Simplification

I'd like to simplify AE's art style just a wee bit... I like the fancy pages, but they take so long to draw, and this comic is going to be huge. I've been thinking of doing this for a while, and what really solidified this idea was seeing this video yesterday evening:

youtu.be/6BzCDVR-tr8

Like I said, this project is going to be huge and no, I don't want to still be working on it in twenty years. So I'd like to tone down the fanciness in the panels. Comic pages really don't have be fancy anyway... their main point is to tell a story. I think the best idea with a comic really is to find a fetching but simple-to-draw art style.

So here we have a quick, made-from-memory doodle of Parch, just to test out something that may work. I made this thing in probably under two hours, and really, it doesn't look that different from the pages as I've been drawing them. It has:

-A simpler shading style (this is the big one)

-Sketchier line art... not sure if that actually saves a lot of time or not, though I DO like how it looks

-Less defined scale-details. Maybe it would be better to just define them in close-up shots? Or make a brush or something for them?

-Parch's wing-design (which stands for the other dragons too) is slightly simplified and they're a bit smaller. Those bigger, bonier-looking wings are kind of a pain, ha.

-The backgrounds are pretty much the same (I don't mind that since I recycle a lot of bg elements anyway )

So, it's not as noticeably fancy as what I've been doing, but it's not as if it looks horrid. And I think this could still carry the story forward quite well. The only thing I'm conflicted about is whether to start using this style now, or to finish the Prologue with the fancy style. If I were to re-make the Prologue to match this style, I'd have less pages to go back over if I switched them now... hmmmm... thinking in progress.

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