Dark Rising - A Baldur's Gate Comic

1998 was a big year for me. My father got a new job and we moved from Ohio to Virginia. Starting over at a new school can be difficult, especially for a middle schooler. I think thats why when I heard about a new rpg game coming out that was a sprawling medieval fantasy with an epic story I was so excited to get it. Who needs friends when you have hundreds of NPC's with in depth back stories and a well crafted plot line? My late middle school to high school is very much defined by the Baldur's Gate series. I played each of the games several times which is no small feat considering they are probably some of the longest crpgs out there. With the new Enhanced Edition's release and nearly 15 years later, my love of the game was reawakened and Dark Rising - A Baldur's Gate Comic is the result.

The idea to make a comic about Baldur's Gate was inspired by a really talented artist who makes comics about video games, Zac Gorman. You should check out his comics too.

Figure Drawing

More figures from the Santa Monica figure drawing session. I tried something a little different with the first two drawings.

The Seed

Comics are typically thought of as a print medium. For years they have been formatted to fit nicely on the page of the funnies in your daily newspaper or your latest superhero comic book. They come in 3 to 8 panels or they are fit into a rectangle roughly 1:1.5. This is fine, especially if you are trying to keep these comics on a bookshelf or fit them in between crossword puzzles in the Sunday newspaper.

I think that print comics are totally rad, I buy them all the time. I also think that digital comics that look like print comics are totally sweet as well. I think many of the best comics began as or are still internet self published comics. The scope of subject matter and styles is staggering. Many comics that would never have made it past a comic publisher’s trashcan have gone on to become huge successes. The internet’s effect on comics has been the best thing to happen to the medium since printing. Almost as exciting as digital distribution is digital formatting of comics. If the comic will never exist beyond digital form it can be any shape and size. It can even do things that print comics will never be able to do and take shapes completely impractical for a print comic. I wrote a pretty long paper on this subject and Scott McCloud tells it better than me anyway. You can read my master’s thesis about it here and Scott McCloud has a website about the topic as well.

The Seed is my latest experiment in digital formatting in comics. There are two ways to view The Seed.

Method 1: Html 5 interface. This method is recommended to those on a desktop or laptop. The coding for the interface was done by Christian Hahn. It takes about a minute to load on a super fast connection, about 2-3 minutes on Time Warner’s pretty average cable internet plan, probably make yourself a sandwich or something if you are on dial up.

Method 2: A static image. This is recommended for people with an ipad or mobile device that can turn off the auto-rotation. Also its pretty fast to load. Web help provided by Melissa Cell

There are plenty of really talented comic artists playing around with digital formatting in comics. Here is a list of some that I thought of off the top of my head.

Like all of Emily Carrolls comics.
Magical Game Time, by Zac Gorman (uses lots of sweet gifs)
I don't know if nawlz is a comic, game, or animation but I do know that its pretty cool.
hobo lobo
and lots more, leave em in the comments if you can think of them.

Randoms

Months ago I worked on some commercial with hamsters. I also made sketches on my work notes while things rendered.

Figure Drawing

Its nice to add a little color to my normally chromatically challenged people.

Figure Drawing Detail