This weeks self examination will be on my series Weight of Eternity. So we are going to do a little backtracking because some of this comic goes back as far as 2001 but took years to complete.
WOE was meant to be my Twilight Zone/X Files/Hellboy but it turned into what I call my David Lynch movie. How did that happen? Let's take a look...
Preview "And You know what they say about that..." http://www.nilgravity.com/preview.html
Writing wise this comic sets the tone for the series well. It's fun, subtle, self contained, and yet advances the series. The subtlety was really important to me. I like figuring things out as a reader, and I wanted to make a comic that challenged readers. For example in this preview the protagonist's date is actually a celebrity of sorts if you pay attention, but I don't spell it out.
Some of the art I really like and in other places not happy. Mostly it's the woman. The first drawing I did of her (not the first drawing on this comic) she looked interesting and the right amount of attractive. The rest of the comic she looks deformed.
The way I handle color I like but my choice of color is questionable. I chose it for thematic purposes but I don't think the extra hint is worth what is lost aesthetics.
Sorry about the Comics Sans...
Sirens http://www.nilgravity.com/WOE00.htm
This comic was not originally made to be a webcomic but I decided to shoe horn it into a Tarquin engine. The programmer of the app said in an interview that he never expected it to be used in the way I have. I don't remember why he said that (he later became a ComicCon friend). I didn't think I was doing things that differently.
This comic was hand penciled and digitally inked. I like the way it looks but it took me so much more time to do it that way I haven't gone back to it. Instead of using a solid color I went with a gradient to give it more of a flame look.
Another thing I was trying to do with WOE was play with expectations. Which only makes the subtlety more confusing. My current outlook on this is to make good art it has to make sense right away effortlessly and let the subtlety be for subtext and Easter eggs. For example it isn't a big deal if people don't recognize the Fire Chief when I bring her back in later but it is a big deal if people don't figure out who started the fire and why.
Catalyst http://www.nilgravity.com/WOE01.htm
We start out okay writing wise. Drawings have a good amount of detail for me. I do some cool effects like showing the character from the reflection in her cup of tea. The colors look good. These comics were drawn before I knew this would be a Tarquin Engine comic. They are drawn as landscape-wise sheets of paper. These were the first designed for the web but the layouts don't always work for Tarquin.
The lettering still needs work.
I also made the mistake of abandoning the self-contained story. I've started an 'epic' story and the conflict isn't clear, Though it's actually less confusing then I remember it being. I do play with a lot of expectations here. Not effectively though. I tried playing off racial expectations and failed by playing into them. It would have worked if I didn't give the black guys guns. I would have gotten the what I was going for if instead of making them a gang they simply APPEAR to be a gang when we first see them.
Initiate http://www.nilgravity.com/WOE04.htm
Most of these work well for Tarquin. The first part was cheesy so I broke the forth wall by making it silent other than posting the script between the panels. I also more effectively use big panels as establishing shots. And I am proud of coming up with the idea of making the layout of the panels, in the chapter about going out for a smoke, in the pattern of a smoke trail.
I was really into atmosphere at this point and finding beats. Nothing is being answered. Something is working here but it's just not friendly enough for people who are not completely on board yet.
Loose Threads http://www.nilgravity.com/WOE08.htm
These are the first comics made for Tarquin. I figured out that Tarquin likes squares. I still run into problems with laying them out in an interesting way in Tarquin and using the whole field. I also decided to paint in here to save time. After momentarily forgetting that I suck with anything other than a limited palette we end up with a cool look for the comic.
Finally fixed the font issues. It took me forever to figure out how to export crisp vector art text while keeping the file size down.
Inception http://www.nilgravity.com/WOE11.htm
The reason I call this my David Lynch movie is because David Lynch follows an idea even if he doesn't completely understand it. Weight Of Eternity came to me like a dream with it's own logic that I felt compelled to put on the page.
It makes a lot of sense to me but I am not sure if it does to anyone else. I thought that once I got to the end more would keep coming but it never did. I did have a few ideas for strips with a character named Helen in them but even that wouldn't have lasted very long.
I wish I could have kept it about short eerie stories, but the characters got away from me. And though I ended up with something that will probably never have any commercial value it did let me play with a lot of narrative devices.
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