I have decided that the writing, panels, how things overlap and the order of panels will be done digitally but I will be drawing the initial pictures by hand. The backgrounds will be a combination of media – like water colours and inks and then cleaned up digitally.
I may need to go and ind a course somewhere to show me/remind me how to do stuff digitally.
Of course I now have a whole wealth of other questions to answer.
I reached 50 pages which I am very excited about 🙂 This is the half way mark before we are half way through the month. However I have been being naughty – I have been working on The Punk stuff when I should have been working on college stuff. But I also know I am not going to be able to focus on college stuff until it is done.
So the plan is to just do a concerted effort – get it finished and then move onto my script for college.
I am currently ‘coffee shopping it’ – as in I am declaring I am off to write comic books, hubby here are the kids. I’ve discovered a couple of places that do bottomless refills so have been taking advantage of this. Currently I am doing 2-4 hrs but not daily.
Everytime I go I write/script/story board a ‘comic’ – so ten page chapters and then shift onto planning and notes and then onto drawing practice depending on how long I am there. Managed to get the concept sketch done due to having that last hour.
I am going to be attempting to do this as much as I can during April and then aim for once a week afterwards.
I have started on the character design and concept sketches for Revolation. Here is one of Punku – remember she is only half human – this is also her in her hardship state ie lack of food and haggered. It was a quick sketch and there are issues with it, like it looked better before I put the shading in and she now looks a bit old but it is a start.
(dear me! The ears!)
I’ve been making lists again – Art Work wise it goes something like this:
The style, medium and size of the art work
Character development, positions, attitudes and costumes – for each character.
Background – perspective and lay out
Panel/cell layout, type set, font and spaces inbetween
Digital help – how much and what software
Colour/pallete – do I restrict it in a different way for each graphic novel? = different identifiable looks?
Each panel picture is an intricate piece of art work in it’s own right – so this is going to take some time.
Especially as I am still mucking about with how to draw books and in fact decided I need some more – the weighting in my collection is more towards the Manga end with a few fantasy art books thrown in. But I need to add some comic book how too.
There are about 60 panels in each comic (10 pages) and then there is the cover and the background behind the panels which can be white space but may be an added level of art work and add a few ‘ghost’ panels in.
I am going to have to schedule time outside of Script Frenzy to get this done in time for next year. On the plus side, the first one will be the hardest and the steepest learning curve. Especially as I hope to reuse some of the art elements through out the comics.
I am missing the script frenzy forum alot this year – it has been closed down and we have ‘bored’ on the NaNoWriMo site but it really is just not the same 🙁
Add in the fact that I’m not doing a regular script and I kind of feel on my own – even down to the hashtags – no one seems to use the screnzy one anymore and instead use the full ScreiptFrenzy on twitter – took me a while to realise this :/
I’m not really moaning – just mourning.
I am currently working at The Cheltenham Poetry Festival but have found that I can get a little bit of scripting done between events 🙂 Today I got my total up to 10 pages over a coffee.
I need to do some story arcs and structure stuff – interesting that I structure the comic books far more than the novels.
It is the first of April and before mid day but it is not a joke to say that I have some epic work ahead of me this month. I have two scripts I am working on this month – one is for college and is too a little puppet play / dialogic and the other is another part of the Punk’s Universe and is another Graphic Novel / comic book.
I hope to get the college one done sooner rather than later and then to move onto the second part of Exodus. It will be like the others I have done in this universe – 100 pages long made up of 10 smaller chapters of ten page long comics.
I am prepared – in that I went to the stationary shop and bought an A4 sketch pad to story board – oh yeah I don’t actually do scripts as such – my brain just work like that for comic books so I tend to story board the whole lot with little arrows when I get the panels in the wrong order etc…
I also have a new set of the fine liners I scrub out during the story boardings, some felt tips for design stuff, two other types of sketch pad for character design and practice, rulers and protractors for trying to get back grounds right and pencils in a range of hardnesses.
This is very important as I am also working on the art work for the first ever Screnzy project from 2010.
Tomorrow is the beginning of Screnzy when once again I will be scribbling away to create my comic books based in the Universe of The Punk. The Universe has now become so big and bulky and exciting and intricate that I often feel daunted by it.
There are novels, short stories and flash fictions set in the world, followed by Graphic Novels. The graphic novels themselves are a huge list of projects for me to work my way through. There is now a time line for events in the universe and it spans from millenia in our past to millenia in our future. It is not in the Billions though which probably has some of you sighing with relief.
So far just for the Graphic Novels there is:
1) The Tower Series
2) The Oricle Series
3) The Shark Wars
4) The Celestial Spheres
Each is then broken down to 5 ‘graphic novels’ – so The Tower Series is:
1) The Rise of Babbel
2) The Fall of Babbel
3) The Memory of Babbel
4) The Search for Babbel
5) Babbels Legacy
The structure has changed over the writings and will no doubt do so again 🙂
Revolations is the first 100 page ‘comic book’ of The Rise of Babbel.
There are ten of them, each 100 pages long – this is one of the reasons I feel duanted, I’m not sure my life timewill be long enough to write and ilustrate this lot – if I had money I would employ an illustrator but I don’t so I wont and will muddle through myself. Besides I know some people only want copies that I’ve illustrated.
On the other hand I am really excited about all of this and can’t wait to get to a fresh script/story board tomorrow!
I’ve been thinking that I should try out different drawing styles to design the look of my comic book. One of the things I wanted to try was the concept of scribble pictures – so I have been experimenting with this in my visual poetry journal. I am also using them as a good way to get back to the basics of anatomy and how bodies stand etc…
This is my first one called Shopping.
I wont bore you with the rest but they will be appearing on Turquoise Monster which is for poetry and probably Orange Monster (illustrations) too.