Blog Under Reconstruction - Back Soon
Just doing a bit of fiddling under the hood. I wanted to see if I could maintain a blog and I'm kinda happy I can, so now I want to pimp it out.
Saturday, 24 January 2009
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Heartless the Workblog part 4
Another workblog update, the last five days have been slow going apart from a gradually building Heartless momentum that will hopefully mean something more interesting to post soon. Until something shiny appears this is a brief catch-up on some of the issues I'm having.
Problems:
Threw out the high concept until I can say something that immediately grabs you, citing influences is all well and good but if very few people have heard of them it defeats the object completely.
The dream plane name and idea is too bland, I’m thinking of renaming it the One Dream as a start. All names of characters are made up because I liked the sounds, not exactly the scientific method I know, I haven’t yet looked into what they mean and whether I’ve called a character dog poo through my lack of research. Googling as I type.
Most of all though the sword is giving me issues because I can’t fit it into what I need it to be … yet. It may take a little grease and simply ignoring a certain problem with how it works, though I’m hoping not. I’m also struggling a little with the whole heart thing, I wonder where Mari puts it while he is out hunting. They must have found some method of sustaining it during the night.
Have also discovered my fight-scene-fu is weak and am spending too long breaking them down. May avoid one in particular for now, I know how it starts and ends so I can fill in the details once the rest is locked down ... I hope.
On a separate thought trail I started a bible for Heartless today to keep track of a lot of detail, which may only be seen in passing in the actual comic but I hope will add a level of depth to the story. I'm also worryingly discarding a lot of ideas I like, they don't fit the story and I know that, having tried to force them in, but I'm hoping they'll find a home in other Tales of the Two Planes stories.
Problems:
Threw out the high concept until I can say something that immediately grabs you, citing influences is all well and good but if very few people have heard of them it defeats the object completely.
The dream plane name and idea is too bland, I’m thinking of renaming it the One Dream as a start. All names of characters are made up because I liked the sounds, not exactly the scientific method I know, I haven’t yet looked into what they mean and whether I’ve called a character dog poo through my lack of research. Googling as I type.
Most of all though the sword is giving me issues because I can’t fit it into what I need it to be … yet. It may take a little grease and simply ignoring a certain problem with how it works, though I’m hoping not. I’m also struggling a little with the whole heart thing, I wonder where Mari puts it while he is out hunting. They must have found some method of sustaining it during the night.
Have also discovered my fight-scene-fu is weak and am spending too long breaking them down. May avoid one in particular for now, I know how it starts and ends so I can fill in the details once the rest is locked down ... I hope.
On a separate thought trail I started a bible for Heartless today to keep track of a lot of detail, which may only be seen in passing in the actual comic but I hope will add a level of depth to the story. I'm also worryingly discarding a lot of ideas I like, they don't fit the story and I know that, having tried to force them in, but I'm hoping they'll find a home in other Tales of the Two Planes stories.
Saturday, 10 January 2009
The Writing Habit
Whilst browsing the nethernet today I was introduced by Bryan Richmond to an article in Locus Magazine on Cory Doctorow's techniques for managing/avoiding distraction whilst writing in the web age, full article here.
To borrow Brandon Seifert's summary of the article, Doctorow's techniques look like this:
To borrow Brandon Seifert's summary of the article, Doctorow's techniques look like this:
- Make a short, regular work schedule. He shoots for one page, 20 minutes of writing a day, seven days a week. When he does a page a day for a year. he's written more than a full novel. And he can always find 20 minutes.
- Don't go over your goal. Even if you want to. Because if you force yourself not to, then the next day you'll be dying to pick it up again (I've received this advice before).
- Don't stop writing to research something. Throw in a "TK" ("to come") in its place and leave it for later
- Don't try to control your writing environment. Just write.
- Don't use a word-processor. Use a text editor. It's less distracting.
- Don't use real-time communication tools while you write. They just distract you.
They are for the most part common sense, but things you likely don't do. Personally I'm going to try and adapt the parts that would be advantageous to me, particularly the page a day idea - my writing production is all over the place at present. However, some of the advice I'd struggle with because no matter how ingrained it became, letting a juicy idea wait until the nexy day or not writing a passage that's perfectly clear in my head would be next to impossible for me. I'd HAVE to write it down. On the flip side, perhaps that's a part of my problem.
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Heartless the Workblog part 3
Last one for the moment - Cast and Problems coming soon.
