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.)