The Silent War - 2086

All I needed know was to learn how to draw it! I started working on the art for "The Silent War - 2086" in a high school class called Media Art. I had an amazing teacher who taught me how to use the latest digital art technology, but it took a whole year just to draw a few pages of the manga. My friends joked that by the time I finished it, it would be take place in the present day, and they weren't wrong! 

I needed more technological hacks. I struggle with drawing human proportions correctly, so I used small 3D physical "mannequins" that can be positioned, photographed, and then uploaded into Photoshop as an opaque layer for reference. I’ve also found that a trick for drawing perspective in complicated buildings (e.g. ones with curved surfaces) is creating a model of the building in Tinkercad, a program that allows users to easily form shapes together to make 3D models in the computer. The viewpoint can be set from within the building at any height, and this can be screenshotted and put into Photoshop as well. Most "skills" can be replicated with technology and the right mindset. I always enjoy looking for creative solutions to "impossible" problems!

In college, I spent a summer taking zoom classes from a fantastic art teacher who encouraged me to continue using technology to improve the quality of my work and helped me plan out all of the panels and ensure character consistency. Unfortunately, I realized that the time it would take to actually start publishing chapters was intimidating, so as much as I needed to share my story and characters, I eventually put the project on the back burner. A couple years passed. 

Then A.I. was invented.