#kinocomix
Text
devlog 17: things my therapist told me
the script for TSTW is still coming along. the first couple of scenes are the most sensitive ones because they effectively have to hook the reader when little has happened in the story, so I can confidently say that those 8 scenes have been polished enough that I don’t have to worry about them anymore. Now, the main plot begins.
here’s the soundtrack for the rest of this devlog:
youtube
I don’t think there could ever be a fully professional way to talk about the things that heavily affected you as a kid. As an adult, I had to wrestle with the fact that there’s never really a good time to talk about feelings and be happy. There’s always someone in the world suffering more than you, someone dying and something terrible happening to the children of a country being genocided by zionism (free palestine).
Today I’m going to talk about the themes at play in “The criminal mastermind’s pocket diary”, the project I’m working on while writing the script for my other comic, which is coming along well. While a lot of what I’m going to talk about will pale in comparison to the suffering of others in the world, I find it valuable to remember that in order to fight the dragons that plague the world we must confront and quell the evil within each and every one of us.
With that in mind, one thing I haven’t mentioned about the central point of killouette is that in more than one way, her experience is very much my own. Growing up in Beyrouth it seemed like there was one of three options: you’re either born with money in which case your safety can be bought via being in safer areas and schools, or you’re in a middle/lower class area where you’re stuck with the other two choices. One is to pass the time on the street and acquire the culture thereof, the other is to be an indoor kid. My parents, who had good intentions, decided that the best course of action to not have me become a thug was to never let me leave the house except to go to school or family outings. Combine that with a poor financial situation and a tiny house, it meant that growing up I didn’t have the internet, and could rarely take up the space required to do activities. Doing something as simple as reading a book was complicated because most of our books were stored in the sofas which were designed to maximize what we could do in our tiny house. It doesn’t end there, you see my mother has always been a clean freak, so she valued tidiness over most other things. Now imagine all that for a second. An understimulated child, often told they’re “gifted” who could never explore the world or do many things inside either. you can see how that’s a recipe for someone with the personality of a blank sheet of printer paper.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. I still had some fun because I, in addition to being cursed with the gifted label, had an overactive imagination. So the underside of beds became forts, and broken appliances became experiments. The few friends I had at school became a window into the outside… I eventually became a normal human being but there’s something about that entire period in my life that made me feel very bitter towards my parents. Why were you throwing your anxieties onto me? Why couldn’t I just join the scouts? Why couldn’t I stay over at a friend’s house for longer than two hours? Looking back at all of that having gone to therapy I’m thankful for it. I don’t think I would have fallen madly in love with the craft of comics had it not been for me overcompensating for all those missed years. Part of me really wants to heal that inner kid in my head who still wishes for some adventure though. That’s killouette.
Killouette’s parents are much like mine. Not evil, just a little overprotective. Projecting just enough that it’ll seep into killouette’s behavior as an adult. But now, as a kid, I’m giving her something that I wished I had when I was a child: privacy and space. Killouette has her own room and her parents don’t feel the need to constantly police her as long as she’s in there. That might not seem like much, but I think that would be enough for a smart kid to do some pretty amazing things.
you may have also noticed that Killouette doesn’t have any noteworthy character flaws, and it should be obvious at this point that the goal of me making this is in part to empower her. With that being said I am fully aware that while my experience is relatively common, it’s far from universal. This is why the cast is so varied: each child represents to some extent a different way of growing up. I can’t do them all sadly, but I think the grounds will be covered pretty well with what we have.
there’s also other kids to consider, so I have some things I want to explore with them as well. I don’t want to spoil too much but here’s a quick fire round: Talbas has anger issues because of neglect and video games. bata has well meaning parents but the constant taunting and threats of being sent to far away places cause anxiety in the way she acts. motsik has the most ass, dogshit parents. 0/10 not having a good time. abuse central, destination anywhere else. falefil is spoiled and his parents haven’t taught him certain things about respect and money. that tends to influence his behavior. zmik is the closest to killouette, except he is a version of her closer to me allowed to leave the house. he’s included in the cast partially as a way for me to extent empathy to a younger me, but also for anyone who might be going through something similar to what i did as a kid. lastly there’s claude. claude is for all intents and purposes, if we were to put her in a realistic framework, some weird mish mash of immigrant and orphan child genius. i imagine claude would experience some alienation from some people, but i’m not worried about the story getting sidetracked since her friends have her back and the adults in the story are losers anyways.
On a more general note, I’ve been noticing how my approach to writing has been evolving to suit whatever project I'm currently working on. It was weird at first cause I thought a writing technique is something that you’re just stuck with. With prior comics for example the main concern was always “how do I portray what’s happening in the most raw way possible” whereas with TSTW it’s more “let’s try to be more efficient with the framing of the ideas, as long as it feels right”. With Killouette, it’s not about showing things in the most realistic way possible because if that was the case, for starters this amount of genius kids would not be two buildings apart in some suburb in beyrouth and killouette would not be able to hide the amount of things she does. but that’s not the point. a bunch of what happens in the story could happen with real kids in real life, and the point of the book is to capture a young sense of ambition and wonder. the type of mischief that leaves you laughing and being impressed instead of wondering what’s happening in the world. I’m not here to tell you about kids committing actual awful actions, I'm here to show you kids having a good time despite it all. that nothing can stop life and the desire for it.
If the kids of Palestine can still find it in them to laugh and have fun, the least I can do is have some imaginary abused kids triumph over their circumstances.
next week, we’ll be improvising some doodads and seeing how we can recycle previous unused work.
devlog updates on Tuesdays.
4 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Top 100 Digital Artists of 2020-2021
Camito Hatsune & Excelli’s top pick for their favorite 100 underrated digital artist & graphic designers of 2020 & 2021 from numerous content creation platforms.
The following list ranges from different media such as character design, concept art, photography, 2D & 3D modules & sculptures, minimal abstract, visual design, game development & graphics, comics, and more!
Disclaimer: These artists are NOT ranked by numerical order.
Twitter:
Rafa Draws: https://twitter.com/DrawsRafa?s=20
Gigglecorp: https://twitter.com/GIGGLECORP?s=20
Gizem Flame: https://twitter.com/gizem_flame?s=20
Cyaboron: https://twitter.com/cyaboron?s=20
JoeyRedPanda: https://twitter.com/joeyredpanda?s=20
Ashtastica: https://twitter.com/Ashtastica?s=20
Aspen: https://twitter.com/whynotaspen?s=20
Raj | Comma: https://twitter.com/DTMKR9?s=20
Jared Rose-Kim: https://twitter.com/The_JRockMan?s=20
melobuniiP: https://twitter.com/MelobuniiP?s=20
Miel (Honey Violets): https://twitter.com/honeyviolets?s=20
JannyAqua: https://twitter.com/JannyAqua?s=20
ElijahFoxArts: https://twitter.com/elijahfoxarts?s=20
Pink Cynicism: https://mobile.twitter.com/PinkCynicism
Kitty2Katness: https://twitter.com/kitty2katniss?s=20
Forge King: https://twitter.com/PlaguePankek?s=20
Crow Vampyric: https://twitter.com/vampyricTW?s=20
Mutraex: https://twitter.com/mutraex?s=20
Esh (Fiction Addiction): https://twitter.com/Esh_FicAddict?s=20
Lau | Orfeoarte : https://twitter.com/orfeoarte?s=20
Sleeptastic: https://twitter.com/ona_jones?s=20
No Man’s Dream: https://twitter.com/No_MansDream?s=20
Caerball: https://twitter.com/caerball?s=20
Djeb: https://twitter.com/Djebrayass?s=20
Cosmic Flora: https://twitter.com/cosmic_flora?s=20
Instagram:
Punkaroonio: https://www.instagram.com/punkaroonio/
Luana Draws: https://www.instagram.com/luana.draws_/
Mad No Posts: https://www.instagram.com/mad.no.post/
ArtsyAsukka: https://www.instagram.com/artsy.asukaa/
AlitoSketch: https://www.instagram.com/alitosketch/
Muso Creation: https://www.instagram.com/muso_creation/
Deadsunedits: https://www.instagram.com/deadsunedits/
James McDonagh: https://www.instagram.com/_james_mcdonagh_/
Jeano !: https://www.instagram.com/jeano.le.plic/
Renee (Art Therapy): https://www.instagram.com/renee.is.drawing/
Gabs On Film: https://www.instagram.com/gabssonfilm/
Azzyium: https://www.instagram.com/azzyium/
Atom – The Game: https://www.instagram.com/atom.thegame/
Expression Mindart: https://www.instagram.com/expression.mindartist/
Yun Illumo Design: https://www.instagram.com/yun_illumo_design/
The Blot Artist: https://www.instagram.com/theblotartist/
Koiichi Art: https://www.instagram.com/_koiichi.art/
Cartoon Chance: https://www.instagram.com/cartoonchance/
Tyranttitan: https://www.instagram.com/tyranttitan21/
Ryewha0312: https://www.instagram.com/ryewha0312/
Souridealait: https://www.instagram.com/souridelait/
Father Grunge: https://www.instagram.com/father.grunge/
Kreapex: https://www.instagram.com/kreapex/
Wanderdustchan: https://www.instagram.com/wanderdustchan/
Garabato Pictorico: https://www.instagram.com/garabatopictorico/
Behance:
HeraDollie: https://www.deviantart.com/heradollie
Gabela Photos: https://www.behance.net/gabelaph
Sand Pipper: https://www.behance.net/Blazire
Lorraine Lunasin: https://www.behance.net/lorrainelunasin1
Mahmoud Abel: https://www.behance.net/mahmoudadn9851
Sakshi Dalvi: https://www.behance.net/sakshidalvi1
Sandeep Rana: https://www.behance.net/Sanjurana8f6f5
Vladimir Valkouski: https://www.behance.net/vertmonk
Takafumi Ashiba: https://www.behance.net/maison3091f
Maurice E. James Jr.: https://www.behance.net/art4theblackmarket
Soojung Haa: https://www.behance.net/soojunghaa1
Kinocomix: https://www.behance.net/kinocomix
Waleed Usman: https://www.behance.net/waleedusman
Margareta Firsova: https://www.behance.net/mfirsova
Hosna Kachooee: https://www.behance.net/heyitshosnakachooee
Irina Grotkjaer: https://www.behance.net/irinagrotkjaer
My Flower Studio: https://www.behance.net/sylvaintardiveau
Clister Santos: https://www.behance.net/clister
Fluxx Vicious: https://www.behance.net/fluxxvicious
Kabir Artworks: https://www.behance.net/kabir_artworks
Furfur MMZ: https://www.behance.net/furfurmmz
Lisa Heine: https://www.behance.net/tokisuke
Janai Jackson: https://www.behance.net/janaijackson
Vlag Abir: https://www.behance.net/valgabir
ZY Yap: https://www.behance.net/kanohotaru5713
Artstation:
Brady Gibson: https://www.bradygibson.design/
Hamed Abron: https://www.artstation.com/zyrosco
Mahesh Kumar: https://www.artstation.com/maheshkumar
MinHyeok Ha: https://www.artstation.com/ilmk
Maria Caterina Serra: https://www.artstation.com/mariaserra
Emi Nomoka: https://www.artstation.com/eminomoka
Quiblade: https://www.artstation.com/quiblade
CLX: https://www.artstation.com/clm-clm
Ougon Kyo: https://www.artstation.com/ougonkyo
Caden Carleson: https://www.artstation.com/caadeenn
Kamaliah Z.: https://www.artstation.com/mescalitoart
Psycho Amoz: https://www.artstation.com/psychoamoz
Na Sun: https://www.artstation.com/nanajiang
Msartiyo: https://www.artstation.com/msartiyo
Ryugunt: https://www.artstation.com/ryu-geun
Ozan Inkaya: https://www.artstation.com/hypergraphics
Santosh Satish: https://www.artstation.com/santoshsatish
Melba Marat: https://www.artstation.com/melbamarat
Luciferys Alex: https://www.artstation.com/rattlesnake
Kostya Gerasimov: https://www.artstation.com/blik
Joschef Trinidad: https://www.artstation.com/iraetus
Isha Trotman: https://www.artstation.com/artadrokable
Lina Liu: https://www.artstation.com/linaliu
Error Y: https://www.artstation.com/xjia
Anastazi Martsynovska: https://www.artstation.com/cami03
As a gift to the hard-working artist above, here’s a little present from us to you! We appreciate all artists everywhere, listed or not, to be the best person they can be and to change the world simultaneously!
