The finished comic

The comic in the end was printed using the college resources. The comic cost under a pound to develop, which is good as it will be cheap to mass produce. I will produce as many as I can and put them in the right places.

The right places?

First I will make them available to buy online. people visiting my website could buy one and one will be sent over to them.

Secondly I will ask to have them put up in comic book shops around the UK. I will go around the city centre first, going into popular comic book shops such as OK COMICS and TRAVELLERS MAN both allow self publishers to display work.

Pricing?

I will price the comic at 3 pounds as this is the standard in self published comics in this size

Printing the comic

The comic is roughly 20 pages long which is a lot more then I previously planned. The production costs need to be cheap so I can mass produce the comic and send out to publications and sell in store and off my own shop online.

The inside pages will be printed at low cost. Probably from a printer that has easy access. The cover will be printed independently at a higher cost and added on later. The cover will be printed from using the college resources. The cover is printed on matt paper as it is the thickest available in the print shop.

Printing from third party

some other students creating books or magazines are sending work to be printed by a separate company. I thought a lot about this as I could send off the finished files and have them printed professionally. The comic could look better because of this and less time consuming to make It could also have a hardback cover. The problems with this though is that its will cost a lot. A fellow student had a book he made printed, the total cost of one book printed came up to 90 pounds. Even if one my comics only cost 5 pounds to print each I would have to sell them over that price. Many comics that are self published have a price range from a pound to a few. The comics should be cheap to obtain not a lot of people will spend vast amounts of money on a character that have never heard of.

The Final Comic

The finished comic can be viewed using the issuu tool below.

i added small little details to make the comic more presentable.

Added contact details to the start of the comic.
Pre made boxes that the illustrations can sit in. The originals being too scruffy.
The pattern used on the cover is being used as the back print as well
Added drawing about how the heros storys could continue (attack of the 12 year old chavs)

Final Comic!

Open publication - Free publishing - More comic

Final Cover

 

This time I wanted to connect with the story of the comic. Still similar to that of a B movie with the villain being shown just as much as the hero, I wanted to create a cover with colour as well. The whole comic itself is in greyscale. So it would be nice to have a cover that stood out in full colour. I spent more time in the editing of the piece then predicted because I had changed what I had previously planned. The villain was made to look scary but also amusing to view. The protagonist is put in the image but is not the main figure. It also the first time in a while I have drawn the character using colour. I also added a title with this one.

The title seems silly but I couldn't think of what to actually call the comic. The main character never really reveals his name. Following the b movie fashion I wanted the title to be about the villian and not the hero.

Cover?

This is the part I am probably the most excited about. Superhero comics allays have great over the top covers. They should be able to tell the story of the comic on a quick glance. I wanted to pay homage to this by creating a over the top fun cover.

 

first rough draft of cover

Created using similar methods to the inside of the comic

this was done so i can understand what scale i want the comic to be in. i want a large part of it to be the villian and how scary he is.

cover idea 1

In this I tried to put the main character in some sense of peril. Similar to b movie posters for old horror films. It was drawn up using heavy mark making techniques. The problem with it is that doesn't stand out. The cover is a great way to be colourful and draw in the audience. The image may look nice and explain the perils of the character in a over dramatised fashion but it wouldn't stand out on a shelf with other comics looking better in full colour.

Putting the final comic all together

 

I am in the stages now of putting the final pages together. Text is slowly being added to the panels that are missing it so the audience can understand the story of the hero.

The dream like sequence i drew up before is finally going to be used in the comic. This time i will use it as a bridge and turning point before the final fight of the two main characters

Adding more to the story

When drawing up the new panels I started to put in text. I was going to plan to put this all in at the last minute but I wanted to see how they could fit on the page. The dialogue in most the panels is short and this is generally how I want it to be. I think too much time explaining the obvious could ruin the comic. The text itself is handrawn as putting in text digitally could ruin the homemade style of the comic. The text for the other images is added on via photoshop.

The new pages including these should add a lighter tone to the comic. it is also a way to pace it out so it isnt too easy to read. 

After this assessment I went back to the drawing board. I still plan to use a lot of images and I had created before but add in new ones to help with the pacing of the comic. These need to be areas that fill out the comic and add pacing and some sense of reality.

I wanted to add a little humour to the comic. The basic structure of the comic explained what the story is about but I also want panels to describe what kind of character the main person is. These panels don't have to follow the main story but can create a wider knowledge of the character.

