What makes Sacrimony Sacrimony?

I mentioned in my last newsletter that I took some time off of drawing Sacrimony to try and get better at drawing Sacrimony. Could I have kept going with the methods that I’ve been using thus far? Sure. Would I be happy with those methods? Absolutely not.

I’ve said on more than one occasion that I’ve grown tired of doing digital art and I wanted to move away from it. I’ve been trying since the beginning of the year on and off, but I wasn’t able to dedicate enough time to studying.

Traditional art is tricky, especially in the case of doing comics. I’m used to doing standalone paintings and pinups traditionally, but comics are a different beast entirely. There’s a level of consistency that needs to be maintained throughout the panels, there are backgrounds, lighting effects, environmental effects and they all have to play nicely with text bubbles laid over them.

Not to mention that since the possibilities are limitless in terms of what media combinations can be used, there are so many ways to get it wrong, especially in terms of colors not vibing with each other overall. It’s really easy to notice if one thing is too yellow or red or blue or whatever against the rest of the background.

I went through a lot of paper these past few months. This photo doesn’t do it enough justice.

It wasn’t just that I wanted to make a nice looking comic page, but I wanted to make a comic page that looked like Sacrimony. That was the most difficult part. It made me stop and take a long moment to think hard about what Sacrimony should look like. What were my strengths? What are things that I do well that define the things I do?

I wanted crisp line art, bold but soft colors and some slight texture overall to avoid having a page look too bland or sterile. It’s also a style that hovers somewhere in between realism and cartooney without looking as stiff as realism does or looking as out of proportion as cartoon styles. The style is expressive, but not exaggerated. And of course, all of that had to somehow not look distracting with speech bubbles placed on top of it.

I know it feels a bit strange to stress out so much over changing a comic’s art style. There are lots of comics where the entire creative teams are swapped out and new ones are brought in mid-way. I could have easily just said nothing, had Sacrimony 7 come out with a different art style and call it a day.

But for me the change is exciting and I love sharing my process. This is what I came up with officially.

I’ll go into the actual process next week because it’s a lot to explain and also because I didn’t take enough process photos with this page to be able to explain things. I wasn’t sure if it’d even work out, but it did and I’m happy to be able to go forward with Sacrimony 7!

I don’t yet have an official launch date, but I’m aiming for January. We’ll see how much life gets in the way, though.

Speaking of life getting in the way, I’ve had a lot of unexpected expenses come up in the past two weeks that I was not prepared for at all. My phone decided to die after an OS update (hence also not having process pictures) and it needed to be replaced. At this point, we all know by now that smart phones are a necessity and not a luxury - especially when you need one with a good camera for your art job.

Not only that, there have been some ridiculously high vet bills to take Muffin to see a specialist (seriously, it was just $275 for the consultation alone and $500 for a blood test!!) and insurance refuses to cover it. Yay.

That being said, I’m running a portrait commission flash sale. I’ll be doing color portrait sketches like this one for $55 each, hoping to be able to put a dent in the $$$$ that I now owe.

If you’re interested in commissioning me, click on the link here for more info!

If you want to discuss commission stuff before going through Ko-fi, you can email me at msorcier at sacrimony dot com. Don’t be shy! I don’t bite (much.)

I’ve also got other types of commissions available or also if you just want to throw some spare change for the cause, here’s a link to my Ko-fi and Patreon.

Thanks so much for your support and have a great weekend,
-M