Designing The Document

Overview

• Introduction
• The Bible
• Bible Concept
  
  Bible Design
  
  • Sections
  • Main Sections
  • Section Layout Types

FeaturesList of features

Characters

• Concepts
• Designs
• References
• Biography/psychology

Locations

• Designs
• Concepts/Town Map
• References
• 3D Models

Production

• History
• Comic Page Layout
• Logo & Assets

Software

• Adobe Flash
• Google Sketchup

Character Psychology, Archtypes, Sterotypes and mental disorders.

As I dwell more and more upon it, mostly cause my teachers bring it up more and more. I need to start examining the character psychology and behavioral patterns in people to better flesh and bring out my characters. I could always defend myself with the argument that everyone is different and we handle things different to everyone else. But for the most part we are still human and some of us are still going to take things in a specific way depending on upbringing and certain scenarios or events.

To give an idea as to how it may benefit me is my character Mika.

Mika has been blind since she was born as the closest relationship she has had is with her twin sister, her mother and father, the only real friend she has ever made was Bianca and even then it was a spur of events that made that happen. But to put it frank, Mika has always had a wall up, never wiling to try and make friends, but when her Father died the wall became solid and enclosed Mika around the only few people she had left, never wanting to expand on the people she knew.

NOW!, while it obvious in my comic Mika's wall will degrade and she will clearly start to be able to make friends, will she be hesitant to certain people compared to others? How will she react to news of other peoples fathers and would she be one to accept a new father figure into her life?

Nothing is really sure. Other things I'd probably like to explore are stereotypes and archetypes, seeing if there any I can add or subtract from my roaster of character to help build the story up. As I've learned in the past if two characters just aren't working, sometimes it helps to make them the same character or to event characters to serve a particular ideal or thought if none of the current characters would seem right to fill that position.

And finally, psychical and mental disorders and challenges. Many of characters suffer from them, so I need to do my best to portray them correctly and no offensively as I want people to take away from this a healthy idea of issues that plague my characters and never colour someones opinion of a whole group of people.

Other forms of media similar to my comic.

I shall look at comics and other forms of media that are similar to my idea, this may help me reinforce what I plan to do with my comic as well as provide ideas for what I could do with it, such as looking at similar examples in other media, I can see if any tricks they employ maybe useful and adaptable for a comic book.

Lucky Star by Kagami Yoshimizu


Lucky star is a four panel slice of comic made by Kagami Yoshimizu and published regularly in Kadokawa Shoten's Comptiq magazine. The also made additional strips for other magazines for events as the series popularity grew.

Later, Kagami started to publish his strips in printed manga books which would be published by Bandai Entertainment, the books would contain additional content that did not feature in the magazines as well as a collection of all the advertizement strips.

An anime adaptation of Lucky Star was released in April 8th 2007 and ended in September 16th 2007. The anime was animated by Kyoto Animation and became one of their most popular series, second to K-ON!.

Manga itself follows the life of four young school girls and their friends from school onwards, the manga deals with real life issues such as sports, education, entertainment and life in general, present in a digestible and entertaining manner. Kagami has expressed in his series that each of his characters is a small part of himself, so he will always comment that when he does something it's this or that character talking.

Interestingly at the end of the manga and anime a fictional talk show will start and talk about the events that happened in the comic.

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K-ON! by Kakifly

Like many slice of life manga's in the modern era, K-ON started off in a magazine, this one being Houbunsha's Senien Manga magazine Managa Time Kirara between May 2007 and October 2010 issues. In 2008 the manga's were published in a book format that lasted four issues, with two brand new issues released in 2012.

Unlike LuckyStar, K-ON! did actually have a story and focus, the story resolved around a four girls reform a music club with the dream of hopefully being able to put on a live performance when they are older, much like LuckyStar, the series is more light hearted and hardly drops into tough subject matter or drama, mostly focusing on humor.

in 2009 only a year after the manga's launch Kyoto animation released an anime series which was 13 episodes, and then followed by a 26 episode second season in October 27th 2010 and then a movie in Dec 2011. K-ON! has been described as Kyoto animation's most popular anime series by fans, many whom hope was a return to with the release of Kakifly's two new books, K-ON College and K-ON Highschool. But no promises have been made or mentioned from either party.

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F.R.I.E.N.D.Sby David Crane and Marta Kauffman

To date, not one doesn't know what F.R.I.E.N.D.S is, but for the sake of explaining, F.R.I.E.N.D.S's was a tv sitcom that revolved around a group of friends who lived in the same area in Manhattan, America. The show had no over arching plot for the most part, it resolved around a new problem each day that the friends either solved or didn't. So for the most part the series worked like real life, no real demons to defeat, expect the ones we make for ourselves.

The series lasted for 10 seasons and 236 episodes since it's airing in 1993 Sep 22nd on NBC and last episode on May 6th 2004. When the series ended they tried to create a spin-off series from one of the fan favorites of the group, Joey Tribbiani, played by Matt Leblanc, sadly the show didn't take off and only lasted two seasons.

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Yotsuba&!by Kiyohiko Azuma

Yotsuba&! is an unusual slice of life comic and is probably the most original of them all, for Yotsuba&! follows the life of a five year old girl named Yotsuba who learns to discover the world around her along with her father and heir neighbors. Together they act silly, have fun, learn life lessons and explore the world through the unique eyes of a child.

On a personal matter, I have to say that Yotsuba&! is probably one of my favorite mangas to date and no matter how many times I've read it, It never stops to put a smile on my face.

