Soul’s Journey: interview with Sophie Pfrötzschner
Soul’s Journey is a captivating fantasy long-form webcomic
created by Sophie Pfrötzschner.
Want to learn more ? She’s our guest ! Captivating interview.
Hi Sophie !
– Where do you come from ?
I’m located in eastern Germany.
– How old are you ?
24
– Influences ?
My earliest influences can easily be traced back to the Zelda game series. I’ve also been a huge fan of Arina Tanemura’s stories, which got me into reading mangas many years ago. More recently the books by Alexey Pehov started to invade.
– Art school or not ? 
Nope. There were times when I wanted to, but in hindsight it probably wouldn’t have been for me.
– Favorite digital art software ?
Depending on which part of a page or picture I work on, it’s either Painttool SAI 2 (character art) or Photoshop (backgrounds and other magic).
– Your working method ?
I like working chapter by chapter, while having a general outline to boot. After having written a chapter, I thumbnail the entire thing to get an estimated page count. These things change down the line, but it’s nice to have a safety net. For the individual pages, I start out in Photoshop making the layout and rough sketch based on the thumbnails and then letter the page in Comic Life. Sometimes, I need to adjust the layout at that point and it’s back to Photoshop. If not, I jump straight into SAI 2 for the character art and once that is done I return to Photoshop for backgrounds and final adjustments. Once that’s done Patrons get to see the result right away.
– What your webcomic is about, in a symbolic way, the hidden sense ?
This is a hard one outside of spoiler territory. But after trying to shoulder things alone and failing miserably, Anrak has to pick up the pieces and rethink his approach. Sometimes you fail, but it’s important how you proceed after that.
– Tell us more about your main character, the hero !
Anrak isn’t exactly a hero. After running away and picking up a medallion he finds himself trapped in a wolf’s body. That and nightmares make him grumpy and lash out. He’s lucky to have Namide. According to some readers she’s the real hero of the story.
– How do you see your future ?
The immediate future sees a pretty high workload, both for the comic and the day job. Looking a bit further the comic will get a print release in late summer. And a few years into the future I hope to finish it and jump into other projects.
– Your next goal ?
Surviving the summer without getting burnt out. Vacation season means lots of stress at the day job and with the print release on the horizon I might’ve put too much on my to do-list. (Apparently, I need to learn the same lesson Anrak has to…)
– Advices for beginners ?
Start your projects. There’s enough stuff in life for you to regret, don’t let creative projects be one of them. Even if you fail to complete them, you made something. You tried. You learned. And you can apply those lessons to the following project(s). I look back on my early comics and while they show many flaws, I remember working on them fondly. And honestly, most early projects won’t be completed per se. But the good parts find ways into everything you do afterwards.
– Your technical secret trick ?
Instead of putting shadows onto a character or object, I carved out the areas that are hit by light. I feel like I have better control over form like this. And if readability is obstructed I just bend the light a little. Black holes do it all the time, so no reason why I shouldn’t 🙂
– Soul ‘s Journey links to bookmark and share ?
The comic: https://soulsjourney.gerritianchronicles.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_SoulsJourney
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/soulsjourney
Thanks to Sophie Pfrötzschner for this journey !
