Deep Dive Five

First off – its been a while and things have been moving along nicely but there hasn’t been anything too visual to report.  But in the last couple of weeks the slow gears of my marketing machine have reared 2 reviews!  Which is awesome.  They are constructive and spot on in there impressions.  Please check out their sites when you get a chance.  I think it is easy to loose site of just how small the comic community can be when Hollywood starts playing with the bigger entities.

Comic Crusaders – Review

Primary Ignition – Review

It will come as no surprise that Hold Fast, Leviathan! was meant as an open ended stand alone.  It really has a “dead sprint” pace and was always to be more adventure and action than character building.  First and foremost, I wanted to see if I could pull it off and see it to the end.  And of course, what the response might be.  Since both of those questions have been answered, it has become a launching point for the next story.

Speaking of story, the first major arc is completely written.  After creating thumbnails and a few pages of art before actually having a complete script, I realized I was getting ahead of myself.  This has always been my Achilles heal.  Patience is not something that comes to me naturally – I dive in and start the process without pacing myself for the entire journey.  For me this has lead to many unfinished projects – “Captian V Space dog” 🙁 – Top Images – Finished a couple of pages thumb-nailed about 9 pages and they have sat that way for a number of years…  because I thought I could figure the story out on the fly.  Bad Idea.  

Its taken decades to realize and I still have to remind myself to slow down and be patient.

I had to do a lot of research regarding deep sea diving and underwater habitats to help flesh out the ending.  While fuzzy animals underwater can stretch the reality of what of humans have to go through to live and work under the sea, I did want a point of reference.  Salvage of the SeaStar (SotS) has gone through 3 major iterations. 

My process for storytelling is fairly simple.  I like to initially outline my story in broad strokes then ponder different sequences and themes that I want to add.  I think their is a balancing act between pigeon holing a scene you desperately want versus the idea of the sequence and how it may fit more organically in the story.  The drawback to the latter approach is it takes time.  I have to step away from the story for a couple of days and come back to it with a fresh perspective.  And that take patience.  I wanted to be much further along but without the proper plotting of the story I think you set yourself up for writing yourself out of corners.  In this case the actual Salvage operation has gone through many rewrites to avoid just that.  No specifics just yet though!

Generally, SotS expands the world, while pushing deeper into V and Sam’s relationship.  Their backstory is hinted at a little bit but with Salvage of the SeaStar, I wanted to establish their working relationship and banter in more depth than we witnessed in the first story.  Also, just how awesome they are together as a team – in or out of the water.

Okay I know if isn’t much of an update much thats where I stand.  As I get into more rough pages I’ll start posting some preproduction stuff.  Never thought I’d spend so much time on What Captain V wears when she isn’t on the clock…