I’ve decided to let the cat out of the bag and make a preliminary announcement for Sideville, my webcomic in the works. The reason for this early announcement is mainly to modivate me to the extent that I will actively pursue this project without dropping it by the wayside.
Sideville will be based on an independent stop-motion animated film of the same name that I was co-creator of. The basic premise of the story is as follows:
> A 12-year old boy named Trevor runs away from home and on his journey happens upon an unkempt pirate village called Sideville. He learns the inhabitants of the village are retired circus performers/pirates who have gathered together in an effort to hide from the society that shunned them, thus forming the community of Sideville.
The comic is as mentioned still in the preliminary stages, but I expect to update the Sideville site with concept sketches and further details on the characters and story development.
As I flesh out the characters I will be posting their respective concept sketches and other information pertaining to the comic. I’m hoping this will pave the way for the official unveiling of the comic sooner than later.
For now I need to work out the design of the Sideville website which will be built with Movable Type in order to maintain the database of comics. I’ve narrowed down the webisodes to a total of 3 per week (updated every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday). Since this isn’t a punchline comic nor does it follow the conventional layout format of 3-5 boxes (i.e. Melonpool) it will free me from trying to compact the storyline in order to meet the deadline.
Regardless, as I’ve noticed, many (or should I say all) web comics evolve since their initial debut. It’s amazing to see the evolution of the drawing style, storyline and overall quality of a web comic over time. I’ve taken this into account because in the past I just wasn’t satisfied with the output and gave up. Now I realize that web comics only get better and not worse.
As always, stay tuned.
Sounds spiffy! Is the movie available online anywhere? I’d love to see it! Will the comic be a continuation of the movie, a retelling, or just an independant story?
Scott, thanks for the comments.
There used to be a teaser slash test film, but somewhere inbetween server moves I lost the footage (which was encoded in the Realplayer format).
Since then I have been searching for it, hoping it will turn up somewhere. At this point my friend (who I co-created the film with) might have the test footage on hand but even that chance is slim.
If I happen upon it again (crossing fingers) I will be sure to post it again.
Also, the reason I’ve decided to re-imagine the story as a comic is that stop-motion animation is both time-consuming and not very cost effective. At one point we were considering puppets and then CG animation but it all boiled down to time and we just didn’t have enough of it sadly.
Making Sideville a comic will free up my own creative restraints and allow the story to develop and flourish as originally intended.
Wow man. This I gotta see. I wish I had time to do something along these lines. Best of luck!
I look forward to seeing more on it :)
I used to draw a webcomic and let me say that they are a lot of work. The rewarding factor however is knowing that people are reading the comic. Make sure you put up a forum for people to share thoughts on the storyline.
You’ll find that this is a valuable resource.
Thanks everyone for the comments. The comic is in pre-production for the moment as I research and sketch out ideas.
I’ve completed my portfolio section for anyone that is interested. For the moment it includes illustrations and sketches and will eventually showcase some of my print work and various other goodies.
I’m just trying to work out the copyright issues since people are prone to stealing no matter what. I could use an .htaccess file for deep-linking and protecting my images but I sometimes post images on other sites.
If anyone has any ideas? My method of protecting them now is watermarking them, but even that isn’t 100% effective.