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Cosimo Galluzzi
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@dawnrivetingink
Saffron
She’s a very unreasonably tall girl with unreasonably long hair. She’s a kind person with a sweet demeanor who likes dead things mostly and may have a living cat backpack but who knows. She brings in flowers where ever she goes, not sure why it’s just a thing she does. She also lives in a creepy broken down house but she’s fine with it.
The ‘Mean Girl’
While she doesn’t have a name she does appear 3 times within the story. Her intentions are unknown besides what might be seen as general bitchiness but her first encounter with Fray might be understandable that they might not get along. The second one I think it’s also fair for her to be scared, the third time however you see her true ‘mean girl’ ways. She’s often seen with her friend who also has no name.
THE DEVIL
In my comic, I’ve made the Devil nicer and more easily irritable than you would expect. He sympathised with Fray but at the same time recognises it’s just a job and another human soul to get. He’s the person that get’s screwed over in the story despite not actually doing anything wrong (besides having terrible plans and weird creatures) but he is the devil after all.
Granny Rose
Granny Rose is the Grandma to young Fray. She’s a strange old lady that still has the heart of a young lady. She dresses in a poncho for maximum comfort and wears fluffy house slippers even when she leaves the house. She also has no concept of shame and happily has many framed photographs of herself around the house. She has a pentagram on her forehead to protect her from the many demons that come into her life but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want them there it’s just in case she finds a bad one. Since most of the time, she invites demons into her life especially for her grandaughter Fray who she worries spends too much time in her room on her own.
References used for various scenes in my comic
References used for various scenes in my comic
The Cover
(If the cover image appears glitched I’m sorry. I don’t know how to fix this)
For the cover of my comic, I had a few different ideas. I wanted to for example using the Butterfly’s shadow to show it’s true demon-y form or Fray falling from the sky. However, most of my choices featured Fray alone and so I came up with an idea. I decided on an image of Fray in the center looking bored with poisonous and stingy plants around her and bright butterflies in the air.
Why this idea? - The comic’s subtle storytelling using flowers
I decided on this idea because these are the type of plants that keep people away and since she’s a loner this would make sense for her character. As well as the Fray has a couple of these plants on her the thistles on her cardigan and the deadly nightshade stuck to her backpack. She also has a dying plant and a poster of butterflies feeding on dead flowers in her room, so poisonous and unwanted plants are a theme with her. At the end of the comic Fray makes a friend and that friend bring with her fresh flowers symbolising Fray improving her life and replacing the things that pushed her away from people before.
Style Change
The cover looks a little different to the inside art the reason for this is I was able to have much more time to work on the cover and because of this I really wanted to make it look good. The style is still the same it’s just the cover is rendered in a more painted way. This is something that a lot of comics use when trying to sell their work often getting guest artists to design their cover for them. So I don’t think this will be anything too surprising for the average comic reader for the change from cover to inside.
Script - Click ‘Keep Reading’ for the full thing
Panels I changed from the original sketch
Page 21 - Panel 1
The original panel on page 21 features Fray first interacting with her new friend in the background you can see her friends walking off into the distance. The reason I changed this is that after looking at the previous scene I noticed that those characters wouldn’t be there and it would make sense for there to be lockers their instead. That said I still wanted those character talking in the scene so added speech bubbles for those characters so that you can see that they’d be behind Fray instead. I think this change makes much more sense than the original and stops the panel from being too crowded.
Page 22 - Panel 1
In this scene, Fray was originally going to say bye to her new friend with her leaving off the panel, however, I found that this scene was a little too similar to the last one and wanted something a little more interesting. So I decided to add a shot of the girl’s house showing that she’s going home to this creepy worn out house. I think this proves more so that they would make good friends since they both like creepy things. Also, it helps to show the contrast between her happy sweet demeanor so overall adds much more than the original sketch for the panel did.
Target Audience - 15 to early-20s
When making this comic one of the important things to consider was who the target audience is. Since my comic features strange cartoon nudity, that’ll raise the age range this comic is aimed at. After looking up age ratings I found that comics are given age ratings based on the comic companies they are a part of, for example, both Marvel and DC have separate age ratings. So to find a specific rating for my comic I decided to look at the British Board of Film Classification (bbfc) the reason for this is because it’s used all across Britain and while it’s not for comics it has specific rules on what should be applied to each age range. I found that the 15 rating fit my comic well since the nudity in this story is in a none sexual context.
So now that I have a minimum age of who can read my comic I figured out who my target audience would be. I decided to go for 15 to early 20s this is because the story isn’t too complicated so I don’t think it’ll be something someone in their 30s+ would be interested but the simple story and fun character might be something, someone, my age would enjoy or someone a little younger. This is also the age range of the average comic con customer so should benefit me in that way. Indie comic fans might enjoy it as well as. I think people who like the slice of life and supernatural genres would also really enjoy this comic since it’s the genres of this comic.
However, the style is quite cartoonish and the story is rather simple because of this it may attract a young audience based on passers-by. To stop younger kids from flipping through it I could make sure all the comics are plastic wrapped. If I wanted to show previews of the comic I could either print off inside pages to stick behind the comic or add a warning on the front of a preview book so that people can flip through but they’re aware of what they’re getting into when they do. This should stop any young kids seeing anything they shouldn’t and any person behind the table can also steer young kids away from it.
From sketching, lineart, to colour
When making this comic I started by sketching out the page on paper and then scanning it in (on some later pages I made the panels first, printed them and then sketched on those). I then open it in Photoshop and rescale and move around so of the sketches until I’m happy with it since this is much quicker to do in photoshop than with the original sketch.
