Comic Process- Kirby: Chilly Reception

Something I always wanted to do is create short stories based on franchises I love. Now I have done an eight page Sonic comic, but that was mostly playing around with a concept. What I wanted was a full story that felt complete, but also short enough that it could be done in a feasible amount of time. So last November, when I saw the daily October drawing challenge, Inktober, was coming up soon, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to finally plan a story.

Now Kirby, one of my all time favorite game characters, was on my mind at the time so I wanted to write a fun little story about him. When I decided to take part in Inktober I immediately wrote the script and planned how I wanted to go about this comic.

I decided the best way to go about drawing the whole comic without burning out would be to add two restrictions: four panels per page, and only a black and white palette. This way it’ll take less time compared to doing a traditional comic layout, and force me to condense the story.

I sketched out all the pages within four days. Each day I livestreamed the process for as long as I could so that I would be focused. I didn’t want to do any sketching when October came, just inking and coloring.

You’ll notice a few pages I combined two panels into one for a big impact on special moments, and of course one big panel for the very last page. This way I was able to make us of the limited space to save time, and still make things look interesting.

Once October came, each morning I inked, colored, and added words to a page. It took me about 2-3 hours for each page, the simple style I went with helped to get them done quickly.

Since the story only came to 28 pages I didn’t end up drawing through all of October, but the experience was still incredibly satisfying. Once I set my mind towards doing this project I didn’t let anything stop me until it was done. I finally made a story for something I loved that I was really happy with. I felt so inspired that I wrote another short Kirby story right after that I’ll be covering soon!

Until next time, thanks for reading!