Second Life comics
Posted by myg
Sorry that I’ve been MIA the past two weeks. Having a crap-ass Real Job has been putting a major damn cramp in my fun, and what little down time I’ve had I’ve been working on this:
This is the new front cover for the Thincbook edition of Met a Stranger, Volume 1 Episode 1. I have it now in pre-production with a couple of test copies. I’ll have it available for free at the Second Life 4th Birthday event, beginning June 23rd.
I have to tell you, the Thincbook delights me to no end. I never realized how much I’d love a virtual book. When I first considered it, it seemed totally silly. But the Thincbook acts just enough like a book to give my brain the same warm fuzzies I get holding a copy of Love and Rockets or Eightball. In fact, I actually prefer reading this way than typical web applications like .pdf or html. Makes me wonder why folks like the Avastar or Players Magazine aren’t using it.
For a frustrated graphic novelist (guess who can’t draw, like, at all?) having the ability to create this is a total score. It is, however, a huge pain in the ass. I have to lay the entire thing out in Photoshop into jpegs, upload every page as an image and then put them into the book. Then I use the Thincbook press which makes a copy I can then give away or sell. But while it is time consuming, I am stupidly pleased with the result.
I am not, however, the only aspiring graphic novelist or comic book maker in Second Life. I wanted to shout out a few others who are also doing some very cool things using Second Life photos to create works of fiction or comic-style art.
First, there’s the venerable CodeBastard Redgrave, who created Found: Injured Neko in April.
It’s breathtaking, I must say, in it’s look. I am still eagerly awaiting the next installment. Codie?! Hurry up! (She said, knowing that the pressure is beating down for Season 2 of her own work…)
Then of course, there’s Seraphine’s steady outflow of comic philosophy.
And I got an email from somebody new, Patou Dumont, who seems to hail from a blog called Second News! Brasil and has written a comic in PDF form.
What the hell does that say? Does anybody know? Heh, well luckily for us uni-lingual American types, the story itself can also be downloaded in English. So do it and give a read.
What else are you reading out there that’s fiction based on Second Life, or using Second Life images? Inquisitor staff want to know!
Hey Myg,
This project is taking some time, because it’s a huge. And yes theres some pressure but I won’t let that dictate or affect the quality of what will be going on. I want it to be perfect. I have many very complex scenes to build up, the cast is huge and the hardest is to schedule the shoots intelligently.
So no deadline, no date for publication, you will see in time. But you can be 100% sure the next episodes will be published.
Thanks for the ping
Codie
No shit, woman, I know how complicated it gets to schedule shoots across time zones, getting the exact poses, sets, etc. It’s a crapload of work! Whatever, I do know that when part two of your work comes out it will kick serious ass and be well worth the wait!
I visit your blog every day. I’m “stupidly pleased” too. Congrats on completing *Met a Stranger* v1.1. I hope to score a copy! /hugs
Does ‘The Irony of our Second Lifes’ count? *grins*
For me, in a perfect world, the Met A Stranger series would be published in the format Codie used in her Found: Injured Neko work of art - whoa, totally droolworthy! But something that labour intensive would require a team of actual full-time employees to release more than one issue a year, lol.
So, I’ll keep enjoying it in its current format, and maybe at the end of season two, you’ll publish another Thincbook collector’s edition? That would be pretty cool.
And Codie, good luck with your project, as well!
@Vint! OMG–yes! How could I not link that here? BAD MYG writing long posts in a hurry and missing key players! I’m sorry doll–I love that and will give you special payback when I get home tonight *winks*.
@Seraphine–you’re very welcome and thanks!
@Wrath–Yes, I adore Codie’s work too, but going to that style would be difficult for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m a writer–not a photoshop talent. That means my work is very heavily text-based rather than picture based. I suck in photoshop, as some may notice. If I could have someone work with me on photoshop stuff then I could whittle the text down to a few key lines to carry the story. So for now I’m going to go with the adult story-book approach, rather than the comic layout.
wow LOL
thank you all for the nice comments, really, i’m touched that you liked it so much! but if you want to know, it’s not the comic book assembly that is so long. if you think 2h per page is too much time, it’s not the case. the photoshoot took much much more time.
no it’s the logistics. like now my big star Azkaronne is rarely online nowdays. I have a scene planned with Melodious. with her its even worse, im lucky if she gets online for 30 minutes at 7AM. well looks like i’m going to have to photomontage because having both of them at the same time and same moment? would take a miracle. so i may have to do some difficult choices for the times to come.
anyways, just saying, this comic book page hit over 1000 hits total now. thanks to all the fans!
Codie
erratum: should have read about 4h for the montage, sorry, my bad
myg, thanks so much for the link. very much appreciated !
i didn’t know about these other comics. the only one i came across was “plywood”. i’ll check it out.
and on the image it says “download the comic for free” and i used the original title for the brazilian version, because “garçonnière” means a little apartment that guys used to have for “encounters” in the 50s and 60s in Brasil. to have a garçonnière of your own meant you had money, and it gave status too, and more likely than not, many girls. it would not work in english, so i had to pick another title for it.
once again, thanks for the link.
and YES !!! the hernandez bros ROCKS !!!!!