For example the main character taking time off to explain to the audience why he looks this certain way. I could develop his everyday habits and incorporate it into the story, it could parody itself by breaking the 4^th wall and talking to the audience about his problems.

presenting the mock up

I presented a mock up of the comic in one my crits, It was just the drawings I had shown before but presented in the format that I wanted to sell it. Their were many elements missing such as the text and cover so I had to explain them to people for now.

Feedback on mock up

Positive

The main story is quite easy to follow( even without text)

style flows throughout

Negative

too much action

the ending is still disjointed could be fixed together with the use of text

the comic needs to have more pessimistic reality.

The pacing and timing of panels needs to be reassembled

Drawing up the comic

I wanted to spend time creating the actual comic I am happy with the style of the comic and its setting and tone. I just need to spend a vast amount of time creating it.

I will develop the main story first and put together a mock up of the comic, it will be shown to people and I will hopefully get useful feedback with what I should do before developing it further.

As you can see I have chosen this style in the end. As It allows to be versatile and creative with the ink and pen. I will putting in text later as I am mainly concentrating on drawing the comic.

using inks

 

This is a different style to what I initially had planned . This time I have used water colour and pens to create a sequential piece. Instead of creating the whole comic by just using black pens I could introduce texture with inks. They are a lot less time consuming to create then using just pens. The brush strokes create textures and tone, it is also a little bit different from the rest of the styles on offer from other comic books.

The style works well as it lets be more playful with image. The pens felt too constrictive and filling out areas seemed like a time consuming choir.

 

Creating more stories

I want to spend time creating story's with the superhero character. I wanted to imagine a comic book hero that already had established his story and could be mocked around with. I wanted to see if put him in normal day situations. I could put these sub storys into the main as a kind of filler to the main story. This way I could put more into the comic.

I am happy with the main story of the comic but I am having trouble with various parts of it.Particularly

the ending

it just seems to end at the moment. There is no closing comments or what could be done next

the villains

what will the villains look like? Will they be larger then life or more realistic thugs.they could be made to suit our world more then comic world. They could be chavs,neds,pikeys or rather unpleasant people. This way the audience could relate to being bullied by someone bigger and wanting to have sort of revenge.

 

Draft Panel Ideas

These are the first attempts at layout I did (very rough obviously) to fit in with the story I had so far. I liked the idea of a very ordinary but a bit of a loser man who gets beaten up (refrences to Kick-Ass) and then tries to get his revenge by creating his alter ego and going after his tormentors

Initial Owlman Illustrations

 

first time the costume is seen on paper. The idea behind the costume is to make it seem generic, to parody the over top nature of comic book heros.Both drawings are put together to make the hero seem dynamic. the second illustration, I used tones similar to those i found previously in b movie posters. this was done because i had an idea to make the comic seem retro

How Owlman sees himself

I had an idea that although Owlman himself is a bit of a loser, secretly he also thinks he could be something great. Almost like a dream sequence he sees himself as what he believes he could be.

Owlman comes to life

 

Rough drawing of the main character reflecting on himself. I like this idea of the character being a loner and him being a bit self depricating. It would mean I could explain the character then just putting him a action packed scenario all the time.

Idea of using smaller pens to create more detail in the frames. This was just drawn to see roughly how long it took to create a panel for the comic with more detail. As predicted though it was time consuming and only really made the backgrounds stand out. I will not be developing this style any further.

Ideas for comic strips.

Short stories to flow into one big story.

Must have start and a end

How the characters seems himself, and then is shocked by the realitly of his situations

relating himself to other more successful superheroes

making a costume

the origin of the superhero

putting him in realistic situations

ie tell the story of how the hero is going to give up smoking to change his lifestyle.

Put him in awkward situations

ideas and drafts for the panels

It is good to come up with a story for this creation but he must drawn in a sequential format which flows throughout a full comic.

Story and Character formation

Brainstorming story and character ideas...

-The story of a failed superhero

-Dark humour with surreal like moments with a certain grip to realitly

-Small stories that link up all following the central protagonist characters

-main character to be useless and bigheaded, arrogant

-Narrated by main characters

-The character must be average. 

-Too much of the superhero universe is based on men having a unnatural musicalar physique.

-To have problems shared by the general population.

-Balding

-chubby

-sweaty

-short

The character has to appear useless. He is trying hard to be a character that he is not and failing at every turn

He has to appear as a generic superhero and doesn't really stand out in any way. The reasoning behind this is that I want to play on the overcrowded superhero genre.