{"id":4527,"date":"2012-11-13T14:22:51","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T19:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=4527"},"modified":"2012-11-13T14:22:51","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T19:22:51","slug":"alphabooks-post-mortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=4527","title":{"rendered":"AlphaBooks Post-Mortem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Phew&#8230; AlphaBooks is over&#8211;twenty-six weeks of alphabetical literary characters. First off, thanks to everyone who participated&#8211;especially co-administrators Andrew Neal and Rich Barrett&#8211;and a big congratulations to everyone who finished a full alphabet! I&#8217;ve assembled all of my illustrations into a single gallery that I&#8217;ve posted below along with a few post-project thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>(And you can of course see the <a href=\"http:\/\/alphabooks.tumblr.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">entire project here<\/a>, with &#8220;stragglers&#8221; being added sporadically. )<\/p>\n<p><strong>My AlphaBooks A-Z (click through for gallery\/slideshow)<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/115854718917136776953\/AlphaBooks?authuser=0&amp;authkey=Gv1sRgCK3Dwqq424SzvwE&amp;feat=directlink\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"4528\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?attachment_id=4528\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/gallery.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"400,250\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"gallery\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/gallery-300x187.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/gallery.jpg\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4528\" title=\"gallery\" src=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/gallery.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/gallery.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/gallery-300x187.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><strong>Thoughts<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One of may main goals here was to really stretch my <strong>character designs<\/strong> and try to get away from my standard &#8220;ball for a head&#8221; mode. I don&#8217;t think I was really successful at this as a whole. I tended to revert back to this style too often during the project. I think, though, that I did succeed in a few places; Ahab, Vladimir Harkonnen and Wemmick are my three favorite designs in this respect.<\/li>\n<li>Another goal was to learn how to ink digitally with <strong>Digital Manga Studio<\/strong>. I was much more successful here and I feel like I&#8217;ve come out of AlphaBooks reasonably adept at digital inking. I&#8217;m now in a good position to begin exploring more of the software&#8217;s features.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Spot blacks<\/strong> &#8211; About half-way through the project I started working on spot blacks&#8211;something I&#8217;ve never been very good at&#8211;in my sketchbook, and you can see that reflected here. Some of\u00a0 my attempts are better than others. Quasimodo is one of the better ones; Xavier Desmond is one of the least successful.<\/li>\n<li>I should have done more <strong>advance planning<\/strong>. I had to break my self-imposed rule of &#8220;only characters from books I&#8217;ve read&#8221; for my &#8220;X&#8221; and &#8220;Y&#8221; entries, but if I&#8217;d planned things better, I wouldn&#8217;t have needed to. I should have had my A-Z list decided on before I started&#8211;or at least had the more difficult letters populated. Here&#8217;s how my list looked at the end of the project:<a href=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"4529\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?attachment_id=4529\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1100,722\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"evernote\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote-300x196.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote-1024x672.jpg\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4529\" title=\"evernote\" src=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote-300x196.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote-1024x672.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2012\/11\/evernote.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Future alpha-projects<\/strong>: As much as I&#8217;ve loved all three of the past alpha-projects&#8211;and I think I enjoyed AlphaBooks the most&#8211;I&#8217;m officially bowing out of the next alpha-project, both as a participant and as an admin. I&#8217;ve got other things I want to devote my time to right now. But&#8230; that doesn&#8217;t mean there won&#8217;t be another alpha-project. Stay tuned for an announcement after the holidays!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Phew&#8230; AlphaBooks is over&#8211;twenty-six weeks of alphabetical literary characters. First off, thanks to everyone who participated&#8211;especially co-administrators Andrew Neal and Rich Barrett&#8211;and a big congratulations to everyone who finished a full alphabet! I&#8217;ve assembled all of my illustrations into a single gallery that I&#8217;ve posted below along with a few post-project thoughts. (And you can &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=4527\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,44],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-1b1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4527"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4536,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions\/4536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}