Work on RELAUNCH: Chapter Two continues…and with it, more previews at some of the upcoming locations and characters. How do they all fit in to Cris’ story? Stick around!
Concept art for Riko Chang. Chang is one of the Senior Engineers on board the Tereshkova. It’s her responsibility to maintain, repair and program the Cybernetic Remote Intelligence Systems (CRIS).
The run up to RELAUNCH: Chapter Two continues with some additional character preview art. As I mentioned in the previous post, the second chapter of RELAUNCH is a much bigger story. We’ll certainly find out what happens to Cris as the aftermath of Chapter One impacts the lives of the residents of the Tereshkova.
Concept art for Maximo Oslo. As the Deck Chief of the Tereshkova, Oslo is in charge of the docking stations and repair bay. He also supervises the flight deck and repair crews.
As you may have guessed from the previous post, the second chapter of RELAUNCH takes place primarily on the Tereshkova, an orbital space station. It also features a much larger cast of characters. Dan has been hard at work doing concept art for each character and we thought it might be fun to preview some of that concept work prior to jumping into the story.
Enjoy!
Concept art for Sarah Turk. Turk is the Station Commander of the Tereshkova. As the most senior member of the resident staff she is ultimately responsible for the station, it’s missions and all personnel.
When Dan and I first started to work on RELAUNCH we did it with no ulterior motives; we just wanted to tell a compelling, digital story. We chose to focus on RELAUNCH as a stand-alone comic that could be engaging but didn’t require a large investment of time from the reader. One of the great, unexpected pleasures has been that so many people have been asking for more! Does Cris live? What happens next? So, of course, Dan and I promptly began working on Chapter Two!
In the spirit of what we’ve been trying to do with COMIC BOOK THINK TANK, we decided to post some of the work for RELAUNCH: Chapter Two as it’s being developed (and revised) prior to releasing the comic. Hopefully it’ll give those that are interested some additional insight into our creative process. Or, you know, just be fun to look at.
Enjoy!
Concept Art for The Tereshkova, Orbital Station 16J63. A commercial space station whose primary purpose is to act as a repair and resupply depot for a small fleet of utility ships. The fleet’s missions vary; salvage, orbital clean up, deep space installation and repair – tasks that involve long term, extremely uncomfortable or potentially hazardous conditions for the pilots and crew of the ships.
This year saw the comic book industry continue its inexorable move into digital publishing. Along the way we’ve seen innovation, exploration and inspiration as writers and artists pushed the creative envelope, expanding the definition of digital storytelling. While there isn’t enough space to highlight everyone’s attempts to further the medium it is worth taking a moment to recognize some folks whose efforts were especially noteworthy. Without further ado, and in no particular order, COMIC BOOK THINK TANK takes a look back at some of the most innovative digital comics for 2012.
INSUFFERABLE: By Mark Waid, Peter Krause, Nolan Woodard and Troy Peteri
Billing themselves as an “experiment in new-media publishing” storytelling maestro Mark Waid and the gang at Thrillbent are regularly exploring how print comics can evolve in a digital environment – with fantastic results!
XKCD: By Randall Munroe
A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language…and in this particular instance about the exploration of the infinite canvas. If you haven’t already seen Click and Drag you owe it to yourself to head over there and spend some time exploring. You wont be disappointed.
AVENGERS VS. X-MEN: INFINITE: by Mark Waid, Stuart Immonen and Marte Garcia
Kicking off Marvel’s Infinite Comics experiment in digital storytelling in a way only Marvel can – big! The House of Ideas didn’t shy away from pushing the digital envelope with this introduction to the mammoth Avengers vs. X-Men event.
Melding comic book storytelling with animation and special effects, the Madefire team describe their comics as “Motion Books” and are trying to do nothing less than “revolutionize how stories are told.”
INSTA•COP: by Kwanza Johnson and Andy Belanger
A hard boiled action adventure delivered one panel at a time across multiple platforms. The fine gents behind Insta•Cop are exploring the increasingly thin boundary between comics and social media.
OPERATION AJAX: by Daniel Burwen
Based on a true life spy thriller, this multi-media comic is chock full of extras and support documents that let the reader dive deep into a truly immersive digital storytelling experience.
AMERICA: ELECT!: by The Guardian
The interactive team at The Guardian used a creative scrolling digital comic format to tell the story of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and the US Presidential election. The results were far, far more fun than the election itself.
To realize the pages in the Road Goes Ever On, we first had to make a central panoramic scene at the desired screen size x 4 – one for each season. To do this I illustrated each season or page with a particular element I wanted to convey relating to each season . For Spring there had to be flowers and trees present – something we could make grow over time. For Winter – rolling landscapes where snow could fall. For Summer- the sky and water I wanted to play with to show the brilliant summer sky reflected on the water. For Fall, there had to be trees where the leaves could change color and bluster away. (click for larger versions of the images)
Once the line art was finished, it was a simple task of scanning and stitching all 4 images together.
We used color coding to denote which season were which as we worked and on the far left, added a portion of the first part of the wrap from the fall season to the beginning of the winter season in order to generate the additional portions of the fall pages leading into winter.
From there, everything was carved up into “slices”. These increments were the space which each page selection would move and then be exported from, giving the effect when turning each page of moving across the landscape. Additionally the color was added in Photoshop in a flat manner so that elements in the scene could be altered for each page or slice. Alternate versions of trees were drawn, and hobbits, wizards, and dwarves were drawn separately and digitally inserted.
Once each scene was colored, text was added, and the process of moving along the landscape and exporting each page or slice was undertaken. We estimated that the time to generate a comic like this from beginning to end was about 60-80 hours. The real struggle came when the file size of the image became too cumbersome, and scene sections had to be broken out separately (fall-winter, winter-spring, spring-summer, summer-fall). Also the day changes made lining up the phases of the sun and moon tricky – we altered that a few times and it required changing the lighting across the landscape as much as in the sky itself.
Comic Book Think Tank is proud to present…
Based on “The Old Walking Songs” of Bilbo Baggins, as written by J.R.R. Tolkien, THE ROAD GOES EVER ON is a stand-alone, panoramic presentation of The Shire where the reader experiences the change of time and seasons as they advance through the comic.
From a storytelling point of view, Dan and I were interested in deconstructing the elements of a comic book and creating an experiential piece that isn’t necessarily a linear story. As a result THE ROAD GOES EVER ON has no distinct pages, no panels and, like the calendar year itself, the ending brings the reader full circle, back to the beginning, creating a seamless visual loop. A not-so-subtle nod to the potential of the Infinite Canvas.
One crucial point of clarification that we want to be up front about: this comic is not-for-profit and not officially affiliated with The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings or the Tolkien estate. Hopefully you enjoy it and if you do please consider sharing it with friend!
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