Posts Tagged ‘spy6teen’
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Welcome back 16’ers!
After last week’s opening FLASHFOWARD, we’re hopping back just a scant 3 hours for this story beat– Tons of cool and fun stuff in this page, so let’s hop right into:
PROCESS!
* If I do have a small storytelling regret, it’s that we didn’t get a chance to show off Cally’s dress back in Issue 2. This is basically our “payoff” moment from Page 5 of that ish. I do wish we had the pagecount in that issue to showcase it — just to visually mirror where Cally was at that point in the story to where she is now–
That said, I think the whole point works (and reads as intended)– just sadly, we never got to see the dress until this moment. We sort of broke the “Show it, don’t tell” rule of storytelling– in at least that it took 2 issues to “show”. Eh, that’s the breaks when working in a compressed storytelling format.
* That said, maybe the extra time was worth it, because DJ did a pretty great job designing this dress! Perhaps one day we’ll see a line of Spy6teen inspired clothing designs?!
* Speaking of DJ, he did some pretty interesting stuff on this page– namely in the lower right/last panel, breaking Cally out of the frame, but still consistently grounding her to the staircase.
The orientation is different, but it works because she’s pushing out from where she’d be standing. It’s a neat trick that creates a focal point to the page, and creates a more interesting framing than seeing her back walking down the stairs.
* It’s also interesting to note the little background details DJ put into this page: The plug in Panel 3, and the photo behind Conrad in Panel 5. Little touches to be sure– and in the case of the plug, a mundane detail– but it’s those sorts of things that create the illusion of reality on a comic book page.
* Lisa mentioned in an email that she had a blast with this page– and I think it shows! The Dress color choice was entirely Lisa’s– and I love the little floursh of the matching colored earrings.
One thing that really popped out to me is the slight shimmer you see within Cally’s dress– I’m bad with fabrics, so I can’t tell you what that is, but I know I’ve seen it on tons of prom dresses!
Like with DJ’s power outlet: A tiny little detail, but one that goes a long way to creating a believable world!
If you want to check out an archive of Lisa coloring this week’s page, look no further than right here:
Watch live streaming video from huevillenet at livestream.com
* There was a bit of a back and forth between Editor DJ, Brant, and myself this morning– namely in Balloon Placement for the bottom half of this page…
Originally, I’d scripted that Conrad would be calling Cally from Off-Screen throughout the first half of the page– but after we saw DJ’s lineart, I quickly decided to pull that back– mostly considering that Conrad takes up a decent amount of page space, and it’d look weird to have such a prominent character talking from off-screen and then appear on-page.
That lead to a few revisions, and the page you see is where we landed for the time being…
What’s interesting is that over the emails, I believe Brant “reads” the page as Cally being an independent Panel 4– Whereas (what may be throwing me off) is I read Cally as an Independent Panel 5.
Ultimately, I think the page works either way, so I’m pretty much planning on deferring to Brant on this one. But I did think it was another one of those little examples that showcase how people read comics differently. Obviously, within the “language” of comics, we try to convey a proper message– but no matter what, like reading anything, different people process comic reading uniquely…always good to remember that!
EDIT: Brant worked up an ALT for the page & stacked Cally’s balloon– which interestingly, creates a hybrid Panel 4/6 read…I actually think this looks a bit cool, and kinda lessens (what I felt) Cally coming off as “cold”.
I’ll admit, it has been kinda nice to get back into the weekly editorial email discussions– you guys might be surprised with how many emails there are behind the scenes of Team:16!
OTHER STUFF!!
INK OUTBREAK
Curious: are any of you using Ink Outbreak as a webcomic hub? It’s a pretty interesting little spot, and great for discovering new titles. It almost seem to work in a “Stumbleupon” like format– although I haven’t dug too deeply into the system.
Give it a look here– and of course, if you are a user, please give our Spy6teen entry a thumbs up!
GRAPHICLY
Interesting news out of Graphicly this week– It looks like they’ll be offering a full-service distribution platform for Comic Content creators–
Basically, they’ll handle all the slicing/formatting that your comic would need across Itunes, Kindle, Droid, etc– Although– it all comes at a price, which has rankled a few feathers. Basically it looks like it runs $150 per title. I heard a number of creators scoffed at that number, but I have to admit– if you were to break down that number into the actual man hours it would take to develop your own apps for each of those platforms, it actually seems fairly reasonable.
