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Ladydarke — featured creator
Our next Midmococo featured creator is Ladydark who’s been hard at work redrawing early issues of her book Broken Glass.
What are you working on now comics-wise?
“The same thing we do every night, Pinky … try to take over the world.” ^.^ Well, the webcomic world, anyway. I’ve been telling the same story, Broken Glass, since I first put it on the web in 2003. While I have the storyline completely plotted, graphic art is a very slow medium to work in! Unfortunately, as I become a better artist, it seems to take longer and longer to finish each page as well. But I have over 300 pages of story up and growing.
How’s your comic output been the last year? What’s helped or hindered your output?
Output over the last couple of years has been really sparse but for happy reasons! Meeting your future husband and then getting married is time consuming! >^.^< For the end of 2007 and going into 2008, I’ve picked up the pace again. I have also taken on the rather megalithian task of redrawing the old pages of Broken Glass, in color and with the better skillz I’ve developed since beginning the enterprise. I really do feel now that I’ve finally reached a point where I can portray the characters and the scenes more like I see them in my head. I’m trying for two pages a week, but am not always able to meet that generally due to work. That would account for hindrances. What helps is having a clear plate without other stresses to get in the way of feeling creative.
Read any good comics/graphic novels lately?
Sadly, no. Not lately. We swing by the comic shop once a week to see what’s new, but I can’t say that there’s been anything recently that I thought was so stellar I’d have to recommend it. Old standbys are still excellent and in the webcomic world I haven’t stumbled across any new gems but there are some old standby titles that I follow that continue to put out suburb quality. Still, I can recommend all the webcomics on my link page! No Rest For the Wicked and Order of the Stick come instantly to mind.
How about other media … anything good you like lately? (video, music, books, etc.)
Resident Evil: Extinction was pretty good in the way of movies. I’ve recently discovered Christopher Moore as an author. His humor is sometimes off, sometimes on, but when it’s on it’s hilarious! I definitely recommend You Suck to anyone who needs a chuckle!
You are redrawing some of your previous work … Would you recommend other artists do this? Why or why not?
Personally, I redraw old work because I don’t feel I need to chronicle my learning curve; but then, I don’t keep a diary either. What concerns me is the finished product; what the story looks like. That’s the reason why I’m making it in the first place. My husband, faub over at the webcomic Fallen Angels Used Books, rather likes having a record of the path he’s taken to get to where he is now, but then the reason he is making a webcomic is to sharpen his drawing skills and get in practice. Having said that, even he has begun a process of editing, trimming, and redrawing where necessary, I think mostly because he feels his very early issues need some clarification.
So I guess whether I’d recommend it to others depends on what their motives are for doing the comic in the first place. If it’s to have the best story possible, then yes, I would definitely suggest redrawing a shaky start. I wouldn’t suggest doing it right away, though. Wait until you’ve really improved rather than starting just when you think you have! I have actually redrawn both issue one and issue two once before, and am beginning a third time. I don’t mind that I did it before because my beginning efforts were very bad, especially because I was just learning how to work electronically. I’ve made some very bad beginner’s boo boos in figuring out that process. In issue three, for instance, I was adding speech balloons in Word, then printing the page and rescanning it. This was not successful, to say the least, and that issue most certainly needs to be redraw due to those technical problems!
I would like to add as a note that I’m happing with the plotting and scripting of the earlier issues and won’t be changing the story other than perhaps to add a scene here or there. I believe very strongly in knowing where the story is ultimately ending before making the first mark on the first page of the first issue. It makes for a smoothly paced plot and leaves so much leeway for foreshadowing! And I do love to foreshadow.
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