Howdy gang.
Aeolus #1 is out, if you haven't heard (and you probably haven't, because my PR is absolutely lousy). It looks good, if I do say so myself. Not bad, and it cost a hell of a lot less than Ian's Dream. Firstly, it has only sixteen pages, as opposed to ID's twenty-four; secondly, I made the cover material the same as the inside (28 lb copy bond, instead of 60 lb Bristol); and lastly, but definitely not least, I did my own InDesign work, which saved me sixty bucks! All in all, it came out to about $85.00 for sixty-two copies (twelve extra included) as opposed to $107.60 for fifty copies. And let me tell ya, the quality is awesome. Instead of doing the art completely by hand, I swallowed my pride (and every principle I thought I had) and did the hard stuff on the computer - shading and highlights, and mostly photographic backgrounds. Yep, it's cheating all right. And yep, I don't regret it one bit.
Well, maybe a teensy bit...in some dark corner of my soul, I might...
At any rate, things are going pretty well, for what it's worth. Aeolus #2 is currently stalled on page 4, owing to complications with positioning the damn characters. I have this problem where the characters will inexplicably jump twenty feet from panel to panel - they must have walked over there! Novel concept! - but apparently the audience gets "confused", so I have to show the character somehow walking over to the panel to press the button, or taking the remote control out of his pocket before he uses it to activate the thermonuclear device. Right now, the problem is that the bad guy is showing the good guy his new superweapon, which appears through a sliding door; unfortunately, that entire room seems to have appeared out of nowhere, according to the logic of the panels.
You have to remember that in comics, "Panel Logic" is everything. The logic of the author counts for nothing here: I think, "well, he needs a room, so here's a room" - the room is magically injected into the scene, and I think nothing is amiss. But according to the panel logic, however, the room should not exist at all - there is no theoretical space for it, no mention of it in previous panels - and so the audience, whose eyes are completely objective to the source material, thinks, "where the hell did that room come from?!" The only way to introduce a new room or logical space is to a) have the whole page be about movement from room to room, or b) introduce the concept of the new room (via a door, for instance) on one page and then show the room itself on the next. It is all about clear, divisible spaces - mental mansions, so to speak, where each room must fill its own space. This requires you to map out the space inhabited by the characters in advance, just as a thespian must know where everything is on a stage before he can effectively play his part. If there's a trap door, for instance, the actor must know where it is in order to a) disappear down or appear from within it when his part requires, and b) avoid falling through it and breaking his leg. Similarly, a mental map must contain information about all the "trap doors" involved, or else the logical space appears unreal or two-dimensional. You can show a Mona Lisa print behind the head of a character in one angle, but if you show him from a different angle, you'd better be damn sure you know where your Mona Lisa went, because your audience will already have a mental image of that space. Ultimately, if you don't attend to your mental spaces in sequential art, you'll come off as at best lazy and at worst inept, and your audience will lose faith and interest in your story.
That's the long way of saying that I have a job to do - mapping out this mental space for my characters to move through - and I don't have the gumption to do it. Partly because I've already planned out the scene, and abhor fundamental changes of this kind, and partly because I've already got so much to do with classes, and this feels like just another stupid drawing project right now. I know I'll come around; I really don't have a choice, if I'm going to meet my projected February 20th release date (Aeolus #3 should come out on March 20th - keep your fingers crossed). I guess I'd better get to work on that right now. Personally, of course, I'd rather be writing long-winded whiny blogs about it, but duty before pleasure...
Rick Out.
Aeolus #1 is out, if you haven't heard (and you probably haven't, because my PR is absolutely lousy). It looks good, if I do say so myself. Not bad, and it cost a hell of a lot less than Ian's Dream. Firstly, it has only sixteen pages, as opposed to ID's twenty-four; secondly, I made the cover material the same as the inside (28 lb copy bond, instead of 60 lb Bristol); and lastly, but definitely not least, I did my own InDesign work, which saved me sixty bucks! All in all, it came out to about $85.00 for sixty-two copies (twelve extra included) as opposed to $107.60 for fifty copies. And let me tell ya, the quality is awesome. Instead of doing the art completely by hand, I swallowed my pride (and every principle I thought I had) and did the hard stuff on the computer - shading and highlights, and mostly photographic backgrounds. Yep, it's cheating all right. And yep, I don't regret it one bit.
Well, maybe a teensy bit...in some dark corner of my soul, I might...
At any rate, things are going pretty well, for what it's worth. Aeolus #2 is currently stalled on page 4, owing to complications with positioning the damn characters. I have this problem where the characters will inexplicably jump twenty feet from panel to panel - they must have walked over there! Novel concept! - but apparently the audience gets "confused", so I have to show the character somehow walking over to the panel to press the button, or taking the remote control out of his pocket before he uses it to activate the thermonuclear device. Right now, the problem is that the bad guy is showing the good guy his new superweapon, which appears through a sliding door; unfortunately, that entire room seems to have appeared out of nowhere, according to the logic of the panels.
You have to remember that in comics, "Panel Logic" is everything. The logic of the author counts for nothing here: I think, "well, he needs a room, so here's a room" - the room is magically injected into the scene, and I think nothing is amiss. But according to the panel logic, however, the room should not exist at all - there is no theoretical space for it, no mention of it in previous panels - and so the audience, whose eyes are completely objective to the source material, thinks, "where the hell did that room come from?!" The only way to introduce a new room or logical space is to a) have the whole page be about movement from room to room, or b) introduce the concept of the new room (via a door, for instance) on one page and then show the room itself on the next. It is all about clear, divisible spaces - mental mansions, so to speak, where each room must fill its own space. This requires you to map out the space inhabited by the characters in advance, just as a thespian must know where everything is on a stage before he can effectively play his part. If there's a trap door, for instance, the actor must know where it is in order to a) disappear down or appear from within it when his part requires, and b) avoid falling through it and breaking his leg. Similarly, a mental map must contain information about all the "trap doors" involved, or else the logical space appears unreal or two-dimensional. You can show a Mona Lisa print behind the head of a character in one angle, but if you show him from a different angle, you'd better be damn sure you know where your Mona Lisa went, because your audience will already have a mental image of that space. Ultimately, if you don't attend to your mental spaces in sequential art, you'll come off as at best lazy and at worst inept, and your audience will lose faith and interest in your story.
That's the long way of saying that I have a job to do - mapping out this mental space for my characters to move through - and I don't have the gumption to do it. Partly because I've already planned out the scene, and abhor fundamental changes of this kind, and partly because I've already got so much to do with classes, and this feels like just another stupid drawing project right now. I know I'll come around; I really don't have a choice, if I'm going to meet my projected February 20th release date (Aeolus #3 should come out on March 20th - keep your fingers crossed). I guess I'd better get to work on that right now. Personally, of course, I'd rather be writing long-winded whiny blogs about it, but duty before pleasure...
Rick Out.
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