Set Up:
This is the legacy of the Dreamer, Torikami, his story will be one of the Tales of the Two Planes, the rough title I came up with as a way of getting around those damn search engines and as a framework for a few different semi-related pieces that sprang from what I’ve discarded so far from this.
Torikami is the original dreamer, the entire dream world exists within his dream thus making him undisputed lord. However, so big has the dream plane become that the original dream can no longer support it. It now requires a constant source of fresh dreams to continue to exist. Dreams quickly diminish when taken from the human dreamers so the dream plane is constantly eating itself, eternally needing new dreams to maintain and renew itself. Expansion of the dream plane is now nothing more than wishful thinking.
Until the coming of Orash, the denizens of the dream plane collected the dreams themselves from sleeping humans, though it pained them to do so, making it a haphazard, piecemeal affair. Orash initially added order and stability to the dream collection, creating Collectors that could exist in both planes. But the Dreamer feared the power such a position granted and recruited a group of humans, through their dreams, to be the Balance. They are gifted with the ability to see and interact with the dream plane, a trait passed down to their offspring to continue the role. Working in tandem with the Collectors, the humans maintained the balance between planes, when you ‘slept without dreams,’ it is because they were taken to renew the dream plane. Should the volume of dreams entering the dream plane become too great, sections of it would solidify and merge with reality. In response to the Balance, Orash recruited his own human agents, including the Dream Weavers and the Shield.
Be under no illusion though, the Dreamer cares nothing for Reality beyond continuing to renew the Dream plane. As long as Orash constantly supplies the required volume of dreams, then his methods do not interest the Dreamer, unless they should come to threaten the Dream Plane. Orash understands this and over the millennia has been, slowly at first, collecting more dreams than required and storing them in his fortress (formerly just a place to collect the dreams) next to the bridge to Reality, in order to achieve the eventual merging of the city with his fiefdom. This would give him and his people what he feels is their ‘right’, direct access to the dreams.
Opposing him stands Tajitsu the last living member of the Balance and wielder of the Dragon’s Dream. The Dragon’s Dream is a fabled dream blade that no human can hold. The sword exists in both planes and thus allows the dream being who wields it to walk in both, granting the finality of the real world in the dream plane and the abilities of the dream plane in the real world. In order to control and use the blade Tajitsu has to be literally ‘heartless’. However the sword comes with a price, not only must his heart be removed daily (it’s fucking painful every time, thick scar tissue on his chest, over the heart – taking it out with Mari becomes ritualised) but the blade is slowly draining his humanity, whilst constantly standing between the two planes is robbing him of his sanity.
I love Greek mythology and as per many of those stories, this one does not end well. In essence it’s the story of a hero on the verge of a breakdown, whose life is irrevocably shattered and who falls into darkness.
Set Up:
This is the legacy of the Dreamer, Torikami, his story will be one of the Tales of the Two Planes, the rough title I came up with as a way of getting around those damn search engines and as a framework for a few different semi-related pieces that sprang from what I’ve discarded so far from this.
Torikami is the original dreamer, the entire dream world exists within his dream thus making him undisputed lord. However, so big has the dream plane become that the original dream can no longer support it. It now requires a constant source of fresh dreams to continue to exist. Dreams quickly diminish when taken from the human dreamers so the dream plane is constantly eating itself, eternally needing new dreams to maintain and renew itself. Expansion of the dream plane is now nothing more than wishful thinking.
Until the coming of Orash, the denizens of the dream plane collected the dreams themselves from sleeping humans, though it pained them to do so, making it a haphazard, piecemeal affair. Orash initially added order and stability to the dream collection, creating Collectors that could exist in both planes. But the Dreamer feared the power such a position granted and recruited a group of humans, through their dreams, to be the Balance. They are gifted with the ability to see and interact with the dream plane, a trait passed down to their offspring to continue the role. Working in tandem with the Collectors, the humans maintained the balance between planes, when you ‘slept without dreams,’ it is because they were taken to renew the dream plane. Should the volume of dreams entering the dream plane become too great, sections of it would solidify and merge with reality. In response to the Balance, Orash recruited his own human agents, including the Dream Weavers and the Shield.
Be under no illusion though, the Dreamer cares nothing for Reality beyond continuing to renew the Dream plane. As long as Orash constantly supplies the required volume of dreams, then his methods do not interest the Dreamer, unless they should come to threaten the Dream Plane. Orash understands this and over the millennia has been, slowly at first, collecting more dreams than required and storing them in his fortress (formerly just a place to collect the dreams) next to the bridge to Reality, in order to achieve the eventual merging of the city with his fiefdom. This would give him and his people what he feels is their ‘right’, direct access to the dreams.
