New Year's Resolution

Since the New Year's resolution I had last year was such a success I thought that this year I would also have a New Year's resolution. This year I have decided to try and draw every single day (be it sketch, inking, colouring etc). Hence I am hoping this will have 2 good results.

1. My manga pages should progress quicker
2. My art skills should improve

After watching a TV programme which said the reason Beethoven was so good at playing music (even at the age of 6) was because by the time he was 6 he had already practised play for thousand of hours. The more you practise the better you get. Hence because of this, this is why my New Year's resolution is to draw a bit each day.

So with that I am off to do a bit of drawing before I have to go to work.

Hope you all have a Happy New Year and a great 2011.

Body Language Secrets

Recently I watched the “How to get what you want” episode 3 “Winning” of the series “Body Language Secrets” on Sky. When I was watching the episode I kept thinking how relevant and useful some of their tips were for me in relation to doing well as an artist and making Noctivagus: Wandering by Night successful.

First tip was to have small but achievable goals towards the larger ambition. As soon as I heard this I thought, “yes I agree. This does work”. The reason I say this was before I started version 2 of my yaoi manga I set out about coming up with small little goals to achieve as I went along. Once each one is complete there is a sense of achievement (as opposed to letting the enormity of the task at hand become too much to mentally deal with).

The second tip (which I have recently put into practise) is to think positively and to visualise a task being completed and successful. If you visualised it being successful it was more likely to succeed. Hence when I was in work the other day (and it was a quiet period of the shift), I was visualising what the next page was going to look like and I have to say it really did help. It helped me to break down what images would be good on the page and even over the next few pages. Even better was the fact I could work on my manga in this way without actually being infront of my computer!

Below is a quick rough sketch I did from what I had previously visualised while at work. Here is hoping for some more quiet shifts where I can sit there visualising my manga ^_^.

"Bush Push"

The next page of Noctivagus: Wandering by Night involves Raghnall being pushed (as you can see from the sketch shown on 29/11/10 blog post). As I am drawing this page all I can think of is “Bush Push” from Harry Hill's TV Burp. For those who have not see Harry Hill's TV Burp or missed the “Bush Push” moment here is a clip on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdTBQTZ_qAg Needless to say laughing at the thought of “Bush Push” has made drawing this page quiet comical.

Page 21 is coming along. I still need to fix the “possessed first panel”. Hopefully it will be completed by Monday evening / early hours of Tuesday evening.