Dartura & Dragon

From Little Knight.

Rework: Page 8

I started drawing the Little Knight book over 19 months ago and it's very encouraging the amount of improvement I've seen in myself. I've been drawing day in and day out at work for years already, but drawing for yourself in one consistent style all the time you figure out more about that style.

When I started this project the idea was to do it in a more simple style but at first the concept of simple threw me. I had only drawn most of these characters a few times and only a dozen or so illustrations in this style. Now I'm almost 150 pages into the comic and I not only better understand the style, but also what I want from my characters and my drawings.

At first simple meant less anatomy, bolder lines and shapes with the idea to sell the story with character design and solid storytelling and avoiding over rendering things, a concern of mine. 

The above panels show a page from the first week of drawing the book. I remember I even wrestled with the full figure of Odric. He's marching towards his enemy, angrily calling him out. I remember not being 100% about the final but didn't want to waste time and kept moving forward. 

I saw this page recently, and as a reward for working hard I allowed myself to spend some time redoing the figures. (Yes, I reward my work with more work because fun is fun.) When I tell people I plan on redoing a lot of the figures from the first 20 or so pages of the book I often get warned about falling into that trap. Redoing pages can keep things from ever getting done and can become a never ending process. I've seen this happen and have done it before myself. 

 Now ask any artist and they'd probably be willing to redo many pages they've done before. I've seen lots of comics where the creator gets a better handle of drawing his characters and I like seeing that evolution. Look at early Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts or Usagi Yojimbo. It's not wildly different but you can tell they're still getting a handle on it. However, with all I have learned about drawing my characters and my style, and with the idea of keeping things consistent for the final product, I still plan on touching up my characters in the early pages. It won't even be too time consuming because I did the inks digitally

Here's the new version of the two panels from Page 8 that I redrew on Friday. I think it's much more bold and powerful. There is much more implied anatomy and shape to the figure. Plus it's just a more interesting drawing. Same with the eyes. I didn't feel like I needed to redraw that panel, but I wanted to see how much better it would look if I did. It took about half the time as it did the first time, probably 15 minutes, and I think it's a major improvement too. 

Still a simple style but instead I am using the simplicity to my benefit. Implied anatomy gives the figure more shape and more bulk, and the expression is more exaggerated and interesting. Both add to the character and the storytelling so it's win/win.

If you enlarge the pictures on Blogspot you can toggle between the two and see the differences. 

"What in the Kings name is this!?"

'Little Knight and the Scimitar of Sages'

Pg 137

Pencils

Set Design - The Swamp

Here is the set for a scene in 'Little Knight' I designed. I did it in photoshop layers so I could see behind the foreground elements for future reference.

I added notes to block out the scene on their own layer too. When I lay it out into comic pages the action might change and you might not even get to see everything I added in this drawing but it's a concept drawing. I try to get a lot of ideas out there, even if I don't use them all, or just hint at them, I want to know whats going on in my location. 

The best is sometimes after you design a set you see some fun places to take an action scene or a cool shot you can use. It's fun to explore a made up place. 

And here's the frog fisherman that I decided is actually a toad.

Designing a nature set can be really fun because of all the organic shapes. When designing a tree you just throw down a few lines and let them go where they may. 

Character Design - Handsome Cap'n Jon Fathom

Handsome Jon Fathom, Captain of The Mermaids Booty. Just a little character design for something coming down the pipe line. I really love doing character design, and I love making character sheets in Photoshop where I can make different layers with coats and hats and other accessories.

Storytelling: Decisions and Choices.

"I know I drive some people crazy with what seems to be ridiculous optimism, but it has always worked out for me." - Jim Henson

Recently I had a conversation on my Facebook with a friend. I realized it a little to late into the conversation that he wouldn't be able to see my viewpoint and the coversation ended. However it brought me to an interesting question. "When do you stop demanding things of your stories and start sympathizing with the storyteller?"

What makes a good story or good storytelling is very subjective because preference is involved. I don't expect John Q Public to understand it because it's his entertainment. But for me and for other storytellers, be it writers, artists, directors of any storytelling medium I feel like there should be some understanding of the subjectiveness of story.

I see a lot of movies and TV and read a lot of comics. I consume story as most people do, but I feel like that most people don't respect them. The hours of work and process are thrown away as garbage or elevated to gold, sometimes with only the viewing of a trailer. It seems manic and uneven, even though the quality usually does get the recognition and hopefully the money it deserves and the crap usually get ignored. The internet makes the process worse however. I feel like horribly dumb things are said and then adopted at mass, each pretending they came up with the observation. I cringe inside every time someone complains about the lense flares of Star Trek, or call the new Spider-man movie "Twilight Spider-man." I know it doesn't matter and I know it's silly, but that's just me.

To a consumer a story is one thing, a series of decisions.

Decisions, Decisions

Decisions are divisive. Which is unfortunate because all any story is just a series of decisions. I don't mean by the characters, though a satisfying story should have characters making decisions. You don't want them just riding through a roller coaster of plot. There are decisions made for every single thing you see in a story. 

