Portfolio

This portfolio project was not really meant to only include designs and illustrations for the Verner’s Tale project, but I seem to have it on the mind constantly and the mashup of fairytales makes it really easy to just expand on that world. I’m trying to give myself leeway to be creative here, but it might not be a bad thing to approach these images as if they are from the same world because then they might be more cohesive. Which is something one wants in a portfolio.

Ibex-lion (healthy)

The first design has a creature from the beginning of the story, where the reader first encounters the curse Verner must find a solution for. I used the idea of the shattered mirror from The Snow Queen, imagining that someone got a hold of pieces of it and distilled it into something even more potent, though much less subtle. Where a mirror shard will cause inner decay, make a person lose sight of all joy and wonder in the world and make them act selfishly, this particular iteration can be used to cause rapid outer decay. This is essentially what my creature design will be going for.

Before I could draw the decaying creature, I needed a healthy one. Drawing animals is not something I do often enough, so I started this series of illustrations with an imaginary creature. Combining existing animals to make something new is my preferred way of designing monsters because this way I can use reference to make it look believable.

The process actually started a while ago, when I was drawing the prologue to Verner’s Tale and trying to figure out how to design the creature he’s fighting in the forest. On the original pages, I just wanted it to look huge, scary and decaying. The skull is the easiest symbol for that, so I imagined the flesh had already melted off its head, and as for the body, I kind of based it on a deer-like shape because deer are taller and I had gone with something deer-like for the skull, despite the curved horns which are more goat-like.

On the right-hand side, I also attached drawings of a tiny creature which was not initially related to the monster. I imagined it as a wildcat-goat mix, something easily spooked as one can see. When I went back to these pages, I realized it could be a fun idea to combine the two and Verner could be fighting the curse-infected version of the tiny animal that was introduced initially.

So I looked for references and drew a couple of studies, mostly focusing on the big shapes and the differences between wild cats and goats. Having a vague knowledge of comparative anatomy really helps here, since I can mostly intuit what works and what doesn’t in the initial stages and then worry about the details once I’ve scrapped the less interesting designs.

I made a few different iterations of cat-goat/ibex creatures and settled for one with a cat face, cat forelegs and a goat body and horns. I had been reluctant to try out the cat head originally, because my heart was set on using the goat-like skull for the diseased creature, but I still ended up liking the cat headed version more than the others, so it stuck.

I kept the colors fairly realistic, though now that I think about it, I regret not veering into crazier territory. It might have been cool to use a more fantastical color palette.

This is a good start design-wise, but I think I want to make a version which shows a little more personality. Push the design in a more stylized direction and show how I think this animal normally behaves. Wild cats and ibexes are both mountain-dwelling animals so I could draw it defying gravity like a goat on a steep, rocky mountain face. Or perhaps I could go in a different direction and make it look afraid of heights, sort of like when cats climb trees and then refuse to come back down once they realized how far the ground is. Or I could explore some diet-related stuff. I imagine this animal is mostly carnivorous because of the cat face, but likes to snack on fruit and juicy roots. I could show a baby kitty version of it stealing peaches or something. I also think this is exactly the sort of animal that would have the audacity to take honey from a beehive.

In any case, I think I will return to this design, even though I had only made it with the intention of having something to turn into a horrible diseased monster.

Ibex-lion (infected by curse)

On the foundation of the first design, I could layer the decay concept. The second design pulls more inspiration from the skeletal versions of the animals. The picture I had in my head from the beginning was of the horned skull. It might be slightly overdone, as these things go, but I like it and I think it’s effective for showing what the curse does to living creatures.

I started with some fairly realistic sketches with little exaggeration and will build on these in the next update. I will push the design a little more and also make a more finished version of both creatures.

Dwarf Lady (Runa’s Mom)

I really, really wanted to draw a dwarf. I have had the idea of making Runa’s mom a dwarf ever since I re-read the Snow Queen story, where it says that her mother has a beard. There are a lot of modern stories that like to play with the idea of dwarf ladies also having beards, mostly because of Tolkien’s influence. I always thought it was an interesting choice.

I imagine Hans Christian Andersen was basing the Robber Girl (Runa, as I have named her), the other highwaymen and her mother on some travelling show stereotypes instead of real people, but I still think there is real humanity in the way he wrote them, especially because he emphasized that circumstances were against them rather than any sort of insurmountable inner flaws. This is especially interesting because his stories have a tendency to put a lot of value on purity and innocence, which might make a modern reader skeptical of his treatment of people with less fortunate backgrounds. In actuality, a lot of his work was specifically meant to shine a sympathetic light on the less fortunate in a world that had a tendency to assign moral value on the economic circumstances and physical appearance of less fortunate people.

In any case, there are indeed ladies all around the world who grow beards for different reasons, though the general term for extra hair in places it doesn’t usually grow is hirsutism. A lot of women choose to remove it, but there are some who do not either for skin health reasons, in protest of societal norms, or because it isn’t practical with their lifestyle. For this particular character, I imagine she keeps her facial hair for cultural reasons, even though most ladies in the country she and her daughter are living in cannot grow it and therefore find it strange.

