#this style is harder to translate than I thought wtf

[ludeshka]

I had fun watching Hazbin Hotel

[mcrmadness]

Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the Bela/Farin: “Widumihei” comic.

A few months ago I posted here this comic:

CLICK HERE for the original post about that comic where you can see it in better and bigger size, and also reblog it ;)

And this post is just a deep dive into how I plan, do and draw my comics.

Let’s start with sketchbook things...

So every comic needs a story, right? My comics usually are born from either some dialogue I imagine in my head or by an impulsive inspiration that happens when I see something or talk with people and a random idea is triggered. I’m very good at coming up with new ideas solely based on just one word or so which is why I often ask people if they have anything they would want to see/read because I suck at coming up ideas on my own. Or I do get ideas, but not as often as I’d want to.

This particular idea was very old and I have tried but I cannot find the piece that was my inspiration but it was in some of my old German books because I remember laughing at it with either my brother or even with the German teacher in 2011 or 2012. I was only able to find my first “sketch” of the story:

This is in the notebook I used for writing down some comic ideas and even had one comic in it, plus it’s also my fanfiction writing notebook. It has no date but I know for sure it was either 2011 or 2012 because that’s when I did my last Bela/Farin comic and pretty much started my (unintentional) 6 year pause from drawing altogether.

I have always been trilingual when I do these plans for my comics, often writing the “narration” in Finnish and the dialog either in English or German because I just cannot imagine them to speaking Finnish. The translation of that text goes as:

COMIC (sarjis = sarjakuva = comic book in Finnish)

1. The phone is ringing. 2. F: “Widumihei?!” B: ? 3. B: “Farin wtf?” 4. Farin walks from another room. 5. B: “Widumihei?” 6. F: “It means, “will you marry me?”“ 7. B: *wtf* REPLAY:

1. Bela is sitting/laying somewhere. 2. The phone is ringing. Reached with his hand? 3. Looks at the phone, “wtf?”, a thought: “von Jan: Widumihei?!” 4. Bela: “Farin?” / “Jan?” 5. F comes from another room, looks in from behind the door frame or something. B: “Widumihei?” 6. F: “Widumihei: “WIllst DU MIch HEiraten”“ 7. B: “WTF”

So when I then started to draw these comics again in 2018, I kept thinking about this one too and still wanted to draw it one day. If you have read the finished comic, you may notice something different in the old plot versus new: I switched Bela’s and Farin’s roles. Back then I didn’t know too much yet but over the years I have learnt much much more about them and I just figured that asking to marry him even as a joke would be too much for Farin and that it would fit Bela’s persona much much better.

***

I had a bit of problems with getting started with this one, mainly because the last times I drew a dä comic was in June 2020, in April 2020 and before those in October 2019. Because of so long time between the comics, I just always forgot about my methods and in which order I do things and what works for me the best. So every time I started to work on a comic, I had to start completely over because all I had was blank paper and I somehow needed to get my thoughts in order and out of my head, into a physical form aka as text and images on the paper, and it’s easier said than done.

So pardon me but from this on the text is going to get a little bit confusing for a little while from now on - but it’s also a very good look over how the life with my suspected ADHD be like sometimes...

I started working on the plot once again to my sketchbook... I think it was somewhere in the beginning of 2020. Because the next idea there is from the summer. This is what the plot looked like at that point - here I had already switched their roles:

Shortly, the texts go: 1. Farin is reading a book. 2. A phone makes a noise. 3. (Farin) looks at it/read the message. / 6. B appears into the doorway. / 11. F spits out the tea.

And underneath it you can see one of the stick figure storyboards I often do in order to kinda see the text in pictures better, and I will write down or draw important aspects like expressions (Farin’s eyebrows) or things like *facepalm’* or *eyeroll* so that I remember to add them.

