London MCM 2015 and CareersFest

Hi everyone, welcome back!

This week has certainly been a busy week for me, and not just in ways of Dreamwalkers. As you may or may not have known, last week I mentioned that Nadia and I would be going down to London MCM. Let me just say that, even if we primarily went down there for work related reasons (ie advertising our joint comic, Pandora) we certainly had a blast!

Before I get into the fun stuff, though, I've got to say that the fliers that Nadia made for Pandora went really well. We only had 100, due to money constraints, but we managed to give out all of them, and even had some good feedback. Nadia was really pleased - since she is starting off on the art work first (we are alternating on this), and people seemed to like her art style from the fliers. I'm glad they went well too. Hopefully people will like the promotion idea we gave them and send in those free codes to our joint email - we're giving out free images of the characters to those with a code, you see,

We also did a bit of networking and met several people, We're doing an essay/report as part of our university course. The topic that I ended up deciding on was one that I thought might link in well with what Nadia and I are doing - that is to say, starting up a publishing house (Tanra Studios). So I thought it would be a great subject to write about for our essay to tie everything together, not to mention it would give us more info on what we might struggle with in the future, what we would need to look out for, etc. So, while we weren't handing out fliers, we were also speaking to various people in Comic village asking if they wouldn't mind allowing us to interview them. Some were really helpful - Big Punch Studios were great (they've given us advice in the past and are very happy to help us too. Its great as their work is really good!), and others seem like they'd be happy to talk to us as well. I hope that we learn a lot from them, both for the essay and to help with Tanra Studios, once we have it properly up and running.

Obviously, it wasn't all business (though even the business was fun). We got to see some great things as well.

I got to meet Rooster Teeth, and got signatures. They even gave a little advice to Nadia and I about starting up a small business as well. That was awesome, though I'm pretty sure whoever was next in line might have been a bit annoyed we were taking too long. Even with the holes being glared into our heads though, the guys were cool. There was some pretty awesome RWBY cosplayers around too.

Speaking of cosplayers, There were some really good ones! I unfortunately didn't get to photograph many (I likely would have run out of storage on my phone), but I did get a few. Some of my favorite ones included:

Ruby Rose

Well, I did mention that I saw some cool RWBY cosplays around the Rooster Teeth area, and I got to say, this one was my favorite, along with Yang (I unfortunately didn't manage to get a picture of the Yang cosplayer as they were in the cue in front of us, so thought it best not to disturb her.

I so want the scythe though! I have to wonder if its heavy, though...

Aang Firebending

I love Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I got to say I was really happy to see cosplayers for the show. What I was even more impressed with was how this person could portray the character bending fire. I got to say, that is ingenious!

For this one I had to take several shots because the person cosplaying had to keep moving, but looking at it like this really made it seem as though they were actually bending fire. It was very convincing and she was doing some awesome moves. Wish I had a faster 'trigger finger' for my camera. But that's the best use of a fire coloured cloth, I gotta say!

Studio Ghibli

Well, I couldn't really say it was from one show that was made by Studio Ghibli, but it had a blend of My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away and was probably one of the more elaborate cosplays I got to see - I had to wonder if it was hard to move in, though...

Seriously, this thing must have taken forever to make! My hat is of to you! Seriously, I'm impressed!

There were, of course, loads more, but I could spend ages talking about cosplays alone! lol. Unfortunately, we did eventually have to come back home again. After all, I can't neglect Dreamwalkers!

After coming back from MCM, though, the University have this careers week going on - tomorrow is the last day I believe - so I've also been along to that this week. There has been a bunch of different talks on and stands to see people looking for job opportunities and such in the future. Most appear to be in the care industry, but I did find a few that might be useful for me, or rather for myself and Tanra studios. There was a stall based around law, which is important to know when starting a business, there was a stall for the council that took down our names for if anything business related crops up, there was a stall looking for mentors for these summer trips for kids, which would be interesting experience if nothing else. I know there's a few I've planned to look at tomorrow too, Lots of opportunities!

Speaking of opportunities, my friends and I were in the right place at the right time, too - we ended up getting our picture taken for the university and for the Sentinel (the local newspaper), advertising about CareersFest too. We made sure to get one of the copies:

It's pretty cool really that we were picked to be photographed like that. Lucky, huh?