Copy and paste the poster below to keep!
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
'Cause my love is mine, all mine
I love, my, my, mine
Nothing in the world belongs to me
But my love, mine, all mine, all mine
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
devlog 19: parallel storytelling, Devlogs are not forever...
The script for TSTW is 21 chapters long. I estimate we’ve reached the point where it kicks into high gear, given the (hopefully) plentiful space i’ve put in to get to know the characters. when draft 1 is done, i’ll be sending it off to my beta readers who’ll let me know the inevitable places where I left things unexplained. but for now it’s moving along well.
Today we’re changing gears slightly. we’re veering away from the world of granular storytelling and instead taking a look at narratives that shine in their simplicity. Last week we talked about figuring out the inventory our characters have in order to determine how they would solve a given problem. this week, we’re figuring out the deal with these two:
Let’s talk about children’s books.
regardless of what age group you’re from, chances are you have a book you were fond of as a kid. for a lot of people it’s something like the hungry hungry caterpillar, or maybe if you’re my brother you’re fond of the french series “Meche au vent” and “Martine”
There is something to be said about how the books you read as a kid influence you as an adult, and that’s why I’m doing this. In the story, Killouette has a book she really likes. Obviously, we need to make that book if we’re going to show it in the story. I love doing this- it’s called mise en abyme and it refers to when there’s a story within the confines of another story. I think it adds a lot of character and life to what’s being said if you bother to put as much effort into the side missions as you do the main quest. Originally i had drawn the image as an unrelated thing, having recently acquired two plushies that I thought looked great together:
and… that’s that right?
right?
so anyways the little lulu show is an animation series produced in canada that aired in 1995 through 1998, based on the comic strip little lulu by Marjorie Henderson Buell.
the arabic dub of the show, very popular among older folk made the rather curious decision to name the show after Lulu and her best friend which is something that gets acquired in translation i would suppose, but works really well for us because then we can name our two characters Loulou and taboush without worrying about copyright, because another company called studio 100 now owns it after having acquired one of the three companies that made the show and god forbid anyone is allowed to have any fun in this awful ecosystem of companies buying each other like stock.
youtube
But yeah, why am I making a children’s book inside another book? well mainly cause i want to, and if everyone is going to reject publishing my books i may as well have fun making them and be experimental. when I spoke about the camera being focused on killouette and her feelings, that’s great but this comes with an unintended side effect: the clarity with which my characters usually voice certain ideas isn’t there anymore. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, not every piece of media needs to have a message behind it. A decent chunk of stories exist out there because they’re fun and for no other reason.
Regardless, one of the ideas at play is the notion of problems being about perception more than they are solutions. we’re applying this specifically to how someone views themselves, so here’s what i came up with:
The story centers around Tabbouch, a stuffed elephant who has lost the button that’s usually attached to his stomach. The exact event that led to him waking up with the button missing is deliberately blurred and the question left unanswered, because that’s the problem that we’re trying to perceive differently, and I think it would be a bad idea bloating such a short story with things that aren’t relevant. Tabbouch is greeted by his friend loulou, a small fairy that looks like a bear and she suggests doing a couple of activities that aren’t going to vibe well with tabbouch cause at this point tabbouch is still really sad about his button being missing. tabbouch leaves loulou and runs into a friend of his who feels down. after cheering them up, tabbouch sees that the world around him is very pretty, feels good about that and by extension himself, concluding that although he still does want to find his button, he can still live without it.
it really doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. no one needs to know why the plushies are sentient or why they conveniently have small stoves… I say this mostly for me. the life of a chronic tryhard is difficult, don't judge me. What's important is that it mirrors what the kids in our story need to do. They have long term problems they can’t immediately address, so the solution is to see the problems immediately in front of them a little bit differently. with that out of the way, we can talk about the thing that makes children’s books shine…
the I L L U S T R A T I O N S
so it should be no secret at this point that I don’t really stick to any one way of drawing:
this one is how i did all of almost home, real ink with digital colors
this one is just linework with a fountain pen
watercolor:
image editing/glitching
special shoutout to MS paint:
there’s more but I don't want to put my entire portfolio in here so we’ll move on. This is good for me because I have the flexibility of figuring out how I want to show these images. I’ll have to fuck around and find out, but off the top of my head here’s a couple of things i’d like to try:
any of the above
scanning the inked linework and coloring the linework itself digitally (maaybe adding large flat areas of color? limited color palette?)
good old watercolor. I can't go wrong with that.
digital rendering with textures (this could allow us to use halftones for example, but comes with the risk of overdoing it. closest example is the very first image in this post)
paper cutouts mixed with real images
I like the idea of having each page be a linocut print, but i don’t have access to that, and i’d need to look into woodblock printing.
for the most part, i’ve figured out most of the stuff that i wanted to for killouette. so the next devlogs won’t be called “devlogs”... they’ll just be called updates. This is because beyond now I don't think I'll have anything too substantial to share since I'll basically be writing and doing set designs. I’d still like to post on Tuesdays, we’ll see.
Updates on tuesdays.
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
devlog 18: doo dads, inventories and recycling like responsible authors.
The script for TSTW is 17 scenes long so far, still in progress. I estimate it will be around 30 to 40, which is a welcome change given that my last comic was around 110. with that in mind…
would you believe me if i said i spent an entire day looking for an extremely specific book that i used to own- well two actually now that i think about it. I didn’t find them. One of them was a book with a bunch of electronic crafts for kids, the other was this book where you’re supposed to tear the pages to make everything from a chessboard to a cup. Not important, the point is Brandon Sanderson said something very insightful about writing characters that are smarter than you: being smart, often, is a matter of how much time you have to solve a problem. We consider someone as being smart when they very quickly have a good answer to a given question. The reason I was looking for two random ass books I owned as a kid is because I have the time to figure out how the kids are going to channel their inner bear grylls to improvise, adapt, overcome. they do not.
today, we’re going to be figuring out what we can realistically get away with as far as child inventions go, as well as talking about how as artists, reusing work is normal and shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of.
So first things first: what do the kids in our story have access to? this was the easiest to figure out because I know what living situations most of them experience, so here’s a list:
killouette: stationary and a camera. I’m still unsure which time period the story takes place in, so it’s unsure whether or not the camera is digital. It's objectively more fun if it’s a polaroid camera, because then all her pictures are physical. This is a plus because the only person with a computer in the group is talbas. On the other hand, setting the story in the mid 2000s means she probably has a small digital camera that she could connect to a bigger screen. alternatively, if i choose to set the story in the present, she could have both. unwanted old cameras left in a drawer somewhere.
bata tete: fun craft tools (paint, glue, string, ribbons, a big pile of magazines), a basket and a printer. you can’t go wrong with paint and pictures if you’re writing a story about kids, and this is also helpful because it introduces additional things to bata tete’s character: a more artsy side to complement the mission impossible stuff. instinctively i’m thinking the strings are definitely going to serve as trip wires at some point or another, and paper mache is definitely going to be involved in some way.
falefil: a po box, a piano and an electronic voice recorder. My current headcanon for falefil is that he doesn’t really like toys, so minus getting aluminum foil from his mom’s kitchen, he can probably lend his electronic voice recorder to accomplish something. maybe a makeshift MP3 player?
zmik: toys and objects intended to be used with other kids. all unused. I’ll admit this the saddest one by a longshot but it hits home a bit too hard to not include. I remember the piles of old board games, slingshots, marbles, even -the irony- a pair of walkie talkies I had that just… sat there. I like to imagine Zmik is finally in a place where he can share these things with people he likes.
motsik: broken knick knacks, pieces of mirror, detergents, bent spoons, a lot of wooden kabab skewers. It should come as no surprise that most of what Motsik has to offer is broken to some capacity, because of his violent household. the things he brings are broken because he effectively fishes them out of the trash, figuring his friends might have something they could do with them. note: motsik could also try to make stuff himself, but given his character this would be infrequent.
talbas: her uncle has an electronic equipment store, he teaches her stuff and low key is in on some of the shenanigans the kids do. despite the neglect from her parents, talbas loves spending time with her uncle whose store is nearby. he loves the fact that she’s interested in soldering and making fun doodads, so he has a budget set aside just for her. it’s pretty obvious that talbas’ uncle is the only person tethering her to a sense of purpose and a feeling of love.
claude: a lot of organic things and the knowledge thereof. Claude has little in the way of possessions, but she has a lot of street smarts. Claude keeps track of inventory across the 6 kids’s houses and frequently is the first to suggest solutions to problems.
with that being figured out, all we need to do to try to combine what they have with what the problem is and we see what comes out the other end. for example:
let’s say they need all hands on deck for something but that means ignoring a hallway where someone could come see what they’re doing. we know they would have access to stuff like strings, empty spools, simple electrical components and tin foil, so they could for example make a small trip wire using one of several methods i thought up:
this one is a pressure pad you can hide under a carpet that sets off a small light or beeper.
this one is a single use tripwire that would not require miles of electrical wire lol.
two things to note: the actual schematics in the book are going to look much nicer but also i’m approaching writing this book with publishing in mind, so I’m steering clear of actually dangerous things like blades and anything stronger than a small battery. which is a shame- i have a very funny story about how i personally once nearly set my building on fire trying to make a lamp when i was like 11, but that’s not the kind of stuff that will get published for middle grade/early young adult readers. I hate having to squash my book into a category like this, but if i’m to have any hope of doing what i love for the rest of my life, this feels like a necessary sacrifice.
now, as an aside, let’s talk about something I personally do that I think might be helpful to others and I’m going to illustrate my point by sharing spoilers for a project I won't get to for another couple of years.
