Comments on: Chapter 1 - Page 16

By: Riess

Riess — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:11:48 +0000

I will continue using it in situations similar to its first use, i.e. voice over disconnected visuals, and narration.

By: Shoe

Shoe — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:28:42 +0000

rather, it just struck me that you used that method earlier, but not here. I was wondering if that was something that was gonna continue or not. I just realized that question was rather…open ended. Heh.

By: Shoe

Shoe — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:20:33 +0000

Well the thumbnail is there. But the links don’t work. : [

Speaking of differentiation, what about colored text like in the library strips with Thirteen?

By: SquidDNA

SquidDNA — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:33:17 +0000

..while at the same time moving things along action-wise.

Also, WOCK should already be in the extras section. Just click on the last page “version 1″ and that will take you to the entire first scene in all of its crosshatched glory. Rumor has it that Riess stalked the morgues and funeral parlors of Vienna at night looking for replacement tendons during this part of the comic.

Thanks for your comments, Tory. That’s worth keeping in mind as I start writing again, which will be, oh, sometime this summer I guess.

By: Riess

Riess — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:13:14 +0000

“Wock” didn’t make it into this version of the strip, unfortunately. You’ll find it on the old page 3 in the extras section eventually.

Let me just say I hope to be able to give a very clear image of what is happening and at least a sense of why - at this point in the story, introduction, buildup and familiarization with the characters is the primary goal, but at the same time we’re starting to open the story up to questions. We are of course deliberately withholding information to keep the story interesting as you learn more and more about the Why it happens over time. The key problem here is finding the right balance of what we say vs. what we don’t.

By: Tory

Tory — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:38:24 +0000

This early into the story isn’t the time to throw in a “mystery character”; every character up to this point is really a mystery, so the story/ art mechanic doesn’t fit. Once you have fleshed out the characters and the story, you can have characters doing things that you wouldn’t expect, and that would be where you might use an artistic approach like the “hidden character” panel. You brought up the ideas of thinking about “what is happening” versus “why is this happening”. Each one of those ideas has a role in just about any story. If you read a mystery and knew exactly who the bad guy was, it might not be so interesting. Along those same lines, if you read a mystery and didn’t know what was going on, then you probably wouldn’t enjoy it either. Sometimes not knowing who is pulling the strings forces the reader to think about why the events are taking place the way they are. If I know that Thirteen wants the dragon to defeat the king and has hired someone to steal it, would that be a more thought provoking scenario than knowing Thirteen is interested in the dragon and a second individual is interested in it also but not knowing that the second person’s strings are being pulled by Thirteen? Let’s say that Thirteen is looking for the item and sees the second guy escaping with it but doesn’t stop him. If I know he works for Thirteen, I would just say, “Oh, his guy has it so no worries.” If I don’t know he works for Thirteen then I say, “I wonder why Thirteen didn’t catch him and take it? Does he know that guy can’t use it? Does he plan to meet him at a different location and take it?”

This kind of reminds me of the political aspects of the Star Wars movies (Episodes 1-3). If we hadn’t known that Palpatine was the emperor, it would have caused the audience to think more about why he was taking his actions. Because we “knew the future”, there was no political intrigue at all in the movies. It’s almost as if, because we know that Palpatine is bad, that if he had been just a shadow figure for the first two episodes and only made a real appearance in Ep. 3, there would have been a lot more thought as to why the situations were playing out the way they did. This actually seems to be a pretty common plot device in the Star Wars novels too. Some insignificant event takes place but it really underlies a larger plot that you are unaware of usually because you don’t know all the players.

Where’s the WOCK?

By: SquidDNA

SquidDNA — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:32:02 +0000

Re: Evil, Inasmuch as possible given our plans for the plot, I would like the reader to know what they’re looking at. It doesn’t strike me that the upper left corner of someone’s glove should ever be as much as we would want to reveal about a character in a scene. Always we should let people know WHAT IS HAPPENING and the mystery should be WHY IT IS HAPPENING. Sure, we’ve once already left the scene at the last moment, but I guess I would rather people get a clear picture for a limited time than get an obscured picture that runs from beginning to end.

Also Jaen, my favorite on that page was the “WOCK.”

By: Tory

Tory — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:19:49 +0000

define “evil”

By: Jaenny

Jaenny — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:59:57 +0000

Whoo, the POOF! -marble is back.
But hey, where’s the POOF! sound effect? Why BLOFF? Is it more liquid this time?

By: SquidDNA

SquidDNA — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:30:42 +0000

Hmm, are we that evil?