Opposing him stands Tajitsu the last living member of the Balance and wielder of the Dragon’s Dream. The Dragon’s Dream is a fabled dream blade that no human can hold. The sword exists in both planes and thus allows the dream being who wields it to walk in both, granting the finality of the real world in the dream plane and the abilities of the dream plane in the real world. In order to control and use the blade Tajitsu has to be literally ‘heartless’. However the sword comes with a price, not only must his heart be removed daily (it’s fucking painful every time, thick scar tissue on his chest, over the heart – taking it out with Mari becomes ritualised) but the blade is slowly draining his humanity, whilst constantly standing between the two planes is robbing him of his sanity.
I love Greek mythology and as per many of those stories, this one does not end well. In essence it’s the story of a hero on the verge of a breakdown, whose life is irrevocably shattered and who falls into darkness.
Heartless the Workblog part 2
Inspiration:
Whilst working on another piece called Broken Hearted there was a thread on here about titles and how they work, or don’t, with the Amazon search engine. Given Broken Hearted as a title is likely to drown me in more Mills & Boon than anyone can rightfully expect to survive in a dozen lifetimes, I started playing with alternatives. The piss poor, and likely worse, Heartless immediately came to mind but was quickly discarded for obvious reasons. It did flip one of those random switches in my head though and two images popped out. The first was a samurai style warrior who had to remove his heart, which he gave to his love, in order to do what needed to be done. The second image was the first page of the first issue, no clue how they fitted together or even if it would work but you know, fuck it, it looked good in my head. So I wrote the first page and a bit down, using placeholder panel descriptions and it came out looking like this (the demons became the Collectors later):
___________________________________________________
[no dialogue]
__________________________________________________
Over the course of the following week absolutely loads of details came to me about who the samurai warrior was, his journey and why on earth would he take his heart out. It started with a dream.
Whilst working on another piece called Broken Hearted there was a thread on here about titles and how they work, or don’t, with the Amazon search engine. Given Broken Hearted as a title is likely to drown me in more Mills & Boon than anyone can rightfully expect to survive in a dozen lifetimes, I started playing with alternatives. The piss poor, and likely worse, Heartless immediately came to mind but was quickly discarded for obvious reasons. It did flip one of those random switches in my head though and two images popped out. The first was a samurai style warrior who had to remove his heart, which he gave to his love, in order to do what needed to be done. The second image was the first page of the first issue, no clue how they fitted together or even if it would work but you know, fuck it, it looked good in my head. So I wrote the first page and a bit down, using placeholder panel descriptions and it came out looking like this (the demons became the Collectors later):
___________________________________________________
Heartless #1 D1
Page 1
All page width panels
1
Establishing shot. Over head view of a night scene in a large oriental city (think Tokyo) with neon lights and sky scrapers. There’s something wrong with the picture though, black smudges (our demons) – like speed blurs – are visible across rooftops, looking in windows etc
[no dialogue]
2
Closer in on some of the lower rooftops and residential buildings, we see a large, shadowy demon with red eyes as it’s halfway through a section of wall close to the roof of a flat-topped building with fire escape. It’s stopped as the left side of its ‘body’ is already through the wall, looking straight back at us. [describe building in detail!]
[no dialogue]
3
Same shot but pull it back so we can see what the demon is staring at. The demon is pulling its left side back out of the wall because we’re looking at the back of a small, lean man in flowing oriental robes (lots of red with dragon designs and gold filigree) with a long, narrow sword in a plain, dark wood scabbard. Tajitsu!. The hilt is giving off a red glow/aura. [detail!]
[no dialogue]
4
Taj reaches back with his right hand and grabs the sword handle. The world around him has now changed drastically. All the real world objects – buildings, wires, billboards etc have faded and crazy things intermingle, overlay and work around them. There are dragons in the sky, ancient buildings in the gaps between the real ones, the roof Taj stands on is now a neatly cropped field full of bamboo trees and although the building is visible, it is faint and there is ivy crawling all over it with a four armed monkey hanging off the fire escape, which has become a red tree. This is our dream world merged with reality thanks to the Dragon’s Dream (the sword – shitty name?). The demon has lost its black shape and is now clearly defined. [Work out what demons look like, not homogenous but characteristically similar.]
[no dialogue]
5
The demon charges, a silent terror (side on shot showing that Tajitsu hasn’t moved yet, despite the size and speed of the demon, which clearly towers over Taj.)