Around 2014 was my very first attempt at writing something. it was a story called “Last of the Predators”, a very angsty attempt at something serious written by a version of me with no connection to the subject matter whatsoever. it had no plot outline, end in mind or clearly defined characters. Everyone spoke in the same monotone calm way and every paragraph had way too much description of the person’s emotional state. I eventually lost interest and dropped it, even deleting the blog I had been using to document the updates on.
shortly after I started making comics, i came up with the ice cream men: a story that follows two aliens kicked off their planet who arrive on earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably bringing up a million other topics along the way. This might sound fun, but when I came up with it at the time it didn’t feel enough to justify the commitment it would require. it initially focused too much on jokes and really didn’t have much to offer in the way of depth. so i shelved the idea for a while and this is the piece of advice i have:
don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them.
around this time is where my studies got in the way. When you’re just starting out trying to make art, everything stops you dead in your tracks. It wasn't until I started working on illustrating almost home that the creative gears started turning again. I came up with a whole bunch of things, but some of what I did is revisit my folder of abandoned projects. Sometimes when a project feels dull, it can be helpful to merge it with another one. This doesn’t always work but when it does it can lead to very interesting results. This is what I did with the ice cream men. I took the philosophical premise of the ice cream men which suffered from an underdeveloped plot and bad setting that didn’t suit the theme, and I combined it with the idea that survived after I cut all the slack out of Last of the predators which is the following:
The world LOTP is set in suffered a cataclysmic event that killed all the animals. Humans being how they are, they quickly built a religion around this and decided that some people have “predator souls” while others have “prey souls”, even going as far as to genetically engineer the way people look to introduce animalistic features to faces and bodies. The story is very political in nature and revolves around this role reversal that happens many many years after the cataclysm… and that’s where all the bullshit comes into play that I cut out.
As a side note, what I just told you is the polished version of the lore I rewrote for this devlog- it’s not the one I decided to settle on for the ice cream men but I'm sharing it regardless for the sake of documentation. point is: the reason this felt relevant to me is because combining this with the ice cream men added a layer of intrigue to the story which i really liked:
two aliens are kicked off their planet and arrive on a deserted planet which the reader knows is earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably discovering more about this strange planet and its past…
That past is the yet untold story of LOTP, with a less shitty name and more consideration given to the themes and mechanics of the things at play. so effectively we have several narrative layers at play:
the ice cream thing which could be a commentary on purpose or the creative process in addition to being a fun jumping off point for comedic relief
the past of the planet which could offer some mystery to the story, and maybe encourage some more serious topics to be brought up
and a third secret one, that i’m not willing to share just yet.
which i think is a story more worth telling. Here's another example more immediately relevant to our devlog. two years ago, I was thinking about how funny it would be to have unnecessarily complicated contraptions in the kitchen. the type of stuff you see unemployed engineers do for social media instead of benefiting mankind. I asked myself how would you go about making those contraptions useful: maybe someone could benefit from them if they were for example disabled, cool. too straightforward for my liking. What if they were small? like… as small as a bug? a very small chef.
how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall. that sounds fun i like it. What if it was a cookbook where part of the instructions were these complicated instructions on how to build and solder electronics? fun! I need a chef and an engineer to do that. I am neither.
don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them.
I kept thinking about that for a while. I imagined our protagonist Claude, a small hercules beetle who loves to cook. I wrote three versions of the script of a comic and even discussed making it a short animation at some point, but it didn’t feel right. it’s not the vision. It needs to be a cookbook.
queue Killouette and the fact that I’m really annoyed at how the camera can see everything. I remembered the idea I had with the cookbook, so I thought why not borrow some of that and make it a diary? Let’s add Claude in there as well for good measure. Maybe then how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall can be the one that comes after Killouette if I’m lucky enough to get funding. A grown Claude who made it big as a cook. By combining the two projects into two parts of the same series, I fixed the problem I had with the camera and added continuity to two otherwise one off projects.
So maybe that’s something to keep in mind. don’t throw away ideas, shelve them instead.
Next week we’ll be looking into the supplementary children’s book attached to killouette.
devlog updates on tuesdays.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
devlog 15: meanwhile...
The script for TSTW is coming along. So far I have written 3 scenes. i expect the pace to pick up soon, but to be completely honest with you we’re deep in the “trust the process” part of the making of this. it’s been a bit weird finally jumping into the deep end of this, i’ve prepared for it but the inevitable “this is a different story” realization finally kicked in. we march on.
As that’s happening I want to discuss an idea I’ve had for a while that won’t really work as a webcomic per se-i imagine It’ll instead be released as a PDF or something (i’ll figure that out later) here’s what i have so far. some time ago I drew this character that a friend jokingly said should be called killouette. (this design was an early one)
i quite liked the energy she was giving off since it reminded me of my cousin christy so initially i wanted to make a children’s book. I even got to the third draft and had some semblance of the idea of what it would look like. we’ll be talking about that later. here's the scrapped script for that:
The reason I ended up ditching the idea of making it a children’s book is because I honestly don’t feel comfortable squeezing narratives into that small a form factor. I genuinely envy people who can do that and make it the only version of the story worth telling, as opposed to a more expanded version being the superior one. So I shelved the idea for a while until one day I was having a conversation with a friend about an experience he had as a scout. What's to note here is that I was sharing the fact that I didn’t have any worthwhile adventurous memories as a kid because I was an indoor kid. We’ll talk about that in another devlog but I want to bring your attention to a very specific thing that I do with my projects. when an idea had something interesting but not enough meat and potatoes to justify the time investment, it usually ends up getting combined with another one.
case in point: I really liked growing up media about kids with practical intelligence like Harriet the spy or kids next door or spy kids. There's like sixty million examples I can give and while I’ve always contemplated making my own, I never saw a reason to seen the overcrowded niche. At some point last year it clicked with me that i could combine the current skills that i have with killouette and the idea of very smart kids and use that as a jumping off point to talk about my experience growing up: that of an indoor child with helicopter parents who didn’t do many things. now obviously if i did that one to one it would be a depressing slog of a book that was mostly unintended emotional child abuse occasionally interrupted by me talking to my therapist at 25. instead, here’s the vision:
the book would be formatted to look like a child’s diary, except that this child loves drawing and presents their diary as a comic book. It would be a compilation of multiple children’s points of view all drawn by the same person detailing their adventures in trying to do normal kid things such as smuggle candy or get internet access. what’s better is that it makes sense for killouette to be the person drawing here because in some ways her being the head of operation who lives vicariously through her friends is the most empowering thing you could do. kids are also like, very smart. here’s some of the screenshots i’ve been compiling off of reddit:
this one is a fake doctor’s note that was presented to a school:
So really, the only suspension of disbelief here is the fact that the characters are animals. I’d like to include an annex for the schematics for all the machines that the kids make in the book. In addition, it would be really fun doing some parallel storytelling here (I’ve explained this in devlog 5). Maybe since this is a child's journal, it was packed alongside their favorite book, which could be about these two:
and we could use this second story to talk about the themes of the first one in a more mature way that’s not filtered through the lens of a child.
great! making a plot at this point emerges naturally from the subject matter: what does a kid care about enough to put in their journal? I have the answer since I technically started thinking about this at the same time as this devlog started. Kids want to have fun. What does a kid hate and is afraid of? having fun taken away. great. how do we embody these two things within our narrative?
for the having fun thing, it involves answering several other questions which is the point of the whole book. what actions do these kids undertake to get what they want and what are they trying to work around? off the top of my head, based on my personal experience they could be trying to do normal kid things that they’re not usually allowed to do: leave the house, see each other outside school, have internet, pass the time… while thinking about all this i realized that everything would come as an extension of the characters because the events and reality the story takes place in are very normal. so:
Talbas, a bear who acts as the computer wis of the group. He has access to the internet thanks to a previously successfully executed plan by the group, which was to connect an ethernet cable from the cafe at the bottom of the building to his house on the fifth floor. Talbas is a girl, easily excitable and way too down the rabbit hole of weird internet videos she should not be watching at her age. She can be quite prone to anger, given her history of online gaming and is usually the first to suggest new activities for the group to do. She's clumsy and lazy and very awkward in person, but in reality she cares deeply about everyone in the group and is always happy to be there in person.
bata tete, whose gender is never known. The kids simply refer to them as “bata” and never use any pronouns, even addressing the fact that they have no idea if they’re a boy or a girl and that it doesn’t matter, because they’re really strong and good at aiming. bata is on the large side, and frequently lets their gluttony get the best of them which is the main reason behind the candy fiasco of july 2018*. bata is very brave, gentle, and generous and frequently strands on the frontline of the group’s operations, though they can be stubborn due to their anxiety, [redacted]
Motsik, a skinny chicken who acts as the eye of the group. motsik owns a walkie talkie the other end of which is with killouette. Motsik is very softly spoken, quiet, only ever speaking when spoken to. [redacted] he also mentions at one point how he enjoys being in high up places, and wishes he could bring killouette (and even the others) to see things from his point of view. he has some self destructive tendencies that show up for example in his lack of desire to participate in some of the group’s plans, in response to which killouette has to coax him in. his occasional apathy is contrasted by his encyclopedic knowledge of certain topics, as well as his undying loyalty and love for the group.
Falefil the bear is the spokesperson of the group. his parents are frequently shown being very kind to him. He's very polite and is learning to play the flute, citing that one day he wants to own a tin whistle:
falefil is a coward, frequently bowing out the second danger peeks its head around the corner. he’s also neglectful [redacted] he has the iq of a tomato plant and is very spaced out. [redacted]
Zmik is the new kid in town. He acts as the audience surrogate in some scenes and is…boring. He doesn’t do much, rarely has anything interesting to say on account of having lived a very similar “jailed” life to killouette up until that point. Recently he’s been allowed out of the house, and over the course of the story his character develops as he takes on the different sensibilities of the group.
