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
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