Purple Monster

Yesterday I sat and drew pencil sketches with construction lines – female manga heads and worked on the design for the first part of Revolations – Bamboozled. The comic book and my last assignment for college mean I need to remember how to draw and illustrate. So I am steadily working my way through my how to draw books. I think there is a marked improvement from the line drawings I did earlier in the week.

People interested in the design and/or creative process, I am using the Complete Book of Drawing Manga at the moment but have a stack of other drawing books. I don’t want the Punk comics to be Manga but nor do I want them to be ‘Marvel’ style. I have books about different drawing methods so hope I can come up with some cross over style I like.

The drawings are still pretty dreadful but the improvement gives me hope.

I spent the few days working on the graphic novel Revolations that I started for my first ever Script Frenzy. As I’ve mentioned the kickstarter for the comic con got funded so I am now spending a year get the first ‘comic’ sorted and printed.

The story is called Bamboozled.

I’ve been making lists of stuff I need to do, working out the over all plot arcs and timelines and fitting it in with the Punk novels and what not. And planning which section to write for the screnzy in April.

I will be doing lots of posting of my lists and story arcs and the art/design process – I’ve not put the story boards in chronological order or anything, on here as I want to keep that for the finished article 🙂 In other words I don’t want to give too much away!

There is going to be a lot of fun experimenting with techniques and styles, I am not going to say that I’m not nervous about pulling this off – because I am. I’ve had huge doubts about my art work lately and this is stifling as I am working on a number of critical visual projects but going back to basics and thinking of it as a learning process – giving myself permission to play, to make errors – this is important and I am hoping will reset me.

For those interested in process – here are some of the sketches and lists.

Tomorrow Screnzy or Script Frenzy starts and I am planning out what I will be doing – the plan is to spend 30 hours working on my comic book projects. One part of this is the actual scripting of my next comic book and the rest is going to involve me working on the illustrations etc… for the first part of Revoltions (my first and second Screnzys back in 2011 and 10).

I have been working here and there on the art work, costume design and general look of the comic already but am going to give it that extra push over the coming month.

I have decided to script the next part of The Oricle Series – number 2) Navel Gazing which is about how Jess sets up the cult of seers at Delphi in Greece. He is the historical/mythical figure of Apollo and creates the wet-ware bio-computers from my 2012 GothNo and NaNo novel trilogy.

Jonathon is a tall journalist, dark skin and blue eyes, he is desperate to make it and has one chance. If he mucks it up he and his sisters family are going to be screwed and poured into poverty from which there is currently no return. He is petrified and so enters the most dangerous place in the city to take photos and get a story.

After his dad was killed (project fire storm?) his mother worked herself into the grave to try and provide a future through education for him and his sister but the economy is so brittle that they can be plunged into the ghettos of England without a second thought. His sister and brother-in-law have three kids.

He is all show but is quiet unsure of himself. He doesn’t know when to quit.

Katy has long straight hair which she plaits to keep out of her way, it changes colour a lot. She likes extreme climbing and spends her spare time exploring the ruins of The White Tower which is actually where she is from. It is incredibly dangerous and has a ferrel population of kids living in it as it is a place adults fear to go.

She is quiet regal in apparences with high cheek bones and a tall broad figure though she is in good shape physically, she is muscle rather than fat but it has given her a stockier appearance than she would have had. Amazonian could be used to describe her.

She is too serious and feels the loss of everyone she knew but worse she feels the pain of her adopted father as she found out through sneaking at thirteen, that he had tried to mount a privately funded rescue mission and that it was blocked. Things she has found in the ruins since have made her excessively angry about this and she feels she can not tell him as it would hurt him more – this is driving a wedge between them.

Janus her adopted father has given her an uncoventional upbringing and her skill set is vast – ranging from martial arts and climbing to programming and domestic chemistry. She is a rebellious teen but calms down into a responsible 20 something who just happens to like adventure. She like her adopted father feels her status in society keenly and wants to help. Plus she remembers what it was like. She is often shocked that people think she is being arrogant when she offers financial aid as money means nothing to her.

Janus is tall and lanky with a burning passion, he is intelligent and quick but full of sorrow. He builds businesses like others play with lego – he quickly became rich but always seeks to save humankind from themselves.

He invests heavily into charities and life extension tech after an accident left him almost dead. This is when he met the benifactor who had helped him grow up with access to the sort of stuff he needed to become successful. An orphan he is very clingy and would probably have been better off if placed with a loving family in the first place.

After the accident he is left with a problem – he has stopped ageing.

He is very caring and loving but can be demanding and has mood swings.

He has a mop of dark curls which after the accident he dyes to get rid of the grey shock the accident left him with. He appears middle age from then on even when he becomes well over a hundred.

A mischievious smile he somehow never entirely grew up and has enthusiasm over load.

Looks like it is a five book series then! And I have started with the second book not the first!

1) Janus – the story of who he actually is and builds into a home made super hero type story – ends with an accident

2) The White Tower – Katy is orphaned by an industrial accident and adopted by Janus, she returned to the ruins of her home and meets a journalist and together then uncover the true horror of the accident

3) Promethius Rising – The struggle to get the space station operational, lots of intrigue and sabotage.

