Believe it or not this is the 5th version of the cover for the first story. While the previous versions were okay, I didn’t think they told the summery of the story very well and at the same time I felt they were dull and uninteresting. I wanted it to be eye catching while sticking to the theme of the comic being a call back to B-movie monster flicks. Hopefully I did a good job this time round.

(Bonus points to those who get the glaringly obvious reference.) 

My name is Marie and I hate Thursdays!

Hello all, I’m going to write today about the setting of Marie vs the Monsters by going in depth with what I’m hoping to do with backgrounds and places.

As I said before in my universes post, I wanted the town itself to be a character. To do that I want the backgrounds, such as buildings, parks and monuments to feel vibrant and exciting while at the same time I have to be careful not to overdo it or else it will distract the reader from the main plot and it’s characters.

I also want to place small little details in the background that can tell more about the town and it’s story without resorting to a wall of text that would hinder the pacing of the story. For example; if I placed a poster dedicated to a show on a wall it will tell the reader that the towns people are fans of the show.

Along with the main characters I designed key buildings to stand out to show the reader it’s importance. For this example I’m going to use Fortess Cafe, the main hangout place for all the characters.

 I wrote it as a hang out place for the characters that will also give the readers a sense of calm and safety. It will act as a set piece for plot/character exposition. After all, if you were in your usual hang out place with friends you would talk about current events going on around you.

Considering that it was a place for chilling out I went with cool calming colours, much like what I did with Tatiyana, when I came to the logo I was going for a cafe theme. I think of the word cafe and associate it with tea, coffee, sandwiches, chips and maybe a donut. So I tried my best to incorporate these things into a logo and hopefully it did the job. As you can see with my other designs it appears the Starbucks colours leaked in there because when you think coffee you think Starbucks. Fortunately a cafe is more than just beverages.

So while we’re at it, let’s meet the owner of the cafe, Shaun.

He will act as sort of the older brother and mentor figure to the rest of the cast, giving advice and sometimes talking about the rumors and gossip that he hears from customers passing by. As a running gag he butts heads with Tatiyana because he forgets to pay the unusually large tab she built up over the time she hung out at the cafe. While he is only a secondary character I wanted him to be as colourful as the rest of the cast.

Hopefully you’ll be seeing more places like this as the comic progresses.

Little bit of stuff during my down time. Enjoy!

With the risk of sounding pretentious, apologies in advance, I’m going to explain how I will write my characters.

I already explained the design of Marie and a bit of her personality. However I’m going to go a bit more in-depth about writing for the actual character. For this post I’m going to use Tatiyana, the secondary character, as an example.

Say hi!

Tatiyana, Tanya for short, was originally created way back when Mary was the titular character. She was written at first as the generic sidekick that would tag along and help out if needed. When Marie came along she was re-written as the foil to Marie’s character.

While Marie is energetic, clumsy and childish. Tanya is Calm, cool headed, collected and mature. The are many ways to get this personality across. First, of course, is the writing and by that I mean the way the character talks.

When writing dialogue you have to step back and think to yourself, “would I normally talk like this?”. Sometimes it can be jarring when someone suddenly quotes a wikipedia article in normal conversation.

However you can’t just rely on realistic conversations, you also have to make them distinguishable between different characters by using slang, mannerisms and accent.

With Tanya, I wanted her to be a smooth talker. Someone who is willing to keep calm and talk her way out of small issues. At the same time she’s a psychology student so she’ll have the habit of psycho-analyzing people, including Marie.

The second way to get her personality across is the character design, so much the clothing.

I went with calm and cool colours such as blue and purple. Overall pastel colours. While Marie has her badges, Tanya has her light coloured clothes. On top of that she’s consistently sucking on a lollipop as a coping mechanism for stress much like how people smoke.

Third is showing certain characteristics through behavior. For example, as a running joke Tanya has a different job per story, even if she got fired or she left she’s not effected by it in anyway. It just shows that she doesn’t want to stay in one spot for a long time.

With all this in mind I want to slowly allow the characters to show their personality and history through subtle clues that the readers can pick up on easily as the story progresses. That way the pacing of the main story isn’t ruined by pages of sudden character exposition.

Hopefully this will work out and you’ll learn more about the characters as the stories progress.

