I feel like I've been working on this forever, although it's only been a few months. I wanted to find the perfect form for telling stories. I noticed some times of scenes and sequences worked better as text, some worked better as images, and some worked better with a combination of both. Traditional prose, novels, short stories, and novellas are perfect for the first type of scenes, and comic books are perfect for the second and third type. But what about stories with all three? Almost every story has them. I also wondered what the images should look like--should they be black and white line art, should they have tones, should they have color?
So I set out to create a form that was flexible enough to handle all three. And I did it with a story I've been kicking around in my head for a while--a murder mystery, scientific conspiracy thriller that makes you question what you think you know. I also tried a new style for the art work. I used a Zig Calligraphy pen to ink the drawings (I love how it traces form) and a free
set of textures I found online for anyone to use. It made rendering them so fast and led to my "raw umber" style I've used in a
couple of illustrations.
Publishing this also presented an interesting challenge because of the unique layout. So I decided to publish it as a series of images. This meant the file size was too big for one book, so I split it into two and made the first part
free. I
posted it online for all to read and enjoy and, hopefully, entice to buy part two.
Was I successful? You'll have to tell me. Will I continue writing stories in this format? We'll see.
Go to
http://www.wanderingkoala.com/s_caveman.php and check it out! And then go buy a copy of part two.
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