Yes, you do have me figured out when it comes to the low panel count. As a rule I won't go above six panels a page for free. Even for myself. As a reader I prefer it that way. Unless circumstances call for a claustrophobic mood or an exhausting sequence.
I didn't notice my habit of jamming my dialogue up top. Maybe I'll be more creative about dialogue placement on the next pass.
I can see the repetition now. I'm definitely going to dick around with the first page. I'm going to keep it repetitive on the 2nd page because I don't want Unfu's appearance to come out of nowhere. I also want the dust storm to get thicker. I think I might ad one more panel though. I think he needs to be clearly shown being pulled into the bunker.
Right so this ain't a short synopsis by any means. I felt the really short synopsis wouldn't have captured the feeling I want to put forward and I want to get crit on that as well as the overall structure. It's kinda like a synopscript or a scripopsis as I imagine much of what is in the text will become captions for the comic itself. I have also started the actual script to map it out properly, but figured this would be where I want to get the crit on before continuing...
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A small tribe wanders the desolate reaches of a vast desert. They are lead by the anointed one (a shamen) the finder of the way (a pathfinder) and tribemother (the matriarch). They are all old except the matriarch; she is the soul of the group. Every other “cycle” they undertake an arduous pilgrimage to the holy site and perform the obligatory rites of supplication and entreaty. They are lead by the tribemother through inhospitable terrain, a custom handed down to them from ancestor to ancestor generations deep.
The pathfinder leads the way; he follows a beacon built into the top of his staff that pulses brighter and quicker as they retrace the journey of the previous pathfinders. The desert here is harsh and offers them many hazards and little sustenance. They send out hunters on a hunt which is long and hard and yields little but a spiny creature (reptile-like? porcupine?). At night by the light of their cookers they enjoy their meagre catch. The matriarch reflects on how their journey has become harder each time. This time they have already lost 2 to the heat and water thirst. Once it was annual for decades and now it has dwindled down to once every 5 years, She considers making it once a decade or even stopping but she doesn’t want to face that yet.
The journey continues on with the new day. Looming up ahead is a large unbroken cliff face that extends to both horizons. The pathfinder points the way forward through a thin slit in the barrier and the matriarch urges them through. The gorge towers high above them. Shapes high on the chasm’s edge silhouetted against the bright sky jog distant memories of another past, another life, not this. They almost seem to move. A stone falls down the side of the walls echoing loudly and lands directly in their path. The ground starts rumbling and then larger and larger rocks start tumbling. They run through the gorge pursued by the deep roar and rocks falling all around them. They spill out of the other end of the canyon followed by a huge dust cloud. They are two fewer in number.
Resigned they continue on. The alien features of the landscape slowly begin to resolve into ruins. At night they huddle in the shelter of two large ruined towers around the brilliant but cold blue-green atomic glow of their burners. The tribe, never exuberant, have been especially subdued after their loss, so the matriarch beckons the spinner of tales to weave a song in tribute and to distract them. As he does so recounting the (myths of the people?) the matriarch watches the dancing lights and shadows against the ruin walls which bring life to the carvings and glyphs in (hundreds of?) languages, once uttered but since forgotten. For the most part.
Days pass and the ground grumbles as if lamenting its loss of them, chasing them. The anointed one is worried of the omens but the matriarch buoys them on. After days of trudging over the rumbling ground, eventually they ascend a rise and the vista of a ruined metropolis on the shores of what used to be an coastline long since dried up meets their gaze; spires still reach partway to the sky and shadow their path.. The city is now instead perched on the lip of a grand chasm the bottom of which stretches as far as the eye can see. They walk in dwarfed by the still huge structure. They head for the holy site, a section of the city at a higher point overlooking the once-ocean trench.
There they start the rites of supplication and entreaty. The matriarch has encouraged this, it brings them peace of mind and a sense of purpose and place and they have needed it. She has needed it. The tribe chants in a strangely hypnotic dirge. The matriarch takes the pathfinder’s oracle, no longer pulsing but glowing steadily, and places it into the control panel of the console of the communications relay station. The panel lights up and as the anointed one begins his chant of entreaty behind her the matriarch punches symbols on the panel and stares at it in earnest hoping for a response. When they left all those years ago, she was only little better than a child, and now she is still in that child’s body but several centuries have passed and made her something else. The advanced life extension therapy was only available to a few and she was one of the “lucky” ones before the world collapsed.
