In the time since graduating college, a strong sense of the comic I wanted to make was beginning to take shape. It was nothing tangible, and but were certain moments of little aspects coming together and I made sure to keep a note book of any meandering ideas I had.
I found a good comparison for compiling these snippets together while reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. In the third book The Wastelands, the character Eddie Dean is compelled to whittle a certain piece of wood into a final form he is unaware of. It eventually starts to resemble a key that he dramatically finalizes at the last second to rescue another character by using the key to open an inter dimensional doorway. It’s a pretty crazy story, but whenever I would take time to sift through my notes and assemble them like some kind of puzzle, I would always think of Eddie carving out that key, not knowing exactly what it’s final form would be, but assured that he would know when he was done. Another good analogy that helped me out was one by Andrew Stanton, the writer/director of Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo. On the audio commentary for Nemo he talks about the story building process and how it’s like an archeological dig. To paraphrase Stanton, you start uncovering a number of bones little by little, and start to see them as a whole, thinking you have a triceratops. But then, as you dig more you start to discover that it’s a tyrannosaur and you have to go back and rethink your approach to the whole project. These kinds of considerations assured me about how long it takes to conceive my comic, work on it, and eventually finish it. I will recognize the directions to take when I see them and I will know when it is complete, but I will need to remain aware of when I should step back and see if I need to take a different path.
I had made a series of short story mini-comics post-graduation, the first one actually being my senior project. I decided to make them ‘silent’ by strictly using visuals to convey the story without dialogue. The results were mixed. I successfully utilized sequential imagery and was quite satisfied with the final layouts. Communicating the theme and message of the story was not accomplished as well. I never received in particularly negative feedback on these stories, but it put the concept in my head of the connection with an audience. I always realized the importance of a storyteller to tell a story that they would like to hear, that one should always make what they themselves would enjoy. Now, an audience obviously plays a part in any form of art and media, but in comics it is a crucial role. The reader is the one that completes the process of panel transitions and what is meant to be conveyed in the space between them. So as I concentrated on developing the story that I would enjoy, I also sought out how to make the theme easily communicated to the reader.