Claude is a hercules beetle that lives in killouette’s closet, frequently helping her spy on her parents for intel. she’s her best friend, is a genius when it comes to making contraptions and [redacted] for the most part, claude is very cheerful and is always excited to talk about science, her inventions or anything really. She's very curious and is always excited to socialize or plan some new scheme. She's quite intolerant of authority, frequently showing signs of vengefulness whenever parents affect one of her friends.
Lastly there’s killouette. part of what killouette’s job is, is balancing all the moving parts and variables between the different members of the group. She's the mastermind of the operation, and is fiercely protective of her friends. if you hurt one of them, you have another thing coming. mischievous to her core, incredibly caring yet meek in the face of her parents. She's never allowed to leave her house alone for whatever reason other than school, and so decided to cultivate her gang of criminal friends that live nearby by inviting them to her house, eventually causing her friend’s parents to have her come for sleepovers. The story is centered around empowering the idea of killouette, so she doesn’t have any noteworthy flaws.
I don't know exactly what all these mission impossible things they want to do are, but i do have a semblance of a plot structure with an end goal, thus the [redacted] bits in the above section. I don't have much in the way of themes yet, but I do know the core thesis is problems are what you make of them. In this phase of the devlog as I’m writing the script for TSTW, we’re going to be working on killouette. it’s less research than TSTW, but I do think there’s a lot of interesting things to talk about here.
that’s it for now.
devlog updates on tuesdays.
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
untitled project devlog #5: Murder mystery and the art of 50 cent plushies from the sunday market
A common thread among people who watch shows like NCIS or similar formulaic police shows -where the protagonist is a stoic wall of muscle surrounded by their coworkers who end up being more friends than coworkers- is to predict what’s happening. You frequently hear people go “I knew it was [blank] all along!” Which makes sense, that’s part of the appeal of these shows and how they’re written. You’re MEANT to be hooked in by the incomplete information, that’s the crux of ARGs like the mandela catalogue and marble hornets, lonelygirl15 before Austin Mcconel took over (his words not mine)
youtube
sidenote, Sarah from the mandela catalogue is an alternate I’M CALLING IT NOW, this bitch is sus as fuck.
Back to my point, mystery in fiction is a promise made by the author, that promise being that once it’s cemented itself in the logic of the world it inhabits (think how in the mandela catalogue the first few installments were introducing you to the idea of the demons that try to copy people) it’ll slowly unravel itself to the point where its cards are eventually there on the table, and it’s up to you to go back and see how you could have read them better. a good mystery makes the act of solving it equally as fascinating as the solution -that’s why agatha christie tends to be timeless whereas the appeal of shows like NCIS is eventually delegated to the character arcs and set pieces.
In the documentary free solo, Alex Honnold is on a mission to climb El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park with no safety equipment. The actual bit in the documentary where he does the climbing is around 5 to 10 minutes of the 100 minute long runtime of the film. the argument could be made that they could just upload the 5 minute montage of the climb to youtube, and for the extra vicarious thrillseekers low key on the autism spectrum like me, the unedited 3.5 hour long footage of him raw dogging the mountain. But that’s not what documentaries are the same way detective movies aren’t 20 minute podcasts of someone dryly reciting a police file. Documentaries aim to use the language and vocabulary of cinema to discuss everyday ideas. that’s why free solo spends 80 minutes teaching you about climbing as an art, showing you Alex the human, his friends, the shortcomings of other free soloists who died climbing and THEN shows you the 5 minute montage… because at that point the stakes are so high -appropriately so- that the shots of the camera man not being able to look in his viewfinder out of fear of filming someone’s death become intensely real. Alex becomes more than just the visualized idea of the climber, he’s THE climber Alex. The madman who wants to see something done. The friend, the human. It's about narrative delivery, the balance between tension and release.
This is interesting to consider because the information here is essentially the same, but one feels much more interesting. This same idea is why some science communicators like Hank Green and Bill Nye do a much better job at making you interested in science than most articles on google scholar, it’s the same information but more approachable and digestible. what i”m getting at here is that most things can be very interesting if you put this twist on them, even removed from the context of media: you’re not just talking to your racist boomer uncle, you’re privy to a front row seat into what makes someone grow up to be a racist shithead, which is significantly more interesting. When you shift your thinking into wanting to understand what’s behind the information, life becomes as thrilling and mysterious as a murder novel.
Now let’s apply this paradigm to something like this plushie I bought for 50 cents from the sunday market, and as you’ll see it’s going to raise a very interesting question regarding naturalistic storytelling.
I did not take a picture of it when I found it but it was very dirty, I had to wash it twice, and you can see how damaged it was, there were tears on the front as well and half the stitches connecting the head to the body were gone.
Here it is after it was fully sewed back up, I opted to highlight the patches because I think it shows the history behind the plush, and because I’ve been watching a lot of Baumgartner restoration videos lately and Julian would take away my fabric privileges if I covered up more than is needed.
also yes, it’s being propped up with an empty jar of tahini, it is delicious and I will not be taking feedback at this time. I want to direct your attention at this Logo here:
now if you search for “Herz’l plush” you get a bunch of disconcerting anatomically correct heart plushies that are sure to stab me in my sleep that are wildly unrelated to the brand. Unsurprising, it’s german for “my heart”
a bit of extra digging and you might come across this german reseller website with some plushies with the same tag, but nothing useful to our search is mentioned…
https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/spiralplueschtier-schlange-herz-l-pluesch-kuscheltier/1850047318-23-4712
so… that’s a bust. What about the other side of the tag?
okay… not too sure of what to make of that. But that’s what search engines are for, let’s try “seneca”:
Oh it’s… a Stoic philosopher. Okay what about “seneca Hamburg?”
https://www.ebay.de/itm/125112346754
more ebay listings. great. okay fine, let’s ask the internet for help
I see. surely someone knows SOMETHING.
ok wow this thing is… old.
of course! The german trademark register. I feel dumb. let’s see what’s in there:
oh god oh jesus what is all this why is there a giant block of text is THAT-
okay so they made the plushie but why is it so FUCKING obscure? At this point I remembered I have a German lawyer friend. Everyone needs to have a German lawyer friend.
okay! now we know what to actually search for.
https://www.northdata.com/Terrex+Handels-AG,+Oststeinbek/Amtsgericht+L%C3%BCbeck+HRB+1610+RE
liquidation? so… they never renewed the trademark cause there was no more company. seems like they weren’t doing too well either. looks like at some point they did a merger with another company. Then not too soon later liquidated it… thanks to my dear lawyer friend here, I can tell you this:
“Every company is owned by a larger company, which is the shell company of a different company. At the end, you figure out all companies are owned by like 3-5 companies”
To recap, here’s what we learned about the tag on our plushie:
The plushie is exactly 30 years old as of 2023. This is not to mention that I learned about how companies buy each other like stocks, how there’s something called forensic accounting because of that, that the “China export” thing is just a myth*, and more…
*https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-6-2007-5938-ASW_EN.html?redirect
so this is where we ended up:
It’s possible I may have gotten carried away. Setting that aside for a moment, this is what I mean when I say mysteries are good because they make you learn and explore. Sometimes, connections and breakthroughs are made because of things like a plushie that you would have otherwise completely ignored.
What this has to do with naturalistic storytelling is how it highlights the fact that life is messy. Despite the fact that I hyper fixated on this plush for hours, there’s a lot I still don’t know about it. I have a general overview of the situation for sure, I know it was made in Germany in 1993, and stuff about the company that made it but that’s about it. Good mysteries stay puzzling even after you solve them because LIFE is mysterious. The balance here is how much do you show the reader, and how much do you leave unanswered? The way I’ve personally found that deals with this has to do with format and layered storytelling.
There's one thing that comics do that will always be superior to other media and that is layered storytelling. Not to be confused with how films have a plots and b plots, or how books can choose to switch the focus of the scene onto something different: layered storytelling is when multiple pieces of information are being conveyed at once.
a very straight forward example oh what i mean is how in this section in my comic “Almost home” when Graham is having a conversation with a mysterious person who randomly shows up to see them:
In addition to the conversation being had, there’s this cypher in the background that you would have found the key to prior in the comic. The existence of a parallel piece of information that you can switch your attention to if you so desire is what makes this parallel storytelling. The reason I don’t think this could work in film is because in a comic, you dictate the speed at which the media is occurring. If you stop reading a speech bubble, that doesn’t mean the story is paused, it just means you’re focusing on the moment the panel is trying to show you; and different people do this differently.
In this panel, you’re free to choose whether or not the ciphered text is being narrated or not because focusing on it is optional and doesn't take away from your ability to understand what’s happening immediately in front of you. You’re free to read all of my comics without engaging with a single thing I put in the background and it will still provide a satisfying and emotional experience. Games also do this when done right, an excellent example is “Night in the woods” and how you’re free to ignore most of the town, or sidequests for example.
Another example is an unreleased project of mine still in early development called “the ice cream men”. The story follows two aliens who get stuck on earth and set about trying to make ice cream, shenanigans and existentialism ensue. In the book there’s an entire second narrative told in the form of writings on walls and random journal entries that they find that they just can’t read because… they’re aliens. To them this is just a big abandoned planet with a single cat on it, but to the reader with the ability to see everything… HOO BOY.
This is something I love incorporating into fiction. I think it gives things more depth if done right, and can act like the mystery of a detective novel or an ARG. Obviously this doesn't always work, sometimes the beauty of a story is its simplicity, or by how in your face it is about being analyzed. Not every idea needs or can even handle the additional weight of parallel storytelling. And that’s where dogs come in.
but I can’t talk about that now, we’ll have to leave it until next week.
Devlog updates on tuesdays.
#comic#webcomic#plushies#rescue#poetry#mystery#arg#the mandela catalogue#graphic novel#kinocomix#devlog#Youtube
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
TSTW devlog 14: PHASE B HAS BEGUN
a lot of comic artists do this thing that i will actively attack them for in the form of this devlog which is that they say they’re going to make a comic but fall down the rabbit hole of the endless development loop where they insist on doing sixty things in parallel and that they’ll start it when they figure out the story or once they make a bit more concept art or once all the pieces are together as if their comic is a magical goblet that needs to touch all the creatures in the forest to give you the special secret.
SO.
I’m kickstarting phase B of the devlog since I think 3+ months of research and preparation is more than enough information. beyond that, I think the returns are quite diminished. here’s what happened this week.
