I’m so relieved this trailer is done. I did NOT expect it to take so long to finish. Back in May I was starting to get a little fatigued from all the designing I was doing. Since most of the character designs were nailed down, I figured I’d put them to the test. What followed was me getting my butt whooped by my old nemesis, storyboards. I tried my best to crunch to the finish before my month-long vacation, but failed. When I came back and looked at the art so far, I noticed a lot of things that needed fixing. It was probably better that I didn’t rush it. There are still a few things I would’ve liked to tweak (record better sfx, redraw some stuff, touch up the edit), but I’ve got to move on.

Colouring my boards was difficult. There was a point where I was thinking to myself, would it be a cop-out if I made the comic in grayscale? I’m on the fence about it. If I do choose to colour, I really need to make a colour script before I start drawing the pages.

Making the music for this was a lot of fun. The time spent in front of the keyboard flew by really fast. Sound mixing is uncharted territory for me, so I hope the tune didn’t rip a hole in your ear or sound like a muddled mess. There were some story-related choices regarding the song, but for the sake of not spoiling anything I’ll save that chat for later. One thing I can say is that I tried to stay away from instruments that wouldn’t exist in that world, like pianos, large brass sections, violins, disco, electronica…

I watched a bunch of trailers for inspiration, but kept coming back to these ones: Kairos, The Master, Lastman.

That about sums up my thoughts for now. Here are some feelings:

Will from 2010:  THIS THING IS REAL!! IT’S COMING!!! AHHHHHHHHHHAHAAA

Present-day Will:  …I still gotta make the actual book yo

Here it is.

So I got a little sidetracked from designs and decided to make a trailer. It’s about 80% done. I’m going on vacation soon so I’ll have to finish it when I get back. Until then…

Thinking about how I’m gonna colour this comic. Could be something like this.

Here are a few faces that show up over the course of the story. And my main girl, whom I’ve been neglecting (sorry!! I’ll come back to you at the end).

These past few weeks have been super productive. If I can keep up my current pace, I should have most of the designs roughed out by May.

So, the script is done. Well, pretty much. Any changes from here on will be made during the thumbnail stage. But first I’ve got to design everything.  

I’ve got to design EVERYTHING. :’O

I did a count and there are approximately 35-50 characters to design, 49 specific locations, and 9 major props (someone kill me now). A bunch of these characters are non-speaking roles, and some of the locations are sections within a larger location, if that makes any difference to the amount of work to be done. Probably not.  

Being a storyboard artist, I’m used to having everything already designed for me. Or if something wasn’t provided, I’d just make up something quick. I don’t think that’ll fly in this case. Who knows, if things take too long I might have to resort to that for less important designs. The good thing is now I can show you all some art, at least as much as I can without spoiler-ing the story.   

Wish me luck!