The Furies

[coldcut]

On the old boards, I always wondered what this forum was for. But now...now I know:

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[coldcut]

Exclusive writer commentary (posted elsewhere but only read by approximately 3 people up to now.)

Just to give a tiny tiny bit of background: about a week ago, I was extremely bored and ended up filling up all my slots on Protector with female alts. (I don't play female characters.) Not long after, I read the entire back catalogue of Scary-Go-Round. (You many notice some serious influence in the dialogue in page 4) Scary-Go-Round is really an amazing piece of work. In a daily comic format, John Allison makes you care about characters, even as they're going through really ridiculous situations. The dialogue is so good and the characters are so real that even in caricarture they have the ability to make you care about them.

Anyways, I wanted to do something similar. I can't draw (working on it), or otherwise I'd be greatly involved on my own webcomic. But what happened with the server full of females is that characters and stories started to pop up on their own. I can't even explain it, although I've heard other authors talk about it. It was like they seeped off the server and into a whole other world, and slowly a story started to form. Suddenly Blackbird, who was the original draft of my character Red-Wing developed a very strong personality and storyline. Violet (still can't figure out whether or not calling her African Violet would be too much) was a vamp who'd been swinging in an out of some Code 4 stories I'd been running in my head. Codex, (the girl in page X) had a full personality from the moment the character came online. And Sparks, who I think will end up being a favorite, started writing her own lines.

Think I might be beginning to hit my stride. Shock-rah, the green girl, is a little too quippy. I guess I'd rather be too quippy than too serious.

This is really interesting stuff, learning a medium I've never worked in before. Lessons learned so far:

* Storyboard the whole comic instead of just a few pages at a time. (Still working on this one. :rolleyes: )
* Each board is the highlight of the action, the killer frame in a sequence
* Third person narration is insanely important in these things. I had always thought it was a weird kind of anachronism. But it grounds the reader as to what's happening, or at least gives him/her the idea that something is happening.
* Extensive conversations should take place in as few panels as neccesary. I had this reversed in the first few pages
* All the lessons I learned from traditional writing went up the chimney when I started this. They still apply, but I'm just such a babe in the woods with this that I wasn't able to bring the usual tools to bear.
* Never, ever use the COH "smiley" character face in any future endeavors
* There are about 2-3 animation frames in the running routine that make a character look like they're walking. If not for them, this would be a much more frenetic comic. And even with them, everyone "walks angry."
* The whole face expresses emotion. Okay, I already knew this, but it got hammered home trying to do some of the facial expressions in this comic.
* Atmosphere works completely differently in comic books. In straight writing, you can throw out a lot of noise that generally gives the impression you're trying to make. In comics you're highlighting the most emotional moments in the course of a conversation or encounter. It's like emotional cliffnotes. Hemingway vs. Faulkner.

Revised opening sequence. Less heavy handed and melodramatic than the original. Not quite happy with the new panels (5 and 7 I believe). Blackbird's supposed to be fading into the shadows. Of course when I was storyboarding this, I was unaware that the only things that cast shadows in COH were trees and, for some reason, overpasses. So I had to add shadows, and I'm not sure the effect I'm using is clear enough. Too much translucency and it looks like the body disappears. Too little and it doesn't look like anything's happening.

What's pissing me off about this is that I don't have as much space as a real comic book writer. The panels just won't go as small without losing too much detail (or showing the lack of it in closeups for that matter.)

So everything feels kind of rushed. Maybe that's just the nature of the genre. But I was reading over Kingdom Come, and it doesn't seem to have that problem. (edit: cause Mark Waid gets to work with freaking six horizontal panels! Curse you Mark Waid!!!!)

One other closing comment. An insane amount of work went into the face detail on the new panels (and maybe a little on the old as well). I don't think you can tell it's there neccesarily. The chick in the Ellen DeGeneres outfit (and believe me, I was trying to avoid that. COH's costume generator is limited in some ways.) is supposed to look a bit older. I added a few wrinkles succesfully, but overall I don't think I pulled it off.

Edit: can't believe I'm up to 17 pages already. Just rearranged everything so it's got the right name (i.e., page 7 is no longer labeled as page 3 and so forth). But my webspace is being obstinate, so if some of the links are broken, tough luck.

http://users.adelphia.net/~dmorgan78/images/page19.jpg

This page was such a pain in the ass. Tough to write, tough to put together. For some reason the top panel just refused to work. I redid it three times until I was reasonably satisfied. People are so unnatural when they meet each for the first time in the real world that it's tough to do it "naturally" in fiction world. Tough in third person at least. I've always felt like first person is a cop out. It's too easy.

I'm about 3-4 pages (or 5. or 6) from wrapping this first part up. Not the best story or execution so far, but I'm content to learn from my mistakes and move on to a point where I can better set the atmosphere, control the storyline and just generally make things more unified.

edit: I suppose if you include the awesomely bad cover, this is my 20th page. Happy anniversary, wooiee and all of that.

(After page 24-25)
I will finish this. And I will go on to something that shows off my writing talents a little better. Yeesh.

What happened here was that I realized that I'd been talking about this girl's job for about ten pages. So I had to tie it in somehow. So it sort of crash landed in these last two panels.

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Last two pages are up. Some minor errors and spellchecking going through right now.

[coldcut]

And for some reason, my webspace is acting really, really screwey. There's going to be about 5 pages that don't work.

edit: nm, problem fixed. Just had to keep workin' it: :bhump

[Xanatos]

I'm REALLY impressed with this. In fact I'd be keen to start up a section on the website when it's done for Comics such as this. It flowed well and didn't seem overly melodramatic or cliched. (Well - as much as a superhero comic can do ;) )

The tips are very useful - don't suppose you'd consider putting together a guide for the unwashed masses?

I'll have to check out John Allison - making readers appreciate characters is probably the hardest thing to do in literature. (For me at least)

[Lorash]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: awesome. Your journey in writing it is as interesting as the destination. :)

[Esbat]

Very kick ass... and a schwing to all the ladies in your book, they are teh sexahy, looks like Horndog needs to sweet talk a femme tech there at peregrine island to hijack Portal Corp to visit protector sometime :D

[Druid]

Well you know I've been following this since you started it. All I have to say is that you ended it within the high expectations I had in the beginning. It was just awesome the way you photoshopped that entire thing. And I definitly am hard pressed to wait for issue two to start making an appearance.

[Randomus]

Your Photoshop skillz are most 1337, and the comic is highly entertaining. I give it four banana buggeries out of five.

:bhump :bhump :bhump :bhump

[Esbat]

Dog Fight must visit The Furies... :bhump:

[TopHat]

I just got around to reading it and I must say I'm impressed. Keep it coming...I'm loving it so far! :D

[Sable Phoenix]

I've already said how impressed I am with this. You've really done a heck of a lot of really good work with it, Coldcut.

[Half Life]

Keep 'em coming, they are a good read.

[Stalking Shadow]

Next issue! Next issue! Next issue!

[coldcut]

It's coming slowly. Recently trashed a lot of the storyboarding I did.

[Istasi]

You've done a simply amazing job on this so far! Can't wait for the next issue.