Obviously, we’ve been using Graphicly as our Digital distribution hub (with their online/mobile platform), so I’m keeping a keen eye on their development.
WRAP UP!
So that’s it for this week! I’m hopeful to have a Blog@16 up with a longer rant about Digital Comics and the Big 2 coming up either this weekend or next week, so keep look out for that!
Finally, I checked in earlier with Team 16 about the overall layout of the site– I figured it’d be best to ask you guys as well, since you guys spend as much time here as we do: Do you feel like the overall layout is getting too banner/Ad heavy?
Does it distract from your reading? I just started to get the feeling that our main page is looking a bit like a NASCAR racer, and thought I’d run it past our loyal readers…
So what say you, should I move some of the front end content to other pages?
Ok gang! That’s it! If you have a moment, please drop us a vote on Top Web Comics:
Seeya guys next week!!
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Ok, I may have missed “Talk like a Pirate Day”– but we’re talking about a whole other thing here.
On this week’s page, I mentioned that I wanted to try a little experiment out– so, here’s the grand unveiling:
I pirated our comic.
(Which begs the question, is it really pirating if you own it? Or is it distributing?)
Whatever your thoughts on Digital Comic distribution or Piracy are, there’s one thing you can’t dispute: it’s here and it’s here to stay. There are arguments on both ends of the issue– Ron Marz has a great reputation as a creator who stands up against piracy. On the other hand, there are those who argue that piracy actually helps sales. (at least with Anime in the study)
At the end of the day though, we aren’t pirating here– we own Spy6teen, so we can do whatever we want with it. Including distributing it on torrent sites.
I chose to package and upload our Spy6teen torrent on Demonoid.me, which rides the #2 position in terms of popularity– just shy of the world’s most famous torrent site: The Pirate Bay.
Doing my research, Demonoid seemed to be a good choice- It’s community driven and polices against viruses. Plus it is porn free. All of which were important to me in releasing our comic via a torrent site.
We released it a few hours ago and are already sitting somewhere around 87 downloads (that I can track, at least)– Yes, it was totally by design that I chose to release it today, Wednesday = New Comic Day– so what better day to pop ‘er up than on 0-day.
Timing-wise, it was also kind of interesting to release this week– as a flood of new DC #1s hit the scan sites, why not introduce them to another first issue?
As the day/week goes on, we’ll see how effective this method of distribution is going to be– will folks swing over to the site after reading our first issue? I’d hope so, since most of them are reading other comics on their computers. Will they pick up a digital issue? (I assume not)– will they drop us a donation? (Don’t know)
All that said, as a distribution method, I think if you’re a small independent publisher/author/team, this is something you should really look into. As is, I can’t really afford to do a massive print run of our comic– and the simple fact is, I REALLY can’t afford to print 2,500 copies of the book– which is what Diamond (the Comic Book Distributor) requires to even get our book INTO shops– and that’s if they decide they want to carry it.
Basically, if you aren’t in Diamond, you aren’t in comic book stores.
But, releasing via torrent:
we’re basically on the same shelf space as every other major title releasing this week.
Morality of piracy aside, as a tiny, tiny, tiny, publisher– this is an opportunity we need to be looking at.
So that’s that– it’s up an available, and if you’re interested in helping us out, download and seed Spy6teen #1 here:
http://www.demonoid.me/files/details/2734979/72031788/
So, raise those sails and avast…and…well…I….I don’t really speak pirate…Johnny Depp or something.
Be back next week with a look at how Operation Torrent went!
Burn?
Well, kind of a burn. The big struggle this week was Cally’s comeback line– It stumped me waaay back when I first scripted this page, eventually I hit the point where I just slugged her current line: “…I guess you mean that as a compliment” but I was never really happy with it.
And there it sat– as three issues slowly burned pages towards it.
Every week, Team 16 gets together for a quick production “meeting”– usually a quick little email session where we double check spelling/story points/layout/and any other potential issues that might plague us on a page. Generally we catch one or two small things, but (as you’ve seen) sometimes stuff gets passed all of us.
