Dialogue Sneak Peek

Happy April everyone!


It's been a few months since we've posted on what we're up to, but most posts are to the effect of editing/revising/drinking and whatnot. That remains true.


Dave has done some pretty stellar paintings in the past few months as well, and though they are separate and unrelated to the Seven Stars, we hope to share them with you at some point all the same.


For myself, in February I managed to finish the first draft of a fantasy novel (also unrelated to the Seven Stars). It's about 98,000 words and, taking Stephen King's advice, I've moved on to other projects before immediately jumping into editing mode.


For now, I'd like to share the first few pages of dialogue from The War of All (a prologue to The Seven Stars). We are hoping to have the first part of this prologue ready later this year. The timeframes that Dave and I typically set for ourselves are never in stone because, as there is just the two of us, disruptions to our schedules are frequent and substantial.


In the meantime, read on, and please leave your feedback if you're so inclined!

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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Progress Update, and Tim Reviews Iron Man 3

It's almost the end of May.
Already.
Perhaps once I've transitioned from my current job to (fingers crossed) having this and other works published, I can start working on that ever-elusive time hack.

Dave and I continue to work, and in the interest of being able to complete this project within our lifetime, are considering bringing a third person on board to help with colouring. This want has been posted on our Facebook page, along with this black and white page for people to colour as they see fit:

This page is actually our first glimpse at the king of Carthanea, Kigh Eldorfath, and his military consul, Thanwol. Devotees will recall the first digital image we posted of Obrim Kesgarr, referring to Kigh's potential to wage war. It isn't spoiling anything to tell you that, yes, there will be a war.

Now, on to other nerdy thing...

I recently saw Iron Man 3. It's good, but I want to gripe about the villain. There's a big twist therein, so... Spoiler warning! Don't proceed if you don't want the twist revealed to you, if you don't already know what it is.

Now on Facebook

Hey all!

As the title says, we've made the jump to Facebook. Click here to check out the page for The Seven Stars (yes, that's the real title we've been building up to all this time).

Dave has posted some new artwork already, so head over, check it out, and Like the page if you're so inclinced!

March Update: Enter the Dragon

March.
The month of breaks (if you are a student) and Irish booze-ups (if you are everyone interested in that sort of thing).

We are hard at work.

Dave arts nonstop. He arts so much that we have to use the word art as a verb.
Tim is, as usual, mired in editing/rewriting/revising while working on other short stories and the outline of a book. Business as usual.

With regards to our monumental undertaking, Dave has finished several pages, full colour and all, and they look stellar. We are hoping to have the first part of the first book (about thirty pages) done in March or April.

As usual, here are a couple of samples some of you may have already seen. The pictures below don't actually have anything to do with our graphic novel, but hey... who doesn't love dragons?

Continue on to see a near-finished version of the same work!

One Week Later

 

Well, it's been a week since we got the Wacom Cintiq, and I think because of that, it's also been a week since Dave has seen natural light.

 

 

Over the past seven days, Dave has created a surprising number of pieces. I'm sure we can chalk part of that up to how the Cintiq can streamline the creative process, but I should point out that I firmly believe, despite what Dave says, that he hasn't removed himself from the screen for seven days.

 

In short, he's on a roll. The muse is there, so why deny it?

 

 

 

 

But there's more that's new and noteworthy. Read on!

Wacom Unboxing and Our First Digital Portrait

What's this?
Two posts in one month? When was the last time that happened?

It's been a while, to be certain. Earlier this month, we brought to light that we would soon have our very own Wacom Cintiq 22HD. Update: We have it. And it is glorious.
It was in October that we got to test drive the larger 24HD Cintiq, and we were pretty blown away.

So we got one.

And there was much rejoicing, in the form of mead.



Getting the Cintiq and setting it up was an experience. It was draining, but incredibly exciting at the same time, because we didn't know, and as of this writing, still don't know the potential that this device will afford us.

Well, it was almost immediately necessary for Dave to take it for a test drive. How did it turn out?

Below you'll see two images: one of which is a work in progress, the other is the finished product. Also worth noting is that this was Dave's first attempt with the Cintiq. Both images are 100% digital. At no point did pencil touch paper.

Halfway through:

Finished!

Perhaps within the next few weeks we'll have another post to give some background info on the above character, who looks like he doesn't take guff from anyone (spoiler: he really doesn't).

So what does everyone think? Please leave comments below! And check out our other posts for more artwork!

A Step Forward

Happy 2013 to everyone!

I'd like to start off by wishing everyone all the best for this year, and to thank anyone who has taken even a passing interest in our progress over the past two years. We're going to get things started with a few updates.

You may notice the title of the blog has changed. Yes, I did start it off under the moniker "offblue harvest", which was a slight nod to Blue Harvest, George Lucas' code name for Star Wars when it was in production. But as time marches on, some adjustments are needed, and a code name is no longer appropriate at this stage.
The title Carthaniss Keep is not the title of our novel, but it does refer to an important location. If you want to take it as a sign of progress, we won't stop you.

Secondly, as far as the progress of the writing goes (Tim's constant challenge), we're about 30-40% complete. However, seeing as how we're still in a position to make creative changes, this number could change as well. As the scribe, Tim has found a more comfortable footing in terms of pacing, scene writing, etc, and as such will make changes to some major segments in parts of the book we had already thought of as complete.

Third and thirdmostly (thanks Bobby Bottleservice) we are less than a month away from obtaining our very own Wacom Cintiq, which will make the creation of the artwork much more fluid for Dave. When we actually do get the Cintiq, we're going to nerd out with D&D-esque board games and lots of mead (pictures will be provided).

As always, here is some sample artwork. What you see below is the actual layout of one of our very first scenes, and I think you'll agree with me that the quality of the artwork we've seen is always increasing.



Feel free to leave comments, and look for more posts! They should be coming more frequently in the days to come.

Cheers.

(Click here to check out some of our other posts!)



August Update: The Noble's Son

As Summer marches on, so too do we march on with our work.

Not only have we been going over our first book with a fine-toothed comb, we have been playing a LOT of Call of Duty while brainstorming.

We're both excited about the shape our story is taking. Needless to say, we are a long way off from the end and there are megatons of details yet to be finalized, but every day brings us closer.

Enjoy the latest piece from Dave's repertoire!