Demon Hunters, 4 Horsemen, and Star Wars 7-9 Projects

I'm one of those guys that love coming up with projects, but horrible at seeing them through.

These 3 projects are often on my mind. I tend to do a lot of thinking in terms of them. Fill my mind with something, right?

I've been taking photos of the 4 Horsemen and doing some 1-page vignettes, but nothing canon-hard. I'm thinking of changing that and how I do the project. But let's back up for a moment to discuss Demon Hunters.

Demon Hunters is currently suffering writer's block. I think I found a way to get around it about a week ago but haven't put pen to paper yet. While I know in my head, it occurred to me (again), that the Demon Hunter story with the Devil Dogs is a 3-tier story. Meaning, the team will change names as time progresses. What I realized is, this project is going to get long. Not so much bigger, just longer. It's not just the Devil Dogs stories I have to get through, it's the 2 iterations afterwards. I'm not a fast writer so it could take years to get through the Devil Dogs stories. I plan on 10 or less short stories!

The plan was, near the end of the run, the 4 Horsemen aspect would come in. I'm deciding now, that's a bad idea. The 4 Horsemen need to be told at the same time. Because the Horsemen have a hand in what happens to the Devil Dogs. So I'm going to start working the 4 Horsemen story which I'm realizing now is going to be a bit bigger than I had thought it'd be. Which is fine, I'm still figuring out how I want to tell the story.

At the moment, I have photos I took last week for another 4-Horsemen vignette. I've decided that these are designed to start, lay the ground, and move the story forward in a visual fashion. It also gives me a reason to go outside and work on photography skills and well, just get outside.

The Star Wars project is still going. The chapters are all introductory to the main characters. I admit, I didn't think most of it through so having not figured out the finer details is slowing me down.

Until then, here's a raw image of an upcoming 4-Horsemen page. Major Bludd & Lady Obitus.

 

I got something to say...

I hate to say this triggers me. But something about it bugs me and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe I'm just in denial and this is truth.

But.

When I got back into GI Joe in 2002 with the Joe Vs Cobra themed toys, my love and fascination with it was with the modern. It was with the current. For me, this meme implies the old. The past. It's a nostalgia thing, yes. But I'm not attached. However, GI Joe as a toy brand is a childhood entity. What GI Joe did for me as an adult (other than meet people, have good times in the discussion boards, etc) was give me a vehicle for creativity. It started with photography and that's only because I saw others doing it. It never occurred to me as a kid to take photos of my toys (that had to do with how I grew up and the era). From photographic singles of my GI Joe toys, it led to telling visual stories and even some art stuff. My toy interests meandered and evolved since 2002. I may not be doing visual stories (as much) but I'm writing stories. 

Btw, this image has been circulating lately. I pulled it from Checkpoint Alpha on Facebook.

 Trying new things...

Haven't been able to work on much for the last week or so.

I'm working on a lil photo project, nothing spectacular. As I was getting the photos ready to work on, well, people who know me know that I've been creating diostories for over 20 years. Around 5 years ago, I backed way off. To the point that I don't do them anymore. I do some very small projects (which oddly still take a lot of time).

Now, to get to the point, when I do the photos, I add all dialogue/text/etc onto the actual image. That means, all the text (w/ boxes, word balloons, etc) are on the photo itself (and not usually saved as layers; it's fully merged into 1 image) and it is all within the constraints of the photo. This is my anal thing. But I'm working a 3-photo page and I'm thinking a bit more outside the box. Or I'm trying to be flexible even if it'll be a headache in terms of file naming. I'm considering trying some of the text so that it breaks the photo's borders. It's something I know of doing, but my 'style' isn't like that. I think it's worth a try. My thinking behind it is, the text doesn't have to be constrained to the image itself.

To note, when I started diostories, they were done as a slide show. I learned early on, clicking NEXT for each image to get the story could be a long and tedius endeavor for the readers. 100 images were too much but it was also really hard to tell a story in that fashion. At some point, I realized I could make a large canvas (page) and put the finished images on it like a comic book. That's kind of how "diostories" became "diocomics". Once I realized I could do this, it really opened my mind and the stories got better. I also was shooting 2-3x as many photos for it and per chapter for a story were usually between 180-225 images. As for chapter length, it varied. I set a goal at 25 pages. Due to how long a single chapter was taking to produce, I moved to comic book-length chapters. Which I admit, I'm not really sure if the standard is 22 pages or 23 pages. By the time I decided to do 20-page chapters, a lot had happened in life and I moved to writing stories instead. Photography in general, was no longer a priority. I still do photoshoots but nowhere near as often as 10-15 yrs ago. And for the record, I'm procrastinating on a bunch of household chores too. Here, have a random image that has nothing to do with the post. Dr Mindbender! I'm still working on 4 Horsemen/7 Orochi. Just a hint, if this is how I'm envisioning Mindbender, then how might some of the others look? (Okay, I'll play fair. Some don't get any changes. Crystal Ball, however, is waiting for a new body.)