FMP- How Will I Research And Experiment?

1. Peer Assessment and Questionnaire

Done a few of these already, as i was testing my main characters emotions, and seeing if an audience responded to them. All were understandable- quite the surprise considering my character has no eyes to be seen. I also asked about if the character design was appealing.

2. Read other successful comics

It may be a good idea to examine other comics. See how they work. I need to see how Watchmen does it, as apparently they push the comic to it's limit. I understand they they use colour to show emotion, and they use a 9 frame format each page. I will also be researching comics from other countries and how they do it, as there will be differences.

3. Test Groups

Once i finish the draft, I will have a small test group who will read it. At this point I can see flaws in the story, characters, etc. And work towards a greater final product. I will do this episode by episode, since I have chosen for a semi-connected format, where each story is it's own, but the whole story is every episode back to back, but you can still get a good experience from just one story. I hope to make 3 episodes or more, but if I perfect one I would be happy with it.

4. Drafts

I will have many drafts, and probably variants of each scene, and I will experiment with each and see which does the best. During this stage i can see how far I can push the unrealistic art, until it becomes unintelligible to a reader, and to be honest, as long as I use key points for a reader to reference where a character is, i think I could push it quite far.

I will also experiment with colour, if I decide to colour the comic, which I may, because black and white is hard to work with, with my limited skills, and things quickly become hard to tell apart, but with colour, it will be easier to see everything.

5. Research Culture

To get ready for the story I have been doing lots of research on History and Folklore from Asia, mostly Chinese and Japanese, but some others as well, but nothing close to the amount of Chinese. Soon I will begin research on The Wild West. I hope this new information can help me write the plot. I have been looking at their fiction as well, mostly film, as this was my main source of inspiration for this project- the similarities between samurai and western films, and how most westerns are "adaptions" and teetering on the edge of plagiarism.