[no dialogue]
Page 2
1
As the demon body falls to the floor, sprouting a vivid red ‘blood’ from having been chopped to pieces, Taj remains in exactly the same position as the last panel of the previous page, except a small section of the sword blade is visible in the scabbard and is dripping blood, with splashes over the nearest bamboo stalk/tree - research! He is that damn fast.
[no dialogue]
__________________________________________________
Over the course of the following week absolutely loads of details came to me about who the samurai warrior was, his journey and why on earth would he take his heart out. It started with a dream.
Heartless the Workblog part 1
So I started a workblog at Panel and Pixel because as previously mentioned there have been a few really interesting ones set up there recently. The goal being to make me finish the project, there's nothing like the thought of stuffing up and not following through in a forum full of professionals and soon-to-be's to focus the mind. Just starting it up made me think in more detail about certain aspects of the story, how to explain ideas concisely and what exactly was missing from what I'd already done. Don't think I nailed either part but if nothing else it is a start and something to build on. Here's where I am so far:
Putting up or shutting up, as B. Clay Moore said in his comicsbulletin interview - Do The Work. So here we go, the old familiar new format, bastardised from Jimmie and Brandon with apologies to both for not being quite as good at it.
Tales of the Two Planes: Heartless by Owen Jones and (any artist interested - email me)
Action / Myth / Tragedy
Format: Standard comic book, colour – may need to seek other format if pitches are unsuccessful.
Length: Tentatively Five issues
Distribution: Comic direct market for singles, wider book distribution for trades
Audience: Teen to adult, comic violence.
Production: Sometime in 2009 dependent on artist and eventual format.
Publisher: Still researching, small indy is likely my best bet at this stage.
Goal: Make the story-come-myth I enjoy reading myself.
Pitch (lengthy at present – just getting it set in my head):
Tajitsu is the Balance. Formerly a large group of warriors set against the Demon Lord, Orash Dream- Stealer, the Balance used to control the Collectors, creatures Orash unleashes to steal the City’s dreams. Now that duty falls to just the one man and the burden is taking its toll. However, Tajitsu wields the Dragon’s Dream, one of the most feared dream weapons, a blade that grants any dream being the finality of the real world in the dream plane and the abilities of the dream plane in the real world. Problem being Tajitsu isn’t a dream being, so he must remove his heart and give it to his soul mate, Mari, and rely on the blade to sustain him until his hunting is done. But the blade is driving him insane and Orash is about to attempt to merge the two planes.
High Pitch Concept: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (The Blizzard) meets Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Putting up or shutting up, as B. Clay Moore said in his comicsbulletin interview - Do The Work. So here we go, the old familiar new format, bastardised from Jimmie and Brandon with apologies to both for not being quite as good at it.
Tales of the Two Planes: Heartless by Owen Jones and (any artist interested - email me)
Action / Myth / Tragedy
Format: Standard comic book, colour – may need to seek other format if pitches are unsuccessful.
Length: Tentatively Five issues
Distribution: Comic direct market for singles, wider book distribution for trades
Audience: Teen to adult, comic violence.
Production: Sometime in 2009 dependent on artist and eventual format.
Publisher: Still researching, small indy is likely my best bet at this stage.
Goal: Make the story-come-myth I enjoy reading myself.
Pitch (lengthy at present – just getting it set in my head):
Tajitsu is the Balance. Formerly a large group of warriors set against the Demon Lord, Orash Dream- Stealer, the Balance used to control the Collectors, creatures Orash unleashes to steal the City’s dreams. Now that duty falls to just the one man and the burden is taking its toll. However, Tajitsu wields the Dragon’s Dream, one of the most feared dream weapons, a blade that grants any dream being the finality of the real world in the dream plane and the abilities of the dream plane in the real world. Problem being Tajitsu isn’t a dream being, so he must remove his heart and give it to his soul mate, Mari, and rely on the blade to sustain him until his hunting is done. But the blade is driving him insane and Orash is about to attempt to merge the two planes.
High Pitch Concept: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (The Blizzard) meets Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Start as you mean to go on
More Artwork! As part of the WORK! Anthology I wrote two rough drafts for a piece called Maggie's Farm incredibly loosely based on the Bob Dylan song (more the title actually). I couldn't quite nail it so Tim took over, trying to make the script presentable and that was that ... until today. I wasn't really expecting to see anything from the piece until the final version because I felt it was Tim's story, good guy that he is though (for an Englishman :)) he sent me the first three pages of pencils with a little ink and lettering thrown in. Great way to start the new year, hope you enjoy them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
