First Milestone reached!

Today I have officially reached the first milestone of the first chapter final artwork creation process. I have created (slightly over) 20% of the final art, measured by lenght. After reaching the end of a section I created this milestone plan to review my progress and to estimate the time I'll need to finish the whole thing.

I spent 24 hours on the artwork that now is implemented into the layout. However, I also spent close to 13 hours on artwork that I discarted completely. Like I've already written in an older post, I had some problems to find the visual style that I was looking for. I guess that I have overcome these problems now and that I can calculate with the 24 hours for the rest of the artwork. That would mean another 100 hours of work in front of me. Given the fact that in the first 4 months of this year I have managed to work 187 hours on my private projects, which makes 46 hours a month, I can estimate to finish the first chapter somewhere in July. I'm concentrating on the graphic novel but still have some other stuff to do so that will be end of July, perhaps August. That would be cool. After finishing the first chapter I'll also have to build the Wormworld Saga homepage, which should take a month or so, and then the adventure can begin. Well, we'll see how accurate this estimation is. Life can't be calculated and who knows all the pitfalls along the path?

Thinking in these timeframes is challenging sometimes. I often think about how fast I could be if only I could work fulltime on the project. Right at the moment I spend 10 hours a day at the job to be able to work 2 hours a day on the project. If I could spend 8 hours a day on the graphic novel I could finish the chapter in 15 days. That's three weeks with free (!) weekends. But thoughts like these lead to nowhere so I just keep on working. The milestone chart is a great motivation. I'm actually getting somewhere and I'm really looking forward to share my first chapter with all of you as soon as it is ready.

In the meantime I have some character artwork for you. Here you see Jonas' teacher Mrs. Rubens:

And of course I had to figure out how Jonas looks in everyday life when he's not wearing his adventure outfit. I had the idea to give him a Captain Orion T-Shirt. I figured out that this might be a movie in Jonas' world that boys like him would be a fan of. :)

Ok, back to work!

First "wormsealed" artwork

I'm not drawing a lot on paper. All the drawing for my artwork and the graphic novel is done in Photoshop on an Intuos4 graphic tablet from Wacom. But now and then I pick up good old Mr. Pencil and do a little sketch. This time I created a little gift for someone who ordered his second digital print from me and who had to wait over a week for his order to be processed because I overlooked a notice from Paypal. It's not always easy to do this stuff all on my own and mistakes can happen. On the other hand, that way I have the possibility to connect more closely to the people who support my artwork. I hope that he enjoys his custom drawing and that it makes up for the delay. He's the first one to receive an artwork that features the original Wormseal stamp!

I'm still busy with the graphic novel. I'll  post a milestone update this week!

Panel artwork sneak preview and Wormseal stamp

I'm back from a ZBrush workshop I gave at the Media Design Hochschule in Düsseldorf and I guess it's about time for an update. I had a real struggle with my first panel artwork. I was trying too hard to be especially smart with my painting and totally screwed up. Although I had chosen a technique that should speed things up, I was slow and although I tried to be flexible by using a lot of layers in Photoshop I never arrived at the right result. I discarted a lot of work in the last weeks and started to get really nervous. The worst thing was, that my first painting sessions wheren't fun at all. They felt like work. I tried to figure out what exactly my problem was and again tricked myself by coming up with all sorts of smart reasons why my work didn't turn out right. Before I went on my workshop, I was really lost.

It's always helpful to get out when you're stuck with a problem. The workshop lasted for three days and I lived in a hotel during that time and my daily routine was completely changed. I got distracted from all the theories about my painting problems in my head and finally had my breakthrough when I started painting without worrying too much about the result. I was in a hotel room and couldn't expect a perfect result anyway, right? I used a minimum of layers, worked completely unstructured and relied on my gut feeling. The result turned out satisfying and, most importantly, was fun. I think I'll be able to relax about the whole thing now and just paint my graphic novel. I don't know why things that should be so easy turn out to be so hard sometimes. It's all in the head. We shouldn't use our heads too much when it comes to certain things, I guess.

Here's a first sneak preview from my first panel artwork. I don't want to show too much before the first chapter is released and therefore it's only a small fragment:

And there's another thing to show you! Two weeks ago I received an item that I had ordered over the internet:

It's a stamp of the Wormseal! It is 6 centimeters in diameter and produces a very detailed, forgery-safe mark which looks especially cool in red color. I'm planning to offer a wide range of low priced digital prints of selected panel artwork from the Wormworld Saga online graphic novel as soon as the first chapter is released. Every print will be hand signed and marked with the Wormseal stamp in order to create a unique collector's item for everyone who wants to support my project. I'm really looking forward to making these available to you.

