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Making the Turn

Plans for the New Year

A completely penciled page from Citadel Chapter 4, ready for inking!

Yet another new year is upon us and despite my best intentions back in the spring to really step up my use of this website, it never came to fruition. My attention for comics and illustration work exists firmly in the Twitch space, and now my comic updates over at Global Comix, at the suggestion of several new comics friends over at Twitch. This clearly means the function of this space needs to be reconsidered, and evolve into something that is appropriate for the new way I create comics and art and plan to for the forseeable future. Direct networking seems to be also moving over towards Discord, I may open up my own in 2024!

2023 turned out to be a year of both significant challenges and a renewed effort on Citadel, picking up right where late 2022 left off. Challenges aside, Chapter 4 is nearly complete…I will be finishing the final pencils this Holiday Weeeknd live on Twitch, and starting 2024 out fresh right from the get-go with traditional brush and tech pen inking of said pages. A new digital inkwash process will complete the work and after going back to my prior chapters to touch up the art and adjust some of the text…a collected Volume 1 containing the Prologue (Ch.0) to Ch.4 will be printed and ready hopefully for the Spring convention season…stay tuned!

The effort put into Chapter 4 taught me a lot and hopefully my goal of completing a chapter a year will now be on its way. I plan to be more prepared for Chapter 5, which understandably will start the year a little behind schedule as I’m still wrapping up Chapter 4. I have no idea how long the inkwash phase will take as it’s a brand new approach! I’m excited to dive in and really give this comic a hopefully unifying element that brings out the best in my comics art.

Back to this very website. After over a decade of using Frumph’s very simple and very successful Comics Easel WordPress theme, I’ve decided the time has come to move away from this approach. I’ve discussed at length with my editor, the very talented Ezra Veitch, that Citadel need not be published as a traditional “Web Comic” any longer. The industry has clearly moved away from that. Full chapters both in print and on the web are the way content is published and devoured. I plan to spend some time looking at a new way to theme this website and tailor it more towards full-chapter experiences as well as tying it more closely to my Ko-Fi for handling commission requests and print sales…if I decide to pursue that more. Things are going to look a lot different around here and I think that’s for the best. It’s time to move past the 2012 design aethstetic and move into this new way of presenting and trying to move people towards the existing platforms I’m on that offer more value and interaction. If this website becomes a gateway for even a handful of folks finding me, or vica versa, great! I want it to be something I’m proud to look at and not dreading to deal with.

A New Way of Working: Digital and Comics

Digital Artwork Setup at my home studio for Twitch streams!

With the new year came a decision to change up my working process in many ways. The first of which you can see above, I invested in an XP-Pen 24Pro 4k Tablet Monitor and have made the full dive into digital production of artwork, including much of Citadel. Resisting digital, as I had stated in my previous post, was a hill I didn’t die on, but instead rolled off of right into acceptance and investment in the media. So far it’s been a rousing success and I love the speed this new tool has granded me. It’s made drafting tremendously easier and, as a result, I feel I’m putting in effort I previously was uninterested in pushing through.

I hope to continue experimenting with these tools several times a week on my Twitch Streams and show continued improvement in my work through thier use. I’ve started experiementing with 3-D modeling to help with character consistency and general figure drawing improvement. Design Doll is the software I’ve put a lot of trial time into and I’m considering taking the dive to purchase a full license and begin to model out every major character in my comic so I can very quickly pose them, export a “skeleton” image after setting my camera right and use that as the base-line for drawing each figure in Citadel’s many many many future pages without struggling with consistency and proportions as I have in the past. Special thanks to Kathryn of the comic We Are No One for introducing me to the program and showing it’s incredible use for cartoonists.

WIP Cover artwork for Citadel Chapter 4

Citadel’s New Sunrise

Introducing digital toolsets fo my workflow is not the only major change I’m making to my artistic process. There’s even more in-the-weeds changes coming to Citadel. You may start to notice them immediately once the next batch of pages releases. Yes, you read that right…batch of pages.

At the behest of my editor Ezra Vietch, I’m changing up the working process for Citadel entirely. That in of itself is the first major change; I now have an editor. Ezra has stepped up my game substantially since we starting working together on the project and I’ve spent the last several months really shaping the story and more concretely laying down the structure, arcs and plan for execution of the comic writ-large. It would have been impossible without his guidance and our partnership going forward will mean hopefully a much better comics reading experience to come. Thank you Ezra!

