Happy new year, y’all! Kicking off 2025 with a new Blood of My Blood release.
Stick around after the panels for some author commentary.
Blood of My Blood is a magical realist graphic short story with horror undertones for everyone searching for their body's "Owner's Manual".
Need to catch up on the story so far? Links to all the parts are here:
Part 2.2 « Home » Part 3.2
Part 3.1
Part 2.2 « Home » Part 3.2
William’s Notes
I like how the environment illustrations on this travel montage turned out. There are a lot of urban elements in them, with the train, bus, and their respective platforms, which aren’t my favorite thing to draw, but it’s good to stretch one’s bounds—especially when you feel like you got a little better at something. ;)
You may have noticed that the third and fourth pages here are two sides of one spread. I lay these out with an eye toward the eventual print run, so you won’t get that two-page spread effect until you get a print copy in hand.
I do sometimes think about whether I should lay out my comics for mobile viewing. As others have noted, people do a lot of their reading/watching on their phones these days.
For now, I still like aiming toward the physical book at the end. For one, I find that comics look way better in print than on screen.1 And two, I want to have that item to sell after creating a work, that thing to share and connect with readers, that people can interact with physically.
And given that priority for me, I just don’t have the extra time it would take to design for mobile and convert between one format and the other.
But I may come back to the question another day.
I previously observed this when making a preview booklet for Blood when I was preparing for Short Run:
Happy new year! Terrific poses on Zoe in this one.
The print vs mobile formatting is a perennial question. I try and meet in the middle by using a format which fits both - typically this means it's a little big for print and a little small for mobile, but then again my art is very simple and doesn't need as much room to breathe.
Also want to highlight how much I love Zoe’s sense of style - I would wear that outfit lol :P