There's no way around!

All right, I was hoping that after finishing my teaser artwork for the magnificent mystery project I would instantly be able to update the blog with all the glorious details. Well, it looks like we'll have to wait just a bit longer until an official press release is ready and so I'm updating the blog with some news on the Wormworld Saga online graphic novel.

Well, I have to start it now.

There is no other task in the way, no obligation that's holding me back (well, I could do the taxes...) I now have time to do the final artwork of the online graphic novel. The layout is ready and I've gotten very positive feedback from test readers over the last two months. I even have a professional translator checking my writing and all I have to do now is to paint it. And it's really damn hard to just start!

I made a first move yesterday and made some decisions concerning the dimensions of the final artwork. The online graphic novel will be displayed much like the online exhibitions on my website. It will be 1024 pixels wide (centered in the browser window) and the layout was painted directly in this size. For the final artwork I'm going to work in three times the final resolution which means that the panels will be painted in 3072 pixels width. The decision in which size to work is an important one and I'm pondering on this questions for some days now. A too high resolution creates too much space that wants to be filled with detail. On the other hand, a resolution too small doesn't hold the detail when it is needed. First I thought, double resolution would be ok but my plan is to offer prints of the panel artwork and therefore I changed my mind towards tripple resolution. On a sidenote: the online graphic novel will perfectly fit the size of Apple's iPad (which runs a resolution of 1024x768) in landscape mode. I'm vaguely thinking about the possibilities of creating an app for the iPad which could feature extra content and which people could purchase to support my project. Well, but in any case the iPad will be a great device to read the online version of the Wormworld Saga OGN.

Well, now that this is decided, I can start.

Yeah...

... and then I have made a small but important change to my story development wall:

In earlier posts you can see that I had arranged the post its in a timeline fashion. At some point I felt uncomfortable with this arrangement because it made it very hard to change the number of post its of a given chapter. Now that I have arranged the post its from top to down it feels a lot better. This way it's very easy to add new content or notes to a chapter and I also realized that now the chapters on the wall resemble the final graphic novel which is also a vertical format.

Ok, now ... where was I?

Oh, right. I actually have to create the graphic novel. Well, if there's no way around it...

Finished sculpting

Finally I've finished the concept sculptings of my main character. It took me quite some time to arrive at this point but I'm happy that I've invested that time (close to 15 hours, for those who care about the figures). I really love sculpting and it is a great way to get to know a character. As you can see, I have created a full body figure. I really wanted to get the full picture here.

So, please let me introduce you to Jonas Berg! 

Also, I created a set of emotional states. That was especially fun to do.

 

And it was the moment, when the character really started "speaking" to me. The character lived in my head for quite some time now. But his picture was blured and whenever I sketched him he turned out a different character.

It's a strange feeling to dismiss all these possibilities and to commit to a "face". But now that it's there I'm able to connect much more directly to the character. He's there, he's real. He asks me questions and challenges me to send him on his adventure. Somehow I now feel responsible for him.

And it'll make a hell of an action figure, won't it?  ;)

Next on my schedule is a teaser artwork for ... well, a not yet to be revealed project. But soon the curtain will be raised and I'm really excited about it!

Protagonist sculpting progress

I think I have done some good progress on the ZBrush sculpting of the protagonist. The version from the last post looks totally creepy to me now. It would be better to post this stuff not until it had rested for a bit. Well, this version is from today and - again - I like it right at the moment but hey - I liked the first one, too. So I guess there's still some stuff to improve on this one. Your input is greatly appreciated, by the way! Right now I think that maybe the eyebrow is a bit too heavy. However, I'm starting to like the little fella. He looks like he could stand some adventure but he also shows a certain fragility. Well, I'm not going to rely heavily on sculptings like this for the production of the graphic novel artwork. I'm going to use them for general lighting reference and in fact it's not too important to totally nail the character in this 3D version. But right at the moment it's a fun way for me to learn more about this guy. I'm going to send him through some serious trouble and, well ... I hope he doesn't get too mad at me.

Hey, and I learned to split my progress into smaller postings!

Gaining momentum again!

Ok, nearly 3 weeks (no wait ... exactly 3 weeks!) after my accident, my arm has mostly grown back. I was able to use it for typing two weeks ago and one week ago I was able to start drawing and painting stuff again. So I tried to use my time as far as it was possible and I was able to get quite some stuff done.

