Two different birds

Good news - Bird now has a domain at Amilova. It's birdcomic.amilova.com

Since I've been studying theory of the drama, I began to think that the story itself isn't what's most important rather than the way you tell it. That eventually is reflected in my works. Can't say I'm big of a mastermind in this, but I put a lot of effort especially on the storytelling of "Bird".

But there was a problem, as there always is.

When I first got the idea of this Mystery bird thing, I was seeing it rather as an animation short project. No dialogue, dreamlike scapes, lots of shapes morphing in one another, vibrant colours. But since it looked like a lot of work and I already had big animation projects I didn't even write it down as a script.

So couple of months later, there was this open call for comics. I wanted to participate, but I didn't have any ideas but this one. The problems was I didn't want to go with an artistic, incomprehensible comic which surely was to take many pages. I thought I should tell the story more conevtionaly and definitely add dialogue and well, action. Still, I felt like something was missing.

Then the idea of "Bird" in it's current version was born after a trip to England. I added dialogue, I hope not too much, tried to develop the minor characters, but I always tried to keep them apart, as this story is most of all about difficulties in communication. I was trying to simultaneously tell the story trough the main charaters eyes and trough the children as a group, hoping it will create an interesting relation between the two story lines. Of course, this is almost too subtle and since I had to separate my work and make the chapters in big intervals of time, I think I eventually lost it.

Anyway, I think I managed to get what I needed to show.

I always get back to my first idea, though, with the colours and stuff and wonder if it was going to be better than this version. But it's always risky with the artsy storytelling and I think it might work as an animation short, but not as a comic.

Bird's dialogues

Last month I presented the way I create age layouts, and now it's time to show how I figure out the dialogue.

In this particular project, once I came up with the idea of the Mystery bird, I already knew how this story would end. So, the only thing left for me was to work my way trough the end and build up a logical narrative that would lead to it.

Everytime I came up with an idea about what's going to happen, the constant question was "How is this helping the story?" If I couldn't find the answer, then I'd let go that idea.

But this rarely happened. Most of the time, the question was posed and then I tried to answer it.

What will make the reader realise that the main character is detached from the others?

How can I make them see that she has trouble comunicating with the others?

What will make them feel her growing interest for that mystery?

I hope, I gave the right answers. That is for you to say.

After that, it's the easier part. Well, at least in some ways easier.

The dialogue I put also in service to the above strivings. Especially for "Bird" I tried to put as little dialogue as possible. Somewhere around the begining of the second chapter, I got a bit paranoid that this "less conversation" plan is going to make the story difficult to follow, so I may have let go of my original idea.

This is point that it gets a bit confusing. I really wasn't sure if I should follow more conventional way of telling the story, or should I dive into dream sequences and go and cut off all the dialogue. Certainly, both ways have their charm, but I couldn't decide between them, so I guess this is sort of a low point in "Bird". It's neither conventional, nor art. Something inbetween. In this line of thought, this might be a good thing, since the character herself is a misfit of a sort.

Or I'm, of course, overinterpreting.

Anyway, I spent some time dealing with the words themselfs. For previous comics, the first version of the dialogue was always in english, but in order to make it sound more real and much more rich, I decided to write in my native language. Then, I would transtale it to english and french ( tough one!) and try to make it sound as good as in it's original version.

Here is a little preview of what my dialogue sheets look like when I'm done with them.

You would think there'll be more crossed out stuff.

So, the last thing I do is distribute the lines to pages and then to panels. But I'm really not always sticking to the exact words. Sometimes, in the process of lettering a better sounding version pops in my head, or the speech bubbles are too small and I have to rethink it.
I don't know if this is good or bad practice. Those dialogues are obviously not of Shakespearian type.

But anyway, I try to give my best.