Welding a story together
By chris on July 03, 2009 14:55
Ok, back to it. The story of the Landscaper was developed due to the fact that our new studio demanded me to take two trains and embark on a 20 min walk to reach our new destination. It was on these walks to the university drama work shop where the story began to form. I've always believed walking creates some of the best ideas, especially when you make that same trip over...and over..and over again. So here I was walking from the train station to the university, listening to music and playing the LS movie in my head. Whenever I had a visual, which would basically be a freeze frame from said head movie, I would quickly write it down, so I was ready to illustrate it when I got into work the next day. I saw the whole of issue 1 like this. A movie, always playing in my mind. Each time the scene of the movie would change or if I had a better idea, this would be edited into the movie which would be set up in my head for the next private screening. As I walked, listening to music and playing out this comic book in my mind, I would start to act out verbally certain scenes from the comic. Ok, yes I was probably one of those people you see on the side of the road talking to themselves, but I'm a visual person, and sometimes you just need to act it out. The only good thing was. Our classes didn't meet until 7:30pm, so by this time it was dark, and the only time people could see me was when a car passed and lit me up with their head lights. Plus, this would make me less attractive to potential muggers, as they probably didn't want to get mixed up with the crazy guy talking to himself in the dark. I had the first couple pages laid out at this stage and had drawn the panels for the basic opening to the comic. I knew I wanted a teenage gang in there as our villains, basically a group that would be responsible of the rise of crime in Karillion. (Side note: Carillon City is the name of shopping center in the Perth CBD.) I really thought it had a cool vibe, so I changed it to Karillion City, but it's probably more of an inside joke to those here in Perth. I had the idea of calling the group the Untouchables, which is what Lydia refers them to in the opening of the book. Although this idea didn't really get much further than the first issue. This first page of issue 1 seems to be the make or break point for readers. I have an analytics program running on the site, so I can see where people come in, what pages they read - and so forth. This is really helpful for me to get a better understanding of reader’s trends on the site. Also to see if people are reading the comic at all...which I've noticed they are, and I thank you all for that :). I've noticed that if I can get people past the first page - then it's pretty smooth sailing from there. They usually will venture on and continue to issue 2, where the fun really begins. Some people will come into the comic, read the first page - and then leave the site. Now I know the idea of teenage gangs is a little out there, and I know this concept of an adult vigilante going after a group of youths would probably turn people away from wanting to read further. The interesting thing is - it began with one premise, and continued to mutate into something completely different but still holding true to the original idea. There was a time where I wasn't going to go down the youth gangs angle out of fear it wouldn't be well received, but then I thought....this is what I want to say, these were the feeling I was going through at the time and I need to be true to myself - or what's the point. So, to those of you, who have started reading the LS, don't let the first page put you off. It's all an exaggeration. Of course the police are more than capable with handling a similar situation, and the courts do have laws in place to deal with youth offenders, but this was the story I wanted to tell. So I say - soldier on my first page readers, you may like where the comic goes from here.
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