Hey guys, so recently I finished penciling all of chapter 6 so that puts us at our next stage of my comic creation process which would be water coloring. But I wanted to take a few minutes and show you guys how the pencils turned out and show you my materials. So when I'm doing, sorry I'm looking f... there is, when I'm doing the ruffs I want to work with a pencil that has a B-led knit. And I like using this polymatic which came in my January art snacks. It's a little easier on my hand, it's a little chunkier, I tend to be kind of ham-handed or heavy-handed, tend to grip my pencil too much. So a bigger pencil like this over a smaller pencil like this is less likely to cause to make my arthritis in my right hand flare up. Now when I'm penciling the page itself, I don't want to use a... I don't want to use a B-led because when I add water on top of the pencil it's going to make the pencil smear. I want a harder lead like an H, even an HB because these are dark enough that I can see what I'm doing but they're not so dark that they're going to smear. And I personally like Pentel's high polymer super-led in H, a 0.7 millimeter lead since we talked about me being heavy-handed, I tend to snap fives and threes very easily and the lines are a little too big for me. So that's, I mean, other than watercolor paper which is Canston Montval watercolor paper that I've run through my printer and it prints these very faint blue lines. Now those are going to be... those are going to go away when I stretch my paper so it's not really a big deal. And there are nicer watercolor papers available. I'm not using Montval because it is the nicest paper I prefer painting on Canston arch... I mean arches or Fabriano personally but I use it because it is affordable, it performs consistently and it works well for my watercolor comics. And as I flip through the pages you guys will notice that I haven't let her do yet. I do that digitally with a font that I made custom to look like my handwriting and with brushes designed to look like color pencils. And doing it digitally allows me to make modifications to the dialogue as I go along. In my 500 followers video I talked a little bit about how manga was a big influence on the kind of comics I make. I talked about how an early anime influence in the form of Americanized or Westernized anime that were released for American consumption like Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates which was actually a TMS production. Those sort of animated programs really influenced my taste and they really influenced my style. So I use those aesthetic influences which makes me like the art I like. It is no... I can't change my affection for that art style any more than somebody could change their skin color. I mean you can do things to modify it to make it more palatable to other people who have an opinion about it and maybe they don't need to have an opinion about it. But you are who you are and the way I draw is part of a reflection of that. That doesn't mean though that I have an excuse to be lazy or not try to render people in a believable manner. The style I use to draw hair or eyes has nothing to do with how my characters emote the gestures they use, the expressions they have. Most of my gestures, my expressions, those are either pulled from real life or from past personal experiences, faces my friends might have made gestures, my parents used to have my own facial expression when I am zoned out. And another thing that people keep commenting on the comic is they keep assuming that the main character Kara is supposed to be an author self-insert. And it doesn't seem to matter how much I tell them no, not at all. They still seem to think so. So definitively her mother is actually based on my personality. Kara is kind of like an idealized childhood. She's homeschooled and she's very precocious. The world hasn't beaten her down yet. She doesn't have a lot of experience. She's a little bit naive. She's been very sheltered. Her association with other kids, her age is kind of limited. More through distance than her parents trying to keep her away from other little appusing kids. Here's a double page spread. And when I paint it, I'm going, I have a large gator board and I'm going to tape them side by side to make sure that I'm not trying for like a perfect lineup in terms of brush strokes. I just want to make sure the colors are uniform so that, oh, I'm sorry. When it's sewn together, it's a little bit, it makes more sense. Is that makes sense? It makes more visual sense than if I painted the two pages separately. And one of the things people who have heard about my comic but haven't read it at all, one of the things they say is she needs to interact with animals. She needs to interact with animals. Well, I mean, she does in book one. She's got a pet gecko and she meets pancake, this kitten for the first time. But I decided they were right. She does need to interact more with animals. So for instance, there is a page where Kara and her mom are feeding the spiders, the family keeps for their silk because her mother is a seamstress. So they would need thread. Well human thread is huge compared to them. So spider silk seems like a good option, especially because it is so tough. And I imagine if it was spun to be multi strand, it would be even tougher. And of course, my whole reason for creating this comic, cat writing, that's not really why. But I mean, you can't have a comic about tiny people and not have some cat writing, right? And a cultural exchange where Naomi tries Kara's little appucian food and Kara tries Naomi's human food. And Naomi gets so excited by Kara's initial response that she feeds her some junk food. And I want an activity that they could do with their hands while they talk. So I had them make flower crowns out of clovers and dandelions, which are both really common kind of yard flowers or even yard weeds in Southeast Louisiana. And I like to end. So technically the chapter ends on this page. But one of the storytelling tropes that I enjoyed from manga is some comics like Yotubato, Yotuba and they have after the story ends, there's another beat, like a self-contained beat. And I like doing that with Kara. So here's the self-contained beat of her mom kind of snickering at her flower crown and she comes back maybe because she's so cute. But it's also a little ridiculous. So that's my pencils for seven inch Kara chapter six. And it took like two and a half. It's um, 30, let's see. I think it's 31, but it might be 32. It's 31 pages. So it's one of my longest chapters yet. And the chapter before it was 25. So book two is going to be like, book one is like this big, book two is going to be like that big. It's one of my longest chapters yet and it technically has two parts where it's Kara at home. She wants to go see her human friend, but her mom keeps coming up with excuses to keep her around the house. And then part two where Kara finally is allowed to go see her friend and they have a good day. So I will check in with you guys again when I'm ready to start water coloring this. Now my desk is not ideal for watercolors of this size. So for my demonstration, I'm just going to watercolor the cover for you guys. And if I can come up with a better filming situation, I'll switch over to that and try to record some footage. This isn't intended to be a watercolor tutorial nor is it even really supposed to be a watercolor for comics tutorial. It's more of how I make comics to get you guys inspired to make your own. And some of you have already commented on the 500 subscribers video that you're making comics too. And I'm so excited for you guys. That's great. Let's make comics together. Let's go kick some butt and take over the world. So I'm Becca Hilburn. I'll see you guys again soon with the watercolor video. I hope you guys have a great day. If you enjoyed this video, please remember to hit like, help to me out, and subscribe to my channel. So I'll see you guys later. Bye.