Here’s what my to do list for this week looks like:

* Fix very front of hut for close-ups
* Add some items for inside the hut
* Iron out backdrop
* Rewatch citizen kane
* Work through next Photoshop chapter
* Read next Making Comics chapter

I haven’t gotten to the hut yet – what I want to do is weave some straw-like stuff into the structure to close up everything but the door – and I don’t think I’m going to end up adding elements to the inside – I may just hang some material over the door. I have both of those on schedule for today and tomorrow.

I switched Pyscho for Citizen Kane. I’m mainly looking at transitions and shots to see what I can learn. The overwhelming takeaway from Psycho, other than the wish that I could add sound to my comics, is that I’m not doing nearly enough with lighting. I play with it a bit during Camellia’s scenes, but the rest are pretty flat. That’s probably not something I’m going to fix right away, but it gives me another realm of learning to add to my list.

I talked about the Photoshop select and mask on Monday. The current chapter is text, which is another thing I haven’t added to my stories yet (except through captions). That dovetails nicely with the Making Comics chapter I just read, about the different roles that text and words can play. For some reason, I’ve really tried to stay away from words in the stories, other than to set the scene. I’m realizing that I’m going to need to get over that, and figure out how to merge them more gracefully into the story. That’s another learning for another day.

That leaves ironing the backdrop, which I did yesterday. I have vinyl-ish (and not muslin) backdrops, so I imagined that they’d melt it I put some steam on them. I followed the most protective instructions first, involving laying a damp towel over the top of them and ironing through the towel. But, I couldn’t see what I was doing, so eventually I took the towel off and just ironed directly on the damp backdrop. The first one I tried – the clouds in a blue sky that I use for Camellia’s scenes – weathered the ironing just fine.

Here’s the result:

A before shot

and an after

It’s still a little wrinkly, if you look at the whole thing

But it’s so much better than it was before.

And that’s my week. I still have two more shots to take – of the two women gathering the grasses and then weaving them into the hut – and then I’ll be ready for Friday’s episode.