Falling in love with your first draft...

Never a good idea, is it? If you can't be flexible with your story, especially early in the game, don't be surprised if you find yourself discouraged to continue it, later on.

TV shows have pilot episodes for this reason. Comic books have the rare ability of being able to and indeed are practically expected to, evolve as the artist and writer matures in their craft. And one of the things that still draws me to the medium, especially in the middle of the golden age of information technology, is the connection between story teller and audience. I love books, but I think comics are even today, more accessible. For that reason, whenever I put out a book -- even before I do; the critiques start a-flowin'.

One of the first ones I got when I published the first character models for Varulv was, unsurprisingly, "All your characters look like chicks". And I couldn't have agreed more. It's not always the case that I agree with critique -- I obviously do what I do, most of the time, for a reason... But right before I went to work on the actual pages, I decided to consider this girly-man-ness, and put a different twist on, of all characters, my main protagonist. Once again, it's not always the case, but this time in doing so, I became better connected with the character. Here's a before and after shot to show you what I mean, in the visual sense:


That's a pretty basic Photoshop-only mock-up, I know... but it works for my purposes. Dude is now more muscular (helps, especially when doing a black and white comic, to distinguish him from other characters), has an older face (As I said in an earlier post, I scrapped the idea of young-character-grows-up-before-our-eyes) and I even darkened his locks to dirty brown (again, a moot point when creating a b/w comic... but it suits him better, I think).

As a character, Kjell became wiser, more experienced than his initial concept. He was older, better suited for combat, for sure, and more of the typical leader type. You might think I sort of "sold out" in that department, but really, until I started developing the characters around him, I honestly hadn't thought too much about what we could expect of him. Now I think I know better, and he definitely fits in the dynamic of the whole team of main good-guys, much more believably.

Anyway -- that's a whole lot of explanation for what is basically just having a character go shopping at the gun store and later, getting a dye job... but lesson learned nonetheless:

If something is rubbing you wrong about your initial work, and I don't care how major or minor a part that thing plays in your story, don't be afraid to change it.