Howdy everyone! Well book 1 is off to all parties and reviewers at the moment. So much out there could happen and while that is at once nervewracking it is also very very exciting. Only the anxiety is usually the prevailing emotion sadly. It’s easy to lose yourself in all the questions and the silence you experience while you wait is often defeaning. You start asking questions about what everyone is thinking of you, your work: Did you do well enough? Is it sub par art? It’s almost impossible to fight that fear down. In some ways that is good thing. It means you care, it means this matters , it means you took a chance on something and THAT means you’ll probably keep going no matter what if you don’t let discouragement keep you down.
But on the flipside, it could mean that the thing you hope for to happen will! It could mean things finally start to click. Either way, your life doesn’t end here and it won’t if you don’t let it. So keep going. Keep believing and KEEP WORKING! Also, the silence seems a lot quieter when you pick yourself up and keep going on to the next project.
Speaking of which, what am I working on right now?
A number of things. I am finishing up a book my oldest daughter and I have been working on. You can see the line art for the first story we finished right here: http://www.michaeleregina.com/blog/?p=994 I don’t know what we will do with it all when it’s done, but we will share it all online at least. I have some ideas on what we could do charity wise with it and that excites me. So stay tuned!
Beyond that I am doing a free video tutorial on how I paint in Photoshop. In it I will be explaining my process for making a portrait painting of the great Marvel villain/deity GALACTUS! I’ll be fielding questions and talking through lessons I’ve learned in the art world, so please if you are interested in painting digitally, watch the first video and leave your thoughts. I’m looking forward to sharing some time with you all. Here’s the first video:
On the comics front, its time to make book 2 of Adamsville.
You always hear how breaking a story is inspiration or hear excuses from others that they don’t write because they aren’t inspired… well sir, fix that thought. Making a story is labor. It may have started as inspiration but the doing is hard work. Frustrating back stepping, starts and stops all the way around and then finally you look and your story is there ready to be made.
This past week I finished my first pass at the whole book in a treatment form and that’s what I wanted to talk about.
Now when I write my stories, I start with just a blank word document and let myself have a free for all. I write down everything and anything I think I want to see in the book and just really allow myself to be free to mess up, be crazy and come to some bigger story ideas. This goes on for awhile. I’ve been addressing book 2 of this series since around July of last year. It’s gone through many stops and starts. But the first thing I recommend for you all is to define what you want the book to be. What I mean by that is very open but for me it was deciding I wanted Adamsville to absolutely be a trilogy of books. Before now it had been fairly open and it could have gone on for forever, but defining it was good so that I had something I could more definitively pitch the book.
Since I was able to define the book as a trilogy I knew where this book needed to end for it to be right on track for book 3. Once that was done I got to writing a one page breakdown of the book. This is a super consolidated version of the story that makes sure the plot has a beginning, middle and an end. In many ways this is the absolute hardest phase for me with writing. It’s where I have to actually have a story for the first time, not the trailer that is in my head. Lol. This goes on for months with me, since I don’t get a ton of time to spend in it.
Then finally once that is good and set, I begin a treatment of the book. A treatment in its simplest defintion is a scene by scene break down of the book. It tells what happens every beat of the way. It’s the skeleton of your story that you will put the flesh on to. Many times you’ll find that you will need to leave this phase and go back to your one pages summary to make sure that the plot is truly working. It took me about four or five drafts before I finally finished one that I thought was solid and ready to be tightened up before writing the book.
And what can I say of book 2 so far. It’s gonna be bonkers, lol. Big conceprt, a nigtmare to actually draw and hopefully the emotional and kinetic experience I see in my head. Very excited to finally see these moments in book form after so long them sitting in my head. Just remember when writing, serve your story. Listen to what it is telling you it needs and don’t fight it to hard. Your instincts are usually right.
So that’s where book 2 is. A treatment is done and now begins writing the script. So until next time! Have a great day! 🙂