In a recent post I stated that I want to design a comic book. I am taking this seriously and have given myself until the end of 2019 to complete the task. I am using an 8 step process which I found on Google and step 1 is to start with an Idea.
Once again I took to Google and found a great video on Youtube on ways to come up with story ideas. The video is by Mark Crilley who has an awesome channel for anyone interesting in learning how to draw. Mark has 10 cool ideas which can be seen below:
- Base your story on a real life occurrence – Something that has happened to you or someone you know
- Do a mash-up of two or more different story genres
- Build your story on a “what if” scenario
- If you have a character but not a story, try to tell a day on the life of the character
- Think of a single scene and then try to reverse engineer a story to get you to the scene
- Keep an eye out for interesting news stories. There’s a reason why so many movies are based on a true story
- Begin by copying a favorite book or a movie and then change it until it becomes original
- Start with a location that interests you, then write about a person who lives in that location
- Don’t just watch TV, study TV (or books, movies etc.)
- Just start writing – Often a great story can emerge even when you are making it up as you go along
This list got me thinking of other sources of inspiration:
- My Kids – In my first post I said how I wanted to involve my 3 kids in this whole process. I have 3 boys, Ollie (11), Alex (9) and Zach (6). I gave them a list to fill out for character ideas. I wanted name, type of creature and super power to try and spark some creativity. The best ones were
- Chris the robot who shoots fire and ice
- Arlo the dog (My dog) who’s power is cuteness
- Tim the human with no powers at all
You can see the output of the exercise below. We all had fun but I’m not sure I got my diamond in the rough 🙂
- Mythology – I started thinking about existing comic books and noticed how some of the heroes were actually characters from some form of mythology. Whether it is Greek, Roman or Norse there are plenty of cameos from mythological beings throughout popular comics and movies. This one really got me thinking and sent me on a Google journey researching Greek and Norse mythology. It is fascinating to read through some of these old texts such as Hesiod’s Theogony and Snorri’s Prose Edda and see how they have been the inspiration for so many movies and books. Obviously Thor but also Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and even Harry Potter have themes steeped in classic mythology. The great thing with mythology is that the story lines are already laid out but still require some interpretation.
I know it might seem like a bit of a cheat to take mythological stories as the basis for my comic book but given the tight time frame I have given myself, this could be a perfect way for me to fail fast and learn valuable lessons in the art of creating comic books
I have not fully decided on a particular story yet but I am pretty certain I will pick something from Norse mythology as the subject for my comic book. I have always liked reading about Norse mythology and have spent quite a bit of time in Scandinavia so it really resonates with me. One thing I do know is that in order to keep my motivation up on this project, it will need to be a subject that I can be excited about and this seems to fit the bill.
I am looking forward to sharing the idea I have chosen and start the next step, script writing…
Thanks for reading this and as always…Go create something!