are these idea's realistic or should I drop them?

[keldon]

HelpHelpHelp!!!!

No really, Together with a friend of mine I'm trying to make a comic book. I'm writing the story, and he will draw and Ink it. I have a few Ideas, but I don't know if it is cummon to use or misunderstood.

1. In my story the two main characters think differently. One character is very inventive, the other thinks really one-lined (sorry, english is not my first language, spelling is :( ) I had the Idea to make the pictures for the person that thinks very creative more colourfull than the pics for the other person. In Dutch, when someone thinks "in black in white" it is for him OR good , OR bad, nothing in between. Is that the same in English, and if yes, can I make that visual by making the illustrations concidering that person in graytones???

2. Is it realistic to make the story relatively complicated? My original idea was to keep the story as simple as possible, but the story seems to evolve itself, and small details keep on coming out by itself , if you know what I mean. I wrote a few short stories before, only text, but that's a lot easier. Can I really give a character a lot of toughts, or will that be boring after a while?
The idea is to make some kind of psychological comic, the main character will be relatively evil, but I want the reader (or viewer) to get compassion for his situation.

3. Can I make a variaton in the original comic concept? Lets say one third of a page filled with pictures, one third written text, and than the last one third of the page again filled with pictures? or a combination of photography and illustration? Backgrounds partly photographed, partly illustrated?

Maybe you all laugh out loud about this, but I want to be original, doing something nobody else did before. What you guys/girls think. Are these ideas realistic or ready for the garbage can?

[xadrian]

First of all, for english being your 2nd language (or third or 5th) your command of it is better than most here, don't worry about that.

Second, you're idea is coming across perfectly and I think the idea has merit. Something to consider though is that you don't want to get to caught up in how you want your story to be view or read so much as first getting a story told. By that I mean, make sure you have a story to tell. I too have an idea on how to tell a story and I get myred in the how and I forget that my story goes nowhere. If you've got a solid plot with very few holes, then I'd start figuring out how to tell it.

As far as the art goes, that's really up to your friend too. You can imagine all you want, but remember it's his hand and eye doing the work and it will only approximately get done what you want. Another reason to make sure the story is good first, then the style of telling the story.

But, the idea is cool. I like the two opposing mind sets pitted against each other. And if you wanted, you could make the linear (the word you're looking for) character all black and white, not even grey. Push it to the extreme. The creative mind could be very psychedelic and organic, lots of flowing lines and swirls and tangential thought.

It's a fascinating idea and I'd like to see how you do it.

[RichieD]

1. Yes and I think it would be a good idea.

2. The only answer that I have for this one is, if you think you can make it interesting, go for it. As you write it you can probably tell when it gets boring and adjust accordingly.

3. Sure you can, lots of people do.

[Vendetta]

the only thing... well two things, I would say are...

1) In a comic, you can do pretty much anything you can think of as long as it tells the story and the people reading can understand it. In one incarnation of Grendel (god bless Matt Wagner) the story was a lot of pictures with paragraphs of text telling it. It was very well done and very easy to understand. The key? He is a brilliant writer. Just be sure you really know what you want to accomplish and secondly make sure your artist REALLY understands what you are trying to accomplish. If he/she doesn't get it, it really wont translate well on the page... so, you are somewhat hindered (or enabled) by your artist.

2) When you change your "style" of presentation (ie. the vivid colors of the one character, the more "black and white" of the other) be VERY sure that we (the audiance) absolutely understand from whose perspective we are "seeing" the story unfold. You will confuse people horribly if they are not certain from whose eyes we are seeing things happen. This is a subtle thing that not everyone will catch and if there is any confusion about it, many who would otherwise catch it will miss out and that will ruin your story as people wonder why the art is varried.

[theory9]

Originally posted by xadrian
First of all, for english being your 2nd language (or third or 5th) your command of it is better than most here, don't worry about that.

That bird's talkin' 'bout me!
*ahem*

Back to the questions at hand:

1) I think that's a good idea. I remember David Mack doing something like this in an arc of Daredevil, where most of the book was painted save the opening sequence, which was from the POV of a small boy, and more child-like as a result.

