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Automata Fan-Fic Comic
Jim Gourley
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey,
I put together a 5-page script for an Automata story. *DISCLAIMER*: I'm not actually an artist. I'm a writer, but my experience is that people would rather read a poorly-drawn comic than a well-written script. So, submitted for your reading enjoyment is my crudely drawn story. I hope you enjoy my version of the continuance of Regal and Carl's adventures...
I put together a 5-page script for an Automata story. *DISCLAIMER*: I'm not actually an artist. I'm a writer, but my experience is that people would rather read a poorly-drawn comic than a well-written script. So, submitted for your reading enjoyment is my crudely drawn story. I hope you enjoy my version of the continuance of Regal and Carl's adventures...
Jim Gourley on
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Also, if this is supposed to be following on from the last comic, Carl was the only one who fired his gun. Why would Regal have to visit a psychiatrist?
Edit: Ok, I suppose he's a detective so yeah, but still. The whole second thing.
Generally, so far it isn't really atmospherically anything like the original comics.
Also, something you might want to note...
Now, if they're PRIVATE detectives, I guess I messed up.
It feels like you've taken crime noir and turned it into buddy cop.
Your comments are noted, thanks for the feedback. However, I had a different perspective on the story. I'd say that in just the little material we've seen from Krahulik and Holkins that there's too expansive a setting to pigeonhole it either as crime noir or buddy cop, though it has elements of both. What I found was a compelling character drama and an ingenious sci-fi construct in which to investigate some of the darker tendencies in humanity.
As a purely writing note, I didn't feel like it would be right (even in fan-fiction) to propose how the case itself progressed. Instead, I developed this as a "side-story" to explore some of the more unique items I teased out of the first and last pages. For example:
- Regal is obviously concerned not only about Carl's physical well-being, but his treatment by others. He acts much like a big brother.
- Carl is capable of emotion, and the extent to which he understates it only emphasizes his battle to contain them against oppression.
- Carl also lies to Regal, ostensibly because he doesn't want Regal to stand up for him.
- While Carl feels emotional pain, he apparently isn't bothered much by getting hit by a car.
So, I found a great deal of "buddy cop" nestled in the "crime noir", but at the end of the day what it does is to explore the contours of an imbalanced and unjust world through the relationship between two "men" fighting for justice.
And so I continue, with page 3.
I see you've been advised on the when and where to use Comic Sans, which always reminds me this Achewood strip.
As for your lettering, the words are getting a little crowded in the corners. This is the classic problem of trying to fit a square peg (a block of text) in a round hole (elliptical speech bubbles). To give your paragraphs a bit more room to breathe without having your bubbles cover too much artwork, try to get both to give a little. That is, add line breaks to your paragraphs so they aren't a block so much as diamond-shaped: the first and last lines the shortest, the middle the longest.
For instance, the bubble where the Dr. Gustav says, "You're familiar with the Mickelson diagnostic?" -- try breaking it down into:
"You're familiar
with the Mickelson
diagonstic?"
Your speech bubbles can give a little, too. Unless you want a perfectly elliptical shape to convey atmosphere -- exactly what the square bubbles of the automatons are doing -- you can deform them a bit yet retain the organic shape of human speech.
Try this: in photoshop (you're using photoshop, right?), I'm assuming you're using the ellipse tool to make your bubbles. Once you've got the ellipse down, use the Convert Point Tool
Now, drag that point upward, making the ellipse a bit more square.
Then do the same with the rightmost point, but drag the point downward.
That should give your text a bit more breathing room.
Also, if you're going to be lettering, Blambot should be in your bookmarks.
Hopefully, that will help your lettering become La Bella Lingua.
I posted here because it seems the writer's forum isn't getting a lot of visits and I figured that art hounds on this forum would be of the sequential persuasion.
Really?
In general, I don't find this to be very expanding of the world that gabe did, you seem pretty focused on the fact that humans and robots are different, which has already been established.
This is a terrific question that deserves its own thread. But would it go in here, the Writer's Block, or Graphic Violence?
I don't know but I guess I'll ask in the chat thread? I'm leaning towards here because it's directed at artists specifically.
since you know I have artists taking scripts to draw
1) No one looked at what I was putting out because they were all much more interested in trying to have the snarkiest insult about someone else's poorly-written stuff. I got to the point where I "watched the weather" for indications of flame wars. If one was going on, I knew not to even bother posting that week.
2) Someone used my post to say something like "gee, this isn't half as bad as the stuff (some other guy) wrote last week". In short order, a flame war ensued. No one said anything remotely constructive about what the thread was initially posted for. In effect, I was hijacked.
Let me say that the critique I've received on my three pages of cave drawings here is better than anything I ever got on the stuff I posted at those writer's forums, and I appreciate it.
Also Drop. The. Comic Sans.
If you want writing critiques, look for writing forums. If you want real critiques, take writing classes. With the amount of time reading and writing take, it's not a practical form to discuss online, especially since it's much more difficult to read shitty writing than to look at a shitty picture.
And if you want to be a good writer, come up with your own ideas.
The art leaves much to be desired but it does do the trick. Your perspective, proportions and structure all read correctly. Regal's eyes are always tightly closed, like the sun is shining directly into his eyes 100% of the time. Which it shouldn't be.
With regard to the responses on writing forums, I've never understood why but art forums are normally much more constructive. I think it's because the flaws in someone's art are typically immediately evident. What the person is asking for is a means to correct them. Writing forums require people to take time to read and think, which, why bother when you can flame someone? Kidding... in a serious way.
On Regal's "squintiness", I thought from the fact that he squinted a great deal in the dark in Gabe's artwork demonstrated a tip of the hat to the old Dick Tracy comics of the 30's. The nose kind of made that an open and shut case.
When it comes to the contention that they're private detectives, I'm enjoying the question now. "Uniform" isn't a term reserved only for gumshoe use. Detectives on regular police forces use it all the time. And I found the original confrontation with the beat cops to be that much more provocative on the basis that they would harass a "fellow" officer on the grounds of race. Assuming that they wouldn't do such a thing is as naive as thinking white officers in the LAPD would never harass a black officer just because he's "one of theirs". Probably the strongest indication to me that these guys are cops is that they're working on a string of murders. Where's the profit in that for a couple of private eyes?
This is an overtly racist world, where everyone knows they're racist and yet in many respects thinks it's okay. That's why I took the liberty of saying Regal "pissed off the wrong people" to get a robot for a partner and got assigned a case involving robots. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. Why not send the guy that arrested the chief's kid for drunk and disorderly? The intent was thus not to make Regal "whiny", but a guy who's a bit jaded with the consequences of doing the right thing. He feels outcast by his "fellow" humans, and here he realizes that he's growing to like Carl a lot more because Carl is an honest guy.
By contrast, here is page 4, where the story turns, and we realize that Carl has to walk a fine line in this world. While Regal can go in and vent his true feelings, do we believe anything Carl is saying? For as much discussion as there's been about Regal, I'm surprised no one mentioned just how much of an "Uncle Tom" Carl is playing out to be. I'm interested to know if by over-playing Regal I drowned out that aspect of Carl's plight.
Enjoy.
Granted there's some suspension of disbelief there, but it's a 5-page story. I didn't have time for foreplay 8-)