Thursday, January 20, 2011

Learning curves



When It finally came to illustrating my working draft, I found myself at yet another learning curve. I had little experience in working as a comic illustrator, short of a few below mock ups and story boards.

Indie company Saint James gave me a shot at illustrating an eight page web comic, after seeing a few of my images on Face book. I had applied for the job I'd seen advertised online. This opportunity sort of forced my hand in a way, making me attack the genre head on.


Children Of Terra Devepment


After settling in Thailand with my girlfriend, I set to work writing the story in my spare time. Living on the grounds of the school I was teaching at gave me the chance to work on my project when ever I have a second spare, in and out of the office.

The whole process was overwhelming at first. I'd not really written anything with a narrative for years, and was unfamiliar with the graphic novel format as a writer. It took a lot of time and patience, a virtue I lack at times, but soon all the notes and scribble became my first draft.

In the breaks taken from writing I found relief in developing my characters further visually, from sketches I had made on the move. It felt good to be working with a media that I was more familiar with and gave me time to think about the structure of the story on the whole.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

To view more sketchbook imagery follow the link.

Children of Terra concepts


I've started this blog, later than I intended, to document the working process when constructing my graphic novel. I'd had ideas floating around in my head for more than a year, scribbled over random note pads and scraps of paper. A young adult trying to move out of the university culture of hardened drinking and staying up all night, I lacked the proper motivation to get my arse in gear.

All I needed was the time and the right setting, so that I could develop these ideas further. After saving and scraping up all of my cash, I set off on a year trip over three continents, sketch book ready. Being exposed to a variety of different sites and cultures turned out to be a great inspiration to me as both an artist and writer, giving me the motivation to right my own epic science-fiction adventure.

Over the period of time I was traveling, I started to sketch out and design characters from my notes. Coming from an illustration background, rather than a writers, I found it easier to draw the characters I'd imagined, and then construct the story around them.

Above are some early concepts of characters of my futuristic vision of earth, set a thousand years after the destruction as we know it.