Follower, Page 52

CCF Fundraiser & A Minor Break

December 8, 2013 bugbyte

It’s week 2 of the CCF Fundraising Drive, and we’ve raised nearly half of our goal of $5000! This year I’ve contributed art of Eldora from Follower’s companion comic, Messenger, looking how she might if Chios had awkward school photos. The Comic Creators for Freedom are a group of webcomic artists who get together every year to create a giant collaborative wallpaper featuring characters from all of our comics, which is given to those who contribute to the fundraiser. All proceeds raised go directly to Love 146 to help stop modern-day slavery, so please consider donating today! This year’s wallpaper features art from 167 different creators, and likely includes many of your favorites.

In other notes, due to a number of things happening in real life, I am taking a few weeks off from both Messenger and Follower. I’d like to put an exact date on when I plan to start updates again, but unfortunately I don’t enough specifics to make that goal. 2013 has been a really rough year for me personally and I just need a break for a little bit while life settles down. I’d like to be back by the end of December/start of January, but we’ll see how it goes. You can follow me on Twitter @radio_chio for news and updates.

Thanks again for all your support, and I’ll be back soon!

News from the Follower side

September 11, 2013 bugbyte No Comments

It’s been a while since we’ve made a proper news post here, so let’s fix that. Just a few minor items to accompany the update this week:

Follower will now be updating with larger page images! I am not sure why I haven’t been doing this all along, but since we’re not terribly far into the comic, I’m planning to update the previous pages with larger images, and continue posting pages at the bigger size in the future for the enjoyment of your eyeballs.
If you use Comic Rocket (and you should, because it’s awesome), you can now add Follower to your lists! Shiny new banner image coming soon.
The first print issue is coming along nicely. I’ve made a ton of progress in the past week or so, and am planning to send it off for print in the next couple of weeks. I’m not happy about taking so long getting it done, but I’d much rather create a book I can take pride in than just rush and get it done, and taking the extra time has certainly been worth it. I can’t wait to see how most of these pages will look in print.
Delade has been working along on scripts, and we’ve got the fourth chapter nearly completed. Which probably won’t be available until uh. Sometime next year. Point is, we have a story to tell and we’re planning it to death. So send Delade a word of encouragement so we can get the thing roughed out. (Fun fact: the entire story is divided into about three major arcs, the first of which is five chapters long.)

That’s all I’ve got for now, so thanks for reading and stop by next week for more! If you can’t wait, there’s more stories from the same universe over on Messenger. Just with more watercolor.

That first step is always a doozy.

July 24, 2013 delade No Comments

Hi folks!

As we fire up the first stage rocket engines and begin our ascent into the story of Follower, I wanted to don my Captain Obvious costume and command your attention for an announcement: The story starts off slow.

Those of you who have some background in comics or writing know that setting and characterization are important qualities–qualities that can make or break your story–and I wanted to make sure I could hammer out the setting and the initial characters in as few pages as possible without “breaking” and “cheating” y’all out of a good story. Let me explain:

I wanted characters to act naturally in how they played their role–not as a tourist guides giving expositions to other characters where they would clearly know what the other was talking about. Imagine if, upon identifying an enemy submarine, a crewman decided to explain how to fire a torpedo to a rookie fresh out of sub school. It looks like he’s explaining it to the new guy, but he’s really doing it for the reader.

I hate crap like that. I really do. It’s lame and its stupid and it’s insulting. Why? Because if you graduated sub school–or any technical school for that matter, especially on a submarine!–you would know how to do the simplest of things. That rookie getting the lesson already knows this stuff, and the other guy is more or less wasting time, space and effort.

Stuff like that drives me nuts. Ok, rant over.

The only exhibition I want from Follower characters would be something you could pick up if you were listening in on their conversation or just snooping around their desk. And though this means the story starts off slow because we have to have a gradual introduction to people and places, the questions of “what does this mean” will have that much more heft. Everything you see on the page in this comic is a window to another world; everything has meaning and merit. This goes for setting just as much as it does characters.

These are all hints and puzzle pieces to a bigger game. Don’t rush and throw useless things aside. Take your time. And above all, enjoy!

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