How Not to Fall Into a Chasm From Which You Will Never Escape

or how limitations can set you free

Today, we’ll cover the workflow I’m using to build Quiet: Level One. But first, take a trip with me, won’t you, back to high school?

Woops, too far! These works are from ages 3-8. But wow; howling wolves (“AOOO”), man-rats on goth skateboards, midnight gargoyles, and mutant turtles with ninja skills… I really haven’t changed much, have I?

Except here’s me at the beginning of high school vs. the end:

My wife tells me that my "senior year sneer" is not my best look

My mom had to get some things out of storage recently, and I’ve ended up with a couple boxes of old Jonah material - hence the vintage footage.

So why is this gangly teenage boy relevant to our story?

Well, as you know, I’m currently making a graphic novel, and it’s quite an undertaking. And yet at some point in high school - somewhere between the bowl-cut and the crackling excess of American Crew hair gel - I did something rather similar.

My mom, who’s worked in human rights all her life, wrote a book called “Circle of Rights.” She asked me to provide illustrations. As I recall, she did not compensate me in a monetary sense, but with something called “community service hours,” which I suppose was the high school equivalent of “doing it for exposure.”

some images from "Circle of Rights."

I worked from photographs, and in the end, I made almost 70 illustrations - not bad, for a teenager! But how did I get through so many?

I developed a simple, reliable, easily-reproducible art style.

1. Sketch each photograph with pencil

2. Visually divide them into 3 parts: black, white, or cross-hatch and ink them

3. Erase the pencil

And that was it: that was as far as I would take it.

Years later, I used a similar limiting approach to Marvel Anatomy, which was a 230-page book. In short, I limited the number of layers I used for any given character, resulting in a straightforward, easily-reproducible formula.

1. Sketch

2. Ink

3. Apply solid colors

4. Allow up to 3 colors (standard/light/dark) per element

5. Erase some of the edges to integrate it into the page

There are more steps here, of course, but the budget for this book was a little better than for Circle of Rights. I standardized as much as I could, even making sure that every Photoshop file shared the same layer structure.

If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that making something really big requires a reliable, replicable formula; a process that you can do again and again and which won’t allow for improvisation or time sinks. The key is to maintain this formula, and go no further, even when you know the work could improve. Because when you venture outside of your limits in order to achieve perfection, you start to fall behind.

And it’s really hard to catch up once you’re behind.

I made this GIF just for us.

The moral is this:

Stick to the plan, and you might actually FINISH.

So that’s what I’m doing with Quiet. If you haven’t already read it, I explained my 5 Step Process to Creating Comics in a previous article. I’ve focused on doing more with less, and done all I can to not go beyond.

Except that now, as I prepare Quiet: Level One for its Kickstarter debut, I’m adding one last step to each image. It’s a small step, and done with relative ease, but it makes a world of difference. Should I give you a hint?

No, I’ll tell you: it’s gradients. I’m using gradients.

For anyone who doesn’t know, this is a gradient:

Gradients are cool because they create visual movement. In the same way that the fading colors of a sunset will draw your eye across the expanse of sky to the burning horizon, gradients pull the eye back and forth.

So far, I’ve limited Q:L1 to solid colors with the occasional single-color shading layer. Like so:

Notice how I’m not really using more than two values per material, ever. Do I want to? Yes, very much so. But I’m trying to keep things simple.

But now, with just a single layer of shading and a few gradients:

The difference feels huge, and it doesn’t add that much more time to my process. But it’s critical that I’m only adding this step now, since holding off on this has allowed me to move forward faster than I otherwise would. The trick has been to simply get each page into a passable state before marking them as “done” and moving on. Because if you don’t teach yourself to just “move on,” you’re likely to fall into a chasm from which you will never escape.

Have a great day,

Jonah (AOOOOOO!)

(PS: Don’t forget that Quiet: Level One has been listed on Kickstarter! Follow the project now and secure your Early Bird Special offer: a dope drawing/writing pad designed by me, which may or may not contain a few secrets inside.)