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Hi guys. I'm editing this post to include some relevant info. The first 65 pages of the comic can be read at http://www.jaybird-comic.com If you want to read the comic sans the thread, you might want to try there, though this thread includes pages not on the site. You can buy the book on the same site or by clicking on these buttons:  €28.00 plus a 10% sales tax, €6.80 for shipping.  $36.35 plus a 10% sales tax, $11.05 for shipping. The comic is also for sale on iBookstore as an iBook: http://itunes.apple.com/book/jaybir...&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 Also, Little Jaybird has his own facebook page now: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jayb...279734188810398 There! Everything below this line is just the way it was when I first posted this thread: ____________________________________________________________________________________ Hi. This comic is about a little jaybird who lives in a big house almost by himself. It is based on a short story my brother wrote. It is in book format, so I've laid the pages out as spreads, two side by side like it would be in a book. The first page here is not the cover, but the page right after the cover. The few speech bubbles there are I've squeezed pretty full because of the smaller size for web viewing. The final font will be hand drawn for each bubble. Looking for comments and critique on whatever comes to mind, apologies for the image heavy post. This is a little less than a third done. I'm probably going to redo some of the first pages that don't read so well. I could post pages here as I complete them, is that a good idea? Edit: I rearranged the pages, as the spreads were a little confusing to follow on a screen.                       
klaivu fucked around with this message at Apr 11, 2013 around 06:34 |
| # ? Jul 10, 2011 17:55 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 20:01 |
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Beautiful art. How long to finish it, do you think? I'd like to reserve critiques of the story until after I've seen the whole thing; however I can at least say that I found it easy to follow what was happening.
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| # ? Jul 10, 2011 18:11 |
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Thanks! I think this'll take something like two to three months going with my current pace (1-3 pages per day). I've taken a sabbattical from work for this project, so I'm working on it fulltime.
klaivu fucked around with this message at Jul 10, 2011 around 18:22 |
| # ? Jul 10, 2011 18:16 |
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Extremely cool, I really like the art style. It's well drawn and doesn't stray into the "creepy furry" zone. Some of the scenes, like the wall of pictures and the cord with bells on it are very good. I'm interested to see where this goes.
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| # ? Jul 10, 2011 20:32 |
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What medium are you working in? It looks really nice.
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| # ? Jul 10, 2011 23:11 |
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klaivu posted:I could post pages here as I complete them, is that a good idea? Please do. I'm interested in reading the rest.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 02:03 |
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This is lovely and I'm stoked to see more of it. You might want to play with your speech balloons and/or text a bit. They're a tad hard to read IMO, either some more padding around the text or a different font might do nicely.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 02:45 |
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vermeil posted:This is lovely and I'm stoked to see more of it. You might want to play with your speech balloons and/or text a bit. They're a tad hard to read IMO, either some more padding around the text or a different font might do nicely. I agree completely. While it's seen as poor form in normal writing, using all caps for word bubbles isn't a bad idea, as it tends to be quite a bit more legible. With how much work you're putting into the artwork, I'd say it wouldn't be a bad idea to go the extra yard and do some hand lettering for it.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 03:09 |
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Fantastic art, I'm looking forward to seeing more.
Box of Trial fucked around with this message at Jul 11, 2011 around 06:29 |
| # ? Jul 11, 2011 06:27 |
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vermeil posted:This is lovely and I'm stoked to see more of it. You might want to play with your speech balloons and/or text a bit. They're a tad hard to read IMO, either some more padding around the text or a different font might do nicely. Yeah, I rushed it and it shows. Spent a few more minutes on them, scaled the balloons up a little and changed the font to something more legible. Edited the original post. These are all photoshop, with some of the rooms "modeled" (box and sphere primitives here and there) in 3d first, to keep track of where everything is and to help with the wonkier perspectives. Thanks for the encouraging replies, guys! New pages:     edited to rearrange the pages. klaivu fucked around with this message at Jul 11, 2011 around 14:51 |
| # ? Jul 11, 2011 09:42 |
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I'm not going to lie, this is pretty fantastic. I particularly love the panels that contrast the medals and stains.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 13:33 |
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Gorgeous stuff. The only thing I don't like is that your panel layouts are really awkward. I was always told that you should be going from left to right, top to bottom, so when I hit the page with him changing his mother's diaper I didn't understand what was going on. Took a minute of looking at the page to figure it out.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 13:38 |
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Aculard posted:Gorgeous stuff. The only thing I don't like is that your panel layouts are really awkward. I was always told that you should be going from left to right, top to bottom, so when I hit the page with him changing his mother's diaper I didn't understand what was going on. Took a minute of looking at the page to figure it out. I think the idea is that each image is a two-page spread, but there's no gap to signify that it isn't just a regular gutter in the middle.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 14:18 |
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Llamadeus posted:I think the idea is that each image is a two-page spread, but there's no gap to signify that it isn't just a regular gutter in the middle. Yeah, but it is a little hard to follow on a screen. So I rearranged them, and made the images a little bigger too.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 14:44 |
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This is absolutely gorgeous and I must purchase a copy when it's finished. I would also buy a larger print or two if you made any of those available.
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| # ? Jul 11, 2011 15:53 |
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| # ? Jul 12, 2011 10:07 |
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Looks really good to me, sorry I can't really critique it much. I riches to rags stuff, especially when it's all dilapidated and the folk still living there have lost certain faculties. Only thing that really put me off was the thread title.
