New Character Addition Today

I had originally planned for today to be an update on the storyboards/ story outline exercise I have been going over but I have been a bit busy with some freelance stuff so I didn’t have much of a chance to get those drawn up to share. However, I did keep good on the plan of unveiling a new character to the Cosmic Rage Universe, so head over to the character gallery and get acquainted.

Also, keep in mind that Monday marks a new production update so stay tuned!

Production Update 1

Starting this week I am going to roll out a little bit of a new release schedule for the duration of the summer and maybe longer into the future we’ll see how it goes. The new schedule is going to be Production updates on mondays and artwork and entry later in the week, most likely a Thursday or Friday.

The Production updates will be brief updates on what I have been working on from the previous week. For instance, over the course of the last week or so I have been working on getting the characters from the first episode inked, colored and posted with their brief bios. I have had some of these characters around for a little while and I have finally decided that it is time for them to get inked and colored for several reasons. One reason  is in case I bring in some help on the project, people will need to use these model sheets as references. Secondly, I have been super busy with freelance work and I am generally bogged down with some renders in both 3D and 2D that is at the time prohibiting me from getting more animation work done.

Another thing I have been up to is getting back into the habit of drawing everyday. One of my friends over at http://www.ctrlPaint.com/  talks about the importance of getting in the habit of drawing everyday. Quite frankly, its true. Drawing skills get rusty and I have been slowly drawing every night again to get back into the habit of drawing. I have completed drawing another scene.

I have also begun writing for later episodes down the road. I have been writing in the format of the previous couple posts. This way I can think about several angles and choose the appropriate storyline for the characters. Even with what seems like a lack of updates, I can assure you the project is always moving forward 🙂

This is my way to show you progress without actually showing details. There are also a couple smaller things that I am going to keep you in the dark on for now, but you can rest assured that as certain days get closer I will be sharing these things with you.

Story Outlining Part 2

As we discussed last time, we started constructing the story outline of our short story. We started out by outlining our stories starting point, climax and resolution. After that we continued to fill in more detail. Today we are going to finish up the outline. So this is where we left off last time. The numbered shots being what we are happy with and the other points are things that we want to happen but we need to fill in the areas from point A to point B.

-1-

Boy wakes up from sleep (visual)
Ice cream would taste awesome right now (dialogue/ character thought)

-2-

Boy leaves house counting his ice cream money
Boy whistles his favorite ice cream commercial jingle

-3-

Boy walks down the street
Boy continues whistling

-4-

Boy hears voices of other kids
Maybe more kids want to get ice cream

 

Boy meets Girl (stories climax)

Boy gets ice cream and shares with Girl  (stories resolution)

 

By generating our story in this manner, we are allowed to fill in the gaps in numerous ways and even change things out. Whatever you decide to put into the story is really up to you the creator, there are no right or wrong answers nor is there a perfect solution or formula to create such stories. The amount of detail you add into it is based upon how fast you want the story to go or how much information you need/ want to include. For instance, in our story, we have the boy meeting the girl but we haven’t discussed under what circumstances. Are they friends that are happening to come across each other and get ice cream to catch up? Maybe the girl is being bullied and the boy saves her and takes her out for ice cream. How would each of these scenes look if they were based more on action as opposed to dialogues? We could even create awhile other story in the space between when the boy hears the other kids and from the time the boy meets the girl.

With all of these questions and possible solutions being discussed, you can start to see why writing your story out saves you lots of time in the end. If we started drawing and inking now, if we decided we wanted to change something later we would have wasted time on drawings we may not be using or if we have to redraw content.

So back to our story, I am going to fill in other story areas keeping in mind I want the boy and the girl to reunite. Former neighbors but the girl moved away and they are meeting at a park in the middle of their houses. So now my outline is going to look a little like…

-1-

Boy wakes up from sleep (visual)
Ice cream would taste awesome right now (dialogue/ character thought)

-2-

Boy leaves house counting his ice cream money
Boy whistles his favorite ice cream commercial jingle

-3-

Boy walks down the street
Boy continues whistling

-4-

Boy hears voices of other kids
Maybe more kids want to get ice cream

-5-

Boy starts walking towards the voices
Voices start getting louder as he approaches

-6-

The boy sees a small group of kids playing at a nearby park
Those must be the kids I heard

-7-

As the boy gets closer to the group a girl on the swing turns around
Is that who I think it is?

-8-

The Boy and girl reunite in the park
I haven’t seen you in a  while, would you like to get some ice cream?

-9-

The boy and girl walk to the ice cream shop to get some ice cream
The boy and girl spend time catching up.

(The End)

As you read the outline from above, keep in mind that it is reflecting a story driven by actions/ visuals as opposed to a friends version of more of a dialogue driven story, which would maybe look like something below…

-1-

Boy wakes up from sleep (visual)
Ice cream would taste awesome right now (dialogue/ character thought)

-3-

Boy walks down the street
Boy continues whistling

-6-

The boy sees a small group of kids playing at a nearby park
Those must be the kids I heard

-8-

The Boy and girl reunite in the park
I haven’t seen you in a  while, would you like to get some ice cream?