I wrote more detailed character descriptions.
I fixed some things about the logo that were bothering me:
I also wrote the first three scenes. here’s scene 2 out of context, skip to the dotted lines if you don’t want spoilers:
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
[camera shows a tire shop with a second floor. speech bubble is coming from second floor]
voice through wall: what the fuck do you MEAN you’re microwaving your socks?
cut to inside. rami and jamil are there. jamil is at the drums and rami is holding his phone talking to rabih.
phone: well you see, ya boy is out of socks. so i washed some by hand cause it would take too long to do them in the machine. then i realized, shit. the socks are wet–
rami: -can’t you just use an iron?
phone:-you think i own an iron?
rami: well i don’t know put them on a heater or something?
phone: -you think i own a heater?
rami, putting his hand against his eyes: I hate that It’s beginning to make sense
Phone: yeah so i put them in for the first 5 minutes and it kind of worked, for now they’ve been in there for around 20, they still need a bit of microwaving
jamil: is that even safe…?
Phone: oh yeah yeah I did some research It’s fine
rami: you did RESEARCH?
phone: well yeah i’m not putting my socks in a microwave if it’s going to set the building on fire, plus i learned it’s surprisingly easy to make bleach shirts, where can we get freezer paper?
rami: what the fuck does this have to do with you being two hours late to practice
phone: well you see in the article i looked up on how to microwave socks the picture was a man with a nice beige and white shirt which i would totally wear so i got a bit distracted
jamil, looking at his phone: we can get some off amazon
phone: ayre b amazon* * fuck amazon is there nowhere else?
jamil, a little disappointed but in a cute :( way : no
rami: WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT FREEZER PAPER
jamil: i mean he’s already late might as well
rami: AYRE FIKON TNAYNETKON* *fuck both of you
phone: by the way, am i on speaker? I want to say something.
jamil: dude i’ve been talking to you this whole time
phone: just checking, but… i’ve been meaning to tell you guys something, i think we need a manager
rami looks to the side, averting eye contact.
jamil: …
yeah…
[everyone looks at each other awkwardly for way too long, empty speech bubbles with beginnings of sentences and such]
rami, Annoyed: anyways just fucking get here please…
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….
I estimate the script will need around three months to finish. before i explain what’s going to happen as i do that let’s quickly recap what we did so far as pre production:
we learned about the musical elements and the sensibilities therein including metal, punk and classical music
we learned about the spread of information and how ideas live and die like languages
we talked about mysteries and how the most mundane things can be interesting when framed with the right narrative
we learned about dogs and how they’re trained
we figured out what our thesis is and discussed our themes
we drafted out the characters and gave them nice designs
we named the band they’re in and made a cool logo for it
here’s what we DIDN’T DO:
i have yet to learn musecore. this is mainly because i try to not move my computer around often so i couldn’t dedicate time to it but this is something i can do while writing the script.
I didn’t make style pages. these are comic pages you make just to show what the comic looks like but i’ve grown well acquainted with the tools and the designs are going to evolve no matter what i do, so this felt pointless to some extent
so what does this mean?
i have a different project that can’t really work as a webcomic, so i’m going to be working on that while i write the script and releasing it as one big thing when it’s done. next week, there won’t be an update for TSTW, instead there will be one for this second project that we will discuss and make as we go. once that’s done, the devlog will be over and will be instead replaced by the actual comic.
that’s it for now.
devlog updates on tuesdays.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Metal band story devlog 11: Dealing with productivity as an artist
so here’s an update since last week, the rest of the designs kind of… worked out. I could go ahead and explain the ways that i got there but you’re well familiar with how the process can be volatile and all over the place and this wouldn’t be adding much value to the conversation. and I really don’t want to burn steps here so I think this is an excellent opportunity to talk about something that was going to come up naturally, which is productivity. though It would be rather dickish on my behalf to talk about designs without showing anything (I feel like that could be a good burn to some designers out there) so here you go:
left to right: Rami (lead singer), Jamil (drummer), Rabih (guitarist/bassist) and Leila (manager/other)
if you’re just here for the comic side of the devlog that’s all there is this week. But if you stick around, maybe you’ll read something you’ll find helpful. anyways…
On the 12th of october 2022, I wrote the following in my journal:
I don’t understand the concept of artistic satiation. The idea that, as an artist you could sit back and just go “yeah I’m good” [...] when I share my art, that’s a part of me that I am proclaiming. this thing is about me. [...] it doesn’t need to change the world, it just needs to have been useful to [me]. so when people “have enough art” it really makes me question their priorities. Were you making art for you? or is the art you’re making not good enough to be called your art?”
Productivity is a surprisingly sensitive topic to talk about with any form of objectivity because if you boil things down, human beings were not created to measure anything: circadian rhythms are a thing because we’re not meant to all go to bed at the same time, there might be a big scary thing and someone needs to be awake at any given time to warn the others. The time of day is never the exact same in two places because you’re not intended to measure it. I’ll stop before it starts to sound like I just drank a bottle of cough syrup and got bored of alphabetising my vegetables. The point I’m putting across is that one of the defining traits of humans is that we construct things around our reality. We add measurements to it that let us do great things, we make GMOs and structures and telescopes and planes and come up with fun stories about things. But if there’s something we can learn from any table top role playing game is that a system is great until it’s not: at that point the solution is to add, change or ignore the system entirely. Productivity is the idea that you can measure the effectiveness of something, even potentially optimize it to make it better – however you may define better. This is where my personal experience comes in, so bare with me for a moment.
earlier that same year, I had this conversation with my therapist, you’ll notice some parallels to that journal entry I mentioned earlier:
If you pay close attention, you can calculate just how long it really takes someone to internalize the concept of self respect and love. The understanding that a person’s life and worth is unrelated to what it is that they’re doing. Today I am Charbel who goes online by Kinoko and likes to draw himself as a round sheep. Tomorrow I might be Charbel, the man who's passionate about theoretical economics and skydiving, and that’s just as good. Does this mean I have plans to stop art? I don’t think so. I’ve seen first hand that I’m capable of making nice things that help even a single digit amount of people go through a tough time, and I think that’s something great that I want to keep doing. But if something were to happen that permanently stopped my ability to draw and write and talk, I think I’d pick the cello back up again.
When an artist makes something you like and finishes it, sometimes you wonder why they never seem the same after that. they appear infrequently and seem to close in on themselves. Maybe a large shift will happen in their style and way of doing things that seems unexpected to you. I get it, and I’ll try to explain it, having been through a miniature version of that myself after finishing my first comic. it should come as no surprise that Almost home means the world to me, even less so that finishing something that big leaves an impact on you. What do you do after you save the world? Will you save it again? save another? Sometimes, the answer is easy. you just do something else. It can be daunting and uncomfortable realizing you have to go through all those feelings again, learning to understand and appreciate your new different characters, seeing them grow and then reaching a point where they, for a lack of a more delicate way of saying it, have served their purpose. Do you just… make more? It feels weird. they’re like your kids.
but you kind of have to. There’s a lot more to say about art block, not having the time for your art and such but I don’t think I’m personally qualified to talk about that since, honestly, it’s not my experience. What I do know is that I have these 4 characters so far, and I’m looking forward to getting to know them better.
now with that out of the way I’d like to discuss some exciting things that aren’t quite ready to share yet that I am doing for the comic. First off, since canonically at some point the band would have a fashion designer, I have spoken to one who seems to be onboard and looking forward to working with me. Second, I’ll be visiting a dog shelter to get references to make the fifth member of the band sometime soon. lastly, I need to learn how to use musecore because… reasons. making a comic is hard okay?
we also need to work on the branding for the band and make concept art and like a billion things but WE’RE GETTING THERE
devlog updates on tuesdays.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Untitled project Devlog #2: Heavy metal is not a single landmass, and it’s actually quite wholesome
When I listen to the doom soundtrack, there’s a part of me that’s always tempted to just do housework. say what you want about Doom’s ability to motivate or energize, but the reason I do it is because the image of someone cleaning their house while blasting all they fear is you is quite amusing to me.
As it turns out, that image I had of someone doing the dishes to Doom being hilarious isn’t that far-fetched, seen as the metal scene takes itself seriously, but the appropriate amount. I think the early 2000’s and what I was personally exposed to may have slightly tainted how I viewed metal. Despite being a lover of the genre myself, I wouldn’t consider myself a metalhead by any stretch of the imagination; I’m far from having the encyclopedic knowledge of metal that others have.
Ronnie James Dio in Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, directed by Sam Dunn
up until a couple of years ago, had you asked me what metal was i would have replied Marilyn Manson, Evanescence and Are you dead yet by children of Bodom– to note I to this day have not heard any of Marilyn Manson’s music nor have i listened to anything else by Children of Bodom. So as you can tell the scope was very narrow. Thankfully though I've since expanded my repertoire to include many other subgenres and bands and I've been very surprised by how vast of a genre it is. This week, I spoke to some wonderful people including the wonderful lads from Fall of Eden, Prominentia and some wonderful folk over on reddit. My goal was to understand their relationship with their music, but also people’s relationship to metal in general: so let's talk about that.
I think it’s important starting out to have a general framework with which to operate in, so by “Metal” I’m referring to any genre of music with big distorted guitars, bass, drums and vocals with a focus on being bombastic and in your face. that includes stuff like Jazz metal, swing metal and fusion metal. we’ll be talking about themes and subject matter in a bit, i’m aware that affects if something falls under certain genres or not.
The first thing I wanted to know about the musicians I spoke to is: why metal? A broad question, definitely, that could easily be answered with “because it’s fun” but it did lead to a lot of informative answers. One thing that came up often is the fact that people discovered the genre at a young age; often this is coupled with the fact that they shared it with someone, be it a friend, sibling, or parent. This is somewhat to be expected: one thing I’ll mention later in this devlog is the fact that humans are naturally social animals so it makes sense that people who love a genre that’s historically and still is to a lesser extent falsely labeled as violent would have fallen in love with it at a young age– partially because people tend to have less prejudice as kids, and because a lot of kids enjoy the naturally loud and rebellious idea of some genres of music.
Another idea that comes up often is catharsis, self expression and the notion of seeing yourself through the music.
To quote Charbel, the lead singer of Fall of Eden:
“the extremes you can go to in order to express yourself, it can be simple and complex”.