Back to the comics production. Citadel is no longer going to be a comic that I try to release new pages on a regular schedule. The age of the webcomic has passed me by, in many ways, and there’s no real reason to try and revisit that publishing format. I have much grander ideas for the story, characters, art and future publishing goals for Citadel, and I’m going to work on it in a way that better jives with those goals and my new work flow.

I now plan to release the comic by full chapter. Like waiting for your favorite season of whatever streaming show you like to drop so you can binge-watch it on a weekend (Though, admittedly, even the streaming platforms are moving back to weekly-episode releases in many cases!) Comics of my scale and story type are best absorbed in complete chunks. I will be penciling (digitally) the entire chapter, then inking the entire chapter (Traditionally), then inkwashing (digitally) the entire chapter that I am currently working on.

Once the pages are lettered and complete, I’ll most likely dump an entire chapter upload onto the website no longer as a full-on web comic but as a gallery of all the chapter’s pages. The cover art will serve as the new “Comic” page that you see at the top of the page when you first arrive and from there I’ll navigate everyone to page 1 to start reading! If all goes according to plan, hard copies of each completed chapter may also become quickly available so if, like me, you enjoy your comics best on paper you can have it the same time as the digital version goes up.

Offline Twitch Banner…see new stream times below!

TWITCH

Of course, you can watch every step of the art process for the comic creation live on my Twitch Streams! I stream at least 3 nights a week and one Morning per weekend. Currently I’m live Mon-Tue and Fri from around 6pm to 8 or 9pm. Sunday mornings I try to go live at 8 or 9am and go until 10 or 11 depending on time. Saturday gaming streams also happen occsionally for something different or more relaxing!

Note I do not plan to stream the final completion of the page where we add balloons, lettering, captions, SFX, or anything like that so as not to fully spoil the comic before it’s release. Twitch streams will be focused on the art-side excluseively. Fridays tend to be Fan-Art Fridays where I stream fun illustration experiements and drawings focusing on the game and other characters I love! I will also interrupt comics art streams to complete any illustration work or commissions that come my way, provided I have permission to do so.

Supporting Citadel

There are a few ways to support my illustration work and Citadel coming. I have opened a Threadless and Ko-Fi store front, though they are still under construction and don’t have much to offer yet, but I’ll soon be filling them with art goodies and ways to support. If you subscribe to me on Twitch, donate bits or subs to other viewers that also supports my artwork and ability to keep my gear for straming updated over time. Amazon does take a 50/50 cut of revenue, so there are other, better ways to more directly support me, but I’ll let everyone know when those methods are ready for prime-time.

Lastly, I do plan on opening up comissions more publicly in the future, in the hopes that I can create some fan art or otherwise for folks who already like the work I create for myself. Citadel-related art is also in the plans, so stay tuned! Obviously supporting me financially is not a requirement to enjoy my streams or web-based content. I won’t paywall Citadel or any of my illustration work online, so I hope you can support me in other ways by attending streams, commenting on my work, or engaging me in the many discords I’m a part of to talk about art, comics, gaming and our shared fandoms!

Thank you all for reading, and I’ll see you live, on the internet!

Photoshop Resistance No More

I’ve finally given in after a decade or more of resisting. I’m coloring in Photoshop. I love it! It’s been freeing and fun and experimental and I feel creative again. I’m positive I will bring this into my comics work sooner rather than later and I hope you all will be around for the ride!

For my practice images I’ve been doing quick hour to two drawings/paintings of both my Citadel characters, and some Final Fantasy IX eidolons! Hope to return to doing Fan Art on a regular basis, it brought me much joy in the past and drew the direct line between my gaming fandom and my need to create!

-RD

Citadel and original art is © Randall Drew
Final Fantasy is © SqureEnix

Twitch Affiliate

Twitch goal achieved! I made it to Affiliate, WAY faster than anticipated. Thank you friends who came and supported me on the way there, but that is of course just the beginning.

I’ve worked out a pretty solid art-making schedule now after this push and even though it’s still just a modest few hours a week, it’s helped me get back on track and de-rust my once super reliable comics making. I hope to keep adding time to the schedule as the channel continues to grow.

