It might be that writing a hogwash post is just vastly easier than working on anything else, but anyway, it’s another hogwash kind of day! Woohoo! I think I’ll try to work through some of the negative thoughts that trip me up when I sit down to work on the ‘Squire’s End’ project.
When I started this site, I fully intended to make a comic called ‘Bladeshire Trilogy’. This was a story I had been spinning around in my brain for several years now. The reason we haven’t seen any movement on that title is for several reasons. I’d say the most important, and the only one I’m going to address, was that my skills just weren’t up to snuff to do justice to what I’d built up in my mind. So, in other words, I got too attached to how it was ‘supposed’ to work, how it was ‘supposed’ to look, and when it was clear I needed to accumulate experience, to up my skills, not just with the digital painting and figuring out color tone aspects, but also working out all the resolution issues I never put a drop of thought into until I wanted post color images … Anyway, I just knew I couldn’t let Bladeshire Trilogy become the crummy mess in my wake.
That’s not to say I don’t like Squire’s End, just that I wasn’t attached to the image in my brain. Squire’s End is roughly a back side story to the Bladeshire Trilogy. A story which I felt was too distracting to fit within the planned script. So it was like this cast-off story, I wanted to tell, but would have messed with the flow of the actual story.
Here’s the rub. When approaching Squire’s End, I pooled together all my ‘b-list’ characters; All my original characters, I came up with, but ultimately reminded me too much of something else that was still relevant in my mind. So I told myself, in the past, I couldn’t really use them in good conscience. But since this was my throw away comic, to build up my skill base, I went hogwild and just used a bunch of them!
Later, my conscience didn’t like it so much, though. Plus, my B-list is all I have shown of my ideas since the start of the comics, three years ago.
For example, Alarad, was a character I have been writing for since high school. Yet, when I sat down to play World of Warcraft for the first time, I cooked up an Azeroth version of him. I have been playing that game for the past 9 years or so. So, it’s hard to say now, that Alarad is not based off my WoW character, even harder to say that using the character there, hasn’t changed him over the years. There are differences, all the gnomes in my comics are a bit taller than those native to azeroth, they also have five fingers. I could have changed ‘comic-Alarad’s’ hair more than it is, but ultimately, that’s how I picture him now. I guess I just worry someone may dismiss him as a rip-off, because of the connection to WoW. I don’t think he’s a rip-off at all. Storywise he’s 100% original and I came up with the name. Its how he looks that may be questionable. In my opinion, if I said it was meant to look ‘just like’ the Azeroth version to someone that could compare them, that person would say, ‘that looks nothing like him’… But if I said they were not meant to look alike, I think that same person would’ve said, ‘it looks just like him!’ Uhg, which is why he was cast into my B-list of characters that live in my brain, though may not have ever seen the light of day if not for Squire’s End!
Offrin Rayndragon, was a name I made up for a seriously old ‘text based’ game that I played long before WoW was a glimmer in someone’s eye. Between these two characters, that shared the name, they had absolutely nothing in common, back story or otherwise. While the game version was a ‘Giantman’ it wasn’t the ‘Juton idea’ that’s original to Drue. Eh, I don’t know why I get these hang ups, half the time I know it doesn’t matter, the other half I think I am shooting myself in the foot.
Actually, Runik Wildbow’s name, had roots in the same game I think! lol it just hit me. I actually forgot about that. His inclusion to the B-list has more to do with his abilities to see spirits. This is a different kind of issue and it’s probably the silliest issue I could come up with, but- there was this guy I knew a long time ago, that would say he had an imp that sat on his shoulder. Eh… I don’t know what that was about; He was pretty much a grown man with an imaginary friend? But! every time I sit down to mess with my Warden ideas, I think, ‘is this too similar? Am I beholden to that guy because he said that? These are vastly different ideas…’ I’m weird like that.
So the Squire, which, you may not have noticed, has yet to be named, will also be an original name- that I came up with for video games… What can I say? Playing games is where I cook up names. What’s extra weird, is that I doubt anyone actually likes the names I come up with!
At the same time, the Wendigo got tossed onto the B-list when I realized she was an obscure amalgam of my troll hunter and his pet in WoW. Psht, yet, when I decided to use her in Squire’s End, I actually added the altered tusks to the side of her face, as some sort of tribute or nod to the source. I don’t know, clearly these are complete polar opposite reactions to the same issue.
I think the problem is, eventually, I trace back where these ideas might be rooted from. It then becomes a question of, like, where do the original ideas come from? Are they this subconscious mess of a misshapen maelstrom of thoughts, past ideas and past experiences, long forgotten, though poking back through to consciousness in different forms, to color, not just our world view, but all our creative works? Or are they deliberately altered ideas forcibly adjusted so that they don’t match what already is? ‘cuz, man, I could have just altered the shit out of all these ideas, so much, that even I would not be able to trace them to anything.
I’d rather be loyal to the idea that sprang up in my brain, I think.
And not just for the honesty value, but to ensure someone else can recognize it at all. I mean, in my opinion, that’s why we use genres to begin with, to have a vernacular, a starting point for the vision. To agree, ‘this is the kind of thing you’re going to see, or need to be able to understand’, so that you know what you’re getting into.
Not to mention how often, our own view, or our own mind set, makes these ideas appear the same, when in reality they are completely different. So this idea that I track back to a root, might be all thanks, not to where it actually came from, but to new connections in my mind thanks to my ever changing view of the world. So altering the idea, so it doesn’t match something it likely didn’t match to begin with, just ruins it. And on top of that, probably makes it match something else.
Mostly I use the medieval fantasy genre which, for the most part, is based on old Nordic religions, but other ancient tales and what not, as well. The nice thing about this genre is that it puts things like elves, dwarves, and other fictional races like that, in the public domain. So while I recognize I can’t really use ‘Hobbits’ or ‘Night elves’ or ‘Drow’- among other things that are a bit more original to the modern versions, the genre is safer and less questionable than other modern genres; like horror and sci-fi.
There really isn’t anything I could make, that doesn’t make you think of something else out there, somewhere. Honestly, I think, even when I manage to pull this off (make a completely original idea) the reader would just spin it around in their brain until they found something that did match, then they’d be like, ‘ahhhh, that’s where that came from.” Yet, if they go back and reread what I wrote, I think they’ll find the two things are not as similar as they thought. In fact, their brain made it fit…
I just try to be honest. As Margo would say, ‘Honesty is the simplest form, the shortest code.’
ty, DD
Discussion ¬