Comics

In April of 2004, Cryptic Studios, in association with NC Soft released a game into the Massive Multi-player Online Role Play Game genre called City of Heroes. For a genre defined and perpetuated by games set in fantasy worlds, where warrior and priest are the character types played and sword and spell are the abilities one gains and refines, City of Heroes was a bold step left of the norm. Rather than basing the game in a fantasy world, they based it on comic books. Not a specific series but rather the idea and concepts found in comic books. Super-powered individuals, genius level intellects, super advanced technologies, aliens from other worlds and dimensions, evil and malicious demons summoned from underfoot. These are what comprise the world of City of Heroes.

For a game that’s based on comic books, making comics based on the game seems a bit like going around your elbow to get to your thumb, but it’s less about the actual medium and more about the stories. Turning the stories into comics is simply an area to explore. For me, and for fellow fan-authors I have met, it's less about the comic itself and more about the story. Fan-fiction authors face the challenge of giving you, the reader, the details to paint the mental picture of the scene. For fan-comic producers, the challenge becomes two-fold. First, you have the difficulty of actually making the image. Many fan-comic producers turn to screen captures, more often referred to has 'screen caps' or just 'caps', from within the game itself to produce the images they require. This approach has the advantage of being easy to accomplish. Simply line up the characters you need, where you need them, and have them do an action that looks like what you need them to do. The major disadvantage of this approach is that you are limited to whatever the game engine is capable of. In the case of City of Heroes, the engine doesn't support facial expressions or individual finger movement. So the characters will always be smiling, or grinning, or frowning depending on what face was chosen for the character model originally and the character will always be pointing with all four fingers.

Some of us have tried to address these shortfalls by combining screen caps with Photoshop. The exact methods involved vary greatly, but the simple explanation is using Photoshop to edit together several pieces to create the desired image. While offering nearly infinite options, this method takes far more time than simple screen capping it. What might take four or five seconds to screen cap, may take two to hours to edit together in Photoshop. Still, this method is generally looked upon fondly for the effort involved.

Lastly, there are people who can actually draw. Since I myself can't draw free hand, I know the least about this method. I know I have talked with several artist about commission rates for making a comic and the rates or prohibitively expensive in my situation.

The second challenge with making comics is arrangingthe images so that the story is clear. How do you position a character to show that's he backing up against a wall, instead of being thrown into the wall? How do you show a character is being sarcastic versus cruel when he speaks? That's the big challenge. If you are interested in understanding that particular challenge, specifically the challenge of telling a story with sequential pictures, I would recommend you check out Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and his companion book, Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, And Graphic Novels.

With each new comic I produce, I push myself to try new things. New techniques for image construction, new Photoshop tricks, new tricks in the game, new ideas for composing a shot, new fonts to convey tone and volume... the list goes on. As you read each of my comics you will notice differences in style and technique. As a learning point, I have done my best to include information about the production techniques used in each comic under the "Production Notes" section for each comic.