This is probably the last IFF image I’ll ever do.
I mentioned before that I wasn’t doing well health wise, and while I had a lot of problems before, it’s never been this bad. That’s why I decided to focus on my main comic.
So, this image is a bit of a ‘what would have been?’
People would eventually figure out that Lisa used to be human, and while it would be impossible to restore her old body, she would still try to go back to her normal life. She’d move in with Mina, who would help her with everyday tasks etc, and they’d quickly become more than just Roommates. All the while other alchemy students were up to no good, having found the original concoction that led to Lisa’s transformation in the first place.
Here’s a comic about the dangers of kissing a gryphon.
Just don’t do it kids. It’s best to leave this kind of stuff to trained professionals.
At first I simply wanted to make an IFF version of this image.
What can I say, I tend to get carried away.
“Okay, I have to add a couch or something so they wouldn’t just float in space. Eh, might as well add a background too… Wait a minute, how would they even kiss?”
So I made this…
I wanted to have this done by new year’s eve, but you can see how that turned out.
Getting sick certainly didn’t help matters either.
And as much as I like this coloring style, it takes me way too long to do. I also run into the 4gb memory limit of my small system more often lately.
I definitely have to figure out a more efficient way of doing things if I want to finish these comics within my lifetime.
So, I’ve been neglecting IFF a bit, and that’s why I thought I’d do something special.
Ironically enough, now I feel like I’ve neglected AHS… oh noooo! 🙁
I guess that’s the problem with juggling multiple comics, I always feel like I’m neglecting one or the other.
People suggested I separate the two comics a bit more.
So, I mainly made this to use as a banner for the site.
It turned out to be the most time consuming and complex image I’ve done to date.
It really pushed my poor, small, underpowered tablet-pc and Manga Studio to it’s limits.
I’ve made this over the course of two weeks, and when I was almost done it was about 6000×6000 pixels large and had ~25 layers. My ram usage was 100% at that point.
Manga Studio still managed everything fine however, it happily used virtual ram on the hard-drive and didn’t crash once!
I did get scared a few times. When I still used Paint Tool SAI, I often ran into memory problems and I even lost a bit of progress on two IFF pages because of that. That’s why I always got a bit of a panic attack when Manga Studio became unresponsive for a while whenever I tried to save the image, but nothing bad ever happened.
Click here for some wallpaper sized versions of this image!
Now excuse me while I’m going to lie down for a while.
I’m no longer working on this comic, just keeping it here for posterity’s sake.
I wanted to scale back on the details / coloring for IFF in order to produce pages faster, and I only lasted two pages…
On page 10 I didn’t use inked line-art and instead just refined the sketch until it looked acceptable, also I used a faster way of coloring. The next page I scrapped the faster coloring for the most part, and on this page I’m already back to line-art as well. Fuck!
Going back to more inefficient ways of doing stuff definitely is a problem if I ever want to update this comic more quickly and if I ever want to do AHS in color. At least I’m managing to keep the promise of one IFF per month for now.
I really want to color AHS, but I don’t want it to take even longer to make new pages. That’s why I thought using a refined sketch instead of inking could be a good compromise.
So tell me your thoughts on details vs update schedule. The process I used here probably added a day or two to the making of this page. I’m thinking about trying a limited color palette on the next page plus a sketchier look.
(Funny how I spend so much time on these pages and I always forget to draw the netting of the aviary in most panels.)
Anyway, I’m a big idiot.