Say you are making a Spider-man movie. You have a choice right away, "How light or dark do I make this movie? What is the tone?" Sam Raimi went one way, Mark Webb is going another. A better example is Batman because there are 4 types of live-action Batman movies in existence so far. You have the campy-ness of the 60's, the dark grittyness of Burton, the Schumacher ones which are a campy/dark combo, and Nolans that are "realistic-ish." That was possibly the first decision for those movies, or at least the first one that influences the consumer.

Then you have character decisions, plot decisions, pacing decisions, theme decisions all the way down to costume decisions, scenic decisions, etcetera. 

And after all these billions of decisions are made you have a story and people consume it.

"It's easy to damn a man when you see his life as a series of decisions. It's much easier to forgive him when you see it as a series of choices." 

I watch everything as a series of choices. I try to see the choices as I consume stories. I try to understand the ones they make, the ones they dont and see what I would have done. My goal as a storyteller is to learn from their decisions whether I like them or I don't. But even if I am not crazy about a decision in a story, I try to see if I can respect it.

A few examples of this.

Rodney Lanternfield

1. The Green Lantern movie was hated by so many people. I still don't understand this. I thought it was on par with Thor. It was obviously a movie aimed more at kids, as it was light hearted and whimsical. It had a simple linear structure and hit all the normal notes you would hit. I thought it was beautiful (including on earth which is more than you can say about Thor) and did a great job simplifying the lore of GL for a mass audience. I feel like they should have folded the heel-turn of Sinestro into the climax just to add some layers to make a simple conclusion more interesting. But that's part of my storytelling theory (or opinion, if you will) that I will explain in future posts.
2. The Walking Dead show was generally liked but I hear a lot of complaints about it, especially the final episode of the first season. I thought it was a quality episode. I understand why you would have that episode and why you would need it. The complaints I heard were all from people who read the comics or love zombie movies and already know the zombie rules, which I think is selfish. This show is a new thing for new and old consumers and sometimes you need to close an option, e.g. a cure, for a story to go in so people don't start hoping for it. That's what that episode was, and that's what that show needed.
3. Toy Story 3 won Academy Awards and I've even heard "BEST TOY STORY EVER" bandied about. I feel like a lot of the decisions in this movie were weak and not thought out enough. The themes explored were almost exactly the same as the 2nd Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear was barely utilized and had no character arc, and the elongated threat of death at the end really seemed forced. It just made me realize they are just toys, which ruined the premise of "magic toys understanding their job is to make children happy" for me. Week choices degrading the basic premis of the whole series. Now it's not a horrible movie or anything, but I thought it sunk it well below the other two movies.
4. I have friends who love older comics and hate modern comics indiscriminately. An example would be someone who thinks Joe Quesada ruined Marvel comics and that the 90's ruined the industry. I think comics today are far better than they ever have been in many ways, especially in storytelling, but that doesn't mean that old comics are just hot garbage. The substance and style of Marvel comics have changed a lot, and I can understand if those changes make modern comics different than the product someone would want, but I do think that Joe Quesada (for example) has done nothing but makeMarvel comics consistently good and interesting creatively, and has done a lot for getting better brand recognition across the world. Marvel has done a great job, but it's too bad if it's not someones cup of tea anymore. You still have all your old comics. I still have Toy Story 2.

I am not trying to say I love everything and I am not trying to say that everything is good. I do try to enter everything as blank as possible and respect the product for what it is, the decisions it made, and the reasons it did it. To me it just seems like the way to learn the most as a storyteller from other storytellers.

In conclusion, (I love saying in conclusion) I wanted to start talking about storytelling with this subject because I feel like it will be a good reference point to all aspects of storytelling I could ever discuss. The most fun part about creating comics for me often is seeing my decisions and trying to find all the different choices before I make my decisions. I plan to explore more of my storytelling theories in future blog posts, some of which I've touched upon lightly in this one. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have or anything you want me to explain further. And if you don't care I will always try to post some purty pictures with blog posts, and don't feel bad if you just want to check them out and not read anything. I surely can understand that.

Tree of Orna

The last few weeks I've been designing this set piece for Little Knight. I was excited about this idea when I wrote it in the script but was good and didn't do any design work until I got to it. Turns out it was a good idea to wait, because designing something new always invigorates my creativity. 

Outside view of the Tree of Orna, a mysterious giant tree in the middle of a clearing in the dangerous woods.

Citizens of the Tree of Orna

Early pencil sketch of the ground floor, and the first time I came up with the idea of having a source of water inside the tree. I wanted winding stairs and pathways that go up the inside of the tree to look like a vertical city block or something.

 The power and light source for the village is the glowing Orb of Orna at the top of the tree. It is also the source of the water, and is just above the homes of the Ornans that go into the branches. The idea of the water being more than a decorative thing started to come to mind here.

Cutaway of the Tree to show the pencils of the finalized designs. You can see here now the water goes a long the center, and also acts like a magical elevator for the Ornan's. I love drawing an entire place with people who are just living their lives, their little shops and homes, and the way their village works (magic).