Atomcyber
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Making stories
🕑 Added 2023-05-04 19:09:30 +0000 UTCA bit presumptuous, I have not really something to teach about this (and about anything else probably), but anyway some thoughts, and also how I came to make my stories for my comics zine. Ideas come mostly with only one drawing, that tells me a whole story.
For the first issue, it is finally a part of an old story I had in stock, I had already tried to make a comic with it but I failed because too ambitious for my skills at all levels in comics especially storyboard, and I didn't know really where I was going, all was blurry.
To be able to succeed I made strong material limits, only 10 pages, 3 thumbnails on each page + 1 cover: 31 drawings for inktober: perfect! Totally failed with timing ^^' but not in the project ^^. I had to throw away all the parasite elements, and could, after, focus on my main purpose but I also found it in this way. Here are the first 4 panels I drew for this early test on comic (2015!!).
I stopped there and it's finally the beginning of issue #1 of my zine Silence "Mothership. This stuff was also at this time inspired by a single picture I drew (still 2015 damn...) and you can spot that it's the same character and cockpit (and the same pencil).
Sorry to bring out some old stuff, I created Atomcyber with this project, so it's pretty important to me, and quite relevant to what I want to try to talk about a bit.
So for #1, it's a mix of old blurry ideas but with strong material limits, to tell only the point which was finally to have a mood of solitude, darkness, and eroticism/sex in space \o/ ^^'.
For the second issue "Starseed" I came to my story with a single picture and a second one done with already the idea of a comic upcoming and I used it on the pages of Starseed. It's from 2020, and it was more direct. I guess that the first experiment with #1, concretized something.
I really wanted to use this subject not only as aesthetical stuff but as a story, that became my latest comic. It''s more in a surreal mood than in a big storytelling stuff, but it's worked at some point, and this mood remains in the comic itself (at least in my opinion)
In conclusion, even if it's not very clear all I'm saying, as I'm a drawer, I think that it's easier for me to create stories with pictures, and at the same time, in my zine, stories are only pictures as there is no text. No doubt however that books and text have/had a big influence, but it's more in the background of my mind I guess. Music is also very important. Well besides all of this, I was happy to exhume these old works that are my path in the way of "making stories".
I have also another early failed example of a comic, driven in the same way, more in a fantasy mood, but we will see later.
Comments
Atomcyber
Thanks a lot Jenni! Yeah that's it exactly. Dead end was inevitable here, I was too attached to little details and stuff that give mood, but also lose you if your story isn't totally ready and solid. At some point, even if I do not totally agree with this, we could say that nothing is free, each picture in a comic has to be useful or to be not.
jennijart
So interesting to read about how things have come to be from those first drawings! I recognize the process of how these small "seed" ideas grow into bigger and more complex pieces of work even though the first attempts might appear to be dead ends :) I admire even your earlier work!
Atomcyber
Thank you! I'm glad that you find this interesting, I've lost track a bit when writting it, but well there is the pictures ^^'. I can't realize it is this old... And I'm still sticking with old ideas, which still evolve ofc, with me and age until I put them on paper, or die I guess.
Jack
Thank you for sharing, it's really interesting to see how your art has evolved.
