Grassblades took me several years to plan! It definitely took its time coming together. I think the earliest sketch I have of Masahiro is from late 2009?
I found some of the characters very early on - I woke up one day and realised I wanted to make a story about a wandering swordsman who takes care of a small child, so Masahiro and Akane were there from the very start. Chouko turned up shortly afterwards, as did a handful of other characters (some of which have yet to be introduced into the story).
Of course, they were different then. Akane wasn't selectively mute, for example, and Chouko's sidekicks looked and acted very different. I had the beginnings of a plot, but I couldn't quite tie it all together. I was missing a motivation for my characters to do what they do, and I had no antagonist, like, at all. I let it sit for a while, scribbling a few ideas in notebooks whenever they arrived, but mostly kept it on the backburner.
Then, in the fall of 2014, I was just going to bed when I thought to myself "What if I just made [x] the antagonist?" - and then I couldn't sleep because suddenly it all fell into place and I had to write it down right now. The general outline took me a couple of days to put together, and then I had the first three chapters thumbnailed and planned out, and most of chapter one finished within two months.
The planning and conceptual work is ongoing, though. I didn't plan out every detail, design every character and environment before I started drawing page one. I plan and concept chapter by chapter! If I get to a chapter that needs to have a castle in it, I design that castle then. If I get to a chapter in which a new secondary character is introduced, I'll design them when I get to that chapter. I'm also constantly poking at and tweaking my outline, subtracting some stuff and adding others, to make sure it works the way I want it to work. The general outline is just a set of directions to keep me heading in the right direction!
As for what kind of concept art I draw for Grassblades... Here's a few examples of what I've got:
- Costume/character designs for major and minor characters. Most important characters get turnarounds, so I know what they look like from all angles.
- Architectural sketches Significant buildings get line-drawings to give me an idea of what they look like. It helps me insert them into panels and keep them consistent.
- Floorplans/maps. Haven't used floorplans much, as my characters haven't been inside very many buildings, but I've got one for the chapter I'm currently drawing (part 8), with a layout of the multiple floors of a tall building. Maps I only draw scribbly versions of, to know how my characters move across a piece of geography.
- Creature designs. Not all things that show up in Grassblades are people; some of them are non-human, and get their own design sketches.
- House symbols and banners. I wasn't as rigorous with this at the start as I would have liked (lady Watanabe isn't even wearing her own House-colours the first time she shows up! ^_^;), but these days I do design the symbols and banners of noble Houses, and set colour schemes properly, so I can do a unified design of their living spaces and their uniforms, etc.
... but that's Grassblades. With shorter comics with a smaller scope, I can do them pretty quickly. Wishlight, which I did last year, took me maybe a couple of weeks to plan and concept for? It took me longer to draw, but I had all the thumbnails and the concept-sketches after a couple of weeks.
