Well, in scouring the web for information on exciting topics like best way to write a character/comic bible, I stumbled upon this forum. It appears to be a bit slow at the moment, but there's still activity, and it's a wonderful repository of information on webcomics. So I figured, might as well join up, since I'll definitely be using the knowledge and shared experiences posted on here a great deal.
My story, I guess, begins in Jr. High, when I finally put aside my toys for good. Prior to this point, I would write and draw scenes from whatever story I was cooking up, by my primary method of storytelling, was to act the whole story out with my toys (complete with multiple takes for various scenes). After the story was over, it was done, and I moved on to the next one.
I already had the start of a story cooking when I put my primary medium down. So I wrote this for a creative writing assignment, and that should have been that. But it wasn't. There were questions unanswered, and I started to think about those, and wonder, what if? And suddenly the small story idea that fit perfectly in short story format was now a dozen times bigger (and better too).
As a visual thinker I wanted to telling it visually. Animation! That's how I'll tell it! Except, while I had drawing talent for a Jr. High kid, consistency in my drawings was sorely lacking. AHA! Comics! Wait no that needs consistency too... Well I guess a novel then. And that's how English went from being my worst subject to my best. In one school year.
Almost 10 years later, this story has grown to ridiculous proportions, and has been scaled and expanded and revamped, reworked, reimagined over and over again. And started and started again, and again. And whole books of story notes. But never really written down as prose. I've continued developing both my writing and art, while pursuing writing as a career. Then I came up with a short story for a creative writing assignment and when I was done, I read it, and liked it, and thought, it really should be told visually. Well, I found out in Jr. High, I wasn't suited for that (never mind I've improved hundreds of times over since then. Who needs logic when you can cling to outdated perceptions of your talent, right?) Oh, but hey, I can cgi animate it! Well, I'll need to storyboard it. So I took a storyboarding class, and was finally introduced to the process of animating and Woah... I can do that! So I did. And thoroughly loved and enjoyed it. But as a hobby.
And well, animating requires voice acting talent, and quite frankly everyone I know is horrible at voice-acting (myself included) and I lack the resources to hire talented people to lend their voices. So I guess telling that decade old story in animation is out again. But, wait! Comics! Or even better Webcomics! Don't you just love when stories loop back on themselves like nice neat little bookends?
Okay so I probably didn't need to share all that, but I was rolling. Anyhow, that was about 5 years ago, maybe more, I don't know, got this thing where time kinda blurs together in my memory. I won a couple of student competition awards for my animation, and have been diligently since then, working on that same story idea I originally came up with in Jr. High, (although any resemblance of that original (expanded) story in almost entirely coincidental now). And let me tell you, nearly 16 years of plot lines and arcs is a fantastic reservoir for a comic series. It's taken me a bit of time to fit things together, hammer things out some more, and to be honest, I've gotten overwhelmed a few times trying to figure out all the logistics of starting, and running a comic series, and how best to go about it. But I haven't given up on the idea of making one, and that's something right?
Story-wise, a lot has come together lately, and I mean a lot. Which makes me primed to start it. With luck. Hopefully. And so I have lined up a trusted friend (also a writer and avid webcomic reader) to edit and critique and give feedback on the scripts, been getting back into the habit of drawing the cast, and started looking up things like creating a character/series bible, to organize myself and ideas better. Which lead me here. Awesome right?
If you made it to the end of this impromptu autobiography, you are a dedicated and valued member any community you decided to be a part of. We should be friends.
To the rest of you that stopped reading somewhere between paragraph 2 and paragraph 3, I don't blame you one bit. Maybe I wasn't so much rolling as spiraling out of control, eh?