I've arranged test readings of the first chapter with some friends here at home and I really must say that this step is absolutely essential. The most important thing is, that I was able to identify some problems with the storytelling. At some points some readers stumbled over things that I took for granted and it was really helpful to get input on these points. Also, I was able to stop the time the test readers needed to read the first chapter. I arrived at a good 10 minutes average which is really cool. I thought, it would be much less. And what also really matters to me is, that until now every test reader had really enjoyed the ride and that even in the current rough layout stage. That's extremely motivating, especially because I was even able to entertain test readers that normally don't read comics at all. Of course, I'm really looking forward to publish the first chapter now in full color but for the moment, it's only two more grayscale panels from the layout:



Then, I have finished the first draft of the second chapter script. Like I wrote in the last post, it first was a weird thought for me to work on the comic in pure writing. But when I started to write the script it very soon felt like describing the pictures to myself and taking notes of what I'm seeing and what was happening. I was totally able to get into the flow - in Word! It took me 6 hours to create the first draft of the script and I'm really happy that I took that step because I stumbled over a few things in chapter 2 that called for changes in chapter 1. I incorporated these changes (and some other minor changes) into the chapter 1 layout today and I'm now officially ready to begin with the final artwork for the first chapter.

I've already started do do some concept artwork for the main characters. Since I'm not going for a pure cartoon style in which the characters are defined by characteristic lines but more for an illuminated style where the forms and the patterns of light determine the look of the characters, I'm going to create small ZBrush sculptings of the most important characters. That way I'll be able to preview the shading especially on the faces. In the end I'm going to draw and paint all characters by hand and simplify the lighting but sculptings like these help to find good lighting angles and the shapes of backlights and stuff like that. This sculpting here is a first draft of the main character:



I'm not 100% satisfied with this sculpting yet but it's a good start I think. In recent times I've made the experience that it works quite well for me to make a first draft, then forget about it for a few days and then come back to it with a fresh view. When the sculpting is ready I plan do do some emotion sculptings as well.

I hope I'll come up with some more colorful stuff in the near future!

"Ouch!" or "Then it's writing instead!"

These are the tendons of your shoulder. Notice the bunch of small tendons that connect the clavicle with the shoulder blade via the acromion and the coracoid process.

At least they DO connect the clavicle with the shoulder blade if you DO NOT try to ride your bike on icy ground. If you DO ride your bike on icy ground you will slip in a turn, fall on your right shoulder and the little guys get ripped, turning your right arm mostly useless for over a week. And that's most likely the point where you'll discover how much drawing and painting with your left arm sucks.

Well, I'll have to wait a week or two until I can continue to work on the artwork for the graphic novel. I'm also not going to work and I'm going to try to use at least a bit of the free time to make some progress with my story. Typing with only your left hand is slow but it works. And if I'm thinking about it, perhaps right now is a really good time to do some writing anyway. I'm still at the point where I have to find out how exactly I'm going to flesh out my story.

I really have to thank all the great people on the internet who provide us with their thoughts and experiences about their own projects. For the last few month I was roaming several blogs and forums and tried to get an overview over the complex thing that creating a graphic novel is. I've started to create a link list on the right menue strip but I also want to expressly point you to my favorite findings. Nate Simpson does an epic job over at Project Waldo. It's well worth to read his blog archives which are full of honest and meaningful posts in which many times I found my own doubts and questions expressed. I also recommend Kazu Kibuishi's Boltcity Blog. He's a real pro with several graphic novels on the shelves and he does not only share his experiences with his Amulet graphic novel but also writes a lot about storytelling and writing. And only a few days ago I discovered Jason Brubaker's reMIND Blog and instantly loved it. Jason also loves to share his experiences and although the current incarnation of his blog is only a few month old there's already a lot of information about workflows and the creative process piled up. Well, and I probably don't have to mention that their projects alone are more then a good reason to visit their blogs and enjoy the wonderful artwork.

My own quest recently lead me to the question which role writing plays in my creative process. For the first chapter I hadn't written anything in advance. The scenes just came naturally to me and I wrote the dialog directly into the layout. However, I currrently don't have the feeling that the dialog suffered from that workflow. That's the thing I would expect from that kind of workflow: that the story tends to be told visually and that the dialog feels arbitrary. I think that I somehow managed to avoid that but I'm not sure if this is a workflow to keep. A few days ago I transcribed the dialog of the first chapter into script form in order to be able to hand it over for proof reading and I started to see what script writing might be all about. To be honest, it has always been a big mystery to me how people are able to deduce a visual storytelling experience from a screenplay. Maybe it's the same mystery like with composers who write their music with notes. I never was able to draw the direct connection between a written page of screenplay and let's say a movie scene. Ok, sure, the actors have to say something. But hey, we have a camera here and we'll have to figure out where to point it on in the first place, don't we? Well, after bringing my first chapter into script form it suddenly began to feel less weird to work that way. It felt a bit like the other side of the same medallion. And it felt fast! Rewriting aside (I did a lot of rewriting in the chapter 1 layout, too), I might be able to do in two or three hours what took me 25 hours in the layouts (meaning that I had the character interaction of the first chapter only after having finished the complete layout. Of course a lot of these hours were consumed by the painting process). With decent panel descriptions I might even be able to do a lot less experimenting in the layouts and save time.

