Post by Addie on Aug 13, 2007 2:53:11 GMT -5
...major Kloteck page updates.
Many of Kloteck's pages will be going through major updates. Yes, I was going to redo a number of the old pages anyway, but I'm talking major changes, not just an update on the art. So uh, I'm going go ahead and explain why and how these changes will be made here...please note that when I mention the "current pages" I mean pages 1 to 8, although I may change a few panels here and there in pages 9 through 12 as I see fit. These changes will not affect the plot as I have it planned out either, but will explain things more than I have in the pages so far.
The artwork and dialog. First of all, the current page 1 needs to be dragged through trash, ripped apart and thrown out, main reason being Kloteck is not an anthro comic as I had first intended it to be (many reasons behind this change, mainly because I wanted to tell the story from a feral dog's point of view and I dislike coloring anthro art with Photoshop as the main medium...I started out with drawing anthro in real media, I would like to continue doing so unless a job/commission instructs me otherwise or I feel like drawing digital anthro stuff for some reason. Also, digital media has fuggin' spoiled me.). Obviously a no-brainer on that one. As for page 2 and many that follow, I want to hack every time I read and see them. The dialog is moronic and childish, and the pacing is way too fast (I'll elaborate on this in a minute). Not to mention the artwork is horrible and the shading on the characters does not match that of page 9 and up. I don't think I need to even mention those horribly shitty backgrounds either...not that I'm doing much better at the moment with them anyway. Whoot.
Progression, how fast things happen, etc. I can't stand Kloteck's current pacing. After reading through a few of my old Borders-bought "how to" story development books, receiving input from experienced artists at the college, and looking at thumbnails of the pages all at one time, I've been told and have noticed that shit is just happening way too fast and would never work out in book form. What I have is Kahvie introducing everything via voice over, which is boring as all hell. "Ooo, I was born, this one bitch in my pack hates me 'cause I took her place, oshit, ACTION SCENE TIME, because you've so totally heard enough through storytelling dialog to be interested in what will happen next!!!11!!" I jumped into it way too quickly in an attempt to start the comic and get to the fun flashy stuff to keep readers' attentions. Moronic mistake on my part, as it obviously destroys my own creation and hardly earned Kloteck any readers anyways (ha, my artwork sucks! The truth is a bitch, the parenthesis are pimp). For this reason, I will be attempting to introduce everything with more depth in the new pages, showing character interaction and events rather than using little storybook boxes with the characters standing around like idiots to give readers something colorful to look at. This means that there will most likely be more pages than what is needed to replace the old 1 though 8. So, page 9 may need to be bumped to become page 10 or further, etc...basically the page numbers of 9 through 12 will not be the same once I've finished all the new replacement pages because I will be focusing on fixing the old pages' flaws and not the page numbers. Yadayadayada...
Character personalities and relationships. This is a big one. I've heard more than a few people describe Kahvie as being a solemn character, which she just...isn't. She's naive and rebellious, with very little life experience as a feral canine. She's overly curious about many things and often gets in trouble for this, especially around the villages where she will wander into tavern and shop store rooms and destroy stuff (if you've ever had or have a dog, you know what messes they can make when exploring, picking up stuff in their mouths, digging for food around the house, and chewing up your rug out of boredom...it's reality, it's just what dogs do). Can you tell this from reading Kloteck's pages so far? No, most likely not, because I haven't introduced the character in a way that communicates her as such. Again, I went right for the storytelling boxes, and showed barely any indication of Kahvie's personality through actions or words. And when she did speak, she sounded like a formal retard...most of this is because I was afraid people would come in and comment with "LOL, yur grammah is off," but for other reasons as well, one being that it is a bit hard for me to envision how the readers see the characters. In other words, I know the characters, but the audience doesn't. And it's difficult for me to think like someone who knows nothing of the characters in the comic and portray them in a way that would explain/show their personalities. The characters' relationships with one another and who they are to each other are biggies that need much better portrayal as well. For example, can you tell that Sonny is Kahvie's childhood friend in the pages so far? No. All you know is that Kahvie told him to watch Winchester when she left the cave and very well wouldn't give a damn if he was hurt or killed. Can you tell that Winchester is a father figure to Kahvie? Again, no, because I didn't portray it at all. How does Nightshade interact with Kahvie? What about with Winchester, "lowly dogs," and so on and so forth? You can't tell from the current pages. So, I really need to work on that.