Next I was struggling with the era. It needed to be an era with the old mobile phones with SMS options but still not too early because I feel that Farin would have not been the first in line to buy a brand new technology object, especially not when it’s a phone. I was even googling when did Germany get their first mobile phone - I remember I got my first phone aka Nokia 5510 in 2000 or 2001 after my mom got a new one and gave her old one to me, so the story shouldn’t happen too many years before the Millenium.

Originally I planned 1997 for that - I needed to think about that based on their styles because shorter hair is harder to draw. Here’s me trying out some hairs and how they’re to draw and which era would suit my needs the best. I actually find the text hilarious altho it’s mine but this is what it’s in English:

Time period -> 1996-1997? 1998 I’ve never drawn 1999 is not that much fun to draw 2000 is already a bit too late? Bela not that much fun to draw. -2001 moustaches are not fun to draw?

I think I was struggling with my thoughts because the next thing in that sketchbook is yet another storyboard:

Or actually I think this was just to see how many sheets I’d need and how many panels I could fit on one sheet.

Anyhow, I then did other things for some time before I got back to this project this year. Including finishing with the sketchbook I had been using since 2010 (and the half of it since 2018!) and I had to get myself a new one. So when I started to think about this comic again, one night I was just thinking about some Bela/Farin scenarios as usual and suddenly I just felt that I NEED to do the comic in the 1998 style!!! So suddenly we jump from the original 1997 idea to the new era, only because of the colors. 

So asap I grabbed my sketchbook and started to look for the proper colors for the hairs:

This one I posted here before too as I was struggling a lot and just felt that I didn’t know how to draw, again. Sometimes when I feel like that, I start drawing with my non-dominant aka left hand because it doesn’t have all that in muscle memory so drawing and writing with it feels more free and it feels almost like pressing a refresh button in my brain. Suddenly the right one know again how to draw because left isn’t too well in control. The below part of the image is done completely with the left hand, including the coloring.

And because I had now a new sketchbook, I somehow couldn’t... deal with the plot and plans being in a different sketchbook than everything else so I had write the plot/dialog AGAIN, into this new sketchbook, along with the storyboards and everything:

Translations: kirja = book, puhelin = phone, oviaukossa = in the doorway, teet suusta = tea(s) out of a/the mouth. “Puhelin zoom” just means “close up to the phone screen” in Madness.

You can also see that I found out that I don’t need to do the stick figure storyboards to imitate a sheet when I can just draw this rectangle and smaller rectangles inside of it and write there numbers to match the things in the dialog to make it much easier for me to plan the pages. And here’s also a small easter egg: there’s 13 panels overall in this comic :D I almost did 12 but then felt that no, I really need to do 13 because, you know, the hairs, the era, the album title. And also because I like the number so much lmao.

So from there we get to the second storyboard which is not just stick figures anymore but just me planning how I want the panels to look like. To get the imagery of the rooms and facial expressions etc. out onto the paper so that I can see them in real life instead of my shady imagination that sometimes isn’t as vivid as what I could be.

Also have you ever tried to draw a beach chair? It’s more difficult than you’d think:

I tried to draw the same thing from the same reference photos so many times and still I always felt like I was trying to draw that impossible triangle or some other illusion image. And it just went on and on here:

Originally I also had planned the second panel to be a close up of the phone so that Farin’s face would be left at the background from the frog perspective. That’s what I was trying to with that weird-ass face on the left but turned out that I have never drawn these characters from such angle and I just... couldn’t see it in my head clearly enough to be able to draw it. So I dismissed that idea and that’s why the angle changed from a phone close-up to a side view to the room and at Farin.

As I was in the middle of planning the second page, I suddenly wasn’t happy with my original plot anymore. I wasn’t sure if it would work and needed to think about it one more time. So I wrote two other dialogs here, along with a storyboards for them both. I ended up choosing B from those two options eventually.