The ground erupts all around them and the grumbling that had plagued them rises to a calamitous roar of rage. The ground buckles and whips like waves of the water that have long since left these climes. What is left of the spires begins to crash around them.
When the earthquake subsides, the remains of the tribe gather around the matriarch now crushed and lifeless beneath a fallen piece of plasteel and concrete. . The pathfinder is also dead, his hand and staff poking through the debris in the direction home as if in a final directive. The anointed one wipes the dust from the tribemother's face and closes her unseeing eyes. They weep and wail for her as she is their only mother, the mother of their ancestors. She has been there all along. They leave her body under the rubble and head back across the boiled ocean back to their home.
As they disappear into the distance the control panel lights up “Incoming message”.
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Thanks for reading and be glad for any input.
I like it thus far. Seems like it aught to work okay without dialogue. It has enough rope to give yourself the necessary freedom since this is your first story. You may not need to write much of a script, because in this case the story serves the images, not the other way around. If you implement the "marvel method" where you just decide what needs to be conveyed on each page, and just go at it in the layout, you may have the freedom to really floss the ornate details that may be necessary.
If you want to be extra cautious, go ahead and write the script. Just keep in mind, most first time writers emphasize things that make it really hard on the artist. I have made that mistake myself.
Hey Monkey ur ideas are fascinating. I am no writer or anything so i dont want to crit too much. just a couple of things which i think might help :)
check out storymind on youtube goes into like archetypes and char development and stuff :) really really cool stuff.
Also i think one thing that i got from watching the walking dead (the guy that plays rick) said " i wanted every decision, action to cost him"
Now it seems that u have a gone for a tragedy story (that i love). I think maybe u need to make the deaths in the story really cost the reader, like when they die they are such an essential part of the story that a part of the reader dies as well. cos they(us) identify with these chars and it hurts to see them go. Maybe they can go out heroically? (saving another member) maybe they can go out shamefully, (betraying the group etc) This way u can make the deaths really impact the story and make the comic carry a lot more weight.
@yololex, man those are great suggestions. I particularly like the idea of having the deaths cost more. I will definitely play with that and see how I can build it in. I know i need to do a bit more fleshing out of the characters just to give some small insights and connection to the reader. I will check out those vids.
I don't really see it as a tragedy even though things don't necessarily pan out for the best. The theme is very much about hope, and I had hoped to leave the reader with an inkling of hope even if very small. :) thanks for the feedback!
cool man. thnx! tragedies dont necessarily mean an abscence of positive things. What it does mean is that it results in bestowing a feeling of sadness or seriousness on the viewer. U can have a theme of hope woven in with the story, even tho all the characters die... (aka the perfect storm) Like their deaths werent in vain kind of thing. maybe they inspire the younger generation to go and do their own search? anyways im stoked to see what you come up with next :)
Yolo- That was a great crit. The observation about the tragedy was something I overlooked. Sort of easy to have a cold objective take on such foreign characters as if they are just expendable pikmen. I saw more of a herd thinning than a tragedy.
One thing that I'd like to see in terms of mood, is the event to feel tragic, without being winey. I like the idea of closing on the optimistic note of "some of us survived" as opposed to "most of us are dead".
The storymind youtube thing is great to listen to while drawing. It has already taught me about my misconception of the roles of antagonist and protagonist.
@Gangsta: Sweet gesture and proportions as always dude. Full o' life...though I do wonder what that near arm is doing..I can't tell if it is foreshortened or straightened and pointed out of the canvas.
@Yolo: Those storymind vids are neat indeed. Has given me some food for thought, and a different way of being able to analyse the story a little better to see where there may be empty spots has been useful in making changes to my synopsis.
Also I have decided to do a proper script. Even though I don't have a huge amount of dialogue (there will be some) the narration of my story is going to be very different from the text of the synopsis. It will be more about showing through the narration and not telling, so I do need to make sure I nail the salient parts in the plot to be understood. Currently on page 6 and about a quarter of the way through, so it's looking like it will be a 20+ pager.
bread- That was the last thing I noticed. For the record the arm is hooked and foreshortened. I believe it's a rendering issue.