Of course, I've been working on Dreamwalkers, too. I've got a page completely finished now, but I can't really show it without spoiler-ing it right now. I hope that when I have the appropriate pages done, I can show a few teaser pages of what might be expected when its all finished, so there is that to look forwards too. Of course, I've still got loads to do. 

Still, its fun! I'm looking forwards to that.

I'll have more Dreamwalker related stuff for next time, and maybe more stuff as well. 

Til then, see you next time!

Tara

The Nightmare Corridor

Hello again! Welcome back!

This past week has been an interesting one. As well as working on my comic, I've also been preparing for MCM in London. While we weren't able to get a table this time (shame), Nadia and I are still going to the convention, and we have an offer we are doing, involving Pandora, the joint comic that we are creating. We've got 100 fliers with special business cards attached to them. If you send us the information on the back of the card, Nadia or I will send a free limited edition print of one of the four main characters of Pandora.

If you follow me on twitter (@chosha_kurenai) I'll be posting up pictures and such, so if you see us at the convention, you'll know who we are.

On another note, I've been creating one of the backgrounds to my comic, namely what I call the nightmare corridor, which on its own might not be too bad in appearance, other than the monster that lives inside it that hunts the unfortunate within. So, I wanted to look for something somewhat warped, that didn't look quite right, and with nice dark places for a monster to hide.

So I started with a sketch of the place in my sketch book:

As you can see, I was mainly trying to give it odd angles, twisting the floor and walls, making the supports....not so supportive, to try and give an underlying feel of 'this is not a normal place. Well, less underlying, more as if you were looking at a picture through a bended mirror, I guess. I thought it made it look disturbing without putting signs everywhere saying 'look at me, I'm a horror thing - bwahaha'. 

Of course, the sketch is all well and good, but I am drawing a fully coloured comic, so I needed to bring this to like far more.

Sorry for the slightly smaller photo there - it was difficult to photograph the wacom - I'll admit I've got to get the hang of screen grabs. Anyway, I felt quite pleased with how this turned out. Though the shadows are far closer to the front than in the sketch, it still feels as though it fits, and gives me a little more wiggle room for the monster slinking out of the darkness. I tried to give some realistic textures to the walls in an attempt to bring it to life further. In the end, I was quite pleased with it. Now all I need is to add both the characters and monsters in it and it'll be good to go!

I'm especially pleased as backgrounds have never been a strong suit of mine, but I've been attempting to rectify this since last year, so I'm happy that there is improvements.

Oh, also, last week I showed some of the front cover. I've done a bit more to it now!

Admittedly its not much, but I was experimenting a little. So far I added slight shadows and the glowing eyes. I might need to think if the background behind should remain white or a different colour, however.

Of course, suggestions are welcome. Otherwise, I'll be doing some tests and will give you guys an update once I decide. Either that or put it to a vote. lol.

Well, I'll be continuing with my base sketches and hopefully start up a few more pages before my update next week, as well as an update on how things went at the MCM as well.

Until next time!

Tara

Dreamwalkers: The Cover

Hi everyone! Welcome back!

It's been about a week since I last blogged and I've got some updates on how I've been getting on. So far, much of what I've been doing is the planning stages - I've made an extremely rough script (very rough, its just what the characters are saying, though I might play around with the script to fit the characters better later), and I've started to thumbnail the pages. I'm fairly pleased by this progress, as I've now got up to page 16 all planned out. Since 16 pages (plus the front cover) is the minimum I wanted to have done for my deadline, I'm pleased that I know what I'm doing. After that, any extra pages I do just means I have less to worry about next term. Of course, I don't want to rush my work - I've been wanting to write Dreamwalker for ages now after all.

Speaking of the cover, however, that is where most of my progress has been lying. Considering the content of the story is mainly about monsters invading dreams and much of the story being (literally) all in the mind, I wanted the cover to show that. So I began to sketch an idea I had, about monsters coming out of someone's head, or rather, that of the main character. I thought a silhouette might be a good way of doing this, as it's not revealing who the person is (at least until you start reading). I was also thinking of some atmospheric games, kind of like Limbo, where the silhouettes of everything seemed to raise up suspense, probably a kind of fear of the unknown.

