Decembeard

First of, I’m going to rattle through what we’ve been up to for the past few months.

Editing.
Constantly. Sometimes it’s joyful, sometimes sorrowful. Lately, it’s been more of the former.
When I first began writing The Seven Stars, it had been years since I had written anything of substance. The first draft took a year to complete, and while I was happy with parts of it, there was a lot that needed to change. I was unused to the economy of language that is demanded in comic scripts. In fact, I was not a reader of comics in the slightest. But, I’m happy to say, things do change, and each revision further refines what did indeed start out as a literary lump of coal.
The War of All, the lead-in story to The Seven Stars, has been our focus of late. It, too, is being refined; while we’re keeping the main plot thrusts, we’re trimming down the fringes. A one hundred page comic isn’t the best medium for an overly convoluted plot, as Dave so often reminds me.


Executive Decisions

It has been nearly a full year since we have had the Wacom Cintiq, and it has allowed us to make more progress than I think Dave and I even realize at this point. Dave had completed about ten pages done in full colour (page one, below) when he decided to alter and simplify and visual style, and started over.

It’s worth mentioning that we both quite liked the way that the colour images looked, but as the sole artist, it would be difficult to balance that level of colour and detail with being able to make decent progress.
Recently, he has honed a new shading technique that lends the images a surprising amount of depth. Hopefully I can twist his arm enough to get him to post one of the more recent pages, but at this point we’re going to continue in black and white only. This means (fingers crossed) we’ll have a finished product that much sooner.

Sidenotes

Dave has done some colouring for fellow artist, supreme nice guy and bearded champion Mike Rooth. I highly recommend checking out Mike’s Facebook page to see Dave’s handiwork as well as Mike’s own amazing artwork. I have been working on my own novel’s first draft (82,000 words, still not done) as well as a multi-part superhero story for my overseas friends at Artifice Comics. Part one of "Horizon" can be found here among worthier tales. It’s totally free, as are all the other editions of Bento.

NEWS!
KW Tri-Con is on January 18/19. We are hoping to have our own table where we’ll be selling prints for The Seven Stars as well as Dave’s own fantasy/abstract artwork. More on that to come! Also, I've been catching up on my reading lately and wanted to start posting some semi-regular critiques. First up: Wool, by Hugh Howey.

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