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| # ? Jul 12, 2011 10:46 |
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| # ? Jul 13, 2011 09:27 |
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This is so gorgeously drawn I championed through every page even with a crippling fear of spiders. Is this getting published? Where can I buy it when it's done? Please tell me there's gonna be international shipping. 
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| # ? Jul 13, 2011 09:31 |
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I had decided I'd finish this before even thinking about starting to look for a publisher. If you guys have good suggestions or advice, it'd be welcome.
klaivu fucked around with this message at Jul 13, 2011 around 10:08 |
| # ? Jul 13, 2011 09:54 |
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I just wanted to say that I hate spiders so much I scream when I see them. But this spider that you have created is actually kind of adorable. That is amazing in and of itself, to say nothing of the absolutely gorgeous style and coloring. You have a great feel for creating atmosphere, too. I have never been more glad to have accidentally stumbled upon a thread!
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| # ? Jul 13, 2011 12:14 |
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I'm loving it dude, I also showed my girlfriend who doesn't like comics but she said she loves it and would buy it as a comic or a book etc.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2011 12:15 |
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That spider is terrifying. Did you use a reference? I can't imagine being able to stare at pictures of spiders in order to do that.  That said, this is beautiful. I have no really valuable critique to add, just saying this is awesome and I would totally buy this. I hope you continue to post pages as you finish them!
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| # ? Jul 13, 2011 19:50 |
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This is absolutely fantastic.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2011 00:30 |
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I love this! Beautiful artwork. You have a very lovely style and I really like your use of colors. Look forward to seeing more!
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| # ? Jul 14, 2011 01:39 |
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One of the best comics I've seen, both in story and art.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2011 02:59 |
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  One of the best in terms of story and art? Don't go overboard with the compliments, now  Idunn, I GIS'd "jumping spider" for references.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2011 15:37 |
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I love that last frame. This is really well done!
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| # ? Jul 14, 2011 17:13 |
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These are phenomenal.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2011 17:28 |
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klaivu posted:Idunn, I GIS'd "jumping spider" for references. There's no amount of "eugh + emoticon" to convey how much I feel for you. Every time I think I've desensitised myself to, say, looking up pictures of centipedes and/or spiders, I'm reminded that I'm really not and I'm a giant wuss. You're a bigger man/woman than I. Good job on everything. The spider is gross, the bird-person is cute, the colours are great and make it feel very dreary. Idunn fucked around with this message at Jul 15, 2011 around 02:48 |
| # ? Jul 14, 2011 18:33 |
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  VVV: Not something like full-length comic book, no. And nothing in this exact style - I developed this look for this comic specifically. Here's some slightly older stuff. klaivu fucked around with this message at Jul 27, 2011 around 13:12 |
| # ? Jul 15, 2011 14:45 |
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Have you ever done anything like this before? Other work we can look at? I'm so floored by the quality of this that I'd really like to see some other work. Either way I'd spring for a printed copy of this if I could afford it. It's just gorgeous. Sometimes it looks like 3D render or even photographed stop-motion sets.
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| # ? Jul 15, 2011 20:29 |
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  VVV: The comic is based on a short story my brother wrote. Visual narrative follows different rules from written narrative, so the adaptation was as much a translation as reconstruction. In written form, you can use things like past tense, abstract ideas, conditionals etc. We found it's not impossible to take textual exposition and translate it into visual narrative, but it is pretty hard. Instead of, say, writing a characters inner monologue to explain her motives, you have to draw a set of events that show her motives. In essence, we looked at the employment of narrative in the text, and took out of it the events it implied. Based on the set of events we then had, we wrote a script, where visually describable events conveyed a similar story the things only representable as text had. Some we had to toss, and we had to add new things to explain, for example, the motivations of the characters mentioned before. This script read like cross between a movie script and a detailed police report. Based on this, I started to create the visual script. I picked from the script the things that would convey the narrative best, picking the subject matter for an individual panel from the event described by the script. A lot of tinkering with the rhythm and emphases of the narrative went on at this stage. Also, a lot of revisions. The first draft had double the pages the final did. So after the story was sketched out, the process changed from creating new narrative to eliminating unessential narrative. For the elimination, I had several people go through the script to make sure the story came across as we meant it to. After all this, I started to draw. klaivu fucked around with this message at Jul 18, 2011 around 09:44 |
| # ? Jul 17, 2011 12:44 |
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What's your writing and revision process like?
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| # ? Jul 17, 2011 18:27 |
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just chiming in to say this is absolutely gorgeous, and don't listen to those spider haters, that spider is adorable too.
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| # ? Jul 17, 2011 19:04 |
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This is so cool!!! I love it
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| # ? Jul 17, 2011 19:09 |
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I just really like drawings of birds so I came in here for that and these are extremely well done, kudos to you. Please let us know if they get published!
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| # ? Jul 17, 2011 21:21 |
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Hit a couple of pages I'd finished earlier. Therefore: extra pages.     
klaivu fucked around with this message at Jul 18, 2011 around 18:50 |
| # ? Jul 18, 2011 18:47 |
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Incredible! You've done an excellent job conveying the characters' personalities.
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| # ? Jul 18, 2011 19:26 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 20:01 |
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Wow, this is really good. I have a connection with a writer (writer of Aspire) who works with an indie publisher (Movement Magazine). If you wanted to get this published and distributed I could talk to her and maybe giver her your contact info and show her the work you've done so far.
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| # ? Jul 18, 2011 19:39 |
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