Sunday, January 6, 2008

Can You Tell Who Did What?


It Begins? Yes, what a bitch!

We've undergone a little "phoenix in the ashes" this New Year and have found time to actually progress in what will eventually be our web comic. I s'pose many projects experience their own version of a hellish production and certainly ours has been more a case of the ADD (with college thrown in there somewhere) than anything, but we've found the time to actually get somewhere again.

Today we sat down for a few hours and discussed the scripting and layout of the panels. I actually did my own storyboarding to make myself feel productive while Anton did his own thing, and much better I might add. He got about three pages done. I picked at two visual ideas that I had and was astonished that what I had drawn wasn't nearly as cool as I imagined it. Ain't that the way? Anyhow, we amused ourselves while trying not to get too distracted with good results.

Later on, after we parted ways, I went out to see the new Tim Burton flick (Sweeney Todd) and had a chat with a friend of Anton and I's named Matt. You'll be sure to hear more from him --he's in the damn comic! I was explaining the premise and complicated plotting that I have overshadowing what will be the comic's main story. He said that from what he saw of our work that it would be difficult for the reader to stay involved and want to know what comes next. I don't think he was calling the material boring, but found it a bit long-winded for the web comic format.

I immediately thought about my frustrations of not wanting this project to be like other web comics, and how stubborn I've been to not write in the school of the 1-2-Punch. Still, as Anton (and Matt respectively) have brought up, it would be really hard to keep people intrigued if we updated with transitional pages that didn't have a point (or a laugh), so we'd definitely need to have the small punch-lines to keep reader traffic, well, consistent.

This reminded me of WHY we decided that Hookah was the right premise for doing a web comic, because it allowed for side-stories to mix it up a little without being entirely unfocused and primarily flavor-of-the-week topic humor. That, and it would allow for guest writers to easily pop in and share an entertaining story, if we were to do that (which we will). So, the compromise and POINT of this entry...

...The main story will be presented in chunks or issues (like singles!) to make sense. Also, by doing this, it'll make up for the ridiculous down times like you see in comics you go out and buy..ahem, Blade of the Immortal. You'll have side stories posted a couple times a week --a la web comic--and, you've got the best of two worlds. Hur-fucking-Ray!

~ Corrick