The world of Kloteck and how it affects the characters. Something that I really need to work on and get more into. For example, at this point in the comic, if someone were to pick it up from a shelf and read it, they wouldn't know what the hell a Rakine or Hallow is when looking at page 5. As with the character personalities, I forgot that not everyone will have read the information posted on the forum that explains Kloteck's setting and packs/villages. Again, I need to and am working on that with the new page redoes. Humans are another thing. From the looks of the comic so far, I wouldn't be surprised if new readers assumed Kloteck took place in some crazy world where humans went through some mass extinction and now OMG, WOLVES RULE!!! Yeeeeah, no. Humans play a fairly large part in the story, especially when it comes to Kahvie's development as the story progresses. Oh, yeah...and Kahvie doesn't have goggles because I'm a furf*g and decided that she had to have them. I'm going to get into where the hell she got the goggles in the new pages rather than in a flashback as I had originally planned because, yes, they have a point in being there, even if not am extremely important one.
I think that is about it...I most likely forgot something after spending two weeks working on writing this up, but whatever, s'not like too many people will stop to read this in any case. This was more to help me in realizing what is wrong with Kloteck anyway, even if it is explaining my future plans for the comic. For anyone who actually did read this and cared, THANK YOU...not many really seem to care too much about Kloteck, so it's nice to know that at least a few people might give a damn and help me in the motivation department. I'm not sure if the guys who helped me at the college are reading this either, but thanks as well to you three for helping me with the critique thing, as well as Kyrahlynn for getting some awesome critique for me. You guys rock!
Many of Kloteck's pages will be going through major updates. Yes, I was going to redo a number of the old pages anyway, but I'm talking major changes, not just an update on the art. So uh, I'm going go ahead and explain why and how these changes will be made here...please note that when I mention the "current pages" I mean pages 1 to 8, although I may change a few panels here and there in pages 9 through 12 as I see fit. These changes will not affect the plot as I have it planned out either, but will explain things more than I have in the pages so far.
The artwork and dialog. First of all, the current page 1 needs to be dragged through trash, ripped apart and thrown out, main reason being Kloteck is not an anthro comic as I had first intended it to be (many reasons behind this change, mainly because I wanted to tell the story from a feral dog's point of view and I dislike coloring anthro art with Photoshop as the main medium...I started out with drawing anthro in real media, I would like to continue doing so unless a job/commission instructs me otherwise or I feel like drawing digital anthro stuff for some reason. Also, digital media has fuggin' spoiled me.). Obviously a no-brainer on that one. As for page 2 and many that follow, I want to hack every time I read and see them. The dialog is moronic and childish, and the pacing is way too fast (I'll elaborate on this in a minute). Not to mention the artwork is horrible and the shading on the characters does not match that of page 9 and up. I don't think I need to even mention those horribly shitty backgrounds either...not that I'm doing much better at the moment with them anyway. Whoot.