Sometimes this is very straight forward, you write a song that evokes themes of sexual assault despite the fact that it’s not necessarily intended:
Korn, Freak on a leash
or you write a song describing how hopeless existence is; how absolutely dark and bleak and meaningless it is to pray but at the very least, you have a loved one with you, and that makes it suck a little less:
Lamb of god, Walk with me in hell
or maybe you write a song about finding strength in hard times, when the word “human” begins to overlap with the meaning of “unity”:
Gojira, Born in winter
other times this is much less obvious:
Alestorm, Keelhauled
MUCH, much less obvious…
Cannibal corpse, Evisceration Plague
My understanding is that while the metal scene is very welcoming, it also doesn’t seem to care much if you don’t get it. which is fair, who am i to question that having written entire sections of my comic in a cipher…
keeping in mind that music changes based off of the social fabric it’s built on (we’ll be discussing that as well as the themes and subject matter in a later devlog) it makes sense to consider metal music as outsider culture, despite the fact that it doesn’t fit the textbook definition of “uneducated naive artist discovered after their death”. Metal music isn’t trying to be weird, it’s just trying to be itself, which happens to be weird. Let's go back to that cannibal corpse song I mentioned earlier. it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that people listen to that do so for the same reason they watch horror movies: there’s something mystifying about the weird, the scary, the horrific, the morbidly curious. It’s in our nature to seek those out but better yet– to build communities centered around the enjoyment of these things, and that’s honestly beautiful. There's this very evocative video about outsider music that I think explains well why this makes metal fit into that category:
youtube
Another question I asked was regarding the artistry itself. As artists you either blow up and get suffocated with people’s attention, or you make peace with the fact that you have a couple of buddies that love what you do. I was pleased to hear this translates to metal musicians too. All too often I see the stereotype of the artist or musician frustrated that no one is looking at/listening to their stuff and I've known one or two musicians myself that fit that description. fortunately that does not seem to be the case in real life– though any musician or artist will tell you that it’s never a bad thing if people interact with what you make. One of the most common answers to “what’s the highlight of your career” is always something regarding being acknowledged or validated which I relate to.
left to right: Sergio from Prominentia, me, Bachir from Prominentia. Also my friend Alaa is there peeking up from the table.
As it turns out, a lot of metal musicians are very chill and extremely nice people. Obviously as is the case with all communities there are the inevitable sour apples, whenever anything gets big you inevitably lose some control over what’s happening on a granular level but that’s to be expected. There's something that Sergio said that stuck with me. When I asked him why he became a musician, he talked about how he wanted others to experience the same fun, freeing music that he did. And honestly I can respect that.
When asked about what other genres of music they’d do if not metal, the answers were very diverse. it ranged from everything like synthwave, techno, punk to folk, jazz blues and classical music. It should come as no surprise at this point that metal is actually a very complex genre musically, but you don’t need me for that. There are plenty of online resources that can teach you about that, far better than I could possibly hope to.
While I agree that in some media the aspects of communities built around the enjoyment of art might be presented as a little overblown. I do think they’re inevitably still present.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Bruce Dickinson, lead singer of Iron Maiden:
My intention as the frontman is to try to find the guy who’s right at the back of the 30 000 [attendee] festival and sort of go “Yeah! You!”
devlog updates weekly on tuesdays.
goodbye for now!
#graphic novel#comic#devlog#metal#heavy metal#kinocomix#korn#iron maiden#gojira#lamb of god#alestorm#cannibal corpse
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Metal band story devlog 10: OKAY. CHARACTER DESIGNS. LET’S GET TO IT.
So initially when I finally decided it was time for some character designs I faced a problem. It was not a lack of skill or frustration at my art, it was the fact that I don’t know what I’m designing really. let me explain:
I think a very important thing to do in general is to be aware of your shortcomings and I try to apply this rule to myself as often as possible without it being self destructive. one of those shortcomings is my inability to draw things that I’m not personally familiar with.
I don’t think I would have ever drawn shoes that weren’t my own, so you can imagine what that says about characters and people.
This tends to bleed into art block and a good solution for it is to usually find inspiration somewhere. I don’t like doing that, nothing wrong about it and before you accuse me of being on my high horse I will gently remind you and myself that there is nothing new under the sun. I will inevitably end up being inspired by something even if I’m not actively aware of it but I find that basing a design on someone else’s design feels derivative, which setting aside the legal issues of me wanting to publish potentially copied designs, isn’t very nice of me to do to my fellow artists. I’m better than that. In any case I needed to try to start somewhere so I tried making a design for character A. this is the classical musician. I didn’t base the design on their personality because that never not felt weird to me. I don’t want to know what someone is like when I see them, that’s not how people work.
here is the pathetic first attempt, where i went in with “they’re probably tall and skinny” in mind:
I knew that A would be a classical musician, so I really wanted to include at least a vague reference to one of my favourite pianists, Nahre Sol. I think she’s very cool and so I opted to make A’s hair similar to her’s.
The actual image is upside down
It still looked boring as fuck tho so as is the case with character design, you iterate.
Here you can see I drew a crane, which is a thing you can do when you think designing people is boring as fuck which it usually is if you don’t have fun with the shapes. I really liked how the crane’s body looked like a teardrop and how long the legs were, it also was mostly black and white which went well with the “classical musician who wears classical clothes” vibe.
So I tried a more geometric approach, with long legs but It didn’t fit into the vibe I had in mind and the feet were so comically large i anticipated people would be distracted by it:
I defaulted back to a more organic looking teardrop shape and ended up with this which i liked:
Let’s note a couple of things about this: I liked the eyes, but i very quickly realised I can’t have that be the default shape of the eyes, because please look at this monstrosity:
I came back to it the next day and made a realisation: those are some big legs. So I decided to lean into it and thought It would be cool if she was strong and muscular, and you’ll note that I’m saying “she”, we’ll get to that in a moment.
I had taken the time to think about the fact that I'd like her more if she was more in context. Because floating in the void like that, she’s just some character which was bothering me. So I started small and made a height chart with some general body types/shapes:
This made me more confident in the design because it had some story now, she was very tall and imposing.
I was reminded of a tweet by Pseudonymjones where she talks about a kid who saw her and called her “the lady with the big muscles” which i thought was cool as fuck in may 2019 and still think is cool as fuck now.
This made me like the character so much more and It made sense to me because of everything that I knew so far about the character and the setting that she would be trans. All my research showed that metal musicians would be very likely to be normal understanding human beings and I already know what not to do and what’s preferable from the research I did for Almost Home.
So I present to you the first sketch of Leila:
Note: when designing characters I always design them naked, because clothes a character design does not make. They help, but you can’t start there.
Obviously the design will evolve naturally (and by the end of this devlog update) and get polished the more I draw her but I think this is a solid start. For starters let’s fix those ankles and draw some more sketches to get a feel for what Leila is like when she moves.
Okay, I’m digging the vibe. I also drew this other one where I forgot to factor in the pelvis when accounting for the length of the legs, so i went ahead and tried to edit it:
It looks a bit better, the legs still look gigantic but I think I want to keep that. I imagine she goes to the gym quite frequently on account of being a tryhard. Perhaps that’s one of the things I could explore in the story?
I also tried messing around with her face a bit. I ended up sticking to the one I originally made, which felt the most natural. Maybe that says something about me and how I go with the first thing I see, but it is what it is.
Also here’s a tip for anyone who might need it, you know those doll dress up games where you drag PNGs onto the model? You can use that system when trying to make variations of a design. I did it with a light pad.
This was when I consulted a friend of mine, Alaa. He pointed out the limbs i drew looked kind of ballooney. This wasn't from a lack of reference, it was the abstraction that was done improperly. You see here's two things to keep in mind: firstly I didn't want her to look muscular despite how strong she is. Obviously some of it is bound to show what with her legs as you'll see but I wanted her to seem like a quirky human at first. Secondly, while it's true that I tried to make the limbs with contracted muscles bigger if that's not tastefully done then it just looks silly. So here's where we're at now:
To the left here's you'll note two things, Alaa suggested making her five heads tall instead of 6 which we'll get to in a moment, and the fact that the musculature seems more real now. Here's what i decided to take from his suggestion: i like that the muscles look nicer in the legs, so i changed the legs to match and shortened the pelvis to make her a head shorter. Now about that missing head. Initially while this made the proportions better this also made her shorter which goes against the “awesome towering person” effect i wanted to give her so i had 2 options. I either could keep the extra length but try to fit it in somewhere which could work but it would add extra time to this entire process which I do not have and I am one human being; OR I could simply scale her up. This would make her base circle bigger which would require some quick math every time i need to put her in a scene but that's not an issue for me.
And this is where we ended up. This is something we can use to make a turn around ref sheet once we have an outfit(s). For reference, I drew Graham from Almost home who is about the size of an average human:
Yes, Charlie and Graham are not actually short. Everyone is just taller than them cause that's my experience being short, It just never came up lol
Here's what I like about this and here's what I'm glad I did not include: I like the cartooney proportions that still show some respect to the human. I like that she has the stubborn belly fat that some body builders struggle with. I like that while she looks imposing and is to some extent, a lot of her personality traits will contrast that and give her depth and nuance. (Also in case you're curious, her base circle is 1.2 times the size of average characters)
A final note, which is by no means an insult to any stylistic approach or artist, there's a fine line to tread between “muscular curvy woman” and “pixar mom”. Here's a drawing on the back of a receipt that a friend drew with some suggestions on how to push the proportions. Solid suggestions, but they don't really fit the vibe I'm going for which is fine- when we make art not everyone is going to like it and that's just how things are.
And yes, she's still naked. Clothes come at the very end when we know we have all the proportions and visual quirks figured out. Buuut that's something I won't include in the devlog. Gotta draw the line of “okay, spoilers” somewhere. Next week, we'll start doing the rest of the cast.
Devlog updates on Tuesdays.
#comic#webcomic#kinocomix#devlog#graphic novel#metal#writing#webcomics#lgbtq#original character#character design
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Metal band story devlog 9: let’s write some characters
I think a good exercise worth doing is starting a story from every conceivable avenue. A musician I really like has gone on record as to prove themselves doing this. If you’re not familiar with the work of Andrew Huang, now’s your time to go to his youtube channel and start watching his stuff. literally, start anywhere. He even has a short sci-fi series where he makes music in space, I digress.
similarly, I think from my list of projects I’ve started stories from every corner imaginable: I’ve started with the world, with the characters, with a vague plot, a vibe, an iconic scene that I built around, prompts, doodles, the corpses of other stories, a format, dnd characters, so on and so forth I won’t go into details otherwise we’ll be here all day. What I’m getting at is that sometimes when you have your themes, world and other bullshit figured out it can be easy for characters to feel in service of the story. They kind of need to be but personally I find that when a character is just themselves, the situations that aren’t boring end up feeling much more interesting than if they were written around the world they inhabit. So today we’re going to try to extrapolate our themes into personality traits while making sure there’s a bunch of other stuff going on.
