The Astronaut comic is finished. It’s called Into The Wild.
This was a lot of fun to create. I drew it and scanned it in, then inked it in Illustrator using the brush tool. Once all the art was drawn, I then brought it into Flash and composed each page. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results.
A few thoughts on the whole process:
-I knew there would be a lot of steps to complete this one, so the art was drawn fast and not necessarily “correct”. It was also an attempt to be more honest with myself, as in, just draw the way you normally draw and be done with it. Usually I’ll draw something pretty loose, then go back in and tighten it up. Not this time. Making this comic gave me flashbacks to the first mini-comic I ever made, in the sense that I just plowed through it, drawing it without agonizing over every detail, wanting more to have a finished piece than to have a masterpiece. This took me about 3 weeks to finish.
-The brush tool is amazing. Its so lush. It’s like drawing with a never ending sharpie. Good flow.
-There was a new attempt to use words in this one. I have been dwelling in a no word comic space for a few years now, and it struck me that maybe I’m being too strict. If it makes sense, then go for it. In this one, I used words kind of like they were part of the picture, just hanging out, to give the reader a better sense of what was going on. There’s some dialogue too, but I wanted to make it as limited as possible. I think it adds some goofy fun to the whole thing.
-Much like that first mini-comic mentioned above, it wasn’t until halfway through creating this one that I noticed the metaphors and parallels the story had to my own life. Just the fact that the story starts in stark black and white, then the astronaut begins exploring a landscape of moving colors…very much a metaphor for my own obsession with black and white art, and how I’m now exploring not only colors, but movement and animation with Flash. “A portal to another world!”
-I quickly learned that making movie clips of every page is the best way to work. That way, you can create a file that is just the navigation, and drop in each page’s movie clip, without having to build this long, extensive time line or use different scenes. It’s just a way to stay organized…
-…which is something I’m not used to. Flash forces you to think linearly. Every element has two or three sub elements. Keeping it all organized was a challenge, and I had to go back and rename certain files so that they would show up and play correctly. How many weird shapes were called “mc_color”? Too many! They started to overwrite each other, and I had to go back and rename them all. Being specific helps, like “mc_page09color”. I’m not used to using all these words. It’s drawing man! I can just look at it! Well skynet can’t do the same, you’ve got to play by its rules.
-I have a tremendously clearer understanding of how Flash thinks after doing this. The program used to be somewhat mysterious to me, but I’m realizing that I can take the Photoshop approach: You can do a million things a million different ways. There is no one right way. Whatever you feel like doing with it, if you can get it done, than that’s what counts. I’ve never used movie clips before, but now I don’t see how its possible to create anything of substance without them.
-What’s with the filter gimmick? You can only use it on movie clips, but when I tried it, it didn’t even show up in the actual movie. That set me back a few days as I had to come up with some other special FX gimmicks for the wild transition scene.
-Amazing learning experience. Loads of fun. Exactly what I needed right now. I’m assuming that the more I do this sort of thing, the more I’ll be able to anticipate what needs to be done, so the less time I have to spend in “post production” getting everything to work correctly. It can be maddening trying to figure out why this or that doesn’t work this time.
-Seeing things move, while having other things stay still, is making me pretty excited. The envelope of Comics needs to be pushed, and I feel like I’m doing it, at least personally. The future is comics on the internet, with limited animation, telling all kinds of stories. Have one foot firmly planted in the tradition of comics, but have the other launching forward into the future, pushing the boundaries and expanding the scope of what’s possible. To the future!