Then I start to process of lining my page. My lines are 6 pixels thick while the speech bubbles are 10 pixels thick much like the panel borders this is to make the panels and speech bubble stand out from the images. I use the lining process to improve the original drawing by fixing things I didn’t like and adding detail. Once I’ve lined the page I look at it as a whole and if I find that the characters blend into the background too much I add a bit of line weight to define them.
Once that is done I start colouring my page using the 5 colour palette I have. I do the colouring and shading all in one layer since this saves me time. I just lay all the colours down roughly and then go back and clean it all up. After that, I just need to add the text.
Group Meeting - 02-05-18
The last group meeting before deadlines. Everyone is getting on well with their work and should be ready to submit it soon.
Reminded everyone to keep £20 for the float so that we’ll have £100 as the overall float amount.
For comic printing, most of us are now looking to get our comics printed at https://mixam.co.uk/ because it’s not too expensive, offers more than 20 copies per person, and offers perfect binding at a cheap price. Mattie is looking to get hers done by hand though this is because she’s worked out that’ll it’ll cost 45p per comic. The only thing she’ll have to count in is the work she’s put into it but should be able to get a very good profit for it.
We’ve also thought about the idea of having either a readable display copy or having a couple of printed pages displayed on the back for people to read. Most people seem to be in favor of having a readable copy.
What we’re thinking of putting on our inside pages:
Daina: thanks page, about artist, and helpline
Mattie: Character information, about the artist
Dawn: illustrations that are part of the story, maybe some information
Shirley: Illustration and a bit about herself and her work
The number of comics we’re getting printed:
Daina: 20-30
Mattie: 15
Dawn: 30
Shirley: 30
Sketches Pages 19-24
Click each image for a page description
Sketches Pages 10-18
Click each image for a page description
Sketches Pages 1-9
Click each image for a page description
Group Meeting 25-04-18
Reminders
Since two of us are setting up for MCM prior the rest of us need to check into the hotel at 3pm. Mattie and I will be the ones setting up the table and since I have a very large suitcase have asked everyone to put their stuff in that so we can set it up. I’ve asked to keep what they put into the bag at a minimum since it’ll likely be heavy but they can bring as many things as they want in their personal luggage. This means if they sell out of anything at the table they can easily restock.
When at the con you can’t stay around the table if it’s not part of your tabling time you also can’t hang around other people’s tables. We need to sort out tabling times so everyone has a chance to table at morning, afternoon and evening times. We’ll be sorting this out closer to the time since we want to make sure everyone has time not only to table but to enjoy the Con.
A maximum of 3 items to sell per person and a max of 20 items of each thing, Since we have 100 comics to sell altogether and that’s heavy especially if anyone wants to do bigger than A5. This is so we can be sure the table won’t be crowd since 3 items to sell per person for 5 people would be 15 things on the table and that’s a lot. Claire and Becki mentioned that A5 sells better at the con since people don’t want to be carrying around anything big. This is something I’m doing and have encouraged for the group because of weight but ultimately it’s their own chose of how they wish to sell their work.
MCM Table
Commissions are a good idea to do at the table since anything you make from them is profit. Will need to take money for commissions first. It might be a good idea to take down commission information when you’re not at the table (unless you plan on emailing after the con) since they won’t really be able to commission you when you’re not there and it might crowd the table.
Conan has kindly offered his card reader in exchange for one each of our comics. I think the group is happy to do this. Although we may not use it on the day I think it’s a good thing to have since it might allow us to make sales that we wouldn’t have otherwise. Also, it takes a small percentage of the payment so I think a 50p card charge would be a good idea. This would also encourage people not to spent on lower price things as well.
Since we have stands for our comics an interesting idea would be to have maybe either a description of the comic or an age rating on the front (which might be good for mine since it has some nudity in it and wouldn’t want the kids looking at that).
Plastic bags might also be a good thing that can be given to customers. Clear Plastic bags would allow everyone at the con to see what they’ve brought. Paper bags could be screen printed with the logo
To encourage people to buy all of our comics at once we could sort out a deal. They could get something free like the tote bags.
Money pot. Everyone needs to keep track of what money is going in and out. No one is allowed to take money from the float. We have to be very organised and careful. Remember each purchase and write everything down.
Comic Colour schemes
I’ve wanted to colour my comic from the start and since then I’ve been going through different colour schemes to figure out how to do it. To make colouring this comic manageable I decided to limit myself to 5 colours. I had originally found a colour scheme online that I liked so when I came to my comic I thought I’d go with it. However, I had a better I started to edit that colour scheme and through a series of adjustments came up with 3 different colour schemes. The reason for doing this is to represent Fray’s moods and also to separate the beginning, middle, and end of the comic.
The greyish pinks show mostly at the start of the comic. This is because it’s the most neutral of the 3 colour schemes so I think it would make sense to start with this. It represents the mundane melancholy of Fray and doesn’t change until the middle of the story where The Devil summons some demons. I thought this would be a good transition between the colours because it’s a strange moment so it would make sense for the colours to drastically change. The blue tones of the second part also represent Fray’s uneasiness with the situation and then her disappointment with how it turns out. They only change when finally she makes a friend and the final colour scheme represents the joy of finding someone to hang out with and the happy ending to the story for her (but not the devil).
I think having the colours change like this adds an extra layer to the storytelling that when reading shouldn’t really need explaining because it simply follows the main character’s journey of emotions.