Archive for June, 2010
13 items.
I’m still rebuilding my buffer, but I’m happy with things so far. This page turned out well. The middle panel has a bunch of characters who will become important later. (And yes, there are a bunch of discs with thrones on them just kind of floating around Karrd.) Also, it’s fun to mess around with format changes. Even though I’ll probably stick with variations of the 3×3 grid throughout WPK (it makes for good discipline), I like including soliloquies, letters, and so on, and I’ll probably have more of those in the future. Oh, and yes, the stelae outside the inn, of which you can see one, is new.
Moderately happy with the softer shadows. It’s something I’ll need to work on, since I fear if I get clumsy with them they’ll make my art look too muddy.
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Oh, goodie.
I’ve been thinking about this chapter literally since I built my little 3×3 grid before I started drawing the first comic page. I think it’s got some great writing in it and lots of fun characters. I hope you enjoy it.
I tore through this page in under four hours, which is crazy. I don’t even know why it went so fast. Maybe the lack of faces. Well, full faces, instead of just tongues and lower jaws. And it actually doesn’t look bad. I’m trying to soften up my shadows, since I think the jagged, angular 50%-black shadows have been a bit hard on the eyes.
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First, hello to everyone who came over from Sunset Grill. It’s great to have you here, and I hope you enjoy the comic.
A few of you have, oddly, mentioned that you like my art. In an attempt to pay it forward, here are some other long-form webcomics, all with better art than mine:
Cealdian, a Celtic tale with political overtones based on dynastic succession
Garanos, a swordfight-full fantasy adventure
Dark Places, a really stylish D&D-style story
Ironborn, a technomagical story that reminds me of Final Fantasy 6
Anyway, this is another one of these weird not-quite-in-character recollection pages. I don’t just do this because I watched too much anime in junior high, mind you. I find that even with webcomics I like, I sometimes lose track of what the hell is going on. And I’m a tolerably clever person. I figure that at least once in a while, I’ll stop to make sure everyone who has been following the comic is, you know, actually following the comic.
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Wow, so, another chapter done. It’s interesting to see what little changes have crept into the story as I’ve told it. One of the tough parts about writing a comic that–let’s face it–isn’t very popular is the eerie lack of feedback. That can be a good thing and a bad thing. If you go back to the early Dilbert comics, for example, you’ll find all sorts of far-out stuff reminiscent of Goats, while the modern comic is strictly focused on workplace humor. While Scott Adams got feedback that allowed him to become the success he is today, it also removed the freewheeling nature of the comic and replaced it with a very focused product. I sometimes wonder if there is a focused (and salable) “product” hidden within WPK, but part of me is glad no one will find it for me.
Generally happy with this page, except the faces aren’t quite ideal. I need to work on my expressions.
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I didn’t even have this page in my original script. But I felt my previous page was too rushed and decided to add a bit of a breather and mess around with some drawings of the inn. Though I’m annoyed I didn’t get Meyra’s face (angles are hard!), otherwise I’m pretty pleased. It was fun to draw and let Vish ramble a bit. I imagine he likes to ramble.
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A rather talky page. Still, got some important plot stuff in here.
Currently sketching out the stuff that will show up in chapter 4.
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So exits the Blue Knight. This page was not-too-bad. I think I’ve settled on an effect for the Boreal Scepter, at least for one of its four facets (of which you can see three in the panels above; the fourth, the Man, is visible but mostly obscured).
One of the hard parts about writing a comic is that all but the most important characters get pared down to a bare-bones summary of who they are and what motivates them. It’s probably good–I know the Blue Knight more than any of you, who only got little bits of his story from his internal monologues and the other characters’ reactions to him and the other bogatyrs, but there’s no reason to ramble on about who he was and where he came from.
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This is another one of those pages where I think I miss sound effects. On the other hand, really, how many times can I write some variation of “THWAP” before I get sick of it?
Had a little more fun than should be proper with the Boreal Scepter effects there. Of course I would have rather portrayed the force of the blow with actual, y’know, drawing skill, but we can’t ask for miracles.
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This page threatened to fall apart but I think I beat it into a respectable shape. It flows better than some of the others, but I still regret not scripting things out action by action. But at least I got to draw a guy getting shot by lightning while wearing a big helmet so the lightning ricocheted around in his helmet and messed him up worse than lightning has ever messed someone up. So I can cross that off my bucket list.
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Big fight scenes take a really long time.
More than that, though, I’m realizing I should have planned things out a bit more. The struggles don’t flow as smoothly as I would like: several bandits pop up basically out of nowhere, and their directions and movements aren’t clear, nor does one event flow smoothly into another. Part of that is due to two things going on at once–the fight is raging all around Anthem and Varaxunax as they try to figure out what to do about Vish–but the problem would have been mitigated had I planned “cut by cut” action for all the fighters involved.
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