14in (43.18cm x 35.56cm) and I almost wished they were bigger. Still, working even on that scale has its challenges. If you’re not an artist, you might not realize how distorted a large page is when you’re sitting at a desk. I had to stand up and look straight down at it to keep it from getting too skewed. An easel or drawing-board might have been helpful.

Tip #6 Use a medium you’re comfortable with for your first comic

Kind of a bonus tip. Also, I didn’t do this.

I opted to use alcohol markers for this project. For the most part, I like how it turned out, but I felt a little panicky the whole time I was using them. They interacted strangely with graphite. (Which I used to sketch the pages out before inking with alcohol-based fine-liners.) They each blended a little differently. And boy, I sure used some of them up. We took a couple of emergency trips to Hobby Lobby to replenish them over the two weeks I was working on this.

I was using the store-brand ones, luckily. But you know they still weren’t cheap. That’s the thing about alcohol markers.

Anyway. Once I had inked and colored all eight pages and a cover, I photographed them with my phone, cropped and adjusted them, and popped them into Canva where I added the text. I could have hand-lettered the text on the physical pages, but I didn’t. Because I kinda forgot. I got in the zone.

Tip #7 Leave room for your text boxes/speech bubbles

Mine got a little crowded. This probably takes some practice to get right. But in the end, I think I ended up with a totally readable, and even kind of cool-looking comic that gives my readers an exciting taste of the world of Dronefall. That was my goal.

I hope you got something out of this behind-the-scenes look at my comic-making process. I’m obviously a complete newbie, but I wanted to share my experience with other complete newbies out there who might be just as lost as I was at the beginning of the process. If you have any questions for me, please drop them in the comments, and I’ll be sure to answer them as best I can.

Want to see the full comic?

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Art

I Redrew my Old Art from Years Ago

I’ve never been great about putting dates on my art.  I started digging through my old sketchbooks in search of some worthy redraw material, and discovered a big 8 ½” x 11 ½” spiralbound. Flipping through its smeary pages, I found sporadic dates ranging mostly from late 2008 to 2009. What’s interesting about this era is, it was the beginning of my more serious writing days. I started writing my debut sci-fi trilogy in ’08. As you can imagine, there was a lot of art related to that story in this sketchbook.

In fact, there was so much I thought it would be better to dedicate a whole future post just to Stardrift Trilogy art redraws eventually. For this post, I decided to pick drawings that stood alone. There are five. Let’s have a look at them now.

Girl T-Posing in a Field

Some of these drawings had titles, but this one didn’t, so that’s my title, now. I have a lot of comments about this one. First off, why in the world did I choose that angle on the face? With the head tilted back like that? That is not an easy angle. It actually isn’t even an intermediate angle, but here we are. I would like to congratulate my younger self for not shying away from the anatomy here. I think I remember studying this pose in the mirror so that I got the ins and outs of the arm-muscles right, and it shows.

Obviously, I liked the concept and vibe of this picture. That’s why I choose to redraw it. She’s actually most likely not t-posing, but probably dancing or something, judging by the hair and clothing movement. So, let’s look at my redraw.

The Redraw

This was the first of the drawings I redid, and I was excited to realize, for the first time I actually have developed a style. Clearly, I learned something about how I like to depict hair. Aside from a little more confidence in the foreshortening on the face (I still don’t like the angle) I think the hair is the clearest improvement you can see looking at the two images side-by-side.

Honestly, she looks happier in the first one. But this first redraw inspired me to move on to the next and see what else I had learned over the years.

Smug Girl from Visaclosure

So, I cheated a tiny bit here, because Visaclosure is in fact a planet from the Stardrift Trilogy and I said I was going to save that for later, but since this isn’t an actual character from the books, I decided to go ahead and include her. First off, this is not a proper way to sit wearing a dress, but clearly she could care less. Afterall, I probably wouldn’t care about much if I lived on Visaclosure either. It’s very sparsely populated and every human settlement established there quickly goes back to nature since everything on the planet grows extremely fast.

The hands and feet could use a little more effort, I think. A bad habit I had, and honestly still have, is trying to draw faces on a scale that’s way too small to expect much. This face is under an inch from chin to hairline. It’s really hard to work that small. I tried to draw a little bigger the second time around.

The Redraw

Okay, so it’s kind of an illusion if the face looks any bigger here. I measured, and it actually isn’t. But obviously I got better at drawing faces overall, and was able to get something a lot more human looking into that inch of paper this time. Once again, you can see I figured out how I like to stylize my faces and figures now. I’ve outgrown my ghost stage as well, and I actually know how to put a little pressure on the pencil, which is kind of a plus for people trying to see my art.

