oBe goes Haywire

oBe · Post by **oBe** » May 26th, 2007, 19:25

a.k.a. drawings, comicy goodies, creative business and the likes!

Greyscales are done with beer, and stronger beer.
Elaborate explanation pending.

oBe · Post by **oBe** » May 26th, 2007, 21:40

Alrighty then. Some fine ass ranting coming your way peoples. Sit down and have a drink.

For years I've been been pondering about and sketching up a character and doing something with it, be it an animation, videogame or, what I've come to decide upon, a comic. Over time I've been working on a story, basically creating a consistent web around graphically interesting developments. It'll be a collage of literature, videogames, the drug induced surreality, arty fartyness, fantasy, fairy tales, horror, up to classic superherostuff and the likes. What I'm doing now is trying to fill the wholes between what I want to see happening.

Now, you may recognise alot familiar features, of which I can assure you they're not crucial to the story in anyway. I see these things as homages, rather than stealing. You may recognise alot Spawn, Soul Reaver, hell, even Spiderman. There's alot more then that. Basically, I'm an aesthetic spunge that absorbs everything along it's path and churns out recycled material in a different fashion.

I'm quite exciting to start on this, but I find myself being numbed by seemingly trivial details. Like names, clothes, etc. I need to name a character, but I'm afraid I might change opinion after a while. And clothes is ridiculously important as well, as I don't intend to hide gadgets in utility belts. So, seeing I can't spend fully devote my time to this, I'd have to think years ahead in these details. For example, he wears a skullshaped hockeymask, and I find myself feeling compelled to explain everything, but I'm not sure if all that is necessairy. Also, how the hell would I explain the origin of such an item?

Another silly setback is the medium. I'm seriously considering making this a webcomic, as a way to force myself to keep it consistent and it also opens up a few possibilities I'd like to experiment with, specifically, because I want to play with the medium (animated comics anyone?). But that'll require building one of them sites with scrolling through archive functions, a guestbook or forum might be nice as well, but alas, I posses no knowledge of these matters.

I'm also not too confident in the drawings. My teachers always advise against me drawing figures, they have done so for the last five years, which is on itself quite traumatic. Then again, I don't really have a problem with going Rage against the machine, as I've been doing that the last five years as well. I never said I was smart. I don't really have what you call a figurative style in these matters. I just try to draw everything realistly. This is most noticably in the little robot, whose proportions should be more comically, (it's a toy-robot) and that's where I fail hard. His role is clear in my mind, but again I can't decide on his design either.

So, anyone got any
- insights in my technical issues?
- feedback on the creative aspect?
- hints, suggestions, interesting links?
- free subscriptions to pr0nsites?
I'll take anything.

Also, why the hell does my µtorrent give me 'file blah blah, file could not be opened because it's used by another program' errors all the time? It's not used by another program, you stupid bitch!

There, I just made good for a year's worth of not Posty posting.

Post by **Daedalus** » May 27th, 2007, 01:30

You said Rage Against The Machine. I like that.

Post by **Dimebog** » May 27th, 2007, 11:03

@oBe:
As you know, you have all the support I can give you as long as I don't get to make any creative decisions, or I'm affraid your character would pretty soon be giving cigarette burns to everyone and making them eat their cellphones. I told you what I think of your drawings and ideas in general, and I know it's going to be big.

@Daedalus:
On the TF boards I said that the renesanse of BLOOD is comming. Gimme some loving too.
_________________
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¸.·´¸.·*´¨) ¸.·*¨)
(¸.·´ (¸.·` You can't hide from the Grim Reaper. Especially when he's got a gun.

mouth · Post by **mouth** » May 27th, 2007, 14:09

I love those drawings.
That character looks real cool.

oBe · Post by **oBe** » May 27th, 2007, 15:59

I use the term about every three sentences these days. Yes, people look funny at me sometimes.

And thanks for the cellphone eating.

Post by **Dimebog** » May 27th, 2007, 16:44

What term?

Nono, the idea is hot enough to make one eat his cellphone, but eating cellphones and cigarette burns is pretty much anything I could come up with if you asked me for some refference or whatever. Yeah that's what I meant I hope it makes sense now dildos badger badger badger I think I should cut down on my coffee intake yeah.
_________________
¤´¨)
¸.·´¸.·*´¨) ¸.·*¨)
(¸.·´ (¸.·` You can't hide from the Grim Reaper. Especially when he's got a gun.

oBe · Post by **oBe** » May 27th, 2007, 21:54

The term: "going rage against the machine" ;]

NAto · Post by **NAto** » May 28th, 2007, 15:01

Hey oBe I take it that regardless of what happens there won't be any animals featuring in this comic hey?

