Readers and Sunnyville fans, I apologize for not keeping up with the blog’s regular Saturday schedule. During the month of August, I had personal visits from family, who came all the way out to North Dakota to see me. I was not able to get much work done though I have been going over ideas for the next installments of Sunnyville, including my planned fourth volume for 2017.
Sunnyville #13 thumbnails get worked out.
I should be able to have more pages of Sunnyville Stories #13 next weekend over Labor Day as I’ve nearly gotten the thumbnails worked out. Tonight, I’ll be working out character designs for the all the new characters that we’ll be meeting. To be honest, I’ve had a number of challenges in laying out and setting the pace of the story.
As the plot revolves around Rusty’s mom and another town mother (the local nurse) getting upset over Rusty being into fantasy games and books, I’m setting up another “parent vs. child” conflict. Representing that conflict and ultimately resolving it has been my big challenge not just in the writing but in the artwork too. What’s more is that since Sunnyville #13 will be free to read, I’m obliged to make it the best I can as I want people to read more of Sunnyville.
Another task of mine is to keep the stories in mind that I want to tell. Some of the last stories I did…I didn’t feel that they were what they could be. When I was doing the early Sunnyville tales like #2 and #3 (available to read in the first volume), I had plenty of time to think about those stories and I went over them repeatedly (in my head and aloud) to make sure everything sounded right.
To make sure I have a solid story down that I can build a script from, I decided to redo some of the story treatments I had written three years ago.
I’m going to be keeping notebooks filled with story treatment and other notes on Sunnyville. Yes, that’s a doodle of Cerebus the Aardvark on that page. I’m planning to have him and Little Nemo as special guest stars in Sunnyville #14.
On the subject of Cerebus, I very much want to retain these notebooks for posterity. Many of Dave Sim’s notebooks are being scanned and archived for future generations; check out the Moment of Cerebus blog for more information and samples. I want people of the future to see the creative process and the thought put into Sunnyville.
Stay tuned for more comics pages next week as I’ll have at least a few to show then.
Sunnyville Stories Vol. 1 (ISBN 9780615653921) is still for sale on Amazon. Copies of Sunnyville Stories Volume 2 and Von Herling, Vampire Hunter are for sale right now at Great Stories. Check out Direct Textbook too for more details on my books! And if you have an Amazon Kindle, get Sunnyville Stories Volume 1, Sunnyville Stories Volume 2 and Von Herling, Vampire Hunter for it today!
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