Pencils and pens

from FRUiTS

Reference from Flicr photoghraphs

The last page

Well, few days ago I uploaded the last page of Bird at Amilova.com. It's over.

Another thing that is over is The First Amilova Cartoonist Competition. One of these day I'll write about my favourite comics in the competition.

Here are the rankings . The official winner will be announced by the jury in the next few days. But I can tell you already that it's not gonna be my "Bird". Last week it landed at #47 and that's it. 47th of 65. Pretty glamorous. But you already now how I feel about this.

Despite of the rankings, I'm kind of proud of "Bird".

I'm not going to start once again describing how important and refreshing and enriching was for me to do this comic. I hope the energy that filled me while doing it will be tranfered to the readers and stuff... anyway, next month there'll be some changes on this page to fit my next project.

And to answer your questions - Yes, I am tireless, I am restless.

Amilovers, thank you for 200 votes

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.

Pages and chapters

Having restrictions on the number of pages makes things more difficult, but also much more interesting.

Since the begining, "Bird" was always supposed to be a three chapter story, each chapter containing 15 pages. Even though I started making this story for a project that I later gave up and restriction in page numebrs was no longer needed, I still held on to that idea.

Somewhere by the end of 2nd chapter I got scared that I could not finish the story in 15 pages. For a while I thought I should make it a 4 chapter story.

Which I really think would be a wrong decision.

A 4 chapter story sounds like a short one, but not really. Sounds also like a long one, but not

really.

It just doesn't feel right.

Sorry that I don't have a more logic explanation than just what I'm feeling, but in this case, I'm sure it wouldn't work out.

Somehow, 3 chapters always seemed like the best idea.

On the other hand 15 pages doesn't make it all comfortable. I had to cut out some scenes, shorten others.

Here is an early version of third chapter's begining.

This version shows the same things happening as the final one, but with too much detail around: the house from outside, the other kids waking up, the girl outside the house, the girl inside the house... But having just 15 pages, I had to rethink the begining.

I think we could do without the descriptive stuff and it works even better. Instead of explaining all the circumstances, i tried to concentrate on the atmosphere. See the final version here.

What I'm trying to say with this is restrictions are not an obstacle, but sometimes a key to creativity (working your way around those restrictions!). It makes you think differently and not put the first thing you think of.
Although it also created some problems with the surroundings (why she's suddenly someplace else!?) I think sticking to my 3x15 pages was the best idea. If you know some of my previous work, you'd understand why I'm so contented that those 45 pages came out good. My usual number of pages is around 150, and there's a big chance to get lost along the way.

This week I got a very special present from one of Amilova's artists - LittleEndian. She drew the heroine of "Bird" and I was amased how she managed to capture her character. The drawing is just fabilous, I love it :)

I'd like to thank her very much for this. Inspiring people is all I want to do, and seeing this, it makes me think I'm on the right way :) Thanks!
Check out LittleEndian's story "Leaves" at Amilova

I've just got to put these wings to test

With the 5th day of the new year already coming to an end, the contest of Amilova coming to it's fourth month and the third chapter of "Bird" begining, I felt I should strike a balance...

I can't say I'm very satisfied with the position of my comic. Since the first week it always circles around 50th place. Even though the number of participating comics dropped from 107 to 79 (!), my comic is always in the 50s.

Despite that bad statistics, the readers seem to multiply. "Bird" has, by this week, 163 votes, a solid number that grows every week. I'd like to THANK everyone who votes for my comic, it means much to me. Lately I've been getting some comments too, which keeps my chin up. Thank you everyone, who reads/likes/votes/comments on "Bird" :)

Can't say I'm surprised "Bird"s not in top 15, though.

I was completely aware this story wasn't going to be a best-seller, since it's none of the popular genres. It contains no action, no romance, no comedy, no horror.

It's a mystery. Even not a thrilling one.

And it's just the story I needed to do.

Even though it isn't much of a audience-pleaser, I hope people will stick to the end and see the mystery revealed.

Here's a much different view of my main character. Yeah, though, I added some 10 years and a pink shirt, I hope it still shows it's her.

I used a photo reference to do the pose from this site

The third chapter is the last one, so you may wonder waht will become of this blog. Well, I guess I will rearange it to suit better my next project, which, for now, i'll keep a secret.

So, next time - more page thumbs, inspirational drawings and sketches.

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.