I have edited my comics slightly so they fit over at the Webcomics Nation site. Have been doing this as I will change server soon and in the gap my comics will still be viewable over there, and, actually, I do quite like the format/site layout at Webcomics Nation. Also, It allows me to see what my ‘side scrolling’ comics look like on a flat ‘normal’ page layout (landscape, one above the other, on a vertically scrolling page). It might even be an improvement maybe, I think, surprisingly. I am still in the process of uploading pages but have managed to put a fair amount of the following comics up:

Refuge (serial comic, four chapters so far),
Sand-Pit (Word Comic),
JoJo (Word Comic),
The Knife (Part of Refuge),
The Stranger (old word comic) and
Train Journey (part of refuge separated form new comic narrative),
already uploaded to my little area of the site. More stuff to come!

The Webcomics Nation site is soon to merge with Comics Space. When this happens, in a few months time, people will be automatically redirected to the new site, so I’m told. Not sure what this new place will look like. If it is a problem I will be looking for a decent site to house my comics. At the moment I cringe at a lot of content on Webcomics Nation, that’s when I dare to look. I suppose I can’t speak really. There are some good things I have read there. For me Webcomics Nation good as the design there seems to accommodate my comics well and it may get more people who enjoy comics to look at them. Saves being stuck out in the blogosphere I suppose. I will have to look around a bit more to see what other hosting sites there out there now. Who knows what this new ‘Comics Space’ is going to be like. I am happy currently but in two months time that may change. Be easy to upload somewhere else.

I had an idea for Hungarian dancing at one point as I wanted it to be a eastern European dream. However it ended up being more American western, on the prairie. I liked the idea of running through the long prairie grass. Also that landscape and culture is so set that it is interesting to put things in it that are maybe unexpected.

Experimenting with size the characters find them selves in self propelling toy train that stops when it wants to (or when I want it to). The space they are in is a convenient 3D panel with the scenery passing by them only getting out when I have decided that it is the right place. Then they go from claustrophobic interior to open expanse, then back into interiors again but separately this time and each follows his own parallel narrative in his own separate part of the dream. Joining back again having changed from their individual experiences and the dynamics of the relationship have changed (in the dream that is).

I had the idea that the characters would be at once children and grown men at the same time and life would fluctuate between so called childishness and adult behaviour.

The dream behaviour allows the narrative to travel from place to place that are variously linked by objects, words, symbols and a certain amount of repetition along the way.

Further planning pages from Refuge updated later.

More panels for Chapter five of Refuge Online Comic.

Going to post some planning sketches. Some relating to the rest of the story and others showing the planning drawings for panels already uploaded. It started out quite different to what it is now. I started out drawing 12 panel pages, portrait style.

The characters were also different. I had to do a few redrawings of the first pages in order to create a way of drawing that I was happy with.

I was thinking even of keeping the pencil drawing look or even using charcoal but settled on pen and ink (or a simulation of) for the final version. I may however use pencil or charcoal again in the future.