Step # 2

Well, I know a couple of methods of going about this next step, in my studio I have a couple of examples from workmates. You have those who have the action written page by page, setting the breaks already on the script, so that you can dive into the storyboard without a care in the world, then there are those who just flesh out the story a sequence at a time, feeling their way through the work’s progress. There’s even the option of going page by page without net, having everything in your head and just making (and probably remaking) a lot of the decisions on the spot.

I’m going with the way I feel is the most effective, or at least the one that’s working for me. Writing the story, I give myself some degree of leverage on some decisions and plot points that sometimes don’t come out on the first draft. Since I’m a one man team on this one, I know where to leave appropriate blanks to fill on the actual pages or even in post-production, so after writing the gross of the story and the action, I set up the sequences with a number of pages attributed to each one, within the total number allotted to this first chapter.

I’m keeping these numbers flexible, leaving a couple of pages out again for leverage.

Having each sequence set, I then write one line summaries of the action on each page, which will guide me through the storyboard stage.

With the action all thought out, I then map out the whole thing in storyboard thumbnails.

That’s the next step.

9:55 PM - 11/22/2008 - comments {0} - post comment

Step # 1

Okay, so let's start with the first notions of what the story is and why I'm doing it.

Over the past months, I've been devouring a couple of manga series, namely the masterpiece Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, and Vagabond, by Takehiko Inoue, and, in the process, gaining a whole bunch of respect about the black and white format and the particular pace of Manga storytelling.

Coming from a gruelling concept design job and wanting to spend a bit of time in my own little world, I jumped at the chance of chaining myself to my drawing table to come up with a story which drank from those inspirations.

So, I dusted off an idea I had in the back of my mind about new beginnings on a post-apocalyptic Earth and a man plagued with an ever present dark side, and got busy.

After brainstorming over concepts that started sprouting from everywhere, I realized the idea I had was too big (and mainly that I was having too much fun) for a single book, so I decided to let the story take the space it needed to grow, instead of trying to constrict all I wanted to tell in a relatively small amount of pages, or worst yet, edit out too many elements of it.

So, I'm going with an open story, set up in chapters of 60 pages each, each with a specific theme and pivotal counterpart to the main character.

That's the plan.

On to the next step, structuring the first chapter and breaking the action into sequences and the sequences into pages.

11:01 PM - 11/14/2008 - comments {0} - post comment

Step # 0

Hi.

This is the first post of a new blog I'm dedicating to the making of my first self-published sequential story.

In this blog I hope to show how the work progresses and how I approach the business of making sequential pages.

This is not in any way a tutorial, just a sharing of the experience.
Comments and feedback are highly encouraged, so please, feel free to give me your opinion, within some boundaries of general common sense.

Stick around for the next step.

2:37 PM - 11/14/2008 - comments {0} - post comment