Blood Magic: Creating a Hard Magic System

I've been doing some sketchy Google searches, recently. I'm worried that the FBI might have me on a watch list, now. As you may or may not know, depending on whether you've been watching my streams on Twitch or not, I'm developing a magic system for my comic. I'm developing what is known as a "hard magic" system. Think Full Metal Alchemist magic: there are strict boundaries and limits on what the alchemist/caster can do. A "soft magic" system would be more like The Force, where you can do pretty much anything with it and the limits aren't particularly clear.

So... The magic system I'm developing uses blood as the main component for spells. Because of this and because I want fairly strict limits, I've been researching how much blood the human body has, what different levels of blood loss will do to a human, and how quickly a human can lose blood. In case you're wondering, a human can bleed to death in as little as 20 seconds. Pretty terrifying... But my research isn't purely for morbid curiosity! I've decided that, to cast a spell with "Blood Magic," one cup of blood must be expended, limiting a caster to 10 spells before they pass out/die. One big spell that I've settled on is a Blood Sword spell, where the caster uses their own blood to create a sword. The sword must continually get 1/2 a cup of blood every second to sustain it, meaning that you have 10 seconds of safe use time, 20 seconds if you're desperate.

The feature of my magic system that'll separate the good guys from the bad guys is where they get the blood from. Obviously (probably), a good guy isn't going to want to use someone else's blood to cast a spell. Bad guys, however, will probably avoid using their own blood and use blood that they've collected. I intend to depict this later on in the comic, but I'm going avoid being Berserk gory with it. Leave it up to your imagination more. I'm working to create a truly terrifying set of bad guys that'll make everyone super uncomfortable.

Well, wish me luck and thanks for reading!

Drawing the Panels Faster

Now that I'm employed again (I was unemployed for 12 weeks until now), I have less time to work on Sami's Dojo. Fortunately, though, drawing episodes with over 20 panels has taught me to work fast. I was drawing something like 2-3 panels in a hour before. Now, I'm able to sketch and ink 6 panels in an hour, while eating lunch. Making the decision to switch from graphite pencil for sketching to photo blue has taken away the erasing time that was eating up my time before. I think that was a good call.

I'm hoping that I can still create longer updates for my comic, even though I have a full-time job, now. This week's episode is something like 30+ panels long, so we'll see how I'll do. I might switch update days from Fridays to Saturdays. And although I can draw maybe 8 panels in a day over lunch time and my breaks, that still leaves the coloring time. After I finish The Lantern, I should be able to color faster, since I won't have to add shadows on top of the color.

Creating this comic, with an actual plot, has been a great learning and growing experience. Now that I'm getting used to sketching again, after the long break I took after graduating, I'm getting better at creating interesting and more dynamic poses for my characters in each panel. I won't claim that I'm excellent at it, but I've got Araki Hirohiko as my inspiration, so maybe soon.

Thanks for reading!

Sami's Dojo Official Release this Friday!

It's the countdown until the official release of Sami's Dojo on Friday! I will be publishing it on Webtoons, Tapas, Tublr, and on SamisDojo.blogspot.com.

So far, I've probably put 20 hours or more into Sami's Dojo. From fresh character designs, plot outlines, scripts, sketching, inking, and shading, I've done it all for the first three comics. As the special launch of Sami's Dojo, I will be release all three on Friday at midnight!

Until then, you can read the predecessor of Sami's Dojo here (warning: may or may not suck). Here are the character descriptions I've written for the comic:

Sami-sensei, short for Saeminoru

The unwilling Sensei of the Dojo, Sami was left temporarily in charge when her master left to fight a Great Evil. Many years later, Sami has become the permanent Sensei. As she waits patiently for her Master to return, she does her best to prepare her young pupils for combat.

Goropo

The second oldest of the Dojo, Goropo trains under Sami, but mostly unwillingly. If left to his own devices, he would be follow every whim and ignore the interactions of those around him. As disinterested as he is, however, he somehow manages to have solutions to difficult problems.

Pagi

Third oldest, Pagi would rather read than train. He is easily startled and flustered. While his is intelligent, he is the weakest of Sami's ninja.

Kita

Kita is the youngest of Sami's ninja. She looks up to Sami and constantly begs Sami for attention. She has a hard time focusing, but still a skilled ninja. Her best friend is Shichi.

Shichi

Shichi is the second youngest and best friend of Kita. She is competent, but as easily distractable as Kita. She constantly harasses Pagi and makes fun of his lack of skill. While always desiring Sami's attention, she bugs her less than Kita. Shichi loves dressing up and being pretty.

Sokara

Sokara is neither the youngest nor the oldest. She is not one of Sami's original ninja, but showed up to the Dojo a few years ago. Since then, Sami has taken her in as one of her own. Sokara seems to be haunted by the darkness of her past, as darkness seems to be the only thing she can talk about.

Assembling Comic 1

I recently discovered that I actually have a lot of applications available to me through my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom and Bridge being among them. So I tried to figure out how to use Bridge to get the scans of my first comic panel of of one computer on to my other computer into Photoshop.
Sadly, I couldn't figured it out. Fortunately, though, that didn't stop me from assembling the panels into pages and getting the shading added! I've decided to draw and ink the panels on paper, then scan them into Photoshop to do the page assembly and textures.
Here's a glimpse of one of my inked panels! I'm hoping to get the comic up and published by the end of next week.

Sneak Peek at Chapter 1

I'm still working on chapter 1 of Sami's Dojo, but until I finish it, here's a sneak peek of my script sketches:

Making the Bad Guy

I've spent about a year contemplating the main villian for Sami's Dojo. Since I first conceived of them, I've gone through several character design ideas while her overall concept has remained the same.

It's pretty hard designing a truly scary bad guy, since it's so easy to go clichéd. Spikey teeth, pointy hair, it's just so over done. I'm working on making a character that's scary because they're not clichéd, but almost look like a normal character. Sometimes, it's hard for me to judge if something is scary or not, since I'm very into horror and so fairly immune to a lot.

I think what I've decided on is to make the character more realistic than the other characters. My husband suggested doing a look of abnormal close-ups of the character, which I think I could pull off pretty well.

I've posted some of my early character design sketches for my main bad guy on my Patreon page. Patreon is a site that allows me to offer special rewards and attention to my fans that have decided to monetarily support me. You can contribute $1 or $5 a month, if you so choose. If you don't, that's fine! I still greatly appreciate your support in reading my posts and comic!

Manga in Theory and Practice Helps Me Write Character Sheets!

One of my absolute favorite books on writing is Araki Hirihiko's Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga. I've read a lot of books on writing, but this one really speaks to me. I've learned some pretty solid story principles from Araki that I've not learned anywhere else. One of the many neat things in his book is a character sheet template that he provides. I decided to print out 7 of them to fill out for my six main characters and another, secret, seventh character.

I'm looking forward to when you all can read about him! If I even get any readers, haha. :P

Creating the comic...

It's been a while since I've created a comic and this is the first time I'm creating a story-based comic, rather than gag-based. I am learning that drawing comics takes a lot more time that I anticipated. I think this is partly because I'm trying to make a quality comic, with shading and nicely drawn characters.
So far, I've spent 3-4 hours drawing 4 or 5 panels. Obviously, I need to speed things up.

First Post!

Well, I'm really creating comics, again. I decided to revitalize a crappy comic I made when I was younger, originally called 'Mini Ninjas'. I decided to change the name to 'Sami's Dojo' to better reflect the content of the comic. Here's my set up, so far!