Well it's been a strange old week. Here's the report.
What have I done?
Since last week I have drawn another 6 pages. It's going well! I've been inking the third part of this story, with the plan of colouring it later on so I can streamline the process. This is something I'd never do with Silverstar because the colour process on that story is so intense. For Brightspirit, which is a children's book, the colouring is simpler and be extension quicker.
As I'm progressing on the story I am noticing that the panels are a little more detailed than the first part of the story. I'm intentionally making it less detailed and less correctly proportioned than Silverstar. I did expect things to change a little, and I'm pleased with how the characters and panels are looking. Here are some for you.
I've also drawn a lot of food and let me tell you I am glad that is over! It's been great to design and draw the different costumes and characters I've had in my head for years. I can't wait to see it in colour.
One thing I've struggled with is the dancing poses. Dancing is a big part of the story, and so I've needed to draw lots of various poses. It's not always been easy but I think I've succeeded in getting them right. One thing is usually use if I need and comples pose or a pose from a strange angle on Silverstar are the 3D poseable figures in CSP. In that comic the characters are fairly well proportioned, but in Brightspirit they are not. They all have bigger heads and smaller bodies. I did use the models for one scene and while I did get away with it, it doesn't work for every case.
He's called Bill and he makes lots of cool things, mainly out of beads and rubbish. It's fascinating to watch him sketch his ideas and assemble the junk he has into a finished model. All the things he makes are connected to a world he has invented and in each episode he tells the lore of what he has made. Great fun.
Storytelling secrets.
I promised more 5th character ideas this week, and I want to share 2 examples of how this has been used.
The characters in a story exist in a location, and how they interact with that location has an impact on what they do. As a writer or artist, it is your job to populate the location with things that can help or hinder the protagonist, giving the story more excitement and action. Usually, locations are distinctive and full of stuff, but even a plain empty white room can have meaning and character. It is the amount of stuff you fill a location with and the amount of interaction with the characters, the reader or both that determines how much of a player your location will be.
For example, a fairly passive location/character would be the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean. For Jack Sparrow, the ship is his motivation, and he places tremendous value on it, and so do we as the audience. For Barbossa it is almost a prison, and a means to an end, and the value is different but still meaningful. For almost everyone else, the ship is something to be feared and again has different value. Now, imagine this movie with any other ship, and it doesn’t quite work. The Black Pearl doesn’t really DO anything, but the audience knows when it is around, and the way different characters talk about it and interact with it gives the audience a sense of importance to the location, so we begin to see it as more of a character than just a ship. The other ships in the movie are just that, ships to get form A-B. The Black Pearl is valued, and so is a character in its own right.
Another example is the island from LOST. The island is very mysterious and has lots of factors that make it a character in the show, not least its magical nature which is talked about often by the other characters. The island has lots of strange inhabitants who can give us clues to the mysteries surrounding the island, from the villainous Others to the cryptic Jacob, these inhabitants all see the island differently and react to the things that happen in different ways. Ben Linus for example, views the island a living thing, and battles with loving and hating the island in equal measure. Other characters want to destroy it, others want to protect it, which are all values transposed onto the viewer. We are never asked to pick sides, but how these different factions view the island gives is reason to view it as a character. Another thing LOST does is give the island personality though the visuals and events of the show. The fact that there are polar bears on a tropical island, or the smoke monster crashing around the jungle, and even the hatch which stops the island from exploding all add to the developing personality of the island.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on Monday for more Silverstar!
