Allusionists Studios's blog/

 I have a pretty clear idea in my mind how it should work out, but if you have any questions (studio members) don't hesitate to shoot me an email.  The idea with the photography is for us to build a nice library of images, from two photographers, for the sketch artists and people refining sketches, doing environments, painting textures and overpainting to pull bits and pieces from before hitting the 3D modeling/sculpting stage. Hopefully, this will reduce (if even necessary) the pressure of starting from a blank page. Just let me know what images you are pulling from so either myself or Habib (the modelers) have as much reference material to work from as possible in the modeling phase.  

Here's a rough outline:

Story Development

Character sketches/reference sheets/character sheet

Story Refinement

{Note: This is very important for people modeling and overpainting to know exactly how much or detail needs to be in a particular panel}

Book panel layout designed (panel size and scale locked down)

Character sketches/reference sheets/character sheet

Plot/Story Refinement (Plot/Story Locked Down)

3D character modeling/sculpting from reference materials

Storyboards (environment panels with characters in them)

3D scene construction/ Storyboard composition

Pre-Painting re-coloring/Manipulation

Overpainting

Final Manipulation/extra FX

Printing

Right now I feel like our book should definitely have it's own physical proportions, which could be problematic for certain publishers, but I think we should risk it.  The aesthetic value of drawing someone into a lush graphic novel that even has the dimensions of a film frame could be very important.  What's probably more important is that working to this overall size will make the story exponentially more readable by the casual person looking at the book.  One thing that I think has repelled people from looking at graphic novels/Comic Books (the industry is in sharp decline) is the utterly nonsensical and confusing ordering of the panels; typically there is no order and panels are put together in a way that "Looks Interesting", but people have idea which panel is the first and which is the last making it impossible to actually know where the story is going or what the plot is. I would like to go with a more cinematic frame proportion.  Something closer to old school "Cinemascope" frame size which roughly had a ratio of close to 3:1.  With this kind of long rectangle and a few other technical considerations someone reading will absolutely know that on every page they can read the images from left to right and they will know what the Hell's going on with the story. 

4.25 x 11 would give us a nice and clearly rectangular cinematic canvas to tell our story on. Doubling that would be a whopping 8.5 x 22 which will almost definitely be a problem.  BUT 1 1/2 times our original dimension would be 6.38 x 16.5 which should be workable even if pushed up to 6.5 x 16.5 which shouldn't be impossible in this age of digital print setting.  Definitely let me know what you all think. 

 Interestingly enough this was a question posed by Christine, but she was only asking about that, in reference to the logo we're in the process of developing.  Imagine her shock and sense overwhelmedness (lol) when I poured out the studio mission all out and started philosophizing.

Truth be told I had it in my head and I think most you already had this in your head, just based on the concept, but I never really thought about crystalizing it and really putting it down.  So without further ado and with quite a bit of thanks from Christine here's OUR Vision/Mission statement:

The studio vision/mission is to create captivating and empowering stories about morality, mystery, heroism, comedy, tragedy, evolution and environmental responsibility vicariously through anthropomorphic characters and societies.

I think that says it all...lol.  

Since we don't have an actual book as of yet "leaking" any other plot or story info isn't a good idea. 

The general overview