Graphictober: Ingenious- Graphic Novel Development

I was grossly unprepared for this post. I thought it was Tuesday, and not Wednesday- so that’s why I’m lacking pictures to prove to you guys that I actually HAVE been developing my graphic novel.

*sigh*

Oh well. I’ll show you guys soon.

But first, I want to talk about what parts of the process I’ve enjoyed, hated, and found difficult during my journey to being a graphic novelist.

 

Difficulties:

• I’ve found it hard to make character dialogue natural, yet short and to the point.

I’m always tempted to have my character’s speech  turn into something like a children’s book narrator.

See Spot run. The running Spot has crashed into a garbage can. I feel bad for poor Spot. Does Spot have an infected wound? He does! Now Spot cuts off his arm- *CENSORED GOREY SCENE*  

Hmmm… Maybe I should stick to the Young Adult genre. I don’t think I should be a children’s book writer. Either that, or I write some terrible books for very emo and violent children.

• I just want to start in drawing, but I have to pre-plan the panel arrangement.

So not only (should) I write my story on paper or at least have some scenes written down on how I want to go, but I have to rough draw how it’ll look on paper. I feel like it’s a time waster even though I know it’s most likely a time saver.

• Drawing backgrounds.

Backgrounds don’t make it into the hate list, but they do in the difficulty one. I’m not used to drawing backgrounds at ALL. Yet, they don’t give me a huge amount of grief. With a little time and effort they usually turn out moderately okay- considering the fact that I had little to no practice when it came to backgrounds. I do, however, hate the fact that they take up so much of my time!

 

Hates:

• I hate how long it takes me to draw a panel.

After the rough sketch, then I gotta draw the real thing instead of my basic stick men. Drawing the legit story panel can take me anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. And time feels like it’s dragging on forever when I’m working on panels instead of the “Oh, wait, I guess I should eat now,” type of mentality I have when I’m working on regular drawings.

• I hate drawing and writing in speech bubbles.

And because of the way I’m doing my graphic novel, the words have to be bigger than your average comic book or manga for people to read it. It’s a no bueno in my book. Then I don’t like how my character is speaking, so I second guess what I want to write down in the speech bubble- and overall just making the time I spend working on the panel even longer.

 

Likes:

• Even though it takes a lot of time, I like panel arrangement.

I don’t like squeezing in speech bubbles, but I like the part where I try to figure out how I want to set up the scenes. It makes me feel a lot like a director of my own movie. I decide which scenes  have different angles, how I want things to look, and all that fun stuff. It’s hard work but I love where something flows perfectly and feels pleasing to the eyes.

• I love the sound effects!

KOFF! SMASH! BOOM! BANG! It is SO MUCH FUN to deface your own drawing by writing bold letters in the middle of a scene. It’s almost like useful graffiti. I thought I wouldn’t have as much fun writing the sound effects in like I do. It’s to the point to where I seriously look forward to a panel that has sound effects in it.

• I LOVE drawing my characters.

I love drawing them at every angle, even if it’s an angle that I’m having issues with. I’m in love with their personalities and have so much fun when I draw them with different expressions until I get a scene juuuuuust right. I think character design might have a part to play in this too.

 

*sigh*

So that’s part of what I have to deal with every time I go to draw a panel. I hope to have a few pages posted to show you guys what I’ve been up to next week.

I decided that my graphic novel would be called Ingenious, where my novel follows a couple of gifted teenagers working at a facility under the supervision of specialists in the area that the kids excel at.

They aren’t at a boarding school nor are they EXTREME geniuses working for the government (or about to overthrow an evil one). I’ve had it up to HERE with all of those “WoooOOAAHHhhh- LoOK aT ThOse CHILd pRoDIgiEs ThAT wE acCePteD At oUr scHoOl/FacIliTY!” cliche novels that have been over-saturating the Young Adult and Teen genres for awhile now.

(And I don’t mean to bash those who are writing/drawing a story like that. Just PLEASE try not to directly rip off Harry Potter, Divergent, or The Hunger Games.)

Soooooo. Yep. That’s about it!

 

Thanks for sticking around to read to read to the end of my post!

~Felicity Annora