Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, kickstarter

When I Started My Webcomic, I Was A Different Person

Published Sun, 16 Nov 2014 13:00:40 -0600

Chirault – by Ally Rom Colthoff. Kickstarter closes November 25. Fifteen sketchooks, hundreds of markers, and seven years of fantasy webcomic.

Ally Rom Colthoff writes.

When I started my webcomic, I was a different person.

Well, not in a literal body-swapping sense. I was fresh out of high school, and only just starting to think about going to art school. With storytelling and art as joint passions, it was probably inevitable that most of my spare time would go towards drawing comics. During lectures, in waiting rooms, and on buses, I started working on a story about a demon hunter with anger issues and a little girl with a tiny problem (her problem being that she's tiny! haha). Just as a hobby, of course. Doing comics for real would be pretty crazy!

Seven years later, that same story is still going. It's grown a lot since then; as it turns out that doing three pages a week for years adds up to quite a lot of pages. The art's evolved quite a bit since then as well, although for the sake of consistency (and convenience) I still draw the pages using the same materials I started with– a big perfect-bound sketchbook, a brush pen, and a handful of markers.

I never dreamed when I started that I would spend this long on a single project. It leads to a good deal of introspection on occasion– especially looking back on my older pages; I've grown more serious about my art and more critical of it. Is it a loss of opportunity, for an artist to keep working on the same project for so long? Am I cheating myself, by not working on something new, a story from the very start, in which I could display all of the skills I've gained while working on my current comic? Should I change gears?

The truth is that in a way, I already have. Using the old material as a springboard, I'm constantly revising my plans for the parts of the story that have yet to be told. Anything not laid down in stone in the pages already posted is fair game for complete change. Some parts of my original plan for the story have remained intact — for instance, the family-like bond developing between the two main characters — while other parts have changed significantly; I've used my experience to blend my original ideas with concepts and arcs that suit my growing understanding of comics and the story I wanted to tell. This constant process of change and flux made the whole story stay fresh and interesting to me, making it constantly exciting for both myself and my readers to get to the next arc.

It's almost like piecing together a puzzle– but the final image changes when you're halfway through and you're left wondering how to use the pieces you're still holding onto. The parts already laid down can't be changed, but the meaning behind them can be constantly re-interpreted; I've found old scenes that function perfectly as foreshadowing for plot points that I didn't solidify until years later. Those moments are like a happy accident, but if I do my job right they don't seem like an accident at all.

The final product (or close-to-final, as I've got another couple years' worth of plot to wrap up before the ending) is an organic story that has grown with me, reflecting nearly a decade of experiences. Through it all, somehow, a linear narrative has taken form.

Now I'm finally hitting some of the plot events and imagery I'd dreamed of when I first started the comic, and I'm glad that it took this long to get there because I have the skills to do them the justice they deserve; details of the situation that led there may have changed, but the changes make me like it more. As I've grown I've gained the confidence and skills to approach old scenes from new angles, making changes to already published pages without interrupting my workflow or update schedule.

The result from my years of work is Chirault, a fantasy webcomic that includes themes of bonding and friendship, some explosions, unruly monsters, and a dash of body horror. It's been a long journey, but I've started a Kickstarter to print volume 1. If the last few paragraphs weren't enough to grab you, here's the synopsis from the Kickstarter page:

After being shrunk in a magical accident, a young girl needs help to regain her proper size. A demon-hunter who was passing by reluctantly agrees to assist her in finding someone who knows how to get her back to normal. However, the mages who might be able to help her are all occupied with a much larger problem: a dangerous artifact has been stolen from the powerful Mage Guild, and its thief has some dark plans in mind.