So this week was spent doing character designs. With an exhaustive list of 56 characters that need to be created, it's pretty easy to flip between characters as I build the library and as more ideas become clearer in my head. Like with the writing process, it's amazing how sometimes your pencil and pen take you in a direction that you didn't actually originally imagine. It just happens in front of you and comes from no where.
Each time I draw the character I get more comfortable with drawing them and new ideas manifest themselves to better flesh out the character and enhance their look. Hopefully by the time I have to draw them in the final pages I will have the proper feel of the characters.
For these particular drawings I decided to also play around with my water colours. The truth is I've not touched a paintbrush and gauche since 2002 or something like that, so to say I'm completely rusty is a little bit of an understatement. In fact I'd so go far as to say, I honestly suck major balls when it comes to painting at the moment from an already limited experience built earlier on in my life. I've not developed this skill at all and I can see how my line art has moved forward whereas my painted work has all but stagnated.
The other major point to make is that I don't have any of my books around me which basically teach me the basics of water colours. In stead I'm basically learning by doing...which is just going to mean taking a hell of a lot longer to get to a decent standard where I'm not ruining the drawing/sketch with my ghastly colour combinations.
This is a small peek. I'll be sharing more drawings as they come along.
I've decided to start work on the next record.I really enjoyed his latest work, which is very personal, and this follow up seems to be going down that route, although got reservations of a whole acoustic album... ✖
This week I moved on from character descriptions and turned my attentions to providing a more comprehensive set of descriptions for the world and environment that 'Aitus Moralis' will occupy. This was actually much more rewarding than the character descriptions exercise. Originally I was dreading it, because the worlds I imagine in my head are overtly complex and I don't think I have the skill to bring them to life, but really because I don't want them to suck.
Like before these descriptions are each giving a single sheet of paper that I start scribbling on, letting my imagination run wild. One of the things that I noticed however was in doing these descriptions this also went back and informed my story as well. I guess I was expecting my draft to expand and change during the next stage of the project, what i didn't expect was my description for a building to have a direct impact on the sequence of events, moving a particular scene from the middle of the book to the end (to create greater impact).
Which has got me thinking about the route taken for the story. It's not presented in a linear fashion, by any stretch of the imagination. Is that a good thing? Will it confuse my readers? Will both of them care (hey mum)? I also worry about whether or not readers will connect with the characters. I'm a great believer in letting your character's actions dictate what they are and who they are, as opposed to them telling you these facts. Letting you build your own view of the character. I've been watching movies more intently to understand what makes a great character.
The one thing that I've not done yet is begun my research and information gathering for these worlds. This is basically the next three months worth of work. I'm going to be drawing character sheets and building the worlds, both on paper and virtually.
One of the tools I'm keen to use for this project is SketchUp, which I've used several times during the design of most of my projects. It's an excellent tool, which has really grown over the years housing an impressive library of completed and available models.
Next week I'll be showing the first character designs so far and hopefully the start of the second draft (more on that next week as well).
Movie Mr Men - This made me smile a lot. Love how he's just constantly building this flickr set. Here are some of my favourites:
Chrome Pointer Ad - One of the cutest adverts to hit the web in a while. I think it's down to the music and the sound effects which really bring it to life.
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Love that photo of Adrian Newey, so I thought I'd share today seeing as the new Red Bull was unveiled.
As a teenager, I was never ashamed to pledge my allegiance to this show (the original version, not the shit that has turned up this year). Up until the second year of University, this show was golden - I'm still not.
Happy 9.02.10!
This week has been dedicated to creating the characters and writing their descriptions. These descriptions were both what the character look like, but also how they behave, how they speak and how I will be showing this in the final graphic novel. As a complete typography nut (not as some people on the internet, I'm sure but a nut nonetheless), the lettering in this book will hopefully be something memorable (whether it's good or not is debatable).
The thing that made an impression on me however was how the character descriptions were manifesting themselves. I basically wrote the name of every character on a separate piece of paper (the name sometimes was a description itself) and then I'd basically pick up a piece look at the 'name' and then start coming up with ideas and tangents. Everything would be written down, no matter how silly or ridiculous. I basically let my imagination flow, like a mind map.
Several times I'd write where the inspiration for this particular character was coming from. Was it a movie, was it a costume, was it an historical figure, all of this was written down. At this stage I'm not worried about the research as I am about putting down ideas down on paper. The research can come in the next stage of the design, as this is still all the early concept stage. These descriptions actually then inform the original draft script as it adds another layer to the story.
'Aitus Moralis' has over 50 characters that I have to design. Sometimes the characters would occupy several pages of description, while others were merely a couple of paragraphs. The amount presented is irrelevant; this is all about getting a base from which to start from.Some are obviously more important than others, but they all need to be designed in one way or another, but like lightning, ideas struck and characters were born.
Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling Conversation.This was my favourite of the thirteen. ✖
Having completed my first 'visual' draft this week, I took a few days off and then began with the next step in the process, character and environment descriptions. Much like my draft this particular exercise began by going through the entire draft and recording the different types of characters that I would have to design and the sets/environments that they would be interacting in.
The idea is to basically brainstorm as much of this world as possible, by breaking down everything into pieces my brain can focus on. This whole process has been just that, breaking it all down into smaller pieces that work for me. This process may very well be completely ridiculous to someone else, but for me it works. The ideas keep flowing. Some of them are great, some of them are crap, but the essence of this is to get every onto paper. Let the idea breathe a bit. Let the idea have a form, even if it's just something written onto a piece of paper and dies there.
Ideas are like sperm. 90% are going in the wrong direction and 10% are fighting the uphill battle to get to the egg. This process brings those 10% into contention, rather than having all 100% bottled up and waiting to explode...ok I think I might have drawn that analogy a bit far, but hopefully you get my meaning.
Each character or environment has got a page, or a series of pages dedicated for development. This is where the research for each character begins. Magazine clippings, downloaded photos, articles, whatever all get catalogued at this stage to allow for when I start designing the character's appearance this task is relatively straight forward. I'm sure that during the drawing process more ideas will bubble to the top, but they'll only have bubbled after I'd gotten everything out there and let it ferment for a few days.
In this, the first volume of 'Aitus Moralis', I currently have between 25-35 characters to design. Some obviously are more important than others, but even the simple ones will probably take a good deal of research. This trifecta of documents 'Visual Script', the Character Descriptions and the Environment Descriptions provide me with all the founding blocks I need to create my first readable draft (more on this in future posts) and a series of accompanying character design sheets for when the final art is being created.