I also thought it was funny that she has a similar little thing on her shoulder as the girl in the field. I’m not sure what my obsession with little metal rings as sleeve-ornaments was about.

The confidence is the biggest difference here. Everything about the second piece is much more intentional. And the girl looks a lot more like somebody you might actually see.

Thunderbird, the horse

Thunderbird was my imaginary horse growing up. What? You didn’t have an imaginary horse growing up? She was a blue roan mustang with a stubborn, fiery temperament. She was also my warhorse, but we’ll get to that later. Anyway, I almost think I wasn’t looking at a reference picture for this, so it’s pretty good, considering. But I don’t know what I was doing with the eye. That’s not how horses’ eyes look. Also, is that her other ear coming out from behind her forehead? Because I don’t think that should be visible.

The Redraw

Once again—the hair. Also, I am no longer a ghost, you’re welcome. Though I’m still not super confident with equine anatomy, (and once again was not using a reference) you can see that my understanding for the forms clearly has improved. Another thing I though was interesting about this picture is the way you could still see my stylization carried over from my human drawings, even though my subject was an animal rendered more thoroughly than the previous drawings.

Kids, don’t be afraid of putting some graphite on your paper. Draw hard lines. Shade things in. Your future self will thank you.

Mists of Time

This one had a title. I suspect this is another depiction of a scene on Visaclosure. I loved the aesthetics of that world so much. We have here, an ancient time-keeper—apparently this past civilization divided their day into tenths. I don’t have a lot to say about this picture. I just wanted to see if I had gotten any better at drawing environments.

The Redraw

And I think I have. It’s a lot easier to understand the landscape and distances shown in this second picture. I also was a lot more patient about filling in the foliage and adding details for believability. Forms are a lot more solid and there’s good depth contrast between the foreground and the background.

I changed the design of the vines in this one. I think they were supposed to be opal vines—aggressive low-growing vines with little pearlescent white fruit. They pose a major tripping hazard in the undergrowth. The second picture is more how I imagined them in Stardrift.

Self-Portrait as a Warrior

And now, another episode from my childhood. My siblings and I were very into imaginative play growing up. We had a war that literally went on for years. There were a bunch of made-up characters, locations, and political situations involved—not to mention talking gorillas with swords. They were bad guys. Anyway, I eventually became a commander for some reason (and Thunderbird was my warhorse, as you might recall.) I thought I was cool, but I was probably pretty annoying to work with—always going rouge, had a petty rivalry with another officer who was better at winning over the higherups. It was so fun.

Anyway. I found this picture, which I clearly wasn’t happy with at the time. When I noticed I had literally promised myself to try it again later, (in writing at the bottom of the page) I decided this was the time.

The Redraw

I think little me would have been really pleased. Here we have a lip-curling frizzy-haired little fighter who actually knows how to sit on a rock.

I kind of want to draw my old rival, now. I never really did get a satisfactory picture of him, and he was kind of a good-looking kid, to be fair.

Improvement?

I realized something as I was looking at these drawings. Yes, I have gotten visibly better and have learned to more accurately produce the things I see in my head. Yes, my confidence has increased, and I like the way my style has developed. But there was another thing I realized from this activity. It wasn’t about my art.

It was about my writing. I’ve been writing fiction for fifteen years now, and somehow I have tricked myself into thinking I haven’t improved much at all. But this is how much I’ve improved in art over that time—and I wasn’t even drawing every day. I wasn’t feverishly studying and pushing myself to the next level year after year. But I improved massively.

And I think I haven’t improved at other things? Writing, which I’ve been aggressively fighting to uplevel almost every day? Life in general, after all this experience?

Don’t doubt you’re getting better at the things you love, everybody. You won’t always feel it. You’ll doubt yourself more often than not. But you are getting better, and you’ve already come so far.

Categories
Art

Why You Need a Secret Sketchbook

There could be some really shocking stuff in this sketchbook. Of course, what’s considered shocking is pretty subjective, so I guess it’s safe to say somebody is bound to be shocked by at least some of the content in this sketchbook.

Whether or not anything in this sketchbook is actually career-endingly scandalous is beside the point. I’m not showing it to anybody. This is my secret sketchbook—my drawing journal. This is the sketchbook whose pages will never appear on the internet. Why? Just because that’s the way I want it. This cryptic and mystical-looking tome is my secret sketchbook.

