click to visit larger image Epic of Sally Robertson, page 34 From The Fenworks |
In most epics, but not quite all, there comes a point early in the story when someone tries to predict the future. Usually, they’re accurate. There are a few ways in which this may happen, too. Often, the hero will encounter an oracle and the oracle will tell them what needs to be told to get the hero to do her job (usually the hero is male, but we all know I’m talking about Sally here). Or, if the hero is not present in the scene, it will be a discussion between the gods. In this case, the gods are often fighting over the fates of the mortals, and one will blab out the future in an attempt to one up the other god, and then there’ll be a reminder that not even the gods are really in control of fate. Obviously, none of that is quite what’s happening here. But it’s close enough. Or, at least, I say it is.
We’re going to get more of these scenes with the parents early in the story, setting up the background and letting us know the expectations being placed on our heroes (all three). There is also a point coming up in the next year (real time — two days Liberty County time) where someone is going to play the classic oracle and give Sally a tool for taking control of her own destiny. After that, we should be pretty well set up to do a montage of vignettes and stand alone pages ala Sunday morning Calvin and Hobbes, sort of along the lines of what might be described as the assorted trials of Sally Robertson. Then, somewhere down the line, there’ll be a critical mass of them and more plot will happen. We might get a small shift half way through the montage of vignettes, where-in Sally learns something and then also her classmates suddenly change their attitudes towards her. But later than that there’ll be a big plot development. That will hail the end of the comic. From there, I expect it to take 26 to 52 pages to “rush” toward the climax, a few real years from now (or a few Liberty County weeks or months from now).
After that, I hope to go back to the unfinished stories of the Harmless Free Radicals, and round those comics out. As a side note, I also hope to pick up where I left off with the retelling of those stories this week! I’ve got two of those pages penciled and just need to scan and color them.
Back to the present. Another trick I’m trying to do is use better segues. You can usually predict whether the next page is going to be about a different character by who is mentioned in the last few panels. It’s not perfect, but it’s reasonably reliable. At some point, I’ll mix things up and make a shift in the middle of the page. That will be really sophisticated, like a modern comic, such as Tintin or The Spirit. I’m also thinking about borrowing some visual tricks from contemporary comics, like Girl Genius or Dresden Codak, but that would be really crazy! Best left for those rare supernatural action scenes (or maybe when Carl is eating his lunch).
Epic of Sally Robertson: Predicting the Future originally appeared on Drawing Contraption on 2013/06/18.