college thesis progress part 1 // foundation

Listening to “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac ♫

So I'll be trying to maintain a series of entries detailing the progress of my college thesis. Basically this is what it is:

Complete chapter 1 of Glass Hearts (version 4 AKA version for publishing), self-publish a physical book (to display) or more (to sell), and create merchandise such as t-shirts, stickers, posters, etc.

My peers who are also making comics aren't…doing as many pages as I'll be doing. A normal person would do 24-32 pages, right? I'll be doing 58-60 pages. This weekend I plan to start inking pages for the book. Based off of thumbnails like the following:

 I've been doing thumbnails this small since high school when I started making comics. Apparently this isn't a normal thing and when I presented these in class, my teachers basically freaked out. But I digress: I drew all the thumbnails during the last week of winter vacation and it felt really good working on Glass Hearts again. I barely made any pages during my tenure in college, so it feels refreshing to do something I love in the last semester that will show what I am capable of.

(And show all the people who don't believe I can make 50+ pages in 4 months that I CAN DO IT.)

I have to re-sketch the thumbnails I want to make into larger display prints for the Senior Show, which is six of them, and make a book cover sketch. The latter will be refreshing to do, but I really am more ready for going straight for inking instead of sketching more. It's driving me nuts, but I have two more pages to do. (That's not what's inked on the left — I copied the same .psd 3 more times, haha.) So that's a relief that I can't wait to feel. The right space is the first chapter script, which isn't of any standard layout whatsoever. It's something I made up for myself to understand and not…anyone else. I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who did this, reading posts by Brian Lee O'Malley (creator of Scott Pilgrim) on how he wrote scripts before.

I have a lot of scripts written out actually. Chapter 1 of version 4 (basically revision of the series) has been done since January 2012, and I've been proofreading and revising it through the rest of the year. I'm currently writing / brainstorming / revising for chapter 57 at the moment. So I have a pretty good buffer going on, if I do say so myself. I'm debating whether I split the series into 2, with a sequel. But I'm still unsure of it. The ending is going to be open-ended, for sure. I keep on sketching what happens way beyond the end. I just love the cast so much that I naturally do this, hahaha!