On top of making more art live on stream, it’s also time to add more content for you, the viewers like emotes, more comics + illustration rewards for subs/bits, and hopefully connect with other awesome artists in the Twitch space and spread the love.

Stay tuned!
-Randall

Something like OZ

My dad’s new book of essays is soon to be released from Madville Publishing, preorders available now! It’s a collection of writings on “a Few Poet Wizards & Their Multifaceted Magic”! I of course did the cover art and it’s been very well received among the writing community. It’s a mix of fantastical space exploration and beautiful nature here on Terra Firma. This one was a bit of a departure from my normal process, I went from energetic pencils directly to digital coloring in Photoshop, playing with various elements and effects to keep it colorful, contrasty, and fun! -RD Original Art is ©2022 Randall Drew All Rights Reserved

UpWork

I recently re-discovered UpWork and have been diving into expanding my freelance illustration opportunities, among other skills I can put to use on the platform. As such, I hope to be able to post more regular art updates this way. Share the work I’ve recently completed and hopefully show some growth over time.

Will this cut into my already enemic comics output for Citadel? Yes. However, as that is a true passion project, and I need to feel the passion to put my best work into it…I’m okay with this outcome. It will make the pages my best work and the gig art my opportunity to grow to further improve those pages.

Gig work to me is about making money. First and foremost. I’ve got economic realities and goals and gig work will help me reach those goals. My creative goal with gig work is to meet my clients expectations for each project and not really over-push the boundaries. I’m a big believer in repetition being the key to learning, so by filling my schedule with repetitive (but slightly different) work for each illustration job, I’ll naturally and inevitably glean new information and skills that I’ll retain.

Look forward to my UpWork art, it’ll be a fun look at a totally different approach to art compared to Citadel. I hope you enjoy!

The above art is my first illustration gig, a triptych piece of gift art for a retiring director of a non profit. There were some very specific client requests in the design so I didn’t deviate too far from what they wanted…but coming up with a layout that flowed through time from upper left to the bottom center to upper right was how I approached the composition.

Super Smash Band

I’ve been working with Do A Barrel Roll band leader Austin for the last year or so on a re-branding of the group. At the same time, they’ve been hard at work writing, practicing and recording their new two-part Super Smash Brothers themed, music mash-up albums!

The first volume, Super Smash Band: Heroes will release before the end of the year and now that the cover art has been shared by the band, I’m revealing it here! You can visit their YouTube page to hear a couple of the tracks before it’s release. Definitely check out a hard copy of the album when it releases, there’s a ton more art inside!

I’ll be sure to announce here when it’s available!

Drumming Armageddon

My latest book cover collaboration with my dad! The book and cover were recently accepted by his publisher and will see print in 2020!

It’s all about music this time around and the title poem has a bit of a darker theme. We decided to go with it all the way with a barren wasteland of reds, yellows and some contrasting purple/blue for the mountains. The text pops with more intense red and yellow, matching the flames coming off the drum set.

Original art is ink on bristol board done with brush and microns. Colors and text layout in photoshop.

-RD

Original art is © 2019 Randall Drew
Drumming Armageddon is © 2019 George Drew
All Rights Reserved

Happy 2019!

A new year means a fresh start for everybody, including me! I’ve taken a long 2+ year hiatus from Citadel and a lot of art work in general, however after several months of planning and organizing, I hope to return to comics-making in earnest this year…starting immediately! I hope you enjoy my annual holiday illustration with this post, obviously inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A year on from the release of it’s final DLC pack, it’s still an inspiring game to me and I think about it frequently, even if I’m no longer booting it up regularly.

My wife and I have had many adventures this past year including my first ever trip overseas to her homeland, Thailand! I picked up much inspiration on the journeys we’ve had and the adventure now continues, hopefully on paper as well as in life!

Ink on Bristol, colors in Photoshop CS6
Original illustration is © 2019 Randall Drew
All Rights Reserved

Goats! Line Art

Super long time, no-post! I’ve been very busy this summer moving, attending weddings and getting minor surgery. Now that most of that is behind me, I’ll be slowly getting back into creating art for you all to see! I had to draw some goats recently. I can’t say exactly what for yet, but you can see them here chewing up some paper, cause they’ll chew on just about anything! Ink on Bristol board. -RD Original art is © 2017 Randall Drew