Storyboarding is drawing to a close, and mock-up work has begun. Creating a mock-up is a complicated process, involving a number of steps.

The mock-up is basically a draft version of the graphic novel. It takes the storyboard and fleshes it out onto a full size scale. We’ll print out a mock-up book when they’re all done, and we can use that to do a final review and revision.

These images also really help out in the rendering phase. I could take this page, for instance, lay it on a light table and ink over it onto a clean page. Or I could scan this page into photoshop and make some lovely blacks and whites over the top of it. It gives me a lot of freedom in the rendering phase. Certainly will make that work go more quickly.

Hah! Much has been accomplished.

What, do you ask? What has been accomplished?

Script revision, brainstorm/vision-making, and some character designs, to name a few. We’ve also been peddling some exciting new ideas to incorporate that are so ridiculously stupid that they will quite simply expand your mind.

Since then we’ve been storyboarding. Yes, storyboarding for the better part of three-hundred years! O! The plethora of sketches! Yea, they loom over me now, as we speak.

And what, do I hear you ask, is our vision?

Well, friend, the novel has the same story as the upcoming movie, but it is tweaked. It is our unique thoughts on the story, our response to it. It will be darker. It will be dirtier. Visually it’s going to have a very different kind of feel.

What kind of feel?

Much like what you see to your right (an actual picture of my workspace). We plan on getting straight up messy with experimentation and grody awesome.

So what’s next?

Well, after we wrap up storyboarding, we intend to put together a full size mock-up of the book, send it off to the printers, and get all the folks from Spiral to gather around and take a look. Once we get their go-ahead, we will hurl ourselves into the meat of the thing.

Any more questions?