SuperBatober - Backpack Pencils TimeLapse (Patreon)

I thought it'd be nice to return to TimeLapse Tuesday today by sharing the digital pencil work for one of this month's SuperBatobers.* Decided I'd start with the very first one of these, BACKPACK.

Instead of sharing a quick one-minute sped up version, however, I thought I'd share the full lapse to really hit home the struggles and indecisiveness I had with this one. It's about eight-minutes long so maybe put on a song or two if you decide to watch the full thing.

COMMENTARY:

I feel sometimes folks see the art cartoonists share online--daily in this case--and have a sense that it all comes pretty quick and naturally. And sometimes it does! Those times are great. Those times are also rare. And those times were not the case with this first prompt.

The idea of Babs sleeping on a giant open backpack with Kara peeking inside did actually come pretty quick (often the idea can be the toughest part), but then I had an incredibly tough time drawing that dang backpack! I have no clue why. I've drawn plenty of backpacks before. I think, besides this being the first one and being a bit rusty, my desire--scratch that, need--to keep these pieces quick and simple had me rushing the artwork and therefore I wasn't happy with the results. It wasn't until I slowed down and took my time with the drawing where it started coming together (a method, unfortunately at the expense of some graphic novel coloring work, I've utilized on these going forward).

Except then I couldn't decide what to put in the bag! My initial instinct was some Bat-Alert thing, but that seemed boring. At one point, I had it filled with candy, and I liked how excited Kara would be from that, but that didn't make much sense for Batgirl. I toyed for a long time with Kara sneaking a gift inside it but couldn't make that work right. I even had a Star Trek badge communicator in there for a short stint when I started playing with the idea of maybe connecting all of these pieces.

Eventually though, I landed on the BFF discovery and that felt right to me. And placing a decidedly more consequential bomb under the bag added a bit of humor. I had no idea that bomb would show up over the course of the next few prompts! Haha.

All in all, this one maybe took me about six to seven hours just to draw (and redraw)? And then I still had to ink and watercolor it. Waaaaay too long for one of these. And thankfully, now that I've somewhat ironically started slowing down with these pieces, they aren't taking me quite as long anymore. Well, most of them at least.

Anyhoo, let me know if you enjoyed this sort of thing, if you prefer a sped-up version and/or have a specific SuperBatober you'd like to see. I'll post another next Tuesday if you'd like. :)

❤️

*I still hope to record my process inking and watercoloring. But due to the way my head is usually only a couple inches from the paper as well as how I spin it around, I think I'm going to need someone to physically record that for me. That someone will in all likelihood be my wife, who has also been extra busy this month. So we'll see if it works out! Fingers crossed.