CREATIVE PROCESS

The creative process is divided roughly into five categories, each of which is detailed below: Story, Research, Design, Thumbnailing & Artwork:

STORY

Writing the story is probably the trickiest process to detail, since it continues during and consists of all the other processes. I began by taking rough notes on the characters, the world and the plot, and organising them into something coherent. I'm currently jotting down any new ideas I get and arranging them alongside all the others. Out of this process, a loose synopsis forms alongside small sequences and story elements which are picked out in more detail. I've already blocked out most of the story in this manner, but it's hard to keep track of how much time it takes up. Sometimes an idea can come in five unexpected minutes, and sometimes a whole day can go by making notes, arranging story elements and writing short pieces of prose.

RESEARCH

This process goes hand in hand with the early stages of writing the story. Part of my aim with The Firelight Isle is to create a fictional culture for the story to take place in that feels absorbing, authentic and surprising all at the same time. In order to get a good grounding, I began by listening to an introductory lecture series on Anthropology, that you can find here, and taking notes from the lecture. Using what I learnt I was able to find several more specific books about the types of culture I'm taking influence from that I'm currently reading through for ideas and inspiration. I've also visited museums such as the Pitt River's in search of visuals to inspire the design of everything from hairstyles to religions. This is a pretty time-consuming process (the lectures alone took me weeks to listen to and sort through) and there are new things to look into at every stage.

DESIGN

Design goes alongside story, research and thumbnailing. Whenever there's a recurring visual (a character, a costume or a location), it helps immensely to do rough sketches and (for some of the more important elements) finished artwork that can be referenced when it comes to drawing and colouring the final pages. This process can be quick if a sketch or two is involved, or take days at a time when finished artwork is needed, but this is both time spent and time saved. Every design helps speed up the process of creating the finished artwork, and design assets like character sheets or 3D mock-ups are invaluable for keeping quality and continuity consistent.

THUMBNAILING

Thumbnailing is a form of writing in itself, and is integral to creating a graphic novel with a good balance between visual and textual storytelling. It consists of drawing out pages in a very rough manner with text included in order to design the layout and flow of the story as it will be read. I've done the first few pages already, and plan on working on the thumbnailing of the story in chunks, allowing the process to modify the pre-existing story if any surprising ideas occur whilst drawing. Ideally, once the thumbnails are finished, I will go back and edit the story by rearranging and redrawing until it fits together seamlessly. I can do between 5 and 10 thumbnails on a good day, and expect to redo at least half, if not all of the pages during the editing process. This means the thumbnailing process makes up a large bulk of the project and could take 80-150 days depending on how many pages the story turns out to be and how smoothly the process goes.

ARTWORK

The finished artwork is the most time consuming aspect of the creative process. It can take between 2 and 3 days for me to complete a page to my best ability, which includes doing a rough drawing from the thumbnail, tracing over the rough to produce the neat linework, scanning the linework and colouring it on the computer, then adding lettering. This means that even working full-time, it would take me at least a year and a half to finish the artwork for The Firelight Isle. Working at a day a week it could take over 10 years!

Because the artwork takes longer than all the other stages put together, I've decided to break the project into two halves: pre-production (which includes story, research, design & thumbnailing) and production (artwork). I'm already a good third of the way through the pre-production, and during the rest of this stage I'll be looking for funding to help speed up the work.

Once I'm done with pre-production, I'll use the collected work to start looking for more substantial funding. You can find out more about how to help with funding, and what the funding will go towards on the Help The Funding page.