Nono seriously the drawings look awsome which is always a great start to a project like this

I'll give a longer post sometime in the near future...

oBe · Post by **oBe** » May 28th, 2007, 17:10

Hah, Nate punctures my mythical aura like a balloon.

'Tis true, I can't draw animals for shit, thanks for bringing that up

.

However, I have come up with a both interesting and cheap solution, that is sure to evoke some hilarity, especially if you know the reason behind it.

Just two more exams, a graduation piece to finish, a job to find, a girlfriend to buy and a maybe mistress on the side and I'm good to go.

NAto · Post by **NAto** » May 28th, 2007, 17:27

What do you mean?! I was just wondering if there were gonna be animals...

Don't get me wrong though... I really like your work. Especially your photography stuff!!

oBe · Post by **oBe** » May 28th, 2007, 17:43

Short answer; 'yes' with an 'if', long answer 'no', with a 'but'.

Thanks for the kinds words, I just hope you'll feel the same way when I actually commence on this.

NAto · Post by **NAto** » May 29th, 2007, 13:01

No prooooob!

I'm sure it'll be good though...

I think the best way to get publicity for your comic would be to make it a webcomic. If you made a book you would have to get publishers blablabla. Keeping this in mind you would have to make sure that it is very gripping with each release as to keep your audience coming back for more. One thing I've found in my year of studying creative writing, plot structure etc is that although you have all these ideas about your story it won't work unless people like it. This might seem pretty obvious at first but believe me it's not. There are basic plot structures like hero is happy, something bad happens oh no! Then hero kicks ass and overcomes the bad... the end. As simple and crappy as this may seem it's the general plot outline for almost everything these days.

Then it comes to the website... I could help with this though I wouldn't be able to promise anything as I'm a busy guy

ahaha ummmm anyways... As an alternative if you have the time you could always study html, php and some css (maybe some java too) and you could have your own sight up and running in no time! But like I said... If you have the time for that, I could help here and there - it helps to have my lecturer who has a Masters degree in web programming at hand haha!

Well that's my 2 cents worth for now... I find it amazing that I worked in a year of creative writing in a bussiness and IT degree.......

oBe · Post by **oBe** » May 29th, 2007, 18:17

Thanks for the real response! =P

I pretty much agree completely on the webcomic idea. It has alot of advantages. Like the fact I can revise the story as I go with it, and the fact I can think through every page seperately. This might aid in structuring the storyline - there's still alot of holes in there- as I can take my time. I've got no real experience in this, but hell, I do everything a bit unusual, which I believe/hope is a strenght.

Cons consist of the fact I can't make spreads, or that I might neglect the number of pages for a printable chapter. But I think I can live with that.

My website building skills are mostly flashbased, which isn't really a good medium for webcomics I'd think (I could do it technically but I'd need to upload the whole swf everytime and it'd become massive after a while). I can also make sites in dreamweaver and fireworks, but those are pretty basic and I don't master the finesses. Any help would greatly appreciated, even if it was only advice.

NAto · Post by **NAto** » May 30th, 2007, 10:30

Dreamweaver... Fireworks... They're all from the devil!!

Jokes aside I really don't like those... I would say that actually learning html and css would be your best bet. I don't think it would even be that necessary for you to learn php. Nice thing is that html and css are REALLY easy!

Besides for that like you said... if the website is done with flash and is too flashy (excuse the pun!!

) then it gets to big and people don't like the load times. I think your best bet is to make your site look good and be as low on recources as possible. After all you can make some very nice looking html based sites and the only things that will really have to be loaded are the images (which will be .jpg anyways). Here are some examples of famous web comics...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/

Ok you see that flashy banner at the top? It's just a picture that's bee image mapped in html... If you don't understand that then just know this... it's easy. You make the picture as nice as you want... then you map it which is quick and easy (as in it takes about 10 minutes max

) Of what I can see this was made mainly with html.

http://www.megatokyo.com/

Ok alot of this is html but there are some things I can't quite make out like the percentage bars etc... but most you could do with html.

Basically you could make your sites look just as good as these famous ones. I wouldn't know how to make the finer details though as I'm very far from professional. Basically all you really need to start is a space for your comics, a space for your feedback and comments and then you can put in a nice php forum in like this one. That would be the basics as far as I'm concerned.

I can give plenty of advice and can even write you some pieces of code if you need it, but all in all again I would suggest actually learning html and css. It would make things alot easier for yourself. Though if I can see your starting to get rich I will of course be happy to run your web site for you