So after months of working in one direction with the new story, it has taken on a life of its own. I am happy and frustrated by this. I have already drawn, inked and colored a number of pages that may need to be scrapped. Its my own fault for not being patient and not heeding the simple advice of outlining and scripting before getting started. As someone "not on anybodies radar" I was hoping to create a more fluid "stream of consciousness" style to my approach but apparently that will not work for me. I am happy that the world of Captain V Spacedog has grown and become a little more serious. For a project that started out as a goofy experiment, its traction with my nephews and myself is awesome. So now I will take the time to outline and script this back story.
Before Captain V was a captain of anything she was an orphan on Mars during it's first century of colonization and terraforming. Fending for herself on the streets with a loyal crew of deviants, she finds herself dodging in and out of skirmishes and near misses while the planet's occupants fight for freedom and independence during the Second Terraforming War. The war is largely a back drop for her story and how she came to know Drogo Blekk and just what their history has become.
While I have outlined a number of key plot points and stories that will help evolve our main characters in their relative directions, I have not reached a satisfying gluing of these parts. Currently, the plot points are a group of short stories executed in flashbacks between scenes that continue the Space Heist Storyline but this current structure is also limiting the impact of their back story. One of the greatest issues with telling prequel stories is you already know where the characters will end up and that they will survive any life-threatening scenario you put them in. But Space Heist really only establishes Drogo as a bad guy and Captain V as a good guy in the generalist of concepts so fleshing out their back stories can still have an emotional impact. And I hope to show how choices our characters make as well as the effects of their environment directly play a part in their rise or fall.
I also would like the opportunity to update Dog Star One and The Mantid as I've become a better artist and I can see where I cut corners when designing certain things. So my goal is now to publish at least once a month, new art and sketches as well as updates on the scripting of the new story. My guess is once I have a hefty chunk of the story scripted and maybe even thumb-nailed I will return to drawing the webcomic. I do not want to put a launch date on this as I've already pushed this back a number of times but hopefully by late spring early summer I will be able to start the weekly or bi-weekly webcomic.