So let's get started. Here's our first theme from the last devlog: How much of the soul of art and music gets lost in translation?
Let’s go back to when we discussed the sensibilities of metal and classical music. There are two things to note here: how does the unapologetic intense self expression of heavy metal react when met with the calm exterior of classical music? In my experience, while this is nowadays changing, classical musicians tend to be more calm and collected, borderline tactical in their approach to music. The desire for the divine aspect of music doesn’t seem to vibe that well with the intensity and fun of most metal music. The difference here is that even when classical music is having fun and poking at the music, it’s still a very choreographed thing. Sure, you see that in metal too but it doesn’t feel that way. No one is saying that metal is improv, but historically speaking classical musicians need to loosen up a little. What does all of this mean practically? here are some traits we can already associate with our musicians:
metal musicians in the story: loud, spontaneous, rude, unapologetic, escapist, funny, introspective
classical musicians in the story: applied, calm, tactical, silly in a fun way, social, restrained, professional, empathetic, anxious, perfectionist
to note: these traits are not universal and not exclusive. Part of writing people and not characters is understanding that no one can be summarized by a list of attributes, these are merely general guidelines. In reality every character with one trait will also display the opposing one.
How do our musicians bounce off each other? How confrontational are they? do they have other emotional aspects to them that override what’s going on in certain situations? for example: maybe someone has a problem with authority because they were mistreated in some way and that overshadows their empathy or ability to escape through the music? This is where I also consider the more personal attributes they have that are unrelated to the music. Keep in mind, when we write a character based on a hobby, we’re backtracking to that character. This hobby or interest of theirs says something about them and that thing is not always the same.
Who does art/music belong to?
This one is interesting because it asks a very vague question, the answer to which could say something about you. Maybe you think that art is deeply personal and perhaps you might have trouble engaging with the more emotional aspects of art because you don’t want to feel exposed. Or you maybe think art is for other people, which might say something about a need for validation or self worth or maybe neither of those things: maybe you’re just here to make the world a nicer place and it makes you happy when art helps with that. Maybe you’re torn! and that also says something: you’re struggling with the need to see art for others and whatever ramifications thereof, and making something for yourself. surely that’s bound to be an interesting conversation…
How much does inspiration really matter?
To me this is the most telling about discipline and control. And I think this journal entry from some time ago explains my thoughts well:
As adults, we’re expected to relentlessly pursue happiness and have everything figured out. This shows up the most in our music and fiction, in how we struggle to think of things or if we do, we struggle to see them as having value. This is why discipline is important in art. art wants to be made and doesn’t expect us to wait for permission from inspiration to make it. The control we have over how we choose to see things makes things harder or easier for us.
I think the band should have 4 members. the drummer, the bassist and guitarist, the vocalist and the non sequitur- the classical musician. I think I'm going to expand the definition of classical to encompass more varied genres from around the world– that should give the music a more Igorrr-esque feel.
I’m not sure about what their genders will be, but here are the initial overviews of the characters:
member A: the stranger, newcomer. Realistically this will be the classical musician and the newcomer position will be helpful to present things from a fresh point of view, so it would make sense to learn about pre-existing things that would not usually be spoken of. A comes from a scholar/professional training background and this shows in how initially they value the showmanship more than the music. they act as the glue that holds the band together and the inciting event that sets forward the motions of the story, the main essence of that reflecting how inspiration is fleeting. the tactical discipline of classical training, while doing them a disservice for being able to speak honestly through their work, does wonders when it comes to ideation and management. A is a little stream of water that carves through the mountain. they’re stubborn, but very shy when it comes to certain things. repressed, but effective.
member B: i’d like this to be the drummer, but we’ll see. It would be cool if B was the most introspective of the 4, breaking the stereotype of the dumb drummer. I’d like to also base the idea of them on the drummer of fall of eden, (see devlog 2) who is a med student. should be very interesting talking about how these two very large aspects of their life struggle for control of their time. B has a loud personality because how could they not? they’re a drummer. they’re studying a profession where they mainly talk to people and help them. they’re confident in themselves and that’s a very admirable trait– until you realize they’re a bit full of themselves. they're also a bit awkward around people, they haven’t quite figured out that part just yet. loud, but shy.
member C: the guitarist. soft spoken, very silly, morbid in the best and worst ways. C is perpetually going through some shit. they’re the type of person who will show up hours late to a gathering and say “sorry, I was microwaving my socks” and not be kidding or exaggerating in any way. ADHD to the bone, a shining example of “out of sight, out of mind” and how that applies to emotions. (will need to research that some more) C deals with their self worth all the time, and frequently feel like an impostor because they were never professionally trained to play the guitar. To them, music isn’t just about the audience or the product. It's about having a good time, escapism or not. passionate, but lost.
member D: by far the most exposed to the limelight, the lead singer of the band is also the lyricist. They are the most emotionally charged of the bunch, handling some anger issues that frequently put a wedge between them and the people they love. they’re also impressively fragile, and i’m thinking they would have some friction with A when they start suggesting changes to the musical style because that’s something the consistency of which brings them comfort. spontaneous, rude and unapologetic. they’re the kind of person to yell at you for an hour only to then apologize and make you pizza.
I think that’s pretty decent for the main cast. Obviously there are other characters at play but I’ll figure those out as I write the script. they’ll be given a similar treatment, but will only serve specific bits and scenes in the story.
next week, we’ll hopefully be drafting up some designs.
devlog updates on tuesdays.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
untitled project devlog 8: themes, and pain
At first, when I said I wanted to discuss the themes of my project, I thought that maybe there would be some convenient article, book or philosophy deep dive I could reference, which does not seem to be much the case, seeing as how my approach to themes is very personal. so… here’s some thoughts.
In case it’s not abundantly obvious by now, the story features a band and music quite prominently. One of my original elevator pitches for the comic was “think metalocalypse meets bandslam, but with the scope of Ernest et Celestine and the presentation of a black and white Wes Anderson film” which is the vaguest shit ever and I’ll eventually get my head out of my ass long enough to stop worrying about spoiling the story. My point is: the act of being creative is at the forefront of the story. What drives it forward is something I won’t mention in this series, but a lot of ideas emerge when you decide to write something as personal as making art. Things like purpose, belonging, self worth, expression, communication, validation are things that every artist or musician deals with quite regularly and no story about creativity would be complete without them.
The first post ever made to this blog was a webcomic name fancomic that, looking back, isn’t bad but remembering the reason why I made it is what makes me cringe. I wanted attention. When I started making art I expected to be famous in 100 days. literally, I wish I was exaggerating.
In every artist’s journey with art, they reach the point where they realize that the only things really worth pursuing are the things they’re passionate about. Sometimes this is drawing commissions, other times people do commissions to keep themselves alive. A lot of times, the art people are passionate about barely gets any attention at all. It's a fact that a lot of creatives secretly know that people who get successful doing something they love are very lucky.
youtube
It takes maturity to be happy for people and proud of their hard work as opposed to being an envious child but that doesn’t mean we don’t secretly want success as well. If I could have enough dedicated readers to make my comics for a living but never be famous I’d do that in a heartbeat. Every big shiny thing is destined to accumulate dust, I don’t want to be a big shiny thing, I want to be a reliable hill you can trust to be there year after year. It took me a while to get to the mindset I work with today. 6 years might not feel like a lot when you consider the insane careers some artists had, but as far as people go 6 years is a lot. I graduated, finished a book, worked on 2 short film productions that have both won awards (one of which for my sound design!!), moved house, freelanced, started a stable job, been to therapy, gotten an operation, nearly lost people, been through an explosion, an economic collapse; and I think that’s just the stuff I’m remembering off the top of my head.
Finding documentation and sources about this kind of stuff is pretty difficult because this is not what gets publicized about media. However, if you pay enough attention some similarities start to appear.
The manga Berserk is pretty famous for its elaborate artwork and story. It doesn’t really need an intro and I’ve been told I need to read it which I plan on, but that’s not the point right now. As you may know, Kentaro Miura, the author and illustrator of the manga passed away in 2021. For fans of the series, while very tragic, this wasn’t all that surprising. The dude doesn’t fill in black. he crosshatches everything. An admirable feat, which makes you thankful that a friend of his, Kouji Mori, decided to finish making the manga after he passed away.
Many other manga share this. Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, has been known to frequently go on hiatus. So has Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi. A lot of times, an artist’s undying faith to their work is because of how passionate they are about it, the people involved in making it or even the audience. I forget the exact interview this is from, but Linkin park has gone on record for saying that sometimes they need to consider the audience. you see them always excited to talk about how experimental their music is, which is great, but when you know someone’s on the receiving end of what you’re making, it’s bound to make you think a bit differently.
This video of George RR Martin and Stephen King chatting kind of outlines the different approaches they have to writing. One of the most iconic quotes is “how do you write so fast?” Spoken by Martin. Now I’m not here to talk about Game of Thrones, trust me I couldn't care less but it does bring up one point worth talking about which is inspiration, discipline and what that has to do about your malleability as an artist.
youtube
This is the trailer for H.E.R.A., one of the short movies I worked on as a sound designer and general handyman. It was written and animated by my friend Alaa Fleifel with the help of some wonderful fellow artists and animators for some of the scenes. Alaa and his studio Phat Chik are an example of what I’m talking about.
pictured: Alaa.
When I talk about being malleable, I don’t mean that in the X-men mystique “I chameleon my way around the world” school of art though that can work in some cases, sure. What I refer to is one’s ability to keep making their art. During the production of H.E.R.A., there were at many points obstacles that would have shot down most movie productions. The sound designer had to prioritize staying alive so he had to unfortunately quit the project midway. Alaa had to juggle a fulltime job, commissions and a rapidly decaying economic system that meant most clients didn’t want to pay well anymore so he had to outsource some of the background art and scenes to friends and animators that he paid out of pocket. The production timeline lasted a year and 8 months, most of that time was spent patching up the team in the background. Working on H.E.R.A. taught me that there is no project in existence that is the result of one human being. Everyone has at least one person to give them advice, someone who goes “hey, I know a guy” and very often that is not just one person. When band line ups change, it’s sometimes treated with an air of disregard.
“oh, it’s just the drummer”
“it’s the rhythm guitarist, their job is pretty easy anyway”
Had Alaa waited around for inspiration or permission to make his film, it would have never happened. Sure, a lot of why we get to watch the absurdist sci-fi acid trip that is H.E.R.A. is due to some luck and connections, but a lot of it is also due to a rejection of the notion that inspiration is what primarily fuels creativity.
