All This Work is Not Useless!

Thumbnails for Polterguys Vol. 1

Apologies for the lack of weekly updates recently! I’ve been fairly heads down working on thumbnails from the latest draft of my story. Last week, I sent the completed set of rough thumbs  to a few friends willing to read my semi-legible chicken scratches and I’m so grateful for all their fantastic feedback. (Take note, get patient friends if you want to write a comic!) For this second set, I managed to clock in at 6 chapters totaling about 160 pages (a fairly sizable chunk of work) which may not be necessarily used after all.

Come again?! (You might have just thought.)

What a waste! All that work for nothing! (Perhaps?)

Well, I like to think it wasn’t. (Well yeah, still trying to convince myself it wasn’t.*)

Especially since I was able to present the story in some visual form to my peers and this in turn helps them “see” the comic better than if I had given them a script. There are cues like setting, panel and page compositions, character expressions and gestures I wanted to include which I don’t bother putting in my scripts because I’m the only one that sees them.

I found the feedback to be incredibly helpful and informative. It can be terrifying putting yourself out there and maybe even depressing to get a lot of notes, but one way to think about them is like a being given a roadmap, with points designated to help me get where I need to go. Reach out to those points and the story will get better.

There were a lot of similar comments (which tells me these are urgent elements I need to address) but also a good show of support for the premise (which fuels my desire to do it justice!) My friends who have been privileged enough to have read an earlier draft noted an overall improvement from the first set of thumbnails so it is (if nothing else) moving in the appropriate direction.

Yesterday was a particularly productive story session with my writing partner, Nathan because we were able to come up with something to infuse the story with a little more OOMPH (that it’s been lacking so far). And when I say productive, I mean after six hours of thinking about story issues, one of us finally managed to bring up something that could work. (Those Eureka moments are few and far in between but when you get them, they are a terribly wonderful!) Unfortunately, thanks to that Eureka idea, the set of thumbnails I worked on for the better part of the last two weeks no longer make sense.

So you see where I am now right?

I have so much respect for the people who do this work and do it fabulously and that admiration just grows everyday.

Until the next set, friends!

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*Step one was this blog entry.**

**Actually no, step one was a bunch of Dr. Who and Torchwood episodes. Step two was this blog entry.