Friday, March 8, 2013

Brainstorming A

Here's a comic for you.

A.)  Tolebias - A young telephone operator, with no given name, is at her last day of work before going on to her new job.  She's whisked away in a dark windowed flying limo and told her code name will be Tolebias, and her mission is to spy an the strangely human crew of an alien space ship on it's way to their planet.  Upon arrival, the mystery of who these people are, who she's working for, and what this is all about start unravel and Tolebias is caught in the middle.

Sound interesting?  Well it does to me, because I just came up with it.  Seriously, about an hour ago I was working on this idea based off a dream where a telemarketer and her Cylon cat crashed in Battlestar Galactica with a space limo.  I have odd dreams.

They say those who can, do, those who can't, teach, and those who can't teach, criticize.  Here I am, a reviewer of webcomics, but I don't have one of my own, so where do I get off telling people their comics suck?  Well, mostly it comes from lack of drawing ability, but not the will.  Right now, I have at least 3 ideas for webcomics, Tolebias here being the most recent, and I've debated posting about the other two for some time now.

So that's what Brainstorming will be, just throwing ideas not just for webcomics, but stories in general, at the wall and playing with the idea, and how those ideas generate and grow.  Of course, none of these will go anywhere, but it'll still be fun to play around with them and I might do at least a bit more with them in the future if I do.

Alright, so let's start with the genre here.  Given the flying limo and space ships, it's certainly Science Fantasy, and at the moment it seems to have a more Drama bend to it (mysteries tend to be Dramas, unless it involves Cthulhu).  So the real question is it more toward the fantasy end or the fiction end of Science Fantasy.  Hard to say at the moment since all I have is the base of an idea, no overall plot, but at the moment I'm leaning toward fiction as the story seems to mean the technology will be important in the long run.

So as a comic, what is the format?  It's definitely an epic piece, as it should have one, large overarching plot by the time it's done.  As a mystery style adventure, there should be several set up pieces early on to leave clues as to the final resolution of the plot, or at least what it was all about.  Since this is more an epic piece, it should also have full sized pages, so that leaves room for artwork and more story telling.

A lot of the art angle I can't deal with because, well, I'm not an artist.  However, I do know that having regular updates helps keep a comic going, so depending on the skill of the artist, the basic nature of the artwork needs to be kept in line.  Thus I'm thinking for this one that a black and white, 3 day a week strip could be possible and desirable.  If it was weekly, it would HAVE to be in color, but it might wreck the pacing to extend it that long.  Quicker updates might strain the full page updates, and having them in color would likely be impossible.  Chapter style updates wouldn't be very likely because, well, I don't really have much beyond the basic set up.

Which is a big hang up on this particular idea:  I have no idea where it's going.  I suspect the idea is that the "aliens" are human, and Tolebias is being sent there for some reason other than what she was told.  I can even see this strange, nonsense name being the key to a larger reason for the plot.  Exactly what, however, I'm unsure about.  I did just have this idea, so it's very early stage of development.  Most likely then, there will be a series of short adventures to get a "feel" for the world of the story, then building up to a larger plot as things go on.

And that's it for now.  Just a random idea for a random comic.  I do have at least a couple others, one far, FAR more well defined than this, but I'll save them for another day.  Until then kiddies.

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