Yotsuba was originally printed in ASCII Media Works's magazine Dengeki Daioh and is now collected in 12 volumes for people, the series is still very much ongoing.

Kiyhiko has refused to make Yotsuba&! into an anime despite it's mass popularity, claiming the medium isn't right for the story.

What Is Stuffy Stuff?

Stuffy Stuff is a four year long web-comic brain child that started off back in my Cambridge Regional College (CRC) days. It all started back when I was watching more TV and the amount of web-comics I was reading was steadily increasing. Over time I started to notice a trend that was evolving in modern day media revolving around the physically and mentally impaired; that was, even though some stories focused on accepting that they are all just like us, they'd spend most of the story making fun of their disability, so despite their message, we'd spend most of the time making fun of them.

So I started to devise a comic idea which focused more on the disabled as the main cast. My original idea for the comic was to be called "Sadistic Puppetry", which focused on a man suffering from chronic depression and his struggle to simply stay happy in a overly positive world, or one that appeared so to him. While part of me will still always love this idea, I felt it didn't evoke the message I had originally planned to do, so I shelved the idea in the back of my mind, for the next few years.

Skip forward from the end of CRC to the first year of Norwich University Of The Arts (NUCA), I had started to get back into Anime and Manga, as did my sister, but let's keep this on me. Even then I started to get bored with the medium; I felt that every Anime and Manga were starting to blur together, the same over the top drama, senseless death and violence, and overall just becoming very depressing to watch.

That was until I tried an Anime called Lucky Star, of the Slice of Life genre and instantly, I fell in love. Funny characters, real-life situations exaggerated enough to keep the point but remain funny, colourful imagery and just upbeat everything. I then started to try more Slice of Life animes and I just couldn't help myself, I was really enjoying the genre to the point I was even buying the manga copy of it and trying to get my hands on the DVDs.

Some time later, I was working on a different comic that I again felt like shelving for it was too broad to just work with right off the bat. Then suddenly, I read a journal telling people if they wanted to get into web-comics, they just simply needed to "DO IT" and work with it. So after some time, I gave these words some thought and thought back to my "Sadistic Puppetry" as a comic concept I could take and just roll with and then I decided to combine it with my new found love of Slice of life and figured it be the perfect way to tell a story about the life of people who are challenged every day, by NOT focusing on what makes them different and instead make it a part of who they are.

This is when Stuffy Stuff was born, when I finally realised the best way to create something that speaks positively about something. Sometimes it's easier to make something positive rather than something that dwells on the negative.

25/10/2013: Mr.Plastimime Lecture by Daniel Greaves

Today I attended a lecture by Daniel Greaves about his Kickstarter raised short "Mr.Plastimime" a Plasticine animated film about a mime with the titular name. I found the full length partly edited film that was shown to us to be very enjoyable as well as the behind the scenes. But what really interested me the most was the figures for the film, especially watching them being made.

The made me think back to the figures that you'd see at anime conventions or my shelf.

Cause knowing they were working on a budget, they had to be able to create multiple replacements and additions to their Plasticine cast on the fly, plus while the quality of the workmanship is very good, I feel the exact quality isn't Nightmare before Christmas, or to put it frankly, they are quite crap.

Which made me wonder if I could perhaps create models of my own for my comic, because I would love more than anything to have this line of quality merchandise ready for people who enjoy my work to have, so this is a possibility might have to keep on, now that I've seen what is possible under a strict timeline and budget, thanks to Mr.Plastimime.

Searching for the software.

What I'm looking for in terms of software for when it comes to my interactive Bible, is an easy to use program, where I can simply assign commands to assets I can produce, for I'd rather have something I can tailor around my needs than be forced with a program to which I'd have to tailor around it.










 
To make this Bible interactive, I plan to use Adobe Flash as this will allow me to focus more on research and assets for the main build of the bible and let me simply place the items I need into place. Also with Adobe being a much older program, finding tutorials that speak easy to me for specific task or job will be no problem.

I'd also need an easy to use 3D modelling program to create easy to make as I have no talent when it comes to the university's normal 3D software, I feel like I'll have to outsource for my project. They do not need to be high-res, just practical.




For this I've chosen, Google Sketchup, an easy to use 3D modeling program that is used to make 3D blueprints of existing and non existing buildings. I will need to research some English architecture along with some tutorials to aid me with the creation of my sets, but considering how long this program has been out, I'm sure I'll be able to find a plethora of tutorials online.

Changing Project Focus

Coming back to uni I found that my work that I had been doing over the summer holiday has more or less been made null and void on the regards it has nothing to do with what I plan to do for my project, so I decided to focus my work on making a digital Art Book for my studio project, I plan to base this art book off of my upcoming Web-comic Stuffy Stuff. I had planned for the Art Book to be a focus on what was missing from Art Books I've read, to give readers what they did not have and what I've always wanted to see. Mark suggested after seeing my first presentation that we focus on both my web-comic & the Art Blog for my project, I've decided to try and talk to him again about it when I see him, as several parties, my mother and mentor included, believe this will be too much of a strain on me.

Several weeks down the line, I've finally managed to get a word in with Mark. He's told me that it probably be best that I did NOT, work on both projects and instead of doing an art book, I'd focus my attention on doing a bible of my comic an interactive one to be exact. This way I'd be able to put the level of detail I wanted into the my work plus more as well as provide assets for my comic as it's still has some work to do.