I don’t remember anymore if I had already done the first sketch of the comics or not but at some point I just felt that I no longer knew how to draw in my style. Sometimes you just draw and learn wrong things and wrong methods that you get used to and then you have to take a break and actually do a little bit of studying over your own style to find again the way how you want to draw, and get rid of the bad habits and find the good ones again. In my case it was to draw the eyes way way too big when they originally never were THAT big, so I had to learn how to draw them small and normal again. That’s why I did these, as I really needed to pay attention to the faces and remember how to draw them again:

The front-side views were another big readong for this “study” because I have drawn that perspective only once or twice before and I needed to figure out how I want to draw that. Also, I don’t know if it’s just me but for some reason the front-side Farin reminds me of one of the parent characters from this cartoon called The Rugrats which I watched as a kid. It was totally unintentional, but you can google The Rugrats if you don’t know how the charatcers looked like in the cartoon.

The things below are just me testing something. The red Farins were just to test how the colored pencils work on each other and how the fineliners work with the colored pencils, and which way is the better way to do the shading. And the red colored pencil was the only one available at the time so that had to do.

A little bit about the heads btw: You might notice some difference between the left and right faces. It’s because I have always, always struggled with drawing anything that is looking at right. Most of the animal portraits and all I have drawn so that they look at left because I just find it so much easier to draw. I think with comics it’s because I always start with the eye (and the eyebrows if I don’t forget it) and then do the forehead, nose, mouth and chin, and after that I either continue from the hair (from the front) or do the ear first. But when I am drawing them to look at right, I have to basically draw the mirror image and starting from the hair is not the key because it can easily mess up with the perspectives. I still usually draw everything in the same order but it really is difficult because I’m doing a mirror image and my own hand is on the way, too. Basically I’m drawing from right to left instead of left to right! (I think I should try drawing those with my left hand, then...)

And from here we get to the first sketch of the comic. From here on the images are from my phone’s camera so they are sometimes illegally bad but no can do, I again didn’t think I’d post these to anywhere:

Here you can see I was mainly just focusing on the shapes and the space inside those panels. Just trying to see the perspective and how everything is. The only thing that I drew more precisely was the third panel, with the hand and phone. I had quite a nice memory of old phones in my head but I still googled for some reference photos of Nokia 5110 phones as that was my first phone (as I mentioned earlier), and I also happened to have some of my other old phones on the table nearby so I took my own hand reference photos too:

They always say there’s a little bit of the artist in their art and this one literally has that - “Farin’s” hand is actually my hand! :D And I think the size is kinda on point too because this phone was like 2-3 times smaller than Nokia 5110 and I have small hands, and I believe Farin must have much bigger hands, so the 5110 probably would have looked about the same size in his hand.

After the first sketch, the next step was then - the second sketch:

I also wanted to add more action to the panels so that it’s interesting to look at and not just basically the same panel over and over again with just different speech bubbles, so I came up with the idea of Farin spitting out his tea not being as cartoony as it could be and that he would have to actually clean it up instead of just leaving it there just because in cartoons/comics everything is possible. That way I got more depth into the panels and it was also interesting for me to draw because I drew lots of new postures I have never drawn before, and I’m surprised how well it went despite me not even looking for any kind of reference photos! The only things I used reference photos for were the beach chair, and the phone in a hand. (I have actually always been quite good at drawing 3D objects and spaces, especially if they are rectangular.)

So yeah, this is the phase where everything is then finished with pencil and what follows next is drawing the lines with fineliners - I use Sakura Pigma Micron fineliners for everything else, and black Promarker for doing the lines for the panels (and also if I need bigger pitch black areas done).

Here are the panel lines done but I only had a photo of this first sheet.

And here are both sheets with the finelining done and all pencil marks etc. erased. I really like this part because it looks so clean when all those sketch marks are gone. It’s also crazy to think I literally spend hours drawing something in pencil only to erase it all away later :D

And here’s one photo of the coloring process, the first one has only the base colors done but none of the shadows yet (apart from the shirts), and the second one has some of the shadows done but not everything yet.

