Character design

More character design - this time clothing and colours.

Because she's a young (early 20s ish?) person, probably at or just finished uni, I sat in the library at uni and sketched outfits I saw people in. I also am going for something casual and comfortable, like it's not much effort. Not all of these fit that so much, but I'll choose something that does.

Some colour variations:

Friend: I've also decided on a more solid direction for the friend. I want to make sure they both have different body types.

The site for a comic I've been anticipating the release of for years just got launched! The site itself is really nicely designed...and has a lovely subtle parallax effect in the background which I almost didn't notice

Protean Sea

Start of semester 2 update

in terms of my timeline......

2: I ended up doing all my little paper plane javascript things, which was more important than making it into a comic specifically (it was about learning those things) so that's done. I also eventually fixed the eyes comic.
I didn't get to talk to tanya until a week or two after that, but that was because of our schedules

3: I did a little bit of the research and script writing, but was a bit behind on that because of the above situation with discussing plot

4: I collected images of art styles and moodboard stuff. I didn't do much of my own concept art, though.
I hadn't really done enough script by this point, however I did get a few people from twitter to take a look at my ideas so far; which is testing it with readers in a way? The intention was to get people's opinions, so I did do that

5: I didn't do too much research on hosting strategies - because from what I found there aren't that many options out there aside from what I already knew of. I made the decision to host it free on tumblr initially, and perhaps when it's finished I could move it somewhere more permanent.
I did some character designing, though not as much as I had wanted to have done at this point.

6 (and start of week 1): I finalised my script for the most part - I will still need to test it with some more people. but that's something I can do as time goes on.
I did a little bit more concept art, as well as some initial thumbnails/paper prototyping.

So overall I didn't do as much of some things as I wanted, but I did at least some of all of it, and I'm pretty happy with the point I'm at now.

Thumbnail/drafting of a scene

a draft of this scene:

>Wakes up. It’s like, twilight, takes a second, but then realises she better get home, oop 

(it’s dark and cold, she probably doesn’t have a jacket)

>Walks a bit/looks around “wait a sec….” the old ruins feel more alive, and everything’s darker

and bigger….realises it’s all quite not familiar 

>checks phone, no signal, then it glitches possibly - the signal changing, and the time  

(magic interferes with technology, it means a disconnection with the real world/a lfieline,

also provides a brief warning..)

>Drops it, sees the circle of fey, kinda looming, or appearing out of the vegetation

(possibly 0-100% opacity as you scroll, they turn from vague vegetation

silhouettes to beings)

>nope  2.0

Coded draft with javascript is HERE 

the separate files:

I'll probably make the glitching look a bit more like a phone would look if the time/battery were changing all over the place, but this is more effective for the rough sketch that it is right now.

Initial sketches for this page: 

(the bottom of the first image)

The sketches as I drew them on paper. These panels are ones that I erased and changed to make them better:

The final before scanning. The parts that I 'animated' (the phone glitching, and fey appearing) I drew on separate paper, but blu tak'd it on while I was drawing them.

some initial colouring.

I did this as a kind of concept art thing to get the overall tone, style, mood that I want! I'm not happy with the style I've drawn the plants in yet, but otherwise I think this is pretty true to what I'm imagining, and it was fairly fast to colour.

More character designs:

Friend: (haven't yet settled on a design)

Main character:

a more solid design:

• unruly hair, which is like a bob that's grown out a bit and not been cut in a while, also dyed (probably just bleached?) but the roots are showing (aka she's stressed and overwhelmed, doesn't have time to do that stuff)
• in general tired looking, slight bags under eyes
• hair's also covering face a bit, aka not so much confidence? later on in the story she ties it up.
• haven't really settled on clothes yet.

initial colours I'm imagining, though will play with a bunch when I have a more solid design.

Script update

I printed out all the comments on the google doc (as well as the script itself, not pictured here) to sort them out a bit, because there was too much stuff for me to keep track of. The first column is divided into four for MC, friend, Fey, and then general overarching theme/tech stuff. The other three columns are the plot in order.

