4: Building the Frontline
Hello, my Squids. It's been a little while since I've written a blog but I thought it would be a good time to talk about art, webcomics, and world building. At the end of the last year, I released Taliah and, while I've been putting up pages, I've also been making adjustments to the structure of the early story. I thought it would be fun to capture some of my thoughts and let you in on what's ping-ponging around in the ol' noggin.
When I originally conceived Taliah, I wanted to do set chapters of roughly 26-30 pages each. It was a good, solid number and easily obtainable for each chapter. I planned on releasing the full chapters at once when each one was finished. I started my storyboarding and script writing around two and a half to three years ago, then started crafting pages about a year after that. All was well and good until I made the switch from Procreate to Clip Studio Paint. I had to learn CSP, become comfortable enough in it to be quickly functional, and use it as a primary arting app. I also needed to get familiar with CSP's comic tools. This would take time.
At the same time, my art was getting better and better. Taliah's original pages were done in Procreate, with each page being its own project file. Between when I originally started drawing them and when I finally switched over to Clip Studio Paint, my art abilities had grown considerably. I would need to redraw the pages to fit how I, at the time, was drawing. Which meant starting the pages over in Clip Studio Paint.
This is when I decided on the webcomic format. Since my skills were getting better at an exponential rate, by the time I had finished drawing all 26-30 pages of a volume, either the art would look nothing like what I was putting out in my other illustrative work or the art would change fundamentally from page to page as I applied new techniques I've learned. The only way through was doing a webcomic, where timed releases weren't as jarring as I added new skills to my art repertoire during my creations. It would make sense for page 1 to look different than page 26 after months and months of page releases. This is par for the course. It also meant I could tell the story, experiment with my art, enjoy the journey at a pace that was manageable and fun.
However, this introduced a problem: with a single 26-30 page release, you have all of the story you need to tell that in that volume at the readers' fingertips. Webcomics are fundamentally different. Since they're scheduled, having a good hook at the beginning of your comic helps draw the reader in with immediacy. What happens when the big hook is on page 20 but that page won't be released for months? There were some things in Taliah's first chapter that only showed up in future pages of the chapter. I needed to bring them forward so that readers could be excited in a more fundamental way. I also needed to flesh out Jaixia more. Some things that better explained the city or the world were later in the chapter, but I needed them on the first few pages. I needed to create more.
Right before the release of Taliah, I drew a new page one. It was to set a more establishing shot than the original pages, as well as explain things like the Deep Red, which originally were talked about on page 11 and 12. As more pages came out, I knew I wanted to pull more from the back of the chapter to the front: things like the Celestial Constellation, Saul and Leira's relationship, even Leira's parental lineage. So I drew new pages in between existing ones, pages that more explained what these symbols are and mean, who Leira is, her relationships with those around her, even the magick that exists in Taliah. All to better set up the trials and tribulations as the story unfolds.
I think, however, that what switching from comic book to webcomic also allowed was for me to think about my characters a bit more. I'm a character creator: I write characters, I live characters, their stories are fundamental to my enjoyment of art and creativity as a whole. Since the creation of Taliah, I've had the stories of our four main characters written and cemented in the world. Yet, as soon as I decided to make the switch from comic book to webcomic, I revisited those stories and realized I wanted to change or adjust them. Some, like Micah's, are very solid but others, like Atticus, were greatly changed. Some of the motivations changed, some of the relationships changed, but it was all to set up more devastating plots, more uplifting themes. It allows me to tell the story of these characters in a better, more intricate way.
Moving things forward has changed the story of Taliah in the most positive of ways. I hope it shows as the story unfolds and the pages get better and better. Creating and publishing this webcomic has been an eye-opening experience, both for how different it's been from when I was last writing and drawing comics, as well as how it feels to grow, learn, and get better at the things you love to do. I hope that you love Taliah as much as I do as the tale unfolds. Take care for now.