The weekly session also allows me, DJ Kirkbride, and Brant to do a quick edit/rewrite session– often times based off of being really mouthy in the script and Brant letting me know that I’ve gone way overboard with my word count (kidding!)–
I guess for Cally’s comeback line, I just popped it in the back of my head, figuring that I’d come up with something better by the time we got to this page.
…turns out, I didn’t.
There was a bit of a brain lock– or, it might just have been that I’ve lived with the line so long that it became the line.
Either way, I took it out to Team 16 and everyone threw some suggestions in the pot– turns out, we’re really bad at pretending we’re catty 16-year olds.
A lot of suggestions were thrown out, but nothing that felt like it had that spark that I was looking for– and just to clairfy, it’s not like I HATE the line– I just think it could have a little more…burn?
Which is why we’re holding the first ever REPLACE THAT LINE contest! If you think you’ve got a better zinger, let us know in the comments and we’ll replace the line with yours!
This is likely a one time thing– that’s just my little rule, otherwise I’m going to start putting up blank pages with a Replace all the lines contest and never bother writing again!
PROCESS!
Pretty standard 5 panel page here– Perhaps not the most action packed of our pages, but DJ still manages to put some energy into a scene with 4 people sitting in a car. It’s a lot harder than you think when you’re playing with the interior of a vehicle, as you can’t cheat out angles or distance.
I do particularly like Panel 1– where DJ is able to throw an even more bratty/catty look on Alyssa by angling her so she’s looking backwards.
DJ’s “beat” structure for this page is pretty interesting as well. Comic panels do have a rhythm, much like editing in film. In the case of this page, DJ goes from a tight panel on Alyssa, to a wider 2-shot of Sears and Cally. He continues to open up for the “anchor” of the page in Panel 3– giving us a wide establishing shot– before tighting up on the Dashboard.
So basically, he’s “moved” the camera outwards– each panel giving us a wider “view” of the scene, before “cutting” to a tight shot. From there, he’s able to pull back again for the closing shot of Don.
So again, although we aren’t in the most visually exciting scene of the book– DJ still puts in his best, giving us a rhythmic back and forth which keeps the page from looking flat and stagnant.
COLORS/LETTERS!
Lisa popped in some interesting visual flair on this page. I’ve often said that Lisa “lights” a scene with her colors– much in the same way a lighting director would on a film set. Here, she literally does so, by casting a car dome light in the scene and giving us a point of reference for shadows and highlights.
I’m always impressed by Lisa’s natural talent to understand exactly how light falls– which is clearly evident on this page. Track the light source (above all four characters) and you’ll see that it lines up every time.
Letters wise– I got a little kick out of noticing this in the linework this week:
In case you weren’t aware, most of the text SFX and Logos are done by Brant. Everything from Cally’s secret classroom number, to the MK Black etching in the base– that’s all Brant. It was just funny seeing DJ throw in a little message for him!
It was pretty much a smooth lettering page, although Brant did debut a new “look” in Don’s SUV bluetooth notification. Just a note, that’s what cars “sound” like in the Spy6teen U from here on out.
WRAP UP!
Relatively quick writeup this week. Still plugging away on Issue 4′s script and it looks like it might go a few pages long– naturally, that’s because we’re packing in a TON of cool stuff for you guys! It’s always funny being an issue or two ahead– I spend half the time wishing we were up to the next issue! Trust me, there’s some really awesome things to come!
If everything goes as planned, I should have an interesting experiment going on tomorrow– more on that as it develops. Even if the whole thing fails miserably, it’ll make for an interesting write up– and at the very least, force me to dust off Blog@16!
As always, you can help support Spy6teen with a quick click at the Top Web Comics link below:
Plugs wise, I’ll hold off on self-pimpage, and instead point those of you who are headed to the comic book store this week to pick up some of the new DC 52s to check out our pals at Bonnie Lass who have just released their print version via Red 5 comics!
I know there are a ton of high profile comics in the shop, but take a chance and pick one up from an up and coming indie–it’s the best way to inject some new blood into the mainstream!
Well, that’s a wrap on this week! I’ll pop on sometime later this week for a special “announcement/recap”– it’ll be…interesting, I think.
NEXT WEEK:
SPY TIME!