Usually after coloring, I will then go through everything with the fineliners one more time to make sure all the lines are dark enough as it just gives everything the finished yet a bit “sketchy” look that what I really like with my comics. The actual last detail is always adding my signature along with the date or year.

And here’s the finished comic one more time for comparison:

Don’t forget to check and reblog the actual post about this comic if you read this post all the way here. I’d appreaciate that a lot since art and artist on Tumblr are not really that much appreciated.

[rkmason]

   ▰▰▰▰▰▰ TO ALL THE PEOPLE THAT HATE ME, LET ME SAY GOODBYE ˟                                                 (     LET IT GO, I DON’T CARE ‘BOUT NOTHING, SO WHAT     ) ▰▰▰▰▰▰ 

“your father was right. your studio is a mess.” 

hands thrown up in the air, he shakes his head. this is what happens whenever he lets anyone from his family take a look, he guesses. he left seoul after the first few comeback performances of confused with his father and came back just in time for every night with his mother. she’s the one most willing to make jokes at his expense. jokes like “hey good choice” while gesturing at the stage during their performance or “she sings so much better than you” when listening to the album would hurt a helluva lot more comin’ from anyone else but his ma. 

“i’m surprised you have anything resembling books in here.” 

okay, this time he has to say “ma” which only gets him a mocking echo of his tone and a shake of her shoulders. but he does feel the need to look into what she’s talking about and he finds remnants from the years, half-used notepads and scraps of paper tossed into a corner of the studio for ‘sorting when he had the time’ which translated to ‘never gonna happen.’ 

finding the original napkin he started writing statue on is surreal when he’s finally finished it by now, finally sang it for mijoo months ago even if it was only a recording. his mom snatches it from his hand and he groans as she reads it off, the words of the initial draft too embarrassing for him to handle. covering his ears with his hands, he yells over her, a childish la la la la la can’t hear you loud enough to echo throughout the whole warehouse if not for the immaculate design of the built-in room. pays off having an architect father, really does. 

it’s only later than he goes through the rest of the scraps, having gathered them into a box. his mother is off meeting up with some old friends because she’s quote ‘gotten tired of seeing her least favorite idol son [ to which he reminds her that he is the only one and an ex-idol, which aha is what she wanted him to say judging by the smug, amused look on her face— gee, thanks ma, no holding back there ] unquote, so he’s free to look at them all. 

that’s when a few texts come in and he’s distracted for better or worse. 

< ✉ : adonis johnson  >

» hey hey have you heard about the trc triple threat competition » i’m not saying you should join but » pretty sure you can sing, dance, and rap 🙌

it’s a lofty suggestion considering his situation, is he even allowed to do that kind of shit? he didn’t think to ask sphere when he left and the companies are under the same umbrella company. would they bother with him?  who cares about a washed-up idol that got kicked out within months of debut? 

but he can’t say that to chanyeol, least of all him when he’s sunshine and rainbows in a giant human form. it’d be nice to debut together, their entire friend dream had this same kind of lofty dream too. now yien and yixing are in convex without him, chanyeol is in trc, bobby is off doing his own thing, and rome can’t make up his mind from left and right. trying to come off as a triple threat? yeah, sure he was definitely a threat to convex with his scandal. 

'course he knows better than to think it’ll end there and he hears all about it from dabin too. the difference being, dabin is going to do it. “you can decide if you’re waiting in line with me or watching me from the crowd.” he almost punches dabin’s arm for deliberately saying it in a way that’ll remind him of what baek jiyoung said to him before. is he willing to be a face in the crowd again? is that really his destiny? does he give up here or not? 

truth is, he’s made his choice before coming back from australia. because he could’ve stayed, could’ve gone on that trip with chris, could’ve gone back to uni. he left behind a list of could’a, should’a, wouldn’t, and it’s about more than coming back to seoul for mijoo. it was about him loving dance and whether he follows through on opening his own dance studio, working in someone else’s, or helping the guys produce and edit videos, this can’t be it for him. 

“i don’t have a song to use, man. i’ve got nothing.” 