As for the monsters themselves, I tried to influence the appearance based on things people are wary or frightened of. Spiders, holes (I didn't know there was a phobia of those, but I discovered that recently. Its an interesting concept, even if its probably a difficult phobia to have to live with), demons and monsters. ~Then with them being black, its also that added fear of the unknown and gives some surrealism to the image. After some sketching, I came up with this:

That, on itself, of course, isn't the final of it, it was just more simple to have the outline drawn so that I would have a basis to work on when I got into the digital side of things - I like drawing my base sketches by hand, I just feel I have a little more control that way. Obviously, I can then better refine it digitally.

I had a little help on my typography with John Charles, who is a well known comic artist himself, and he gave me a few tips. I'm very much thankful for that - I'm still a little new with digital work, so getting a few tips from a professional is very helpful. Again, because of how the comic is - being based in the mind, and at times pretty surreal, having just a simple type just wouldn't work, so I warped the text and tweaked it, so it would appear to be coming from the silhouetted image, 

I also gave the monsters a few hints of colour as well, to make them seem to stand out a bit more. Of course, I'm still testing out a few ideas to see what may or may not work, before I add in my name and such. I have a few extra ideas, but need to check to see if they work.

As such, this is what I currently have for my front cover:

 I still need to consider if the background should remain white or not. I'm also considering giving a glow to the eyes and mouths within the monster mash (to borrow a song title. lol) 

There's still a bit of work to do - perhaps fading the shadows a bit more etc, but so far I'm fairly pleased with how its going.

Oh yes! As I mentioned in my first post, I've also done a bit of work with Nadia towards Pandora - There is now three podcasts (the links can be found on Nadia's blog) where Nadia and I discuss places the characters will visit, and two out of the four main characters. They can also be found under the title 'Pandora Chat' with either 1, 2 or 3 at the end. We should be doing another one soon for the third of the four main characters as well.

Perhaps I might do that for Dreamwalkers a bit later on? I'll have to see.

Anyway, for now, I should do more on Dreamwalkers - hopefully I'll be able to get through doing my first full sized drafts for pages before my dog attempts to, yet again, somehow manage to steal my eraser from my desk again. He's a sly little ninja dog. lol

Until next time!

Tara

Beginning a New Project!

Hello everyone! I'm Tara Washington, aka Chosha Kurenai and I've begun a new comic project. I've made some comics before, but this project is not only something I've been wanting to do for several years now, but is also one of my final projects for my graduating year in Cartoon and Comic arts at Staffordshire University.

One of the things we had to do was top present six story ideas to a panel, who would question the ideas and eventually vote as to which idea was preferred. Of course, this could be ignored if the artist wanted to, or they could go with the most voted project. For me, as I want to do all the stories I have at some point, I decided to go with the most voted project.

As you can likely guess from the title of the blog, the story I decided to go for is called Dreamwalkers, which is a pilot for the longer series I want to do which will either continue with the name Dreamwalkers, or be called Dreamwalkers SOS.

This blog will be covering my work towards Dreamwalkers from now until completion, with some additional information concerning another project I'll be working on alongside this with a fellow comic/manga artist, Nadia Williams. While she is mostly in charge of Pandora for the first volume, I am co-writing the story and will be drawing art for it and will be part of various podcasts until it is my turn to be in charge of it for Volume 2. For the main information on Pandora, however, please check out Nadia's blog:

http://pandoradiaryz.blogspot.co.uk

As for Dreamwalkers, this is my main project, which is a minimum of 24 pages (though it highly likely that it will go on for much longer), in colour, which tells the story of a young man plagued by monsters ravaging his nightmares until he is approached by a mysterious team known as SOS, who reveal the monsters in his mind are far more than jut plain nightmares.

On this blog, I'll be showing sketches, discussing ideas and developments, eventually until the full story is complete. After that, hopefully I'll be able to reveal more information as well, including where to fine the completed works and any future projects.

I hope you enjoy the journey into the realm of Dreamwalkers - I know I will!

Until next time!

Tara