The stuff of nightmares.

I'm plowing away at Jonah and I just got the layout for page 3 done . I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. You'll have to wait a few days for the finished version, but I've included a frame from the full page layout below. In it, our titular hero regards a rather large and seemingly bemused gastropod with a mixture of curiosity and just a tinge of terror.

The layout for page 3 took a lot longer than I expected as I'm quickly realising this book is probably going to have images that are a lot more detailed than I'd expected. There's also the fact that since I'm essentially starting the story about halfway through my original draft of the script, I'm having to do some narrative re-jigging (technical term) and I'm basically making up new scenes and dialogue on the fly to stitch things together. I hope this turns out okay.

Back to Jonah for a spell

Page 1 was done and dusted in just over a day, but after struggling a tad trying to figure out how I was going to approach Page 2 of Jupiter Jonah vol.1 - wherein our heroes find themselves hurtling toward earth at an alarming rate - I finally decided to scrap my initial sketch layout and start over. You can see below how closely page 1 mirrors my initial idea, and how much page 2 totally does the exact opposite.

You'll notice that these images are pretty small, this is because I figured it might not be the best idea to upload hi-res images of Jonah to the web just yet. That said, I think it's safe to post a few images in "you-can-barely-see-em-o'-vision".


Page 1, as you can see closely resembles the original idea I had for the layout, I wanted something reminiscent of those great Kirby space-vistas,, where space is a hundred different subtle colors, and the title card and text pretty much jump off the page and scream at you. however...
... this original layout for page 2 just didn't work. I felt it was somewhat indulgent to have another large, almost full page panel so soon after the first page, which was also a large full page panel. It really didn't help get the story moving at all. In fact, the only reason I felt drawn to this (nyuk! nyuk!) was because I was eager to draw all kinds of 50's style dials, levers, knobs and whatch-ma-bobbits for the interior of the crashing space ship. I also didn't really like the panel break being diagonal, it's dynamic sure, but JJ isn't really meant to be a dynamic book in that sense.

So I went for this. It's pretty different. They layout is a lot simpler and this "four rectangles a page" layout is one I'm likely to stick to for most of the book with only the occasional deviation. The reason being that I'd like Jonah to be easily adaptable to portable media devices like the Kindle, iPod, Smartphones and PSP, which all have widescreen aspect ratios. I'm also targeting delivery via outlets like the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, so I try to make sure the comic looks good and is legible on an HD screen.

Here's a detail of my favorite panel from page 2.

Anyway, I'm off to start work on page 3, wish me luck!

Jonah is SO yesterday...

Taking a break from Jonah to work on my videogame project. I got stuck on Page 2 you see and only just figured out what I want to do to make it work.

Still, Edward Usher (the working title of the videogame) is coming along quite well. As you can see in the video below we've managed to get the basics of the first level working. That is to say, you can run around, jump, and climb up conveniently placed nooses.

The little orange fella you see is just a stand in, we're still working on the animation frames for our titular character.

Jonah's a star!

Just wanted to say thanks to Shof and Shane, who both went ahead and conjured up their very own interpretations of Jupiter Jonah. I must say I'm rather honored and quite chuffed, makes me excited about getting the comic proper done.

I would take this opportunity to post the unfinished first page of Jupiter Jonah vol. 1, but methinks I should actually start finishing work before posting it.