“Communication” | #15 – May 15, 2023

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Monday May 15th, 2023

This is inspired by the general sentiment of the era we’re currently living in.

I pattern-interrupted so hard in the last comic, it took me a year to make the next one! I have several rough drafts sketched out that I plan to finish in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!

Also contemplating changing the comic’s font – what do you think? I’ll have the previous font in the full post below to compare:

I was also trying out placing the comic date & title to the top, instead of on the bottom. I’ve settled for a sort of hybrid, at least for this two-panel layout. Might change in the future, but think I’ll try this out for now!

The main reason I want to try changing the font is the one I’ve been using, “Komika,” looks a bit too “shouty” to me. I really like the font for its readability, but at least for the tone I envision for this comic, it looks a bit mis-matched to me. Or, maybe it’s only this specific comic strip. And I’ll change my mind in the future. I’ll never know if I don’t try it out!

Incidentally, the new font I’m trying out (the one in the top of this post), is called “Cartoonist’s Hand” by Shyfont. It has a bit of an understated look to it which I like, particularly for the toned-back look I’m going for with Duskbirds.

By the way – both these fonts (and many more) are available on a site called FontSquirrel. It is a neat site that lets you search fonts you can use, and it has the licenses displayed on each font page, making it easy to find the font the works best for you and your project. This is one of the oldest font repository sites I’m aware of (I am admittedly not the most knowledgeable about fonts, though). I first heard about it when I took a one-off design class at SVA one summer. I did not go to SVA, but from the two summer classes I took one time, they are wonderfully instructive. I would say design is one of my weaker areas, but being introduced to the basics in that course has continued to be useful in my art, website, or even these comics – even years later!

Anyway, what was I saying? Right, I’m trying out numbering the comics in the layout for this one, as well! I was inspired to because when posting the comic to Comicfury, it has fields where adding the “page number” for the comic made sense to me. I didn’t have an accurate sense for how many comic strips for Duskbirds I had made so far. I’m not sure if it felt like more comics, or less comics, than I was expecting, haha. Well, it’s personally a bit neat to me to see the counter for myself.

Finally, last thing I’m trying with this comic is refreshing how I want this comic to be attributed. Until now, I’ve been referring to it as “A side-project sketch-comic by Liz Liu (Landylachs).” I’m going to try having this comic’s attribution more focused more on the “Landylachs” aspect of my online alias – I think because some of the comic ideas are personal to me, having that bit of distance of it from my real name might make it easier for me to feel more open about which ideas I want to explore with it.

Even though “Landylachs” is clearly connected with my real name nowadays, I still sometimes have people confused about whether “Liz Liu” is a separate identity from “Landylachs.” I’ve been trying to make it clearer by putting both identities on my art, which I hope might help, but it’s always appeared somewhat messy to me. Since using my real name with my online alias, I haven’t made a project that’s focused on the “Landylachs” image – at least not one solely my own. The Guild Wars 2 projects largely focused on it, because of the culture around gaming personas in online gaming culture. Which might have contributed to why I felt more comfortable or open about my GW2 art versus my personal art. I’m not sure.

This is has turned into a ramble. I’m going to end this now before it becomes even longer!

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