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kinocomix · 2 months

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devlog 18: doo dads, inventories and recycling like responsible authors.

The script for TSTW is 17 scenes long so far, still in progress. I estimate it will be around 30 to 40, which is a welcome change given that my last comic was around 110. with that in mind…

would you believe me if i said i spent an entire day looking for an extremely specific book that i used to own- well two actually now that i think about it. I didn’t find them. One of them was a book with a bunch of electronic crafts for kids, the other was this book where you’re supposed to tear the pages to make everything from a chessboard to a cup. Not important, the point is Brandon Sanderson said something very insightful about writing characters that are smarter than you: being smart, often, is a matter of how much time you have to solve a problem. We consider someone as being smart when they very quickly have a good answer to a given question. The reason I was looking for two random ass books I owned as a kid is because I have the time to figure out how the kids are going to channel their inner bear grylls to improvise, adapt, overcome. they do not.

today, we’re going to be figuring out what we can realistically get away with as far as child inventions go, as well as talking about how as artists, reusing work is normal and shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of.

So first things first: what do the kids in our story have access to? this was the easiest to figure out because I know what living situations most of them experience, so here’s a list:

killouette: stationary and a camera. I’m still unsure which time period the story takes place in, so it’s unsure whether or not the camera is digital. It's objectively more fun if it’s a polaroid camera, because then all her pictures are physical. This is a plus because the only person with a computer in the group is talbas. On the other hand, setting the story in the mid 2000s means she probably has a small digital camera that she could connect to a bigger screen. alternatively, if i choose to set the story in the present, she could have both. unwanted old cameras left in a drawer somewhere.

bata tete: fun craft tools (paint, glue, string, ribbons, a big pile of magazines), a basket and a printer. you can’t go wrong with paint and pictures if you’re writing a story about kids, and this is also helpful because it introduces additional things to bata tete’s character: a more artsy side to complement the mission impossible stuff. instinctively i’m thinking the strings are definitely going to serve as trip wires at some point or another, and paper mache is definitely going to be involved in some way.

falefil: a po box, a piano and an electronic voice recorder. My current headcanon for falefil is that he doesn’t really like toys, so minus getting aluminum foil from his mom’s kitchen, he can probably lend his electronic voice recorder to accomplish something. maybe a makeshift MP3 player?

zmik: toys and objects intended to be used with other kids. all unused. I’ll admit this the saddest one by a longshot but it hits home a bit too hard to not include. I remember the piles of old board games, slingshots, marbles, even -the irony- a pair of walkie talkies I had that just… sat there. I like to imagine Zmik is finally in a place where he can share these things with people he likes.

motsik: broken knick knacks, pieces of mirror, detergents, bent spoons, a lot of wooden kabab skewers. It should come as no surprise that most of what Motsik has to offer is broken to some capacity, because of his violent household. the things he brings are broken because he effectively fishes them out of the trash, figuring his friends might have something they could do with them. note: motsik could also try to make stuff himself, but given his character this would be infrequent.

talbas: her uncle has an electronic equipment store, he teaches her stuff and low key is in on some of the shenanigans the kids do. despite the neglect from her parents, talbas loves spending time with her uncle whose store is nearby. he loves the fact that she’s interested in soldering and making fun doodads, so he has a budget set aside just for her. it’s pretty obvious that talbas’ uncle is the only person tethering her to a sense of purpose and a feeling of love.

claude: a lot of organic things and the knowledge thereof. Claude has little in the way of possessions, but she has a lot of street smarts. Claude keeps track of inventory across the 6 kids’s houses and frequently is the first to suggest solutions to problems.

with that being figured out, all we need to do to try to combine what they have with what the problem is and we see what comes out the other end. for example:

let’s say they need all hands on deck for something but that means ignoring a hallway where someone could come see what they’re doing. we know they would have access to stuff like strings, empty spools, simple electrical components and tin foil, so they could for example make a small trip wire using one of several methods i thought up:

this one is a pressure pad you can hide under a carpet that sets off a small light or beeper.

this one is a single use tripwire that would not require miles of electrical wire lol.

two things to note: the actual schematics in the book are going to look much nicer but also i’m approaching writing this book with publishing in mind, so I’m steering clear of actually dangerous things like blades and anything stronger than a small battery. which is a shame- i have a very funny story about how i personally once nearly set my building on fire trying to make a lamp when i was like 11, but that’s not the kind of stuff that will get published for middle grade/early young adult readers. I hate having to squash my book into a category like this, but if i’m to have any hope of doing what i love for the rest of my life, this feels like a necessary sacrifice.

now, as an aside, let’s talk about something I personally do that I think might be helpful to others and I’m going to illustrate my point by sharing spoilers for a project I won't get to for another couple of years.