We’re a bunch of internet artists anymore

Even me. I actually draw for Instagram the majority of the time. I need to stop that. I need to teach myself to draw for other purposes and let Instagram look over my shoulder a couple of times a week. But we’re living in an age of isolation. The compulsion to share everything is stronger than ever. Everyone is lonely—especially artists. If posting to the internet can give us an hour or two of attention, we’ll do it.

But the internet audience is distracted and very far away. If we’re lucky, they’ll drop us a like and scroll on. Is that what we create art for? So somebody will tap a little heart icon and flick it off the screen? What’s so great about that? Did you really spend three hours on that drawing just so somebody would look at it for three seconds?

Is that why you started?

We often forget what drew us to something in the first place. Sometimes it’s when we decide to “get serious” about something that we lose contact with what made us love it. You need to find joy in what you do—especially as a creator. Otherwise, you’re likely on the fast-track to burnout.

Enter the Secret Sketchbook

It’s time to buy a new sketchbook. This is your sign. Get one with paper you love the feel of. Make sure it’s one that can handle your favorite media and the art-style you enjoy the most. Bonus if it’s really beautiful. You want something you’re going to get excited just looking at. Most importantly, it needs to be brand-new. Completely empty.

Now go ahead and fill out the first page. Make it fancy or a sloppy mess, but you need to actually write, on the first page or inside cover, that this is your secret sketchbook. Make your own rules according to what you want.

These could include:

  • I will not post anything in this book to social media
  • I will not work on any commissions or pieces to sell here
  • I will not take this book out in public where anyone might look over my shoulder
  • I will show the inside of this book to literally no one
  • I will keep this book hidden in a secret room behind a bookcase in Amsterdam

You can be as extreme as you’d like, or less so. The goal is to put boundaries around this particular sketchbook and promise not to violate them under any circumstances.

But isn’t it kind of selfish to hoard your talents like that? No. Not all art is meant to be performance. Think of the creators you appreciate. Do you really think they show you everything they do? Do you really think they should? I don’t. I think the magic of art comes from the intimacy between the art and the artist. You have to have a relationship with what you create that has nothing to do with the audience.

This applies to any kind of creative work. I’m primarily an author, and I follow a lot of other authors on various social media, and read a lot of blogs. I’m sure none of them think they actually have to post or publish every piece they write. And yet, I have noticed a phenomenon that bothers me a little. I have seen authors post and publish writing that is literally from their diaries. Yeah. That book you might even have kept a dinky little padlock on when you were twelve or thirteen. They’re opening it up and putting it online.

Why? Well, because even though a diary is, by definition, a private record full of personal thoughts specifically not written for general public consumption, we just can’t keep it to ourselves if the prose starts to sing, or the points hit home. Because we must share our art.

And then we wonder why we feel drained and judged and unappreciated at the end of the day when the likes have already stopped popping up.

Speaking to the world is important. Sharing our vision, gifting others with the products of our passions and letting our unique voices be heard is one of the biggest joys of being a creator. People need what we create. Art can encourage, inspire, and uplift people in ways nothing else can. But sometimes our work will be met with silence or criticism from people who had nothing nice to say. Sometimes we can overextend and lose ourselves in the noise of public display.

Some of your art is God’s gift to you alone. Some of it deserves to be kept out of the glaring sun and careless wind. That’s why you should give yourself the sanctuary of a secret sketchbook. Take some time to develop your relationship with what you create away from likes and comments.

So, what could you do in your secret sketchbook? Anything you want. That’s the point. It doesn’t have to be anything particularly personal or private. It could be:

  • Pages and pages of hand-studies (You know you should do some)
  • Self-portraits, or portraits of people you know
  • Spoilery stuff for the webcomic you haven’t even started yet
  • Nothing but character designs, if that happens to be what makes you happiest
  • Still-lifes and value studies, since no one really likes seeing those anyway
  • All the guilty-pleasure fanart from fandoms no one else cares about
  • Comic-strips of your day-to-day life
  • Prayer-art or scripture drawings
  • Art depicting what troubles you, or what you think is missing from the world
  • Kittens, puppies, and baby rabbits
  • Literally anything. Nobody cares.

So…what’s in my secret sketchbook? You’ll never know. Not everything I draw is for you and not everything you draw should be for me, or your followers, or your aunt Philomena. You are completely entitled to your own secrets. Your sketchbook is not a billboard. You can keep anything you want to yourself.

Oh, and your other sketchbooks? Yeah, you can censor them too. I love watching sketchbook tours, but if you want to slap sticky notes over some things, or washi tape pages together here and there—hey, do that.

Give people something to speculate about.

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