So what does that say about the story? usually I find it helpful to present my themes in the form of questions, so here’s what i’ve been able to come up with:
Who does art/music belong to?
How much of the soul of art and music gets lost in translation?
How do you balance making stuff for yourself and an audience once you have one?
How much does inspiration really matter?
I need to be honest with you about something.
I’ve been kind of avoiding talking about the more… personal themes at play here.
it’s not because I don’t know what they are, really. They just come from a place of deep discomfort and humiliation for me. I’ve obviously become a much different human being over the course of my 27 years on the rapidly traveling rock in space but it’s never not weird for me remembering the dumb things I did or said growing up or while I was finding my footing as a writer. There are entire projects and dozens of pages of things that I threw out the window before I felt confident enough in something to be able to share it. there’s a lot of fucking up you do while growing up and not surprisingly, I feel more comfortable seeing my weird feelings in fiction than I do laid out in bullet points in a devlog. So I promise you this:
the people in the story are going to be human. Faults, warts and all. The only thing I ask of you is to know that while those warts are real, they are not mine anymore. Every day that passes, I grow a little bit more, and maybe at some point I’ll grow tall enough that the light trickling through the trees will feel safe enough to fly.
Merry Christmas, and may every year bring a little bit more sun.
Devlog updates on tuesdays.
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Untitled project Devlog #3: The crab effect
Today we’re going to talk about how art and politics are inherently inseparable on a conceptual level, but first: let’s talk about boots.
If you google Doc Martens you’ll be taken to their website where you have the option of buying an assortment of very overpriced shoes that a lesbian on tiktok assured me are made less good than classic ones from the 90’s and 80’s. When I was in class one day our professor mentioned how nowadays a lot of companies adopt an ideology put forth by Ford (the car manufacturer) where if you have a very sturdy part of a machine that’s expensive to make but the rest of the machine isn’t, the “smarter” idea is to make this part cheaper and less sturdy than to spend a bunch of money to make the whole machine better- supposedly this is better for the consumer somehow but that’s not the point. Setting aside how that raises the question of planned obsolescence and potential consumer exploitation, part of the reason that people say old Doc Marten shoes are better… is probably because they actually are.
from how to geek: https://www.howtogeek.com/731791/what-is-planned-obsolescence-and-how-does-it-affect-my-devices/
This sentiment, the idea that companies aren’t worth your respect because they optimize their products to make more money and not to actually sell you a good product is part of what a lot of punk subcultures are about. Those same boots were likely part of the original fashion focused subculture, skinheads, that assisted in the creation of the punk genre.
The original meaning of “skinhead” referred to some working class young people who had some extra cash to spend on clothing. Because history is always very messy, some racists saw that and thought “oh wow young people who can vote” and then neo nazis happened. in reaction to that you had people still calling themselves skinheads now taking an anti racist anti fascist approach. to note: it’s not clear cut, you still had people in the middle not caring.
This is how the ideology of punk was born. It’s this whole messy history lesson spanning continents, politics, fashion, a distaste for what was then the way too polished mirror sheen of rock. they wanted something tangible, something of the people by the people. so take the urban fashion of the original reggae/soul/ska influenced skinhead movement born in the UK, combine it with the now beginning to be unique sound of american punk just trying to sound different, the image of the working class “bastard” that deconstructed and challenged the idea of what a musician was and you get a socio-politically motivated genre of music that wants the best for the people.
sidenote: in case you’re wondering- yes there were neonazi punk musicians, but it’s not called punk, it’s called hatecore, which is… a fitting name. Genres are not only defined by sound, but themes as well.
Remember when I mentioned that music changes based off of the social fabric it’s built on? there you go. Punk as we know it would not exist the way it does today had it not been for that messy history. Now with that in mind, you can hopefully see why there’s an overlap with metal. If I were to vaguely state “loud music that actually wants to say something very important” you might have a hard time telling me which genre I’m talking about. This overlap is vaguely similar to how nature keeps evolving crabs independently from each other:
“Carcinization is of interest to carcinologists and evolutionary biologists for several reasons and at different levels. First of all it is an instance of astonishing convergence, concerning a whole set of structures.”
Scholtz, G. (2014). Evolution of crabs – history and deconstruction of a prime example of convergence, Contributions to Zoology, 83 (2) 87-105. https://brill.com/view/journals/ctoz/83/2/article-p87_1.xml
And… it’s weird right? how these people trying to do different things ended up in the same place. to note, I’m aware that both of these genres are not exclusively worried about social and political issues, no genre is. Metal is first and foremost fun, and punk music is first and foremost that: MUSIC. But it’s hard to deny that both genres are intense in their messaging.
Remember the time System of a Down set aside years of creative differences to talk about the war happening in Armenia?
youtube
Literally any Russ Russel song will be talking about some variation of politics/the man/religion
Napalm Death, Metaphorically screw you
Here’s a fun fact, Rage against the machine got the N-word pass (I would presume) to sing their cover of Fuck the police
youtube
You know the meme of Gojira being all like “come here bb girl” and then it’s just like a tree? I mean that’s not based on nothing either…
youtube
On the lesser known end of the spectrum, you have artists like 3teeth which raise an interesting question:
3teeth, president X
“It’s all kind of… tongue in cheek?” you might say. There’s the song “God hates us all” by Slayer, when the lead singer Tom Araya was asked if he actually believes that he simply said the following:
Tom Araya in in Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, directed by Sam Dunn
Metal Musicians aren’t dumb. They know what they’re doing. Sometimes they’re Genuinely convinced of what they’re talking about. Other times They’re just trying to be outrageous.
Dee Snider, Lead singer of twisted Sister
A lot of the gender norm defying things the metal scene did in the 70’s was because they were just trying to look cool and outrageous. But let’s forget about that for a moment. I can hear someone giving the arguments “What about Nu metal?”, “What about Rob zombie?”, “what about Ghost”, “what about [insert commenter’s band here]?”. Are those political? no, neither is most music in general. No one listens to Feiruz and thinks “ah yes, you can clearly hear the Palestinian struggle represented through the lyrics” but you might just look up Feiruz, learn she’s from Lebanon and then learn about the part of the world glued to Lebanon called Palestine. This is called tangential learning, so in that same sense, maybe you’ll be listening to Bodies by Drowning pool–which is about moshing by the way– and for a moment you’ll think of something else more serious for example. Again, you might not, and that’s fine… but you can’t deny that the path is there.
Setting that aside for a moment, let’s consider the argument that music is a form of escapism. Leaning on this as your sole argument is very narrow minded and forgets the idea that escapist fiction is inherently anti-escapist. When you read Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (which is great by the way go read Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson) sure you’re immersed in the world of the book and the intricacies of this nigh-impossible magical bank heist. But once you put down the book, you’re always reminded of the world you’re escaping from. Escapist fiction offers a temporary relief from reality, there is always a thread that tethers that fiction to the real world it pushes against.
Craig Thompson, Blankets
If you're still reading at this point you’re probably wondering how any of this is relevant to a comic book, let alone one that I'm making. The project I'm working on is going to feature a band that we’re going to be eventually making characters for. but in order to do that and do it properly, it’s important to understand the motivations behind the music. If I don’t then you end up with cliche characters like “angry rebellious metalhead” and “overly verbose activist punk” which no one wants and that would make the whole thing a shit fest at worst, and a boring comic at best. It’s important for me that i don’t rely on the events taking place in the story to hold it up, the world and people in it need to be just as interesting and complex as the contrivances of my narrative, otherwise I’m just writing a less good bandslam or a very uninspired rip off of inception that completely misses the point.
Anyways!I would be remiss to not specifically point out that I actually have a goal I’m working towards, I have a plot outline that’s been figured out for a while. All the work I’m doing fits into that skeleton in one way or another, but that’s it for now.
Devlog updates on tuesdays
#comic#kinocomix#devlog#graphic novel#metal#webcomic#craig thompson#twisted sister#slayer#punk rock#Youtube
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
look at me planning illustrations in 3D and shit
1 note
·
View note
Text
update 22: some sneak peeks at something that won't see the light of day until years from now...
the script for TSTW is 34 chapters long. for the most part the end is in sight, i don't expect it to be much longer. will need to send it the beta readers and possibly adjust some things.
the killouete script is 6 chapters long. it's long enough that i could make a prototype and use it to try to find a publisher, we'll see. I really want to finish the script first though.
here is something unrelated that I really want to share. i recently wanted to make a short dora the explorer joke comic, here it is if you were wondering, it's the dumbest shit, but i need it to make my point:
POINT IS, did you know that canonically swiper has something called swiping disorder, which states that the mask is like... part of his face because he's actually sick? i know that because i spent two hours reading dora the explorer lore.
i then decided it would be fun to redesign swiper, again, trying to get to a point here:
all of this was in february by the way. i really liked how the design looked. honestly, had i not told you it was swiper you'd have never guessed. it's to be noted that i don't like swiper nor any of the lore attached to him. because my brain is desperate for logic, i wondered if the mask is maybe because of something else.
i only hyperfixated on Lucha libre and wrestling for two days, not neglecting what i was doing for TSTW and killouette, obviously.
now we're here (the point)
he doesn't have a name yet. but to the left is the wrestling attire and to the right is what he actually looks like. see? you can't tell anymore.
i have a vague idea of what the story would be about. wrestling is very hard on the body, and once you're a wrestler, there's not many other jobs you can do. some people become actors, others trainers. but for the majority of wrestlers, retiring is rarely an option. wrestling is part of your life in more ways than one. according to my initial research it appears people have a love hate relationship with wrestling. it doesn't always have the best healthcare as is the case with WWE, and can force you to hide who you are out of fear of not having a private life like in Lucha libre.
instinctively i want to explore all of those things. what happens when a wrestler has to find a different job? why would that even happen? what are the weird bureaucracies involved? how does that make them question their decisions and what answers do they find? what even is important enough to give up on something you dedicated your life to?
my WIP answer right now is a kid you love more than life itself. to want to give up everything to make sure you'll be there for your child, not in some hospital or grave; to want to set an example of what to be and how to find happiness despite everything, i think that's worth exploring.
obviously i should state that i won't be working on this until i get around to it, which will take a while given that i want to finish what i"m doing right now first, but we'll get there.
might have to learn spanish in the meantime.
1 note
·
View note
Last Seen Blogs
greyopal
yodels
socceradvice
Soccer Advice
dmukcs
DMU Korean Culture Society
your-local-feral-pussycat
My Little Rhealm Of Innocence