Around 2014 was my very first attempt at writing something. it was a story called “Last of the Predators”, a very angsty attempt at something serious written by a version of me with no connection to the subject matter whatsoever. it had no plot outline, end in mind or clearly defined characters. Everyone spoke in the same monotone calm way and every paragraph had way too much description of the person’s emotional state. I eventually lost interest and dropped it, even deleting the blog I had been using to document the updates on.

shortly after I started making comics, i came up with the ice cream men: a story that follows two aliens kicked off their planet who arrive on earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably bringing up a million other topics along the way. This might sound fun, but when I came up with it at the time it didn’t feel enough to justify the commitment it would require. it initially focused too much on jokes and really didn’t have much to offer in the way of depth. so i shelved the idea for a while and this is the piece of advice i have:

don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them.

around this time is where my studies got in the way. When you’re just starting out trying to make art, everything stops you dead in your tracks. It wasn't until I started working on illustrating almost home that the creative gears started turning again. I came up with a whole bunch of things, but some of what I did is revisit my folder of abandoned projects. Sometimes when a project feels dull, it can be helpful to merge it with another one. This doesn’t always work but when it does it can lead to very interesting results. This is what I did with the ice cream men. I took the philosophical premise of the ice cream men which suffered from an underdeveloped plot and bad setting that didn’t suit the theme, and I combined it with the idea that survived after I cut all the slack out of Last of the predators which is the following:

The world LOTP is set in suffered a cataclysmic event that killed all the animals. Humans being how they are, they quickly built a religion around this and decided that some people have “predator souls” while others have “prey souls”, even going as far as to genetically engineer the way people look to introduce animalistic features to faces and bodies. The story is very political in nature and revolves around this role reversal that happens many many years after the cataclysm… and that’s where all the bullshit comes into play that I cut out.

As a side note, what I just told you is the polished version of the lore I rewrote for this devlog- it’s not the one I decided to settle on for the ice cream men but I'm sharing it regardless for the sake of documentation. point is: the reason this felt relevant to me is because combining this with the ice cream men added a layer of intrigue to the story which i really liked:

two aliens are kicked off their planet and arrive on a deserted planet which the reader knows is earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably discovering more about this strange planet and its past…

That past is the yet untold story of LOTP, with a less shitty name and more consideration given to the themes and mechanics of the things at play. so effectively we have several narrative layers at play:

the ice cream thing which could be a commentary on purpose or the creative process in addition to being a fun jumping off point for comedic relief

the past of the planet which could offer some mystery to the story, and maybe encourage some more serious topics to be brought up

and a third secret one, that i’m not willing to share just yet.

which i think is a story more worth telling. Here's another example more immediately relevant to our devlog. two years ago, I was thinking about how funny it would be to have unnecessarily complicated contraptions in the kitchen. the type of stuff you see unemployed engineers do for social media instead of benefiting mankind. I asked myself how would you go about making those contraptions useful: maybe someone could benefit from them if they were for example disabled, cool. too straightforward for my liking. What if they were small? like… as small as a bug? a very small chef.

how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall. that sounds fun i like it. What if it was a cookbook where part of the instructions were these complicated instructions on how to build and solder electronics? fun! I need a chef and an engineer to do that. I am neither.

don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them.

I kept thinking about that for a while. I imagined our protagonist Claude, a small hercules beetle who loves to cook. I wrote three versions of the script of a comic and even discussed making it a short animation at some point, but it didn’t feel right. it’s not the vision. It needs to be a cookbook.

queue Killouette and the fact that I’m really annoyed at how the camera can see everything. I remembered the idea I had with the cookbook, so I thought why not borrow some of that and make it a diary? Let’s add Claude in there as well for good measure. Maybe then how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall can be the one that comes after Killouette if I’m lucky enough to get funding. A grown Claude who made it big as a cook. By combining the two projects into two parts of the same series, I fixed the problem I had with the camera and added continuity to two otherwise one off projects.

So maybe that’s something to keep in mind. don’t throw away ideas, shelve them instead.

Next week we’ll be looking into the supplementary children’s book attached to killouette.

devlog updates on tuesdays.

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