When working on comics in general you have to have a cover that catches some one’s eye and causes them to gain interest in the product you’re presenting. The same applies to movie posters, though nowadays they’re boring and horribly done photoshops.

Since I’m following the B-movie theme for my comic I decided to go the same way for my comic book covers. Combining the two things I love, I have to reflect that in this comic while at the same time not drown it in all kinds of flashy stuff.

This is a common mistake when it comes to comic books in general. Yes, you have to get attention but at the same time the cover has to make sense or draw the reader in. If you have explosions and monsters all over the place, the reader won’t know what the hell is going on and lose interest right away. It’s the main rule when coming to projects such as these; keep it simple.

Originally when starting this comic I went in with the mind set of it just being a comic book. So I went with a straight forward cover taking inspirations from the Marvel Ultimate universe comics, using borders and all.

As time went on as the comic developed further when I decided to go for the goofy B-Movie theme I thought it would be cool to make the cover in the same style. Taking ideas from movie posters back in the 60s to 90s.

Again, while keeping it simple, I also have to establish the situation, the characters and the monsters in one page. This will cause curiosity and interest for the reader making them think; “Oh how did these guys get in this situation?” or “What is that monster all about?”                                                

I really hope I can achieve this with the comic and hope you guys will enjoy the results of my work.

Next time: Writing Characters with depth and complexity through subtly.

Originally the comic was named ‘Mary vs the Monsters’, and before that ‘My Tiger Heart’ (I cannot remember why), because the protagonist was based on my old friend, Mary.

Mary is a very talented photographer and has a exciting personality so I thought it was good to start created my character around her. Going back to my explanations about using an alternative universe to your own to set the story in, Mary was going to be a photographic journalist who investigates these weird events.

I tried this out for a story called ‘The Organic Terrors’ which was split up into 3 parts.

This story was more of a test on how things would work for the series. While some parts of the story were successful, others needed work. When I come back to rewrite this story I’ll hopefully cut it down from a 3 part story to a 2 part story.

I never finished part 3 because this was the point where I got bored of the story due to poor pacing on my part at the same time I was having trouble drawing Mary. I wanted to be a bit more original and even if she was cool about it to begin with, I really didn’t want her to be uncomfortable about me drawing a comic around her as a character.

Around 1 am in the morning I began designing a new main character while at the same time rewriting parts of her personality.

I continue to draw characteristics from Mary while at the same time throwing in a few flaws to make the character imperfect. Without conflict the story and character would be boring. I didn’t want a perfect godlike person, who everyone loves, and can’t solve a problem with a snap of a finger. 

In the end I created Marie Candid. A normal tomboyish college girl who wants to be a great photographer. Kind hearted, courageous but clumsy, Marie is often landed in bizarre situations where she has to try her best to get her and others out of trouble.

I created the main protagonist as someone you can relate, like and cheer for. Kinda like an underdog. Marie isn’t anyone special, she’s a girl who tries her best to get through tough times to achieve her dreams. In the end I want readers to get attached to her as a character to the point where they want her to success despite her flaws.

While designing her clothing I followed the standard rule of having characters wear something trademark. Something that stands out and let’s you know “This is the main character”. You’ll often see this in cartoons, comics and even TV shows.

I had Marie always wearing badges on her coats, on top of that she wears rings and different kinds of wristbands. That way when you see badges you can associate them to the character. I kept her design unique while simple at the same time.

So after all that time faffing about and remaking the character from scratch here is the result:

So why a photographer? During the redesign I could of made her an artist or a writer. Well to be honest I kind of made Marie as kind of a love letter to all those awesome photographers out there. I know and worked with a few of them and I find them to be wonderful chaps. After all I drew inspiration from friend, whom I think is a fantastic photographer.

It’s not everyday you see a photographer as a main character of a comic that involves monsters barging in. Unless you’re Spiderman of course.
                                

Check out Mary’s stuff here: http://www.mary-alice.co.uk/

Next Time: From movie posters to comic book covers.

With that out of the way I’m going to talk about writing a universe for my comic. Like most comics they are usually set in an alternative universe to our own. I decided to do the same thing drawing from experiences of my own life. 

Marie vs the Monsters is set in a normal quiet town. However I wanted this town to feel alive as if it’s another character of the comic. It is the background after all and I want it to at least make it exciting without it being distracting. I wanted readers to pick up small things in the background or what characters say to get a feel about what this town and it’s citizens are like.

