After reading the Order of the Stick last year, I was quite keen to try and launch a web comic again.  In order to not be too ambitious, I wanted something that I could do a regular four panel for that could be funny without setting out to be perpetual comedy and carry a enough story to not stagnate and maintain a certain amount of interest.

One of the few finished panels of Eye: Private Eye.

I know there are inherent problems in shoe horning everything into a four-panel format (most jokes end successfully on the third) but I wanted a standard format to use so that I could work on building a decent website, which is another skill I need work on, with decent archiving and a clear simple design.

Then I made my trademark mistake:  I drew the characters, I constructed the framework of a setting, and came to the conclusion that my throwaway idea to just give me something to draw was too good and my artistic talent

will never live up to my expectations.  I have to this day drawn two strips and finished neither of them completely.

Eye is a mutant.  He’s a runt with a squashed beak like mouth and only one eye.  He is sour, grumpy, unkempt, untidy, perpetually hung over, disorganized and penniless.  He makes his living as a private detective with his gentle-giant friend Hammerhead, a fearsome looking shark-headed mutant who wants a kitten and has a childish innocence that means he can’t comprehend why people find him frightening.

It’s set in a near-future urban sprawl where mutants are the mutated-disfigured variety as opposed to the super-model with special powers variety and distrusted and downtrodden accordingly.  This project is again one of those where I have more in my head and in notes form than is on actual physical pages and the disruption of the transfer from brain to page has been largely self defeating.

I sense that I’m now starting to talk about things which are not merely unfinished and incomplete, but actually not started.  Both Eye and Paladin are almost in a planning stage as opposed to anything else.  Having said that, this early planning stage for my earlier work would probably mean I had ten pages already before grinding to a halt when I realised I had no idea where I was going.  I think I’ve probably grumbled about it before, but planning is very important and my inner-8-year-old weeps every time I admit that.

This is an odd one.  This is a more recent project that started off as a cliché ridden fantasy idea that I was using almost as a thought experiment and culminated in a story that I really want to tell.  I have what I think to be really good ideas for this but have also become convinced that my art is not good enough to tell it properly or do it justice.

This is Paladin, a story about a young goblin who wants to become a knight of the realm dedicated to honour and justice as opposed to a scheming thieving power grabbing violent malcontent like the rest of his species.  The series would see him taken on by a disgraced trainer of knights and through a series of coincidence or destined events would get closer and closer to achieving his goal to the utter dismay of “Lord Smith”, the ruler of the realm currently descending to despotism and tyranny.  The ultimate point of the story would be to explore the idea of power inevitably corrupting and forcing compromise on ideals as Snakral the goblin follows the path that was only recently tread by a young dreaming blacksmith’s apprentice who wanted to become a knight, ending up toppling the previous tyrant-king to become Lord Smith, ruler of the realm.

Snakral the goblin picking mushrooms and dreaming of life as a knight of the realm.

I have a bunch of concept sketches, a load of plans and even a few page outlines, which is a first for my comics.  I also experimented with making it novel-based instead, but that didn’t work and this definitely belongs in comic-format.  I also can’t shake the idea that it might make a decent animated series, but that is so far beyond my means, abilities and work ethic that it’s untrue and borderline delusional.

Taking a few steps back from the project over the last few months, I’ve noticed the elements that I thought were unique are probably not quite so.  The character design of Snakral, the goblin, is somewhere between Dobby the house elf and a young Yoda and the idea of a traditional monster-race being the questing protagonist-hero isn’t a million miles away from Shrek, the ogre with a heart of gold and two too many films.  I still love Snakral as a character.  He moves slightly beyond my usual “He is ____ but incompetent” archetype that I’ve noticed pops up in everything and is instead a determined underdog with hopes, dreams and a modicum of talent mixed with luck.  In essence, I like this project because it has the potential to mix nihilistic predeterminism with pure naïve optimism which could provide an interesting juxtaposition.

I am fully aware that this is a hilarious situation I have got into:  I am talking about a project as if it exists already whereas all I can really show is a couple of sketches, the result of an attempt to learn how to use a tablet in Photoshop, and a half finished splash page.  This is all that exists in any solid substantial consumable form.

Additional Notes:

This is my fourth post on outstanding projects and although it’s all horribly self indulgent, it’s actually been quite interesting for me to write about these things.  When you look at a project with a view to explaining it in something approaching a pitch format, it’s so much easier to pick up on the weaknesses and inadequacies.  Part of that is the lizard brain constantly shouting at you that you’re rubbish and your work takes on your characteristics of rubbish-ness, but part of it is genuinely good self assessment.  I would heartily recommend this to anyone with a languishing project of this nature.