4) We are Titans – a spat of high violence crime spreads across the world, Janus and Katy fight to save as many as possible but actually starts with a mid life crisis on Janus’s part.

5) Promethius Bound – they can’t go back to earth but the station was not yet fully functional. They need resources and they need them quickly but are stuck in the water. Ends with them reeling in an asteroid for mining.

The series is primarily about a man called Janus who was orphaned or abandoned at a young age. His progress in life has been guided by Aten (the aquatic ape/grey who made the Punk) though Janus does not actually get to know Aten until his ageing becomes an issue.

Janus is rich, clever and off the wall. He wants to make the world a better place and so when an industrial accident wipes out seven tower blocks of workers – he tries to privately fund a rescue operation but it is barred due to the dangers of the monofilament scattered in the area. Instead he contents himself by adopting Katy – one of the few to get out un harmed from the collapse and subsequent flood.

He is old but does not look it and he does his best – she has an unconventional up bringing with lots of martial arts and climbing and of course he is a bit of a metal head goth type person. They get on ok but she is trumatised in a way he doesn’t understand and begins to spend more and more time on dangerous adventures.

He himself gets drawn into rich dude who does good works role (the sort of comic book set up you often see!) and begins to become embroiled in a situation where he build from his own fortune – a space station/orbital platform type thing – it was supposed to be a gravity fountain but work gets interupted.

Katy ends up on the space station monitoring things when she spots a worrying tend – a drastic increase in violent crime. There is lots of twisty plot to do with this but the overall outcome is that Janus escapes with a plan full of people and has to do some stupidly dangerous stuff to get them all safely onto the space station. This includes Aten.

The space station and sea steds are now the only safe places to live – the floating ‘hotels’ like the Punk is found in at the begging of The Punk in Pink become corporate run megoliths that can keep workers in slavery due to paying them a currency that is only usable on their own platform – an illigal trade in Bitcoins exists between customers and staff.

The space platform code name Promethuis is then a jumping off platform for Janus and co to begin looking at the near by asteroids though this does not really build momentum until the Punk arrives sometime later. The series ends with them realising that there are things – artifacts etc… on the asteroids and the desire to go and explore.

So what is this years nano about? I’ve already said it is based in the Punk’s Universe – but lets recap on that shall we?

The Punk’s Universe is an alternative history series were humans came to be as genetically engineered slaves of a dominate homosapien species – creatures who evolved on volcanic islands and have large foreheads, dark wide eyes, small chins and webbed fingers.

They almost extinguished themselves with war leaving the slaves to over run the planet – human history is then plagued by the remaining factions fighting through human civilizations they have helped build up. They have long life spans but there is also life extention tech which gets applied to some slaves and slave/master hybrids. The Punk is a Hybrid but is suffering memory loss and just thinks she is some anomaly who lives a long time – my first proper nano – the one I started this blog for – was for her stories!

Scriptfrenzies (a script writing challenge) then got in on the act and I created the story arcs for graphic novels of the The Fall of Babble called Revolation and deals with how she and her brother Jesu came to be. Then I did a screnzy about then all in ancient Egypt and Greece before it was greece etc… Called The Punk in Gold, and then another graphic novel – this time about the volcanic eruption of Santirini in Greece and the Mosis legend in Egypt which manly focusses on her brother Jess.

Then the last GothNoWriMo and NaNo saw me writing the Godex trilogy – a set of three stories involving Jess and an old Cult he had once accidently made in ancient Greece – the Pythia and Oracle of Delphi. It involves cops and wetware and murder and the Actimen Corporation.

Also in the Punks Universe are the flash fictions such as the Actimen Cull and A Wanting for Grass which are about the near future and how it collapses into the floating seastead business dystopia of the Punk’s first book.

There are also the Shark Wars and Celestial Realms which I think are already out their as flash fiction but can’t actually recall of the top of my head! They deal with deep history of the Masters race and will probably spawn novels of their own.

Another project I have notes for in this universe are The Vagina Dare Chronicles about the Punk being in the New World around the time of European settlement after she stops being Queen Elizabeth obviously.

And then there are the Black Bodies Waiting but I have only the foggiest ideas for them but basically they will connect the Punk with the Celestial Spheres stories and sets things up for some singularity type stuff.

So where does that leave what I am working on now?

It is called The White Tower and is part of the Promethius Series and has come from dreams had quiet far apart. It contains neither the Punk nor Jesu but rather is part of the works their Aquatic Ape/Master creator Aten. He will probably be a minor character if he appears at all – the whole story series is setting things up for why even with flooding from Global Warming not being as bad as expected – so many people end up on the man made islands which is where we find the Punk. And is also the foundation of them getting into space properly.

Roughly that is how it fits in.

I tugged at my brain and made it write 1000 words of story today – it was however a struggle mainly due to small people keep reappearing from bed and the toddler getting a temperature :/ But I managed and now I am looking around my blogs and social media and noticing the pings of other writers… they are doing the Picture Book Idea Month challenge and I am twitching.

Now what I should do is more on my course or more nano writing – get a head or aim for the full word count – instead what am finding increasingly that I want to once more take part in this challenge – I have done it for as long as I have done NaNo for.

So I shall go for my standard – spending 30 hrs this month on my kidlit projects 🙂 I shall document the insanity over on Orange Monster!