From one great idea to another
Last month I had a great idea that would’ve worked wonders for my writing. That being said, this month, once more, most of my words have accumulated from journaling and translations. I am quite alright with it, if I’m honest with you.
You see, friend, I have pondered quite a lot about how to go forth with this adventure of mine. And don’t get me wrong, I love writing! It’s just that… I sometimes struggle with it greatly.
I see the scenery and characters extremely vividly in my mind’s eye, they are like a memory to me. But it is known to me that I sometimes, well heck, a lot of the time, fail to describe what I see on a satisfactory level. It has been this way since my dawn, even the writing school I got into had me by the neck with that.
And no, I will still not elaborate what that previous great idea was… Who knows, perhaps one day I shall use and abuse it!
So what is this new, even greater idea?
As you may know, I have been busy with art lately. I’ve worked on some assets for my husband to spice up his Rimworld runs. I’ve dabbled in pixel art. And now… Now I have found a crush I never thought I’d get together with.
I was never much of a comic person in my past, and to be honest, I’m not that now either. The most I read was some Donald Ducks when I was somewhere around 7 years old, and those things were pretty much the only thing I could be bothered to read. That is, before I became a ravenous monster that revelled in plowing through tomes like Cleopatra and the Dome.
It came to pass, however, that my husband urged me to put down into panels a bedtime story I once told him. (If you are not telling random stories to your family at night, what are you even doing with your life?!) And so, my current project began, sidelining even the asset creation for Rimworld for the moment.
All good things!
Writing is faster, by quite a large margin. All I have to do is sit down and regurgitate whatever it is I see on the paper. That’s about where the benefits end for me. The excessive polishing work, editing, proofing… While all of this is very much a fun activity to me, it takes hours upon hours of my time to make the words come out in an acceptable manner. And that’s not including the rounds the story has to do on the streets of judgment, mainly getting through the harsh evaluation of my husband.
With comics, I have none of the above problems. There’s not much language and paragraph structure to think of, and what is there can easily be viewed without much time spent on it. And the description problem from before? No more! If I learn to draw in a good enough manner, there is nothing I can’t show you. And that excites me above all.
Comics are a laboursome medium that can take ages to tell a story the length of one novel. No way in hell will I be able to pump out something as big as a 200-300 page story in a month by drawing it out – comics work differently. They work with keyframes. Which is yet another reason why I am so infatuated with them!
Not to mention, for some reason, my carpal tunnels like drawing more than writing.
The core of the story is within the keyframes
In a novel, we can ramble on to eternity. If a cup sitting on a bureau is important, we must describe it. If the hero punches the baddie in the face so hard their teeth fly out, we must put it to words. And then we go on to explain all the other things that happen, including thoughts, dialogue, and random happenings in the background. Not so much with comics.
Everything that would maybe take paragraphs to explain can be contained in one or two panels of a comic. Images are such a superior medium, it’s no wonder sayings like ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ came to be. This is such a heaven-sent for someone descriptionally challenged, like me!
And the other glorious thing? I’m learning a lot about what actually has a place in my narrative. Just for fun, I began making a comic flow for Rialar this month. You know, to see if it would work. And boy, it works! And whoa, I dropped so many things from the story that it seemingly became a skeleton once more. But that’s just it. In a comic, things keep happening. It’s all about getting to the other action, instead of meandering around like we tend to do in novels. And to me, that is a lesson I wish I had learned a decade ago.
So what now?
I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be a reason why I have yet to publish anything of my own. And as much as I dread to think of this – perhaps writing novels wasn’t the right medium for me. Afterall, I have not been struck by fatigue once, nor had a problem getting back on the horse for my comic project. With writing, this happens regularly, I procrastinate.
It can also be that this is the honeymoon phase of a new thing. That once I’m all drawn out, the excitement will die and I will once more be in the same predicament. I’d like to hope that isn’t the case, seeing as I have always been thrilled to draw my creations. I have a whole portfolio filled with all sorts of artworks from over the years! Art, while neglected, has always served as an outlet of beauty and the worlds inside.
That’s why I must put due effort into figuring out whether this comic thing is the thing for me. I realize it will make my progress with bringing my stories to this realm slower, but on the other hand, it may just make them that much sweeter. Plus let’s be real now, this much drawing can only make my other endeavours easier in the future. Think of the game assets!
WIP: DA!
As I said, I am now learning to make comics by, well, making a comic. It’s based on a story my husband requested a while back. His parameters were a miqo’te (cat person from FFXIV) and dice mechanics. You know, like in D&D (Dungeons & Dragons). So I whipped up a story of a cat-man strolling along and encountering a predator of the woods. Will the dice be on his side? Find out when I finish my first-ever 8-page-long comic!
DA! is currently in the sketching stage, and I am well on my way. Not too long ago I started on the 4th page, the halfway point, and as my skill and confidence grows I churn out the roughs faster. After that comes the inking and grayscale coloring, I can’t wait to see the pages come to life properly!
One mistake I made, however, was that I did not write a skeleton for this comic. I’m sort of floating around when it comes to dialogue and text, so I’ll need to polish that eventually. Right now, however, I am full speed on making the roughs!
Art Projects
Before the craziness with the comic project, I managed to create some original Rimworld pieces that fit the touched-up female body model. More about those in the April ArtLog!
In the Log, I will also talk a bit more about the process of making a comic, and how it has been for me. After all, I have learned quite a lot during this month! Every page I have something new to research and to figure out.
Game Development
Exciting news on the GameDev side of things! In this month’s DevLog, I talk a little bit about the enormous gap between me and my darling husband. He is a true wizard, and I am but a fledgling. The things he works on on a daily basis make my head spin… not to mention the fact that as a coder, for whom most of the work is thinking, he has bloody written ten times more than me. And his creations have a purpose, a function, and are in use!
Another morsel for you beautiful folks – I finally began the work on the SCaN Game Design Document. All I have to say is that for such a small, confined game, this thing really has a lot of things to consider within it! And I’m not kidding, it is as simple as I could make it, the game, I mean. I am so glad I didn’t listen to all the naysayers who crap on GDDs. This thing is going to be my lifeline!
The next steps
In the coming month, I plan to work on the comic project, DA!, as well as finish writing the GDD for SCaN. DA! Is my current main project, which means that if I have time after wifey and translation duties, I will work on DA! religiously. After that, if the hours are as plentiful as they tend to be for a lady like myself, I will work on the SCaN Document.
In the next phase of things, once DA! is finished, SCaN will become my main project, and perhaps I will finally finish my Forest Guardian pixel art. I am planning to start that from scratch as well, seeing as I have picked up some new things during my art journey.
Other than that, it’s more learning, more asset drawing, and plenty of gaming to wind down for me!