2) It depends on whether or not you have page restrictions. If you, or someone you know, has the money to do a longer story, I think it would be worth exploring.

3) Dave McKean, David Mack and Bill Sienkiewicz have all done something like this before, but there isn't any reason why you shouldn't try it. I find this type of storytelling (I call it "multimedia", but there may be another term) to be very interesting.

Good luck!

[keldon]

Thanks u all for the crits. I'm not really far with the story yet, but I'm slowly getting there.

Vendetta; you're right about the confusion I think. Think if I go and play with 'strange' colour variations, I do just one and not all of them. That wouldn't be too hard to understand, even for the not-so-bright people (lot's of people here smoke lot's of weed :o lol )
we really doubted about whether we'dd try to make more of a written book with cartoonish illustration supporting it or a comic book with blocks of text supporting it, if you know what I mean.

and another question for you; Is it cummon in a comic book to really show things from somebody's POV? I mean, you don't really see much comics with a first person view. I think that would be really confusing. Can I make that easy to understand?

Theory9; We actually haven't thought about publishing at all. Is there a standard number of pages in a comic book? And we have another problem. We live in the Netherlands, not so many inhabitants, so a small group of comic buyers, and a small market for comic writers... the only thing that sells here are regular books. ;dvl;

this is the first real project for the both of us. Once I get all my scribbly pages together and make one story of it, I'll post some of it here, for crit purposes.

[keldon]

he xadrian, checked you're site out. Very dope. only one small thing (sorry, cant help mentioning it.) On your page for avangers artjam in the middle picture a character gets a arm in his back (you know what I mean right?) The hand on the arm contains 6 fingers in stead of 5 on the other frames. Ever noticed? except from that (y) site!

[banshee]

sounds like a great idea :) good luck!

as the others have said, story telling is the key. and then it translate over to the ability of your artist.


I am from Malaysia where english is the 2nd language amongst all the other asian languages hehehe and my grammar does need a looooooooooooot of work many a time so dont get disheartened! if english is a concern, the good thing is that spellcheckers can be used or you cld get someone who reads good english to help you edit your stuff.

We'd love to see snippets of your script if you wish, or even of the work in progress :)

good luck!
B.

[banshee]

ooops my bad!
WELCOME to PJ and thewritersdesk :)


I shld have said that first thing but I am kinda blur as many ppl will tell u.

I think I shld take a nap when my kids do lol

ahhh signs of age!

B.

[Vendetta]

I dub thee, Lady Banshee, official welcoming committee

[banshee]

hehehehe thank u, Sir Ven!
<attempts a curtsey but falls over cos I am so not graceful>

B.

[Mark]

Originally posted by keldon
and another question for you; Is it cummon in a comic book to really show things from somebody's POV? I mean, you don't really see much comics with a first person view. I think that would be really confusing. Can I make that easy to understand?

It used to be that most comics were written in third-person objective. However, in recent years, here in the United States, it has become fashionable to replace thought balloons with captions that indicate a character's inner voice. That effectively makes a story first person.

I don't know why this trend emerged. Personally, I prefer captions that are used to convey exposition, and find those stream-of-consciousness captions unnecessarily confusing and annoying.

But, to each his own.

[keldon]

don't mind that blurry of ya, banshee. Me is king of Blurrinesia, And I live in Fuzzyville! :D

You write comics for a living? I tried to make a living of my art, but there are so many artists here, it's virtually impossible. Back to the classroom 4 me, next year. I've given myself 'till august to finish the storyboard for the too come comic.

I'll translate my storyboard piece by piece and publish it here. All crits are more than welcome!

By the way, this site is marvelous. I didn't have a guildeline for the writing, now I do! :D

KelDOn

[banshee]

hehehe :) thank u!

no, not comic writing for a living, do freelance writing, regular stuff and was a PA for a law partner for a time among other things. My main job now is caring for me lil kiddies! and get writing down inbtwn lol

Cuddly is my husband who also posts here, he's an artist (although not professional as yet)..

looking fwd to seeing what comes thru!

B.