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Evidently this is now an Akron/Family fan site. Which stands to reason, because when I’m not swimming in the morass of the bad news of the world, I have been spending the majority of my time inventing a utopianish universe where I get to just kind of chill with my comrades and every once in awhile save the world. Any number of Akron/Family songs could very easily be the soundtrack for this utopia. I love the meditative repetition and the sweet, simple lyrics paired with atypical sounds and rhythms.
Speaking of said utopian universe…last weekend, I sat down at my art table and four hours later I stood up and looked down at a basic storyboard outline of the comic book! I was so excited, I sent it to some friends who kindly volunteered to give feedback. I got GREAT feedback, and did like another four hour deep focus session with it & came up with a rough rough rough draft outline of a pretty evenly-balanced three issue comic book…or at least a three chapter SOMETHING.
And, since I enjoy it when people talk about their creative process…I’m gonna go ahead and talk about what my process has been so far. Especially given that this is a new kind of project for me. But is it? Because I feel like every time I do a project, I end up doing some weird thing or another that makes it more difficult than it needs to be. So, whatever. It’s a new way for me to do something the most ridiculously awkward way possible, but maybe you can learn something from it.
Up to this point, Oyster and Crow has been a concept I’ve been slowly developing. I had the two main characters in mind…and kind of an outline of a story, and an idea of what I wanted to convey. I wanted to write a sweet story about friends helping each other. I have been sitting with these characters; drawing them, thinking about their traits, figuring out what their superpowers and vulnerabilities could be, and then slowing building a world around them.
Here’s the fun part. The yadda yadda yadda part. After playing with these characters and writing down all sorts of different ideas in about 12 different journals…I just sat down and wrote the outline. You know – the four hours I mentioned above? Yeah – it was pretty frantic, too. I really wanted to eat breakfast, but also I needed to get the story done. It has been A. WHILE. Since I have had that kind of focus…but I do think I have been practicing, and I did the same thing again shortly after, so…maybe that’s a thing now? I’m going to assume that’s a thing I can do now. I can now focus for long periods of time on one single thing without getting distracted…as long as it’s something I really want to focus on!
Back to process, though…I’m really glad I have a few very kind and patient friends who were willing to read over my mad scribblings and let me know what they thought. The feedback was so helpful! I’m so close to the story, I don’t know where the gaps are, and having people give me permission to expound on some things really opened up the story a whole lot!
After receiving the feedback, I had that second four hour focus session. This time I typed out an outline, adding the details mentioned in the feedback, which caused more details to emerge…and just made the story so much more real and complete. I broke down that script into little “scenes,” which I wrote on individual index cards. Theoretically, each index card represents a panel (or maybe a few panels) of the comic book. I have them all stacked in order, and I’m basically going through them one by one and figuring out how to convey each scene in images.
At this point, I’m in the process of drawing pictures, backgrounds, settings, tiny little icons, and decorations. At some point, I’ll start scanning everything in, and I’ll likely build the images in some image-editing app or other I’m not sure which yet. And then I’ll pop them into panels and do whatever lettering needs to be done. I’m still in the discovery phase, though. Still waking up in the middle of the night and thinking “Oh! Crow needs a pet tree frog!” or something like that.
It has been so very fun to do, and such a great escape for me. I hope you enjoyed reading more about my process! At this point, I think I’ve worked through 3 or 4 index cards…only about a zillion more to go! 🙂
Musical Interlude – Akron/Family “Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead:” https://youtu.be/VZ2Spw0hIhQ?si=rjoq0tUo3EU_AveF
