Creating the Unknown

I thought for this post I'd explore (no pun intended) how Shawn and I create an Explorers of the Unknown story.

Early on, Shawn and I decided to work Plot First (a.k.a. "Marvel Style"). The formula is as follows:

Plot Synopsis+Art+Dialogue = Comic Book

On every EOTU story we collaborated on, we use this method. Looking at the current EOTU story, "My Coma Vacation", here is an example from the plot synopsis...

"The Fire Goddess hovers over her! Jane panics, she bursts into flames and flies away from the Goddess. As she flies away, the Goddess reaches out with an open hand and then makes a fist."

From these couple of sentences, here's what Shawn comes up with...

Shawn then emails me the penciled pages and now it's onto the dialogue script. Here's the dialogue for this page...

PAGE 13:

PANEL 1: JANE – It can’t be.

PANEL 2: N/A

PANEL 3: SFX (Jane’s flame trail) – FFWWOOOSSSHHHH

PANEL 4: FIRE GODDESS -- illegible demonic speech

All the panels with description "N/A" refer to silent panels obviously. When Shawn's art is telling the story, I make sure to get out of the way...less is more!

After Shawn receives the dialogue script, he letters the page, does some Photoshop magic and posts the page. Here's the finished product...

So there it is, that's how an EOTU story gets created! Take care everybody!