-9-

The boy and girl walk to the ice cream shop to get some ice cream
The boy and girl spend time catching up.

(The End)

You can see that I have taken out some of the shots from the previous story. My rationale for that in regards to the way I work, is that I haven’t completely fleshed out the dialogue yet. However, I know I am going to dictate more of my characters actions through dialogue and inner monologues than showing an action.

So in the first story we showed the audience the boy walking down the street on his way to get ice cream. In the dialogue version, we can fill in that area with the boy discussing to himself what kind of ice cream he wants when he gets there, or wondering if they have any new flavors or if he wants a cone or not. So we are replacing the imagery of showing  with imagery of telling. The same can be said for other shots that were taken out as we retained keeping the main shots but cutting out some of the non essential shots for the dialogue version.

What you choose to show is up to you and what you want your audience to see and the pacing of your story. Hopefully this helps with your story outline!

 

*Update, new character in the character gallery as well. Make sure to check out Robee, the newest character to the Cosmic Rage Universe.

 

Story Outlining Part 1

Wow, 2 posts in less than a week? Things must be returning to somewhat normal again, at least in the short term. So like I promised last week I wanted to share a little more in depth about my workflow in terms of story writing and how that leads into storyboarding. The first thing is this is reflective of my workflow, maybe there are things you can take from it and maybe there isn’t. I actually really enjoy seeing how other people work and seeing if there is anything I can take from their workflow.

 

Before we get started, during this discussion I was having with a friend, I realized that fundamentally our stories were very different. Cosmic Rage at is core is an action/ fighting story where there will be lots of visuals and such to progress the story. The characters will evolve over time based mostly on events that have happened. Where as my friends story revolves more upon character relationships and some heavy dialogue. This was something that took a little while for me to discover as we were discussing out ideas.

 

Regardless, I wanted to do a breakdown of my process since I am continuously writing future sagas/arcs/stories for Cosmic Rage. Let’s begin with a new story for instance, and in this example we will start with a standalone story, so we won’t be writing to set up a next story arc or anything like that. We will leave that for a later entry.

 

The premise of our short story will be that a little boy is having a good day and decides to get ice cream, and on the way to the ice cream shop he learns a valuable lesson. So I start writing my stories out in numbered sections with the intent that each point is a visual or 2 and I also write a quick memo underneath that would suggest dialogue.

 

-1-

Boy wakes up from sleep (visual)

Ice cream would taste awesome right now (dialogue/ character thought)

 

As I continue to flesh out the story, I need to fill in the remaining plot lines. These would entail the stories climax and the stories resolution. For the sake of the outline we will say the plot of the story will be about the boy learning to share. So my outline would look like…

 

-1-

Boy wakes up from sleep (visual)

Ice cream would taste awesome right now (dialogue/ character thought)

 

Boy meets Girl (stories climax)

Boy gets ice cream and shares with Girl  (stories resolution)

 

So now that we have our core story outline, we can now go in and fill in more details. Notice how I didn’t put numbers by the climax or resolution, this is because at this point I don’t have a specific number of shots or visuals. Now lets say that on the way to the ice cream store the boy hears a group of kids and decides to check it out. Now our outline would look like.

 

-1-

Boy wakes up from sleep (visual)

Ice cream would taste awesome right now (dialogue/ character thought)

 

 

Boy hears voices of other kids

Boy meets Girl (stories climax)

Boy gets ice cream and shares with Girl  (stories resolution)

 

Since there is a gap between the Boy waking up and hearing the other kids, we have room to add another shot or 2 if we want depending on the pacing of the story we want from a creative standpoint. Personally, I show characters leaving and entering new spaces so the audience knows what space and area they are in. Now our story looks like…

 

 

-1-

Boy wakes up from sleep (visual)

Ice cream would taste awesome right now (dialogue/ character thought)

 

-2-

Boy leaves house counting his ice cream money

Boy whistles his favorite ice cream commercial jingle

 

-3-

Boy walks down the street

Boy continues whistling

 

-4-

Boy hears voices of other kids

Maybe more kids want to get ice cream

 

Boy meets Girl (stories climax)

Boy gets ice cream and shares with Girl  (stories resolution)

 

We now have the the initial beginning of our story completed. Although, the great thing about typing out an outline first, you can go in and alter things if you change your mind or thing another solution will work better for the story. We will pick up on this later this week! Have a great week!

Release Schedule

Hey everyone! I am slowly getting back into the groove of working on Cosmic Rage on a  consistent basis again. As part of that process I way to start releasing more and more content on more of a consistent basis. Like wise people say, there is no time like the present. So today there is a new character in the character gallery and a few more characters are sure to come over the next few weeks.

Also, I have some people asking about some story tips so I am looking forward to setting aside some time to dive into that process again and a bit more in detail. Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to check back for some more updates.