Book thoughts
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I hadn't mentioned it before in my blog, but I'm in the process of writing a novel. Been working on it for over a year now but there was a real dead period there in the middle where I didn't work on it at all. Basically, I got a bunch of stuff written early on, then just hit a block and didn't work at all on it for over a year. Fortunately, I had written down an outline of some plot ideas so I could pick it up again. I did a bit more work on it more recently which was really cool. Basically, I just skipped the blocked section and worked on another part of the story. I probably have around 30 pages (single spaced but final fomatting is done so new chapters eat up some of that) so I'd say it's easily the longest single thing I've ever written. Considering all the other long stuff I've written has been research papers for school and this is fiction, that's a pretty big accomplishment.
Lately I've also been considering the idea of doing a webcomic. The big problem is that I'd like to do a more serious/dramatic comic rather than humour and my drawing ability really isn't up to that kind of project right now. Actually, I'm not sure if my drawing ability is up for much more than a pretty simple drawing style right now. I'd like to get drawing more and then maybe I'd be able to do something like this. I've tried doing some digital drawings as well but they haven't worked out very well for the most part. I think it's mostly because I just don't have a clear enough idea of what I want to draw and haven't been taking the time to refine things. I think if I spent some more time improving my skills in illustrator that I might be able to get some good results with it. I really like the idea of doing this kind of work in Illustrator because then I have resolution independent files so I could easily do up a poster version of something or if I wanted to do a book I'd have it all pretty much ready to go. After reading what some webcomic artists have gone through to get material ready for print it definitely seems like a good idea to get it right to begin with. Course that's really jumping the gun, right now I can't even draw well enough to do the project so I'm nowhere near having enough material for a book project. Still, something to shoot for.
The other thought that occurred to me the other day was to turn my novel project into a webcomic. In some situations, I can see this as a really cool project because I've really been working on the story for this book and I find that a lot of comics don't focus on the story as much. I can really visualize how I'd want to draw some parts of the story (this is another area that I find some people fall short on, visual story telling). The big downsides I see is that a webcomic is inherently serial so you usually want to make each strip somewhat self-contained or have a hook to make you want to read more. The other issue is that as the story is written right now a lot of it deals with how the characters are thinking and feeling and it might not translate into a visual format as well. Some work on really conveying emotions in the drawing would be necessary for sure. I'm not sure if I'd end up with a stronger story or weaker story if I went this route. At the moment, I think I'll just focus on writing more and see if I can't improve my drawing abilities. Otherwise it's basically a moot point.
Lately I've also been considering the idea of doing a webcomic. The big problem is that I'd like to do a more serious/dramatic comic rather than humour and my drawing ability really isn't up to that kind of project right now. Actually, I'm not sure if my drawing ability is up for much more than a pretty simple drawing style right now. I'd like to get drawing more and then maybe I'd be able to do something like this. I've tried doing some digital drawings as well but they haven't worked out very well for the most part. I think it's mostly because I just don't have a clear enough idea of what I want to draw and haven't been taking the time to refine things. I think if I spent some more time improving my skills in illustrator that I might be able to get some good results with it. I really like the idea of doing this kind of work in Illustrator because then I have resolution independent files so I could easily do up a poster version of something or if I wanted to do a book I'd have it all pretty much ready to go. After reading what some webcomic artists have gone through to get material ready for print it definitely seems like a good idea to get it right to begin with. Course that's really jumping the gun, right now I can't even draw well enough to do the project so I'm nowhere near having enough material for a book project. Still, something to shoot for.
The other thought that occurred to me the other day was to turn my novel project into a webcomic. In some situations, I can see this as a really cool project because I've really been working on the story for this book and I find that a lot of comics don't focus on the story as much. I can really visualize how I'd want to draw some parts of the story (this is another area that I find some people fall short on, visual story telling). The big downsides I see is that a webcomic is inherently serial so you usually want to make each strip somewhat self-contained or have a hook to make you want to read more. The other issue is that as the story is written right now a lot of it deals with how the characters are thinking and feeling and it might not translate into a visual format as well. Some work on really conveying emotions in the drawing would be necessary for sure. I'm not sure if I'd end up with a stronger story or weaker story if I went this route. At the moment, I think I'll just focus on writing more and see if I can't improve my drawing abilities. Otherwise it's basically a moot point.