Mafiascum.net

What is this? Stay tuned to find out! (It begins…)

Episode 1, Page 1
Episode 1, Page 2
Episode 1, Page 3
Episode 1, Page 4

I'm gonna sue

fite me

The red hood rider doesn't even have a hood.

In post 5, rb wrote:The red hood rider doesn't even have a hood.

definitely a hood folded back

i think you gotta work on your drawing a bit more.

Mastina I wish you luck on this project!

Quick question though, are you using a mouse or a tablet for these?

Cause I was gonna say this cool program called Lazy Nezumi helps to stableize things better for like making lineart and stuff
https://lazynezumi.com/

i seen a lot of people who are new to digital swear by it ^^

anyway it was nice to see you are working on developing this character more!

Whaaaaaaat Mastina's name got changed

Oh no nvm new account

Can I just call you Tina for short?

In post 9, Majiffy wrote:Whaaaaaaat Mastina's name got changed

Yup, from mastina to...mastina!

In post 11, Glork wrote:Can I just call you Tina for short?

I actually wouldn't be opposed to that. It would kinda be a logical progression, heh.

In post 7, Firebringer wrote:i think you gotta work on your drawing a bit more.

That's a given. (Incidentally, I would link to the original sketch if I could, but embarrassingly enough, I, uh...kinda...lost the link. Best I can give you is this.) I hated the cover. Still do, to be honest. It's a sloppy mess. But, I had to make it, and at point, I had to call it satisfactory even if I wasn't at all pleased with the result. What was I going to do? I'm an amateur artist. I suck. I have very little talent in bringing my visions to life properly. So dabbling on an attempt at perfection was bound to be an exercise in futility; I had to accept I sucked at some point and this is where I made that call.

In post 8, Brandi wrote:Mastina I wish you luck on this project!

Thank you!

Quick question though, are you using a mouse or a tablet for these?

This one was made with a combination of a laptop's mousepad (which is quite literally THE worst possible method of drawing lines for art) and my tablet (which is honestly...well, not very useful. Not enough pressure, and it will not draw a line; too much pressure, and it activates the instead of the line, and I have shaky hands which make stabilizing the pen nigh-impossible).

I also pretty much never put my line correction above 4 or 5.

I was...rather quick to remedy this. Now, I'm using a wireless mouse on a mousepad, with the line correction tool set to a default of 10. (Out of 15. I use FireAlpaca.)

This was also like my third image ever made in FireAlpaca, mind you, so I was still learning the ropes of the program so to speak. Later pages get notably better, especially once I learned to standardize my process. (As in, I quite literally wrote down all the colors I use, at what transparency, with what layers they're on, which...for this page, I was not doing.) The improvement will be really notable around page two or three or so. (And coincidentally, that's when the story takes off, too!)

I am going to bookmark that link, though!

Also, about the hood: I got really lazy with it in later pages, and I'll be honest: it's a pain in the ass for me to draw. She still technically wearing a hoodie, though.

Cool. I wanted to check with you so as not to offend.

It's pretty hard to unironically offend me.

That's not a story update

Red Hood Rider's bow is transparent(doesn't appear in shadow) and appears to be made of solidified light/electricity. That's interesting.

In post 16, Accountant wrote:Red Hood Rider's bow is transparent(doesn't appear in shadow) and appears to be made of solidified light/electricity. That's interesting.

Perceptive!
The bow's pure light. (You'll see some artistic inconsistency on one or two later pages, but that was art error on my end. Just a warning in advance.)

You'll get the in-universe explanation eventually (well, some of it anyway--I'm pretty sure you don't want me to dump on you a 15-page explanation about every nuance of a rider), but basically, she's a "Rider". In this setting, there are eight prime elements: fire/ice/water/energy/earth/air/light/darkness. Every rider is inherently of the Light element, so their weapons/attacks are of the light element. (And also, made of magic, natch.)

In post 15, Cheery Dog wrote:That's not a story update

The plan is once a week (though I'll be missing the first week of November), so I'm updating in...thirty seconds from this post or so!

A bit of a literal Crash(Into)Hello.

This page is a true .

Why is she moving through a pink void? Is this an existentialist comic?

In post 20, Accountant wrote:Why is she moving through a pink void?

It's a void because I didn't draw a background for many pragmatic reasons. Among them, I suck at figuring out interior design (it's...vaguely some sort of house, that's about all I actually about it, so your guess is literally just as good as mine), backgrounds take extra time which slows down my creation process, and that I am being a cheapskate who only draws the necessary details, relying on some minimalism. It's an artistic shortcut, sure, but many professional artists (including many mangaka, which are the main stylistic influences on Red Hood Rider) use it.

As for why pink instead of the usual white: every episode will have a 'focus character'. Each focus character has a bright color. Ruby is this episode's central character, her color is a whitened red (i.e., pink), and thus, her color is the background color. Next episode will feature a greenish hue when it eventually premiers.

lol, cute personality so far, I like it! Keep it up <3

In post 22, Brandi wrote:lol, cute personality so far, I like it! Keep it up <3

You have no clue how much I needed to hear this. Thank you. <3

NP, I love seeing art made by others, especially when they are bringing to life things they really care about end enjoy! Comics are hard and I used to make them all the time but stopped when I got too self conscious and lost my focus. Someday I'll try again.