Another Study

Another quick concept piece to try out some things.

I realized that I've never posted anything that takes place after the first act of the story, which is when things really get going. Although there's a definite John Carter influence to it, Bastard doesn't end up on Mars. I was going for kind of a Spaghetti Western sunset and went a little nuts with the red:

Technique Study

I got tired of working on my story outline, so I messed around with some techniques I've been thinking about for doing the backgrounds. Again, just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks:


Not the most ambitious example, but hopefully tomorrow I can find the time to try something a little more involved.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

I managed to make Valentine's Day dinner for my wife without poisoning us or burning down the house. She wrote about it on the food blog she and a friend started recently:

http://creating-a-foodie.blogspot.com/2009/02/valentines-day-dinner-part-two.html

Pre-pre-production

Having just wrapped up the game I've been working on, I was able to have a long weekend off and managed to get a lot done on what I call pre-pre-production for my graphic novel. I already had a rough outline and a lot of notes, so right now I'm working on a more detailed final outline, nailing down names for people, places & things, and organizing my reference material for everything.

Once that's complete, I can move into regular old pre-production where I filter all of the things that inspire me into my designs for everything that will appear in the story - all of the key characters, locations and props. I'll also take the final outline and use it to break down the story scene by scene, loosely laying out the pages and writing all of the dialogue. At that point, I'll have a pretty good blueprint to follow.

I'm an organizer and planner by nature and since this is going to be a long term project that will undoubtedly have stops and starts as my free time allows I need to have this guide that I can use to keep me on track.

It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm long overdue to try something like this. I look forward to the opportunity to do something 100% the way I want to do it. That way, the only person that can hold me back and the only person I can blame for failure is me.