The Phylactery of Awesome

20th April 2012

Question

jbgarrison72 asked: For the uninitiated, can you briefly explain the major difference between your process for writing a comic and other kinds of writing?

That’s a good question, Jeff. Let’s see, my process of writing a comic is a little different than other folks’; but to be fair, most comic writing processes are slightly different from creator to creator. I tend to come up with a bunch of notes, then I start scripting with dialog and minimal descriptions. Then I fill in panel descriptions and such. While I keep telling myself I’ll go back to using Final Draft and such, I still just write everything up right-justified in Word, with indentations and spacing for talking bits. Kinda like a po-man’s movie script.

Comic scripting for me is wildly different than game writing or prose writing, but all of the projects start the same: Notes and an outline.

The major difference with comic writing is that there’s a script involved and you are writing for an artist to interpret the story and instructions for the project. Now, comic writing is also very fluid (another major difference) in that when you start working with artists, things begin to change. The artist is the most vital element to a story told in the sequential art (comic book) medium. You can have art and daft writing by an artist, and people can still enjoy it. I seriously doubt anyone would read my awesome stories if I also provided the art (aside from it all being a big joke, I mean— yes, I have a project in mind for that madness). “No plan meets contact with the enemy” applies here, except in that artists are usually not regarded as the enemy (quite the opposite, in fact).

I hope that answers your question somewhat, sir! :) 

22nd February 2012

Question with 1 note

bloggothontheroof asked: Do you think that most games have gone downhill creatively since the eighties and nineties?

Hmmm… That’s a very good question. In short: No. My longer form answer is: I don’t think games have gone downhill, but they certainly have changed. That’s all types of games. Board games have vastly improved. Wargames have changed a bit because there are more of them, you can print out paper minis and terrain, and you’re more likely to get cheaper minis due to there being more companies and rulesets out there. Videogames have been incredibly improved, and I love modern games. Of course, there are some classics I’d like to see re-fitted for today’s systems. Fallout serves as one example for me— I love Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, for instance. Then, of course, there are table top RPGs. Creatively speaking, I think they are just as amazing, except now you can get games from just about anyone. Myself included! I’m working on a couple RPG things right now, one of them being a retro-clone where you play undead (I think I’ll call it “Dolmens and Barrows”). Surfing through sites like RPGNow, I see a massive volcanic eruption of creativity going on.

So, I suppose it depends on what you mean exactly, too. I would love to see more standalone CRPG videogames. The old days of those (Think “Ultima”, “Wizardary”, “Might and Magic”, gold box SSI AD&D, etc) certainly banked on the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps. Now games like Skyrim don’t really require too much imagination (though they are amazing nonetheless). I would rather see exploratory games like Daggerfall or Morrowind coming out. 

I could go on and on and on. So, yeah, downhill? I really don’t think so. It’s more of a creative supernova going on… and I thought that was going on when d20 was going strong, but it seems to be very, very interesting.

I hope I provided an okay— if rambly— answer. Thanks for the excellent question! :)