Corvus

G'Day Everyone.

As you may or might not know, I've spent the last few months compiling my TransWarp story and am now looking for artists to help bring the first issue of TransWarp: Csirac to life.

The good news is that I've now got one artist on board. He goes by channandeller on deviantART, and for those that remember back to the TAAU days, he was known as Ravage.

The bad news is there is no way he can do all the artwork on his own (nor could I ask that much of him). So, in order to spruke up some interest in my work, I've decided to draft a story for the TF: Mosaic dudes in the hope I can piggy-back on their project to try and help me find artists.

To do this, I need to write a one-shot story. My answer, was Corvus. But I need some help first.

I'll post the mock up of the script in a comic sort of format below. I need to know if the story makes sense. As I can't draw to save my life, the panels are left blank, but I'll describe what I envisage in each one, hopefully that will help.

But first - context!

If you've read my works in the past you know I'm of the belief that the Tripredacus Council are ex-members of the Cybertronian Empire. They were on a scouting mission when their ship was hit by an asteroid and they were rescued by an alien who is building a huge, planet-sized space station/weapon.

Long story short, the alien's race was wiped out by the Cybertronian Empire and is building the gigantic weapon to battle the CE at the Hub, but Unicron's essence has begun to take over the station. He tortures the CE survivors, corrupting and reformatting them, killing some in the process. The alien helps them escape, but one ex-CE troop decides to stay, because he now loves Unicron. He changed his name to Corvus, and kills the alien.

And now, on to the one-shot, which takes place a few weeks after the above events.


http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/...x/Corvus-1.png

Panel 1 - Close up of Corvus' head.

Panel 2 - From behind Corvus, looking out a huge window onto Space, which is filled with debris from thousands of destroyed mechanized worlds - the debris from the destroyed Hub (See Furman's Alignment story)

Note - The rounded speech bubbles are for Corvus. The square ones are Unicron (but we don't know it's Unicron yet)

Panel 3 - A shot of Cybertron from Space. And perhaps a lay-over of an injured Optimus Prime.

Panel 4 - Another shot of the debris floating in front of huge bay doors which begin to open, thus the sound effect.

Panel 5 - Bad-ass looking Cybertronians. Unicron Cultists.

Panel 6 - A long range shot of Unicron (finally revealed in full, though his form is different, only half built and stuff. Think like the Death Star at the end of Episode 3) as he begins to devour debris. And a streak of light flies away from the huge form (Corvus on his way to Cybertron).

What do you all think? I need feedback.

I like it. It's clear you have a visual way of writing, even if you can't draw yourself. It's a very well constructed page.

In my opinion (which I'm not sure is worth a great deal ;)) I think panel 5 should be made a little smaller to allow panel 6, the big reveal, to have more prominence. Perhaps the dialogue in that panel could be one on top of another rather than Corvus's dialogue on one side and Unicron's on the other? Just a suggestion.

As I said, I think you've got something pretty good here!:)

Haha! Feedback!

Panel 6 Bigger - done. Good call.

My fear from the start with this one-shot thing is having walls of text. Stacking the dialogue in panel 5 might be a bit much, but I can play around with placement.

Thanks M-bot! And if you're wondering what Corvus looks like, think Galvatron meets Tigerhawk.

If page numbers is not an issue, I would suggest that you put panel 6 as a full separate page (i.e. page 2) on its own, to give more sense of the scale of things.

But, I think you're doing this for TF:Mosaic?

I'd agree panel 6 would have bigger impact as a larger panel if that's the pay off reveal. But a smaller Unicron could work too. Revealing the shape and identity is all that matters.

The flow of text in panel 5 is off. My eye wants to reads the two Unicron speech balloons first rather than the first than jumping to the far right and back again to the left. I'd suggest Panel 5 has a split down the middle with one bubble from each character in each half.

