Condemned

[condemnedcomic]

I was inspired to do a little lighting/color study after seeing this tutorial by @toerning. Color is not and has never been my strong suit, so this will hopefully be the first of many studies on my way to getting more comfortable with it. Feedback is welcome!

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Kind of a minor character, but one of my faves :)

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Siblings <3

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I feel like she needs a tat on that arm...

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Been chipping away at the Prologue this Inktober. :)

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Just some of the girls from Condemned :) Been doing a lot of character design sketches to warm up for Ch 1.

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A page of mouths from my sketchbook D:

[el-fury]

Here are some random sketches of Condemned characters. Really happy with the lineup at the bottom. :) I might expand on that later.

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As someone who habitually avoids drawing backgrounds, reaching the page of my comic’s script that just gives “townscape” as direction was pretty daunting. Perspective and all other obvious challenges aside, I was finally faced with the reality that I needed to map out the world my comic takes place in before I could go further.

In the case of Condemned, the world that the story takes place in is this little mountain town. That presented a unique challenge, because most fantasy maps I found during my research were on a larger scale, like a continent or kingdom, and a town of this size was just a little labeled dot on the map. Everything that happens in this comic happens in this little town, so I wanted to treat it like a typical fantasy map.

I naïvely gave myself a week to do this, and here we are three weeks later! But I learned a lot in those three weeks, and I thought I’d share.

Questions to ask yourself when drawing a fictional map:

Where does the sun rise and set? This was a question I asked early on when I was trying to figure out the basic placement of everything. I knew from the beginning that I wanted twin mountain peaks overlooking the town, and my instinct was to place them in the north for the aesthetics of the map itself. But then I considered where the sun rises and sets, and decided to place them in the West. To have the orange afternoon sun slowly disappear behind those jagged peaks, casting a devil-like shadow over the town would be really strong imagery that I plan to take full advantage of.

Where do the rich people live? Where do the poor people live? Once I placed the railroad and the Highway (unlabeled, but it's the main road that borders the town at the south), it was simple enough to figure out where the lower income housing is. Typically properties right by busy roads and railroads are not very coveted because of the noise, so I put the apartments, strip malls, and fast food chains in the southwest corner. Lee's neighborhood, though also right by the highway, is home to more upper-middle class families, so I put a noise-blocking wall around it to give the impression that it is home to more upper-middle class people. The Hotel and surrounding properties house the wealthiest people because of their location near the hot springs, and their view overlooking the town. Placing a river there isolates them both physically and symbolically from the rest of the town.

Where are the oldest buildings? The newest ones? In my experience living in and driving through small towns, the downtown area always has the oldest buildings, and often the buildings essential to any town (courthouse, town hall, police department, etc). As you move further out, the buildings generally get newer, cheaper, and quite frankly, less attractive. This is especially important, in my opinion, when your entire story takes place within 3 square miles. It visually divides different areas of the town, giving a little variety to the backdrop and making the world feel a little bit bigger.

Where does most of the story take place? When you ask yourself this question, think about the scenery you want to draw, because you'll be drawing it a lot. How can you make it visually interesting? Most of the story takes place at the High School, which I've placed prominently on a large hill (hence the windy road leading up to it) surrounded by a stream. Like with the wealthy properties in the north, placing it on a higher elevation isolates it from the rest of the town. When the students and faculty look outside of the classroom windows, what little signs of civilization they can see are distant specks on the other side of the valley that nests the town. This can be a peaceful view or a lonely one, depending on how you write the scene. (Also, more selfishly, it's easier to draw scenes when all of the clutter and buildings are below the eye line)

How do your characters get there? Just as important as the places your characters frequent are the roads between those places. There will likely be a few scenes of them in transit, so how can you make those scenes visually interesting as well? After I drew in the homes of the main characters and the other important places in the story, I placed myself in the shoes of the characters and imagined them traveling to the school, to their friends' houses, to work... What mode of transportation do they use? If it's a bus, what does the passing scenery look like? If they miss their bus, what alternate route can they take?

Think of the characters' relationships to each other and to the town. How can you emphasize these relationships through the map? There are so many ways you can reinforce relationships and story arcs through location. A relationship between two enemies can be made more volatile by placing them next door to each other. Likewise, you can strengthen the longing between two lovers by placing them on opposite sides of the town. One specific example I have here is Charlie's Apartment in the lower left corner of the map. Charlie is an outsider in many ways, and fulfills the "crazy hermit/wise mentor" trope in the story. Making his apartment one of the only buildings on the west side of the tracks emphasizes his outsider status. Sandwiched between the steep mountainside and the train tracks, it almost feels like a prison cell that the rest of the town has sentenced him to.

Other resources/advice:

Consider the climate and geographic location of your world. Make sure it adheres to the laws of nature. 

There are a lot of examples of large scale fictional maps, but if you find the examples of fictional town maps lacking, try looking up tourist maps of towns of comparable size and population. I pinned a few of them here.

This post was very helpful and specific to designing a town map. It was especially helpful with road layouts.

Google Earth!! It helped answer a lot of weird questions that came up, like “how big is a Wal-Mart in comparison to a public high school?”

Try to find real-world examples of places similar to your world. This will help you with less glamorous, albeit important specifics like population, square mileage, and road layouts. Again, Google Earth is super helpful.

Get lost in thought. Drop down from aerial view every once in a while and place yourself in the shoes of your character inside of that world. You’ll come up with a lot of interesting places, stories and scenes that you hadn’t thought of before.

Hopefully this helps those of you faced with the same task! If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t. I highly recommend doing this. It was frustrating at times, but it really helped this world come alive for me, and my hope is that it’ll save a lot of time and frustration in the long run.

[el-fury]