Summer Projects

So last summer I got this great idea that the perfect way to improve my (still) dismal art skills would be to take one of my story ideas and work it up as a comic book. Doing so would force me to work on my art and scripting abilities so I didn’t really think I could lose out.

Unfortunately I totally underestimated my abilities and my attention span. I made the mistake of picking out a sci-fi story that I had only a very vague idea about plot-wise and too much to work with setting wise. With no end in sight, I kind of let the story ramble too much. Plus with the setting, I was challenging myself a bit too much to make it look like it was set in space. Long story short, I gave up after about a month of working on it and just two pages up online.

In part because of total creative funk that I’ve been in since last fall, I haven’t drawn since then. I haven’t really written much either, at least not more than snippets and story ideas. But last night I was thinking about trying something like this again, only this time I would only work with a contained story where I had a very definable ending and knew about how long it would take to get there. Except, when I started going through all my notebooks and files looking for a story that would work…I couldn’t find one. I mean I knew I liked epic plots and stories that unfolded over several different ‘books’ but I didn’t realize how bad I had gotten at taking previously shorter story ideas and extending them.

So then I was left with a dilemma: take one of my longer ideas and shrink it or come up with an entirely new one.

Now I thought over it for a long time and came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to work on a fantasy or sci-fi so that I would be more likely to have references when what I wanted to draw became too complicated. And that led me to another conclusion: I was going to have to come up with an entirely new idea, because apparently I really like coming up with fantasy-ish stories (even ones set in this world).

So I thought long and hard trying to come up with one, and the only idea I was really getting was the idea of a girl losing a lace headband – I blame looking up lace patterns for knitting. So after a while, I gave up and sat down at my computer and decided to waste time by reading fairy tales. And came across this page. Now I’ve read a lot of people re-writing fairytales, and I really didn’t want to do what they were doing by just interpreting it in a fantasy setting. But I think I’ve worked that out.

Now I just have to wait and see. I’m going to work on the story and some art throughout July. If I think I have something to work with by the end of July, I’ll consider posting it.