Do you remember that feeling?

I bet you didn't expect the next update so fast, did you? Well, I just happened to have finished a panel that I was looking forward to right from the beginning of the project and I wanted to share it with you directly. :)

I hereby admit that I tend to get nostalgic about childhood. Well, big surprise. However, the Wormworld Saga will get a good share of this sentiment, especially in the first two chapters. There are several key memories that transport that feeling especially well for me personally. One of these memories is about car rides over long distances. It's a special atmosphere in these memories. The sunset, the humming of the car engine, the muted music from the radio. Time seemed to stand still on these journeys. Interestingly this also happens to be a favorite panel of my wife. It looks like she also remebers the feeling and I was wondering if this might be one of these 'universal childhood memories' that everybody shares.

As you can gather from the posted panels so far, the Wormworld Saga starts with a longer car ride. I find these moments of transition very effective to begin a story. I love how "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro" - these two masterworks of Hayao Miyazaki - start with car rides. It's in that spirit that I want my story to begin. A slow transition from a bright, loud and busy world to a place where wonder awaits.

Milestone 2 accomplished

I'm back with some news on the progress of the Wormworld Saga Online Graphic Novel. I have moved past the 40% mark and therefore have reached the second of my five milestones for the first chapter. And like I promised I have some first real panel artwork for you to see! This artwork has yet to be composed and color corrected and I'm constantly fixing details in all panels but it gives a good first impression of the look of the graphic novel I think.

As you can see, the first chapter contains a lot of unusual subjects for me. I'm not really used to painting scenes from the real world. I like to paint nature and fantasy scenes. All the straight lines and angles in the architecture and the cars were really hard work for me and it also wasn't easy to find the right style for these elements. I didn't want to become too clean in the rendering but on the other hand I also didn't want the hard and shiny surfaces of the cars for example to look too sloppy. I hopefully have found a balance here that will fit to the fantastic subjects that will emerge later in the story.

Fortunately, by reaching the 40% mark I've also come to the point where the action leaves the city now and moves towards new subjects.

The fact that I had to paint a lot of stuff that I normally don't paint also had an impact on the time I needed for the second milestone. I painted a total of 45 hours on 18 panels so I'm way over my estimated 26 hours from after the first milestone (which had only 9 larger panels). My current estimation is, that I'm going to need a full month for every milestone from now on, Hopefully I'm able to finish the third milestone in June and the forth milestone in July. In August I'm leaving for a three weeks holiday in Spain where I'm not going to work on the graphic novel (except maybe for some script writing and sketching) so that the last milestone will have to wait until September. If everything works out like expected I'm going to design the Wormworld Saga website in October and might be ready for launch at the beginning of November - exactly one year after the announcement of the project on daniellieske.com. Well, that would be nice.

I'll keep you updated!