Creating Visual Style for a Comic: Crown of Altair

[Lavender]

Hello,

So, I’ve been trying to make this story that I’m working on, Crown of Altair, into a comic. Basically, the story is about a world that’s like modern times, where there are four groups of magic users, Sorcerers, Alchemists, Magicians, and Witches. Each group is ruled by four princes, who are chosen by magical artifacts called crowns. Basically, the Alchemists tried to kidnap Prince Altair from the Sorcerers, before he even became aware of his powers. The main characters are a Magician, Claudio, Prince Aries; a Witch, Enna, and Andrea, a human who is trying to become a witch…

The first part of the comic is going to consist of Enna and Andrea solving mysteries in a city, through with Andrea, and the readers, learn about the world and Enna’s past. They are also looking for Prince Altair and the alchemist who tried to kidnap him (Ludwig), while trying to reconnect with Claudio, who is being held in the Magicians’ city, cut off from the outside world. He’s the prince, but he’s sort of a figurehead, they don’t listen to his ideas at all, and part of this is Claudio finding the confidence to express his ideas even when the Magicians tell him he’s wrong.

The crown names are all based on star motifs – 11 of the 12 zodiac signs, and then five other star names. But there’s also a bit of a snarky deconstruction of the way humans and societies are so self-righteous… but then a rediscovery of some sort of sublime, spiritual something on an individual basis, once society’s impositions have been taken down. So for that, I want to get some of that religious-like compositions and styles, the way a figure in a religious temple might be portrayed. And even with the sort of “takedown of society” angle, I’m going for a glossier, prettier style than what most people like nowadays. There is also no combat at all in the story, so that’s a big difference between what I’m going for vs. most fantasy comics.

The four groups will also have their own styles. The magicians are more whimsical and curly, the sorcerers are very dogmatic and solemn, so I’m imagining a lot of straight, vertical lines, but still some ornamentation with them. The Alchemists are minimalism and practicality, “modern” with barely any ornamentation. The witches are all independent, so each individual witch will have their own style.

I… feel like I haven’t really been able to draw anything that’s enough for what I want yet. Like… I know I’m good enough to draw something the quality of a lot of the webtoons that get popular, but I don’t just want to be “good enough” for someone else, I want to make something that’s as good as I want it to be.

This isn’t the first thing I’m working on, it’s sort of down the line, but…

[Eden]

Hi Lavender! Sounds like you’ve got quite a story there that you’ve put a lot of time into.

Do you have any art to post that you’ve done yet?

A visual style for an entire comic is quite a big task. You’ve got a lot of ideas and sometimes with that the hardest thing is knowing where to start. Maybe you could start with only one thing to begin with, such as a specific environment or character.

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Lavender

Awesome work with developing this comic. I really like that you are beginning with your world building. It is important to have this from the get go I think in order to help you create a consistent, cohesive, convincing and compelling world. Ensure that all your elements feel like they would actually exist within that world. I would say if you haven’t done so already, work on creating your main characters – their backstory, their interests, drives and motives, their fears. This’ll all help to create characters that are engaging, relatable and feel like they really exist.

Make sure to ask yourself these questions : What is my intent? What do I want to communicate? What do I want to tell with my story? These questions pertain to you as an artist and your audience.

For art things:

Work on moving objects in space with consistency. Draw complex shapes in different perspectives.

Design cohesive worlds : environments, characters, magic, vehicles etc. As mentioned above, with the aim to make sure it is consistent and convincing.

Design and composition. Plenty of thumbnails to explore some very basic preliminary concept art for environments and characters. From there you can start developing some more fledged out concept art.

Could be a good idea to practice and to help with exposure and building up anticipation for your more final comic to write a/some short comic/s. Jake Parker has a great video on his Youtube channel on how to write one. Here’s a screen shot summing up what he covers.

I hope this helps and keep us updated with how it progresses. Post some of your thumbnails/sketches/drawings etc that you start putting together. Looking forward to it.

 

[Lavender]

…. sorry for posting this a long time ago and just disappearing.

Anyway, yeah, I have short ideas, but the problem is, they all take place in the worlds of my larger stories, so I still have to design those worlds first.

And I *do* work by just writing, and coming up with designs/structures based on what my writing needs, but on the other hand, that’s sort of backwards. In real life, histories and structures and societies don’t shape themselves around one person’s story, and I feel like that’s a way to get settings that seem flat. If I were writing a real-world setting, then I could go from research, but I feel like I can’t really use any real-life elements, because one of my points, philosophically, is to make people realize how basically every element of every thing, in practically every real-world culture, is militaristic in origin, and how different it would be to have a world where militaries were never created. Not trying to get into sociology or politics or whatever, so I don’t want to debate that point, I’m just worried that… obviously, I don’t have the knowledge and skills to create an entire world completely from scratch without *any* real-world influence, because no one person can, but at the same time, I’m worried that I’ll put something in because we’re all conditioned to think it *has* to be that way, and then five years after publishing it, realize it doesn’t make sense that way, and then when people start really challenging my work on philosophical grounds, they’ll use that mistake to undermine me… which is, frankly, inevitable, I guess, and I should just not worry about it, because every author probably has that, at least, any author who’s actually saying anything does…

 

Anyway, the first post describes the world of that one story. The other setting of my stories, that I have a lot of, I guess, stand-alone novels in, is called the 88 Metropoleis. In that world, there are no countries or nations. There are 88 cities with loosely-defined territories, that share resources in collaborative federations/organizations for different purposes. All people migrate all over the world, it’s pretty unheard of to stay in one place for more than ~20 years. People have life spans of ~200 years. Societies – not just the cities, but also art and science organizations, and other things –  are usually ruled by princes who are chosen by their mentors, the previous princes. Most of the stories center around introverted characters who are chosen to be princes, and have to come to terms with a public position while solving some other intellectual problem (e.g. finding a lost artifact, developing a new spell before a deadline, sometimes a whodunnit), plus a romance/relationship side. I guess I’ll probably get sick of that angle after writing it a few times, but I’m not sick of it yet…

Anyway, I’m working on the first “episode” of Emerald Prince, one of the novels set in the 88M world, and I’ve thought of something of an idea to show the different languages that are spoken in that world, while keeping the main text in one language (the reader’s). So that’s one big hurdle.

[Author]

Posts