Well, I'm right in the middle of a learning process here and I think I will just have to try it and see what's happening. I guess it's a good idea to do some writing on the second chapter now especially since my injured shoulder keeps me from doing anything decent on the visual side anyway.

Chapter 1 layout completed

After some very busy two weeks and nearly 25 hours of work I've finally finished my first draft of the layout of chapter one of the Wormworld Saga OGN. It consists of 71 panels and will be 1024 pixels wide and 20000 (!) Pixels high. On my screen that's 5,4 meters! Or to put it in other words:

That's a whole lot of work in front of me! Creating the layout was a fantastic experience though. To be honest, I was a bit afraid of my own courage when I announced the graphic novel project. But now I'm very happy that I have finally started. Telling stories with pictures is just great and I'm feeling a bit like a movie director. I'm totally getting into the flow when I'm working on the panels. Here are some sneak peek panels from the layout for you:

As you can see, I've gotten relatively specific in the layout. Basically I have already planned the major lighting idea for each panel in tonal values. I became douptful in the middle of the process if it's worth the effort at this stage but I think this detailed layout will come in handy when I'm going to create the final art. Another advantage of the approach definitely is, that the layout already reads like a real comic and that the mood of every scene communicates quite well.

I yet have no idea how long it will take me to create the finished art for the first chapter. I'm quite intimidated by the sheer size of it. I've already thought about cutting it in half. There would be a nice opportunity right in the middle of the chapter that would make for a clean cut. On the other hand, that would leave the first chapter with a lot of exposition and little story progress. I want the first chapter to be really good and satisfying for the reader in order to raise the appetite for more. Therefore I think that I will keep the long version and just live with it.

At the moment I manage to work at least two hours every day on the project and I try to do between 8 and 12 hours at the weekend. That this doesn't quite work out I can gather from the ToDoList software I mentioned in the last post. There I have counted 35 hours of work on the graphic novel in two weeks. This little program is really helpful for keeping track of your effort. I was even able to estimate the finishing point when I was half through with the layout. As soon as I have started to create the finished art I will watch my progress closely and hope to be able to estimate the completion date of the first chapter soon.

I would love to start with the finished art for the first chapter right away but I have to do some work for another project first. That one is also very interesting and I hope to be able to make an announcement during the next few weeks.

Thanks for your interest and stay tuned!

Revision is progress!

I'm starting to get really excited about my graphic novel. I haven't enjoyed working on something so much for a long time. I have made some significant progress with the story today. I have scraped a lot of post its from the wall and replaced them with new versions.



I have completed the first of the three parts of the story and currently it's divided into 7 chapters.




That's less then I thought. Well, we will see how accurate this estimation is. The first chapter will teach me a lot of valuable lessons in this respect. I have started to draw all the panels of chapter 1 into a single photoshop file.



The idea is to draw every panel the same size and then paste them into the layout document and to stretch them there into their individual sizes. Still a lot to experiment here. I have already worked a bit on the layout file and my experience up to this point is, that this method works quite well with pure action sequences but not so good with dialog. The reason is, that I often have to insert panels in order to get the right amount of space for the dialog. I guess, I will have to work out the dialog directly in the layout document.

Probably it would be a good idea to work out the whole story in thumbnails first before I start to create the final artwork. At least that's the way the pros seem to do it. However, I'm really curious how much time the different parts of the process take and therefore I've decided to finalize the complete first chapter just to get an idea, how time consuming the whole project might become. To track the time on the different tasks I installed a cool little freeware tool called ToDoList. It's very helpful for counting the time which is spend on different tasks. You can configure the features to your needs. I'm only using the time counting feature at the moment but you can also set deadlines and document your progress on different tasks in percent and much more.



I hope to be able to show you some artwork soon. I sure will have to avoid spoilers here, but there are a lot of characters and location designs to create. So, even if I cannot show you final layouts I should have at least something for you to look at.