Lord of the Rings Dwarf Costumes

I like the idea of highly decorated hair and facial hair for dwarves. This is definitely The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit influence (as seen in the references above).

Though clearly when ladies have beards in real life they too will, in fact, be inclined to decorate them.

Harnaam Kaur, Model and Motivational Speaker

I first tried some more domestic designs for her. Long skirt, bonnet, apron and the like, because I imagined she would not have a reason look any different from most women of the era (cica. 1800) doing chores. But then I reconsidered and designed her in “work clothes” instead. I kept the apron idea, because aprons are useful and I gave hers a cool shape. She wouldn’t look overly nefarious, even though their profession of stalking highways isn’t particularly noble. She is just a person who has fallen on difficult circumstances, so she would still dress like the merchant she used to be and still prefers to consider herself as.

Tried out different color schemes before attempting the big one. I tried one where her clothes have Runa’s colors, but reversed (trousers in green, spencer in grey) because it seems logical that they would use the same fabric if they had any actual bolts of it available, but I did end up deviating from that.

Comic

Verner’s Tale is a graphic novel project I’ve been workshopping for a while now. When I was designing the characters and fleshing out how they could interact, I didn’t necessarily know what the end result would look like. Would they be part of a book? A game? A film? As far as project proposals went, it could have been anything. But I grew attached to the characters, so I decided to take up a medium I could conceivably tell their story with myself: comics.

For all I have been reading comics for years now, and for all of the “how to” guides I’ve been studying since I’ve taken the leap to make one myself, I have very little idea of how comics work. I’m floundering as I try to apply the things I’ve learned and as my inexperience in storytelling makes itself obvious when the story is actually visible on the page. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a beginner thing. A necessary step for anyone learning something new. Nonetheless, firsts take time and patience because of this element of floundering, and I’ve reached a point where I need to step back.

I wanted to make a complete chapter of the book so that I would have some idea of what the end result would look like, but I fear I’ve neglected the whole in pursuit of the technical details. Especially since it is more important to have a completed project plan than a complete chapter at this stage. This is a good moment to take steps back and reconsider what my ultimate goals are for this project in order to be able to successfully present the story in my head outside of my head where others can actually see it.

I imagine Verner’s Tale as a single, long story told in about twenty-four chapters. Each chapter would consist of a volume of about twenty pages each, initially only distributed digitally. I want to see if the story accrues interest from other fantasy enthusiasts before taking the leap to printing any of it.

As far as target audience, I thought I was going to go for a younger audience than I was actually writing for. I thought this was writing a middle-grade story and it really isn’t. I didn’t understand what a middle-grade book looked like, because I hadn’t read one since I actually was in middle-grade. The biggest clue is the fact that the main characters are all older, teens and up. Verner himself is about seventeen. Middle grade stories generally involve middle grade kids with their middle grade voice. Verner’s perspective is very decidedly in the angsty teenager pool rather than angsty middle grader pool. The writing and the type of story I’m telling is definitely more YA than anything else. Perhaps lower-YA at a stretch. Kids tend to read up rather than down, especially when it comes to comics, so younger ones might go for this anyhow.

In any case, I had been reluctant to pigeon-hole the story at all initially because I would like to write fantasy that anyone can enjoy. And there is also the fairytale retelling element to consider here. Most fairytale retellings are either “dark retellings” or portal fantasies with either the main reader character travelling to the fairytale world or the fairytale world travelling to our modern one. I took an approach more reminiscent of Shreck, in the sense that the story is happening within the world of the fairytale characters without any intrusion from the outside, but without the satire. I’m going to go for a more earnest, whimsical approach rather than dark, satirical or modernized (with contemporary characters or an isekai/portal story element). I’ve actually been having a lot of trouble finding western comics in this genera. Manga does it more often, but then again manga does everything. This is all to say that this story wouldn’t be without an audience, I would just have to look for them among western lovers of high fantasy/sword-and-sorcery stories instead of trying to fit this story amongst volumes of Protagonist Goes to Magical School which tend to dominate the graphic novel shelves for younger readers.

Since this story will be distributed digitally at first, I have been going back and forth on what best to do about format. On the one hand, the ultimate goal is to print it physically, so it follows that the version people would first enjoy seeing would also be in the same format. But digital comics that do well (especially for the YA target audience) are generally in a scrollable format, because it is much more convenient to scroll when reading on a phone. Some people cut their comics apart to serve the scrolling format better, but it’s always fairly obvious since the philosophy around the reading experience is different. Form-function and all that. This is something I’m still keeping on hold and considering. Another reason to halt the drawing process now and consider the project as a whole.

There are two ways I could approach this project plan: as if I’m constructing a standard query letter which is to be emailed to an agent or editor, or as if I’m making a self-publishing plan. I think there are merits for both, the main difference is that in one (1) I would need to conform to what the reader-base for traditional publishing read, or in the other (2) I would need to think of a way to reach readers interested in my story myself. Theoretically, I would love to try my hand at both, since I’m just trying to learn here. There would be quite a bit of overlap anyway, when it comes to presenting the story itself, there’s only the difference of who I’m trying to convince the story is worthwhile: an agent or the reader themselves respectively.