For some reason the image vanished from my photobucket account. I'm going to hastle with their support.
Anyhow, here's a new set of concepts for the thrashers. Each one plays a tactical role. The boom box is considered a member. They use it for drawing attention in the wrong direction. Although this image doesn't convey that.
On another note, does anybody want to move this group to another thread? It took me too long to realize this is an inappropriate area for a long term thread.
okay everything in my Photobucket account just up and vanished. I don't like doing direct uploading on this forum because I don't want bandwidth to be an issue in this neighborhood. but I'll just use it temporarily until photobucket pulls it's shit together.
Damn that sucks dude. Does attaching stuff increase the load times for some reason? I don't get why it would. Anyways, I like this layout a lot better. Nice touch with the triangle inset, dig that a lot.
What I meant was I don't want to contribute to a bandwidth problem on this site. As far as I know there isn't one, but I'd like to keep it that way by img linking and not uploading it directly to the forum. But it looks like it was just a temporary problem with photobucket.
I just wanted to say Dramatica took it a step too far. If you wind up doing stuff like this before writing a scrip you are fucked. Sure fire way to paint yourself into a corner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGJVlrnQKaI
I finally drew up a logo for the series. Worldwarwhatever is the title of the property. I did come up with that idea first. Letters To Home is the first story popped into my head. And yes I've had to fight off other ideas for Wwwhatever so I can focus on this one.
I like the title. It flows nicely. The lettering is nice too.
I guess it depends on how you like to work and what you're working on. I have a mate who is just finishing off his first novel and he recommended Dramatica because it really helped him keep track of things in a very complex plot with a lot of characters. I didn't really cotton on until today it was the same thing he was talking about.
If you're doing what we're doing it is probably overkill. Comics don't really delve that far into complexity for the most part. I'm a fan of organisation as long as it doesn't constrain you from developing solutions to problems. A tool is just a tool, it's how you use it that matters.
I hope to put in more time on my script this weekend but I just got some concept work, started a CGMA course on environments and also got a couple of competitions to do illos for. A busy as heck week!
Dude, don't stretch yourself too thin. If the concept work is paying, then make that priority one and congrats btw.
The CGMA class aint cheap, so get your money's worth.
Contests are for when you need a pick me up. Wait until your plate is empty for that.
As far as the comic goes, it can wait. Just keep in mind that the ability to create self sufficient content is priceless. There's allot of pessimism and doom sayers in the game industry these days, lets just hope they are wrong.
About the Dramatica software. I was just thinking about how tangled I'd get with that, without getting anything done. I guess that's just me and my pace. I bet George RR Martin knows all about Dramatica.
Thanks man! I know it all seems to have piled on all of a sudden. I also agreed to "mentor" another artist for the next wee while (god knows why they asked me...lol) but I give so much crit to randoms anyway that It'll just be transitioning my time to one person mostly instead.
Yeah the concept stuff comes first, but tbh I have been having so much fun building my own world that I want to make sure I keep picking away at it consistently. I know how easy it is to drop this stuff and I actually think it's more important in the medium term (5-6 months) that I finish it.
Yeah the competitions tend to be the first to go but they are great to get some folio ready illos as well as potentially get some prizes (never won any yet) It's a nice way to judge my own merits against others without being all jelly about it too. :D
On top of that I start work again 4 days a week, next week. Haha. Talk about loading up. Anyways I am totally going to keep working on this. This is MY shit. None of the other stuff is really.
Good to hear you guys are getting busy! man that cgma course looks dope :). Im still building up to working on some graphic novel type stuff :) need some more vis lib. Also got some cool ideas to work towards. I think the best thing is that u get to practice a lot of concept design which is always helpful.
@Yolo, I'm working on the first assignment for environment design 1 and so far it has been lots of fun. I'll let you know how I find it if you're interested in taking the course. Dude your perspective and orthos are cool and focusing on design early as well is a really good thing to be doing. Most people I think just heavily attack the skills angle but tend to forget the design element, me included. It is probably more important in the mix than technical skills are.
![[Image: kalamity_zps8629d60a.jpg]](http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq37/kirpid/kalamity_zps8629d60a.jpg)
![[Image: thrasherparty1_zps5b80e436.jpg]](http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq37/kirpid/thrasherparty1_zps5b80e436.jpg)