“you’ve got me,” the cheeky grin chanyeol gives him makes him laugh and he’s shaking his head. but it’s what chanyeol says next that’s got him. “you’ve got excuses.” 

dabin is quick to add in that of all the things rome’s done and said, he’s never had nothing. 

so he’s back in front of that damned box, digging through for inspiration and he says this is it, if he can’t find anything, he’ll see it as good reason to keep working hard ‘til he’s ready instead of forcing it. 

what he does find is something he wrote as a whim, something he never finished before. the idea came to him once and he was going to work on it with yerim years ago but plans fell to the wayside. his idea got lost, buried under everything, and when he reads the start again, the rework of the melody plays in his mind. yeah, this is it. 

his studio becomes messier once he gets to work and instead of complaining or making fun of him, his mom brings him food on one of the nights he’s working past 4am to finish in time. it has to sound just right and while he knows it can’t sound complete without the entire group he has in mind for the performance, he can make it work for this one in particular. “my hard working little princess,” his mom teases when he tells her the song he’s remixing and he laughs harder when the reaction chanyeol gives him is “WTF” via text. the final reveal is only for the day of and he’s endured all the new jokes for this moment, jokes of should he wear a blue tiara, a cape, or even a sparkly blue dress. every time, he said it’s okay, he’d just take it off so he can “let it go” anyway. 

even though he said all that, dabin shakes an icy looking tiara in his face on the day of, lining up with him, and rome yells ya whenever dabin tries to put it on his head until he gets tired of it, giving in and letting it rest there to the point that he forgets when it’s his turn. the laughs and giggles from the crowd tips him off when he gets onstage and he’s chuckling as he holds it in place when he bows. might as well go with it, right? why the hell not? 

“the name’s yu barom. i go by bboybyu or rome. romeo’s good too if you like tragedies,” he jokes, both about the shakespearean tale and what happened. “i’m here ‘cause, aw man, i just can’t hold it back anymore.” he’d asked the staff with a number of “please” and “thank you” to start the music when he said aw man, and he’s tossing the tiara to the side as he sings, let it go let it go. 

00:06 to 01:14 

like the last performance he’d felt so into, the last performance that was entirely his own, his own stage, one of the last evaluations they did for convex before going into the debut album preparation, he sings first, trying to throw off the judges who probably expect him to shy away from it. lord knows, he thought he would too but what’s a cover of let it go without singing even a little? 

the wall people built to lock me up  pretending to be okay because of people’s eyes on me i learned while falling have you ever had a feeling like everyday, you’re walking on thin ice 

the first time he wrote the lyrics, it’d been who he was in high school, how he felt after the mgas, how he felt in nova, and now it’s about how he feels after leaving convex and sphere. his father had a point, he does act like he’s okay but really he’s walking on thin ice, faking it until he tricks even himself into believing. 

oh i want to get away from the things that bother me oh let it go, let it be me  become alive and breathe in this freedom look closely at how far i will go to the people that hate me,  let me say goodbye 

he almost decided to run away from everything. it would’ve been easy, go back to sydney like nothing happened, but this can’t be it. every time he thinks it could be, he keeps going. 

don’t let them in don’t let them see be the good boy you always have to be conceal, don’t feel don’t let them know well now they know

TURN UP let it go, let it let it go  let it go, let it let it go I DON’T CARE ‘BOUT NOTHING SO WHAT

this is where he really shines, his true element. this is what his father really spoke of, how rome doesn’t let anything hold him back in the long run and he has to let it go. this time, this is how he does it. this is how he moves on.  

“let’s switch it up!”

00:07 to 00:45

the lyrics are changed to be more public-audience friendly but the connection to frozen is why he chose it but the main reason? it’s fun. most of it he made up on whim in a few hours, freestyle that gave way to a choreography. the power behind his movements aren’t his top priority the way his style used to be but it’s about fluidity, about his transitions, and how he ends it with a grin. yeah, he let it go.