Both would need to contain:

a summary,
information about the world, the characters, and the genera,
visual development (designs for main characters, antagonists, important elements and environments),
sample pages
process summary/author bio

The query would also need:

a synopsis (not a summary, but a complete overview of the story told in no more than two pages)
first ten pages of manuscript

The self-publishing plan would also need:

an update schedule with deadlines and pledges
a video “trailer”
a place to interact with readers

I’m acutely aware that these two approaches are not actually all that compatible. Even the format of the story would need to change depending on how I would distribute it. I’m pretty sure a traditional publisher wouldn’t agree to the episodic style for a YA graphic novel, because the books would be too short to look good on a shelf, but printing it all at once would make for an absolutely massive book, which would be quite the risky investment. I imagine the logical suggestion would probably be either breaking it up into a trilogy or shortening the chapters so that it all fits more or less neatly into a single book. The problem is, if I want to take my time with any part of the story, I would need to resign myself to a very, very rushed narrative. Or just scrap everything and tell a different type of story. Which is something people do all the time, but would rather defeat the purpose of the current exercise which is to make a presentation of what I have.

In the case of self-publishing, I would need to research how people use Patreon and/or Kickstarter. There’s rather a science to both and I’m entirely unfamiliar with either. This approach also requires that I find a way to advertise my endeavors, probably via video format, because that’s easiest to follow. I would write blog articles, since that’s what I’ve been doing these last few years, but people can’t be bothered to read. And I wouldn’t be either, not for something like this. I have liked experimenting with video so far, so it wouldn’t be completely outside of my wheelhouse. There would be a million other things to consider if I did want to go this route because I would need to contact a printer myself, figure out storage, shipping. That is, if I figure out how to make a good story, how to get the word out about said story and if people like it in the first place.

What I need to get down right now is:

A proper script. Or at least a synopsis rather than the chaotic outline I’ve got right now. At the moment there are at least five versions of the story that I’m vacillating between so paring things down and making some definitive decisions on that would allow me to build with pictures. Even if the story ends up changing in the future!
Nice-looking finished comic pages. I’ll select a couple of the ones I have and refine them instead of trying to tackle all of them.
Environments. A lot of the fantasy genera is about the amazing, whimsical places the characters are traveling through, and I have been slightly intimidated by this. I don’t need more than two or three, but I do want to make them! These will be included as the pieces in the portfolio project as well.
A villain design. One of the things that I’ve really been wavering over lately regarding this story is the main villain, a rather important element to be unsure about. It’s really kept me back in terms of advancing with the project, so that’s the most important decision in terms of step one.
Figuring out how to put it all together in a way that looks competent and pleasing.
I already have the character designs for the main ones, but some of them might need a bit of cleaning up.

For the next section, I will be focusing on finishing the creature and dwarf designs, the synopsis, and refining a page.

The comic so far:

In the last section, I pointed out some problems with the flow of the comic and in this one I experimented with writing and sketching. While this is technically a middling chapter of the comic, it’s the first one where all of the characters of the company are in the same place. I could have started at the beginning, but I felt it was more important to see all of them interact, even if not all of them take center stage for the duration of the chapter.

Reflections

As I advance in the second half of this course, I continue to wrestle with the conflicting impulses to either take on all of the ideas I have racing through my mind and all the work I want to see made real or to completely hide it all away and never let it see the light of day. The first is understandable, yet disorganized and the second is actually the last thing I want to do. It’s an unfortunate meeting of genuine enthusiasm and typical artistic paralysis. Just the other day I saw parts of a puppeteer’s comedy special where the entire premise centers around the fact that he’s written a book he wants to share, but the anxiety of doing so is crippling to the point he ends up talking around it for the entire hour. It’s scripted that way, obviously, but it’s an extremely relatable circumstance for anyone who has made or is making anything.

Posting speedpaints regularly helped with anxiety around showing my work, though after I overstepped my deadline, I squirreled myself away again. I had certain expectations for myself for this part, to make completed images rather than just sketches, and this expectation created something like an anxious tunnel vision which made it impossible to continue. This is something worth noting, because there is absolutely no requirement set here outside of my own standards and I could have taken the easier road at any time but just chose to not cut myself any slack whilst also advancing at a snail’s pace because of the unnecessary pressure. The biggest problem with this is that it takes all the joy out of making because all I could think about was the missed deadline.

The unnecessary, self-imposed anxiety combined with a certain lack of clarity when tackling an illustration or project is at fault for most of these woes. I’m getting better at diagnosing the issue in the moment rather than in hindsight. A couple of years ago, I could not have done so and simply remained stuck, but now I’m getting better at actually self reflecting in the moment and realizing what it is that stands in my brain’s way of continuing the task at hand.

For the next section, I will mostly be focusing on my written essay, but I’ll also complete the illustrations I have not in this section and make another attempt at a project plan for the comic.