Progression, how fast things happen, etc. I can't stand Kloteck's current pacing. After reading through a few of my old Borders-bought "how to" story development books, receiving input from experienced artists at the college, and looking at thumbnails of the pages all at one time, I've been told and have noticed that shit is just happening way too fast and would never work out in book form. What I have is Kahvie introducing everything via voice over, which is boring as all hell. "Ooo, I was born, this one bitch in my pack hates me 'cause I took her place, oshit, ACTION SCENE TIME, because you've so totally heard enough through storytelling dialog to be interested in what will happen next!!!11!!" I jumped into it way too quickly in an attempt to start the comic and get to the fun flashy stuff to keep readers' attentions. Moronic mistake on my part, as it obviously destroys my own creation and hardly earned Kloteck any readers anyways (ha, my artwork sucks! The truth is a bitch, the parenthesis are pimp). For this reason, I will be attempting to introduce everything with more depth in the new pages, showing character interaction and events rather than using little storybook boxes with the characters standing around like idiots to give readers something colorful to look at. This means that there will most likely be more pages than what is needed to replace the old 1 though 8. So, page 9 may need to be bumped to become page 10 or further, etc...basically the page numbers of 9 through 12 will not be the same once I've finished all the new replacement pages because I will be focusing on fixing the old pages' flaws and not the page numbers. Yadayadayada...
Character personalities and relationships. This is a big one. I've heard more than a few people describe Kahvie as being a solemn character, which she just...isn't. She's naive and rebellious, with very little life experience as a feral canine. She's overly curious about many things and often gets in trouble for this, especially around the villages where she will wander into tavern and shop store rooms and destroy stuff (if you've ever had or have a dog, you know what messes they can make when exploring, picking up stuff in their mouths, digging for food around the house, and chewing up your rug out of boredom...it's reality, it's just what dogs do). Can you tell this from reading Kloteck's pages so far? No, most likely not, because I haven't introduced the character in a way that communicates her as such. Again, I went right for the storytelling boxes, and showed barely any indication of Kahvie's personality through actions or words. And when she did speak, she sounded like a formal retard...most of this is because I was afraid people would come in and comment with "LOL, yur grammah is off," but for other reasons as well, one being that it is a bit hard for me to envision how the readers see the characters. In other words, I know the characters, but the audience doesn't. And it's difficult for me to think like someone who knows nothing of the characters in the comic and portray them in a way that would explain/show their personalities. The characters' relationships with one another and who they are to each other are biggies that need much better portrayal as well. For example, can you tell that Sonny is Kahvie's childhood friend in the pages so far? No. All you know is that Kahvie told him to watch Winchester when she left the cave and very well wouldn't give a damn if he was hurt or killed. Can you tell that Winchester is a father figure to Kahvie? Again, no, because I didn't portray it at all. How does Nightshade interact with Kahvie? What about with Winchester, "lowly dogs," and so on and so forth? You can't tell from the current pages. So, I really need to work on that.
The world of Kloteck and how it affects the characters. Something that I really need to work on and get more into. For example, at this point in the comic, if someone were to pick it up from a shelf and read it, they wouldn't know what the hell a Rakine or Hallow is when looking at page 5. As with the character personalities, I forgot that not everyone will have read the information posted on the forum that explains Kloteck's setting and packs/villages. Again, I need to and am working on that with the new page redoes. Humans are another thing. From the looks of the comic so far, I wouldn't be surprised if new readers assumed Kloteck took place in some crazy world where humans went through some mass extinction and now OMG, WOLVES RULE!!! Yeeeeah, no. Humans play a fairly large part in the story, especially when it comes to Kahvie's development as the story progresses. Oh, yeah...and Kahvie doesn't have goggles because I'm a furf*g and decided that she had to have them. I'm going to get into where the hell she got the goggles in the new pages rather than in a flashback as I had originally planned because, yes, they have a point in being there, even if not am extremely important one.
I think that is about it...I most likely forgot something after spending two weeks working on writing this up, but whatever, s'not like too many people will stop to read this in any case. This was more to help me in realizing what is wrong with Kloteck anyway, even if it is explaining my future plans for the comic. For anyone who actually did read this and cared, THANK YOU...not many really seem to care too much about Kloteck, so it's nice to know that at least a few people might give a damn and help me in the motivation department. I'm not sure if the guys who helped me at the college are reading this either, but thanks as well to you three for helping me with the critique thing, as well as Kyrahlynn for getting some awesome critique for me. You guys rock!
(And if you ever have any questions for my cousin, just let me know^^)
