The Yume-Hime Thread

o_0 This is a very high art standard you're holding yourself to. It's very high quality, and your perspective is impeccable. Don't put yourself down too hard, buddy. Pages can always be reworked - for now, I think letting your passion for the project be your momentum to produce more, still up-to-snuff pages should be more important. That's what I learned from my own experience, anyway.

I'll keep this thread on watch. I also really liked your analysis on the manga art style in that thread. Very informative, and it does address that trend in the loads of mediocre How to Draw Manga books.

Thanks. And I'm considering writing a lot more on drawing. (In fact, I already have. My personal notes are about 10k words, but they'd need to be rewritten before they made sense to anyone else.)

Looking forward to them.

Damn, those 53 pictures are seamless O_o

Page 7.

In which a small southeastern city is destroyed and a pattern of each page being more difficult and time-consuming than the last is established.

o_0 Great use of contrast there from the blank page leading up to the bottom. You really make the most out of every page - each of it deliberate.

Thanks.

Page 8.

...In which our protagonist cries.

Getting some Toht flashbacks here, where he laughs crazy-like in the terror of opening the Ark.

Also, pretty morbid. I think it communicates the protagonist's troubled state of mind really well in those two successive pages alone.

That is a very Junji Ito-esque drawing.

Went back and added some tone. It's a minor adjustment, but it looks much better.

Thanks. This is supposed to be a very small warning for what's coming later.

I don't think there's enough Facial Horror to make it look like something he'd be interested in.

edited 27th May '14 12:45:52 AM by Wheezy

Passed the 1k unique visitor mark, and now pulling in at least 100 a day. A thoroughly meaningless achievement, but not bad considering there are still fewer than 10 pages.

Anyway, this will be updating every weekend now.

edited 28th May '14 2:12:05 PM by Wheezy

Meaningless? What I'd give to have your popularity. I'm serious, 100 a day is pretty generous, though I guess I'm discounting the ratio to favourites and stuff like that.

First of all, I'm sorry I missed a week. I just lost my job and I've been spending all week trying to bring in freelance work to pay the bills. Working on the next page now.

But that said...

#2!

edited 7th Jun '14 10:59:19 PM by Wheezy

"“I was pretty certain someone must have done an idea like this before..."

Goddamn it you asshole.

In all seriousness, though, I am a little worried, but since I was planning on deviating significantly from my original plan anyway, this might not be so bad. It might just force me to improvise more.

edited 12th Jun '14 6:13:54 PM by Wheezy

That still sucks though.

Yeah, but there's nothing new under the sun. As You Know, I've been working on this for four years, so just throwing it out it isn't an option.

I think the only option is to go so wildly different in tone and "details" that the differences far outshine the similarities.

But I'll admit, I'm seriously considering giving up.

Edit: If that were to happen, I'd just stop drawing, finish editing the text, release it online for free (or pay-what-you-will), then get to work on some of my other projects.

edited 14th Jun '14 3:54:47 AM by Wheezy

Page 9

...In which I decide not to give up after all.

edited 14th Jun '14 4:02:03 AM by Wheezy

That house as two air conditioners! That is strange...then again I lived in a very differently structured house which was more open than that one, I'm assuming.

Houses with window-mounted AC's instead of central ones often have more than one.

(Also, we're #1 on Google now. That's a genuine surprise.)

Eh, I wouldn't worry about it. Pixar's is definitely taking a much more whimsical turn, while yours is more dark, and focuses on anime and otaku culture, which uses completely different tropes as its focus.

Sorry about the long hiatus, I was out of town for a month.

But while I was out, I stopped by a place on the way for reference pictures.

• The house our protagonist's is based on◊.
• The clearing◊
• The secret place◊
• The high school◊

As a side note, while writing the novel, I'd only seen these places on Google Maps/Street View. Most of them look like I expected, although I was surprised by the size of the clearing.

New page to be started later today. "Cover image" for part one already mostly finished.

edited 8th Sep '14 2:48:08 AM by Wheezy

The secret place looks really nice and serene, scenic too. The locale seems rather rural? So, it's not set in the city?

From the text:

Page.

BRB, going to work. Description later.

No new page this week. Instead, I spent all weekend (~13 hours of drawing and toning) redoing page 9.

Having a photo reference made a slight difference, yes.

edited 8th Sep '14 1:49:48 AM by Wheezy