To start off its got its own morning radio show that most of the youth enjoy.

The Ferr Zone is named after a DJ named Ferr, based upon a friend of mine, who does nothing but riff on current events and newspaper articles. He’s often known as faceless because nobody knows what he looks like, not even the crew at the radio station. I’ve made it a running gag while at the same time a mystery. What does he look like after all?

In this universe kids can look forward to Saturday mornings when their favorite diabetic super hero comes to their screens.

Captain Insulin swoops into action as he battles diabolical sugar based villains and teaches the kids through educational PSAs about diabetes. I drew inspirations from cartoon shows of the 80s and 90s. As a kid I actually loved watching Captain Planet not understanding at the time that it was one giant PSA telling us to save the environment. The name of the hero himself came from a little Nintendo game called Captain Novolin.
Once again I based this character around another good friend of mine who is in fact diabetic himself. We often made jokes about him either being a secret agent or a superhero so in the end I made him into one.

For news of the latest surrounding the strange events people tune into The Midnight Star.  

Lead reporter, Eileen Heather, is normally on the scene when something peculiar happens to this normal town. Originally the news station was going to be ‘Cool News for Teens’ with a totally different character as the lead reporter where she often tries to find weird, bizarre and interesting scoops in this normal city.
I changed it to The Midnight Star to make it a more general news station so everyone in the town can see for themselves the odd events occurring. I transferred some of the characteristics of the old reporter character to Eileen. She still tries to get the scoop on the weird stuff but acts a bit more up tight and professional. I will get more in depth about Eileen’s character later.

The main characters often hang out in the same certain places. The Fortess Cafe, St.Ashely’s College and Merton Apartments. It’s usually good to have a place for both the characters and readers to feel comfortable, in which sometimes gives a little break in the pacing of the plot. It’s during those places where it’s a good time for readers to know a bit more of the characters and the universe they live in through talk and banter.
I will also go a little bit more in depth about those places in a later post.

Hopefully this will let you know a bit more about the universe of Marie vs the Monsters.

Next Time: Creating the main protagonist.

At first my main inspirations for creating the comic came from the classic doctor who serials. I wanted to take the formula of splitting a story down into 3-4 parts and feature a monster or a strange entity that the characters have to deal with.

I later combined those inspirations with my love of horror B-Movies.

Watching stupid teens run away from a guy in a rubber suit can never get old. I would love to watch any B-movie, good or bad, that I can get my hands on. It’s pure entertainment; from the shoddy camera work, laughable special effects to the hilariously bad acting.

Nowadays there are B-movies, indie or Hollywood, that try to push for a much serious tone. It can work well having high production values but in the end there’s a girl running away from a comically giant tree monster.

This is how I came to the idea of making this comic just fun and entertaining. Funnily enough, I wanted it to be serious and emo until a the though popped up in my head; “There’s people being eaten by giant plants, can you take that seriously?”

To be fair certain movies or shows can pull off some really creepy and scary situations. Going back to my love of Doctor Who I remember how fans would talk about how scary the Cybermen or Daleks back when Patrick Troughton was wrestling the controls of the Tardis.

 Now most kids today think the Cybermen and the Daleks make pretty cool action figures, so of course we have to bring in some new monsters to scare the little tots and give them nightmares. For example; The Weeping Angels. Even as an adult now they still give me the chills and the brilliant writing behind it gave us the number one rule, “Don’t Blink!”
 


What I want to do for this comic is make it campy, fun and exciting like B-movie mixed with a few chills and creepy moments.

Hello and welcome to…

A B-movie themed comic about a girl, her camera and a couple of monsters. In this blog I’ll be explaining what goes through my head during the writing and design of this comic.

The comic itself originated from a prank created between a friend and I. Little did I know that I would grow more attached to the idea and allow it to evolve into what you’re seeing now.

I will get into how everything came together but considering this is a small intro I’ll let you into the basics. This is our main protagonist, Marie Candid,

                           
A photography student currently studying in college. She gets thrown into all kinds of weird situations against her will. Often along with these fellows,

I think thats the best way to summarize it. So have another picture,

Good day!

Next Time: Themes and Universes.