*Shakes fist at Panel 5* :mad:

Yeah Sam, it's for a Mosaic. My biggest fear (apart from now finding a way to get Panel 5 to work :p) is the editors rejecting the idea because it isn't set in established canon. Unicron's return, the Tripredacus Council being of Cybertronian Empire heritage, even the destruction of the Hub are all events that haven't officially happened or been made reference to before.

I'll milk the other panels as much as I can to give more room to Panel 6. I agree, a 2nd page would be lovely, but alas, I've got to work within the constraints.

Another bitch of a thing to content with is the TF: Mosaic logo that with go at the top of the page. I feel I've got to cut some dialogue, or at least trim it.

Thanks for the feedback lads, keep it coming! (I'll post up another version soon to be picked apart)

Ok, here's take two, complete with the odd spelling mistake. Sue me :cool:

http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/...x/Corvus-2.png

It's pretty boring layout wise with one frame on top of the other, and panel 6 can still be made bigger.

Thoughts?

I have thoughts. I'll share them tonight. Some need visual aids.

A powerpoint presentation?! :eek:

PM'd

With a big Thank You to Paulbot, who helped me flesh out the panels a bit more, we have a new version with some rough, and I do stress rough, images (both Paul's quick sketches and my terrible use of MS Paint. But here we go:

http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/...rvusCollab.png

Panel 1 - as before.

Panel 2 - Now has Corvus walking past a huge window showing the Hub debris, and boarding a ship.

Panel 3 - Corvus inside the ship. Out the window we see debris. On display panels in the cockpit to the left and right we see Cybertron on one and Prime on the other.

Panel 4 - Will be an even closer in shot of the maws of Unicron opening (but different so we don't give the game away that it's Unicron yet.

Panel 5 - Some bad-ass looking Cybertronians with a Unicron insigna somewhere on their bodies.

Panel 6 - The big reveal. Unicron beginning to eat the Hub debris and Corvus blasting off to Cybertron to have some fun.

Thoughts?

Thanks for sharing my sketches with the world :)

(I tried to use my graphics tablet but I can't get the hang of it so I gave up and started again with my finger and touchpad :o )

Hopefully it helps you (and others) get an idea. Rough sketches of the layout help a lot with a comic page.

This is a rough ROUGH idea what the comic would look like.

Except when it's done properly, it'd be awesome!

http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/...0x/Compile.png

Ignore Hound, I couldn't find an appropriate picture of a gangway.

Imagine how cool it could be if someone drew it!

*sigh* One day...

Well, all I can say is hat these story boards look absolutely excellent! :eek::cool:
I think these Mosaics, dude, is an excellent way of garnering some interest/attention from artists who've worked on other mosaics and might wish to expand; very glad to hear you've managed to get 1 bloke onboard already too! :eek::D

Cheers Hursty, I can always count on you for a morale boost!

She's gonna be a slow process of gaining attention and a (hopefully) good reputation.

Let's hope you get to see a finished product one day.

:confused:I was wondering how this was going, I used to be quite good at drawing but like everything if you don't stay in Practice you become crap at it:o. If you still need people to help I might have a play around this weekend and see how crap I have become:D

Cheers Orion, but I've actually got an artist and colourist signed up to do this one as of this morning! Woo!

But if you're at all interested in some other work, I've still got the first issue of Csirac that I'm looking to get drawn.

Csirac Issue #1

Sam, from here, is having a look at pages 1-4 with the BW bots, chanandeller (Ravage) from DA is taking care of the Predacon attack on pages 5-7, as well as 18. The rest is open to interest. You might like to have a look at pages 8-12, the big countdown scene?

I just read about Mosaic going the way of the dodo... how does this affect your plans? Was looking forward to seeing Corvus on there... :(:confused:

Yeah, I was shattered to hear about Mosaic. Hopefully a similar project pops its head up, as it definitely fills a hole within the fandom - that of collaborative projects.

But even if another such means of publication doesn't arise, Corvus will still get made :cool: