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Email the author at qwanderer7+lgc@gmail.com

The Elves of LleuGarnock is Copyright Irene Pitcairn<2008-2009. The Elves of LleuGarnock is hosted on ComicGenesis, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics.

LleuGarnock HOME Archive     --- CHAPTERS & Sections     --- Chapter 1: Amaranta's Grandchildren 1-1: The Berry Incident 1-2: Destiny & Mr. Cat 1-3: By Garnock River 1-4: Pursuit of Fruit Chapter 2: Gemini Alone 2-1: The Dangers of Thinking 2-2: Healing 2-3: Destiny or Somesuch 2-4: Humans in Town Chapter 3: Laws and Secrets 3-1: Comforts of Home 3-2: Colliding Worlds 3-3: Living History 3-4: Gifts Chapter 4: Calindell Roads 4-1: Blue Girl 4-2: Toad's Story 4-3: Getting Along 4-4: Arledge Chapter 5: Under the Full Moon 5-1: Black Cat Inn 5-2: Corn Cat 5-3: Helpless 5-4: Story of the Opals Chapter 6: Prisoners of the Earth 6-1: Bitter Words 6-2: Kings and Constraints 6-3: The Shape of a Prison 6-4: Lightless Chapter 7: Bonds of Hardship 7-1: Differences of Opinion 7-2: Truitt's Tale 7-3: Strange Magic 7-4: The Black-Haired Man 7-5: The Evil-Hearted Monk Chapter 8: Shedding Light 8-1: Curses on Verses 8-2: Who Needs Keys? 8-3: The Sacrifice 8-4: Prayers Chapter 9: An Unequal Fight 9-1: Drawing the Curtains 9-2: Power of the Staff 9-3: To the Ends of the Earth 9-4: And Back Home

January 26, '09

I have to stop estimating the dates of events appearing in the comic. July. OK, I'm done. For now. The plot will finish starting in probably July. I am incurable. I know I always have more material than I think I do, but that doesn't matter because I still always have more material than I think I do. This comic may yet take ten years. Oh no, I estimated. Bad me!

Section four of chapter three has officially been started. I'm quite satisfied with the fruits of my long break. This stretch of comics, which I feared might become merely mechanical pieces of the story as a whole, actually contains comics which are fun in themselves. All of my time off was necessary for this end, and it's totally worth it. My test audience agrees that they are LOL-worthy.

I am living proof that funny can be learned, and given time, summoned at will. I have definitely improved in the being-consistently-funny department. My art's also gotten a lot better. I'm not sure about my sense of page layout and scripting for the benefit of the page. I think if I made them priorities I'd definitely get better, but I'd also get very bored. I'm most interested in the telling of the story through words and expressions.

I do think I'm improving slowly in these areas, just by seeing every day the effects of the variations that I do have, and I'm getting better at noticing the same aspects in other comics too. I just wish I could see the improvements more clearly.

I've also gotten some ideas from my art books, and I hope to learn a lot at NYCC. Besides all the Penny Arcade stuff, here are the sessions I want to attend:
NYCC Classes: Story Structure
Her Face Was an Open Book: The Art of Character
NYCC Classes: Page Layout
Jim Shooter's How To Write, Draw, and Tell The Story
Comics and the Language of Visual Symbolism

*drool* I am so excited. I don't know if we're going to go on Sunday, though, so I might miss that last one.

So, Thursday's comic, the first couple of panels: ugh. Definitely an illustration of the weakness of my brush skills in tight quarters. I think that's the last really bad stuff. Today's is much more controlled. But there's still more than a month's worth of comics before you can see what happens when I stop fighting my materials and buy the awesomest drawing machine ever.

I love my Cintiq. I'm finding it by far the most convenient to do everything from sketch to color in the GIMP. Definitely getting used to sketching digitally. One of the things that makes it so effective is that I have learned to ink confidently. I can do a good inking job from a fairly rough sketch, and then go back to the sketch and add more detail where I need to. Not putting all the detail into the sketch saves a lot of time, and also prevents the disappointment of the ink not turning out as good as the sketch was - although sometimes the spirit is lost. If it's bad, though, I can always undo or erase the ink and start over. Yay!

I just started a DeviantArt account, named LleuGarnock if you want to look it up. It's pretty much stuff that's already in the gallery here, but you can see the new poster better and buy it in more sizes. The comments that I've gotten there remind me how little I've actually experimented with standalone art recently. I'd like to do more side projects, but I think I'll wait to do anything serious until my buffer is up over three months again. I'm keeping up, at the rate of two a week, but I need to catch up in case I fall behind again.

I made some new banners, and I put them on their own page. See the cute little button button? Yeah, they're in there. The new ones may not be as pretty, but they're correctly constructed webcomic advertisements. Later I might make some that are pretty and well-constructed.

I have some plans to use Google Sketch-up to help me with backgrounds and camera angles. If I figure out how, I'll write more about it.

William has successfully hooked James on Battlestar Galactica. I wanted to watch the new BBC Robin Hood and then Babylon 5, but those plans have been derailed. Ah, well. This Galactica stuff's not bad.

That's it, I guess. Later, guys.