I marked various important things, and then wrote stuff down in my notebook, then went back to my google doc and rewrote the script and also a succinct summary (of the themes, etc)

Aside from a few bits that I've got a couple different directions to choose from, it's mostly complete! (to a degree I can start figuring out overall art and pacing, I'm sure many of the smaller details will change)

summary:

Her life is too busy/full of responsibilities or expectations and she’s overwhelmed by it. Goes out into nature to get away from it for a bit, and finds herself trapped in a faery realm [the messy, overgrown vegetation represents her overwhelming life]. She’s quickly discovered by the fae who rule the forest [who represent __], who tell her she will be trapped there forever unless she completes three tasks to escape. She’s then approached by another girl who’s been trapped there longer (and others, who are also trapped there?) [who could represent relationships being affected by her not taking control of stuff?] who gives her tips on how to complete the near-impossible tasks in exchange for the MC getting freedom for her, too. [the three tasks represent some part of the Overwhelming Life Stuff, each one a different part and showing her a way to get over/accept that, and also overall representing the fact that doing things one by one is easier than being overwhelmed by the bigger picture]. She completes the tasks; brings them back to the fey (or they just find her) and there’s One Last Thing - a reveal or sacrifice or choice, before she gets out and goes home [need to add to this last part] [as the story goes on the art gets clearer and less messy, representing her personal development]

NEW VERSION OF THE SCRIPT (below cut)

Found this gallery of nz native wasp species which I thought was interesting, also could use as visual inspiration for the faery designs?

Came across this, an article about the boys trapped in the cave in Thailand, which uses some javascript/scrollmagic/infinite canvas type things (in regards to infographics and news)

I had a brief look at the code to see what they use. Was interested to see (just by zooming out, second video) how they used pinning and moving the images themselves, instead of 'moving' the viewport. That might be a strategy to explore, rather than the scrollpath I used for the little nemo comic, as it works on mobile too! (the images aren't the right size for the mobile screen and are a bit cut off, but I think that could be fixed by changing the scale in the css or even just the trigger point to the top (or bottom?) of the screen rather than the middle.

Some of my photos of the place that partly inspired this story..... (these are from a few years ago..)

more under cut >

Hosting

A little more research on possible places to host my comic.....

I couldn't find any comic hosting sites that allow you to edit your own html, etc - most of them (like tapas, webtoon, etc) are just for uploading images.

There are a few webcomic collectives around, like smackjeeves, hiveworks, spiderforest....but they all require submitting and being accepted, and apparently it's better if you pay for your own hosting anyway.  - though having a look at that, it's probably cheaper than paying for normal website hosting?
I talked to a few people who use smackjeeves on the webcomic discord I'm part of.

One of them mentioned to check out what people on spiderforest use, and I had a look at their forum which had a few things - here and here which could be helpful, though are focused on normal webcomics that are normal page formats, rather than mine which will be a small amount of individually coded pages.


I think at this point I might even keep with tumblr, using the custom pages (and getting rid of the tumblr iframe, changing the home page, etc) and then I can easily edit it...


I also talked to my friend who's web hosting space I use for my own website, to see if she has any advice. She said she'll get back to me.

Nightlights

Another comic I went through and analysed a bit.

I didn't even realise that this had a lot of similar themes to my story before I read it... it's about a girl  (sandy) who draws (doodles in class a lot) and becomes friends with another girl who turns out to be a creature from her dreams, who makes it so Sandy can't draw anymore unless she's with her. There's a divide of dream/reality, the dreamworld is very bright and full of plants and creatures, she offers sandy a deal to get out or stay there forever........

Comics / sequential art / artist models

I found a bunch of short comics -  a few I knew already, and I also asked on the webcomic discord for recommendations. There aren't that many around, as I was looking for things around 20-100 pages which is not that common (most are <10 pages or 100+)

I went through them and wrote short notes on what happened on each page, in order to figure out things like plot structure and pacing, and things like that. I found that on average, (at the beginning of the stories at least) most parts were in 5 page sections of story. May write out some more specific findings later on.

Katie O'Neill Comics:
Princess Princess 44 pages

The Tea Dragon Society 46 pgs

Mari Costa comics:

The Well by the House on the Hill 77 pages

Porcelain Princess (21 pages)

And a few other shorts (8 to 11 pages)

----------------------------------------------


A Small Revolution 83 pages

A few other I have read, and considered doing this for, but decided they're a bit long and maybe not so helpful at this point.

The Lady of the Shard
150 days 
Questables
Erie Waters

for fear of little men  - this is not a comic, it's a short film (animation) that happens to have a similar feeling/theme/art style to what I'm thinking about, possibly? It's also a uni final project.

Google doc script update........

script progress

still quite behind on this........ I have the main structure but am just unsure on a few specific themes and character development points, which everything else will fall naturally around once I've figured them out.

A few days ago I asked on twitter if anyone'd be interested in giving input.... and I got quite a few people saying they were interested! (6/7ish) I gave them the link to a google doc with info about the project and basically all my thoughts.

A few people so far have added a ton of great comments - often just questions or ideas for things I had questions about. I just need to sort everything out now..