Jocelyn Samara
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Moonlight Wanderers - Page 1
🕑 Added 2017-09-21 15:00:37 +0000 UTC Hi, everybody! Welcome to the first page of Moonlight Wanderers, a Pokemon Moon Nuzlocke Comic. If you're familiar with my work with Rain (which I'd imagine you are, otherwise I'm surprised you're here), you know I usually like to include a blurb with my pages. And there's a lot to say right off the bat. ^_^The first thing you might notice is that this page is quite long. It is almost the length of four Rain pages. The plan for MW is that when it starts, it'll probably only go up one day a week, but with longer and more artistically complex pages than Rain. Actual page length may vary from one to the next, so as to offer fewer restrictions (more room for setting up dynamic scenes or conversational dialogue). So they won't all necessarily be this long, but some could potentially be even longer.
Another thing I wouldn't be surprised to hear is: "What the hell? It's day time!" It's called Moonlight Wanderers after all, so the majority of the comic will indeed take place at night. Buuuuut for story purposes, it does start in the middle of the day.
Speaking of story, we never see Maya get Tsukiko. And there're hints of a disapproving mom and being unconscious for a couple days. The professor is shown in a flashback with his back turned talking about her nearly dying. Wut? If you're familiar with the Pokemon Sun and Moon games, you're probably aware that it takes way too long to really get started. Ironically, even in my efforts to diverge from that, it led to about a dozen or so scrapped openings where it'd be three (or more) of "these-sized" pages before she'd even meet her starter Pokemon.
So I'm taking the in medias res approach (ie, start a bit after the beginning, and fill in the blanks later as we go). Maybe it's still a little slow and exposition-y, but I personally think this is the most efficient way to approach it.
Finally, I want to address the art. Now that I'm showing this, I'm seeing in hindsight I probably could've done more with the background. It's mostly just the sunny sky (which admittedly has more depth than the skies in Rain), the grass at Maya's feet, and a couple bushes/trees. I admit it's all a bit rough looking, but bear in mind that it's all very new to me to even attempt this kind of thing. Ideally, I'd like to see the backgrounds look better and better with every page.
There's still a lot to say, but I want to hear what you think so far. What do you like? What do you not like? How do you think it looks (either individual points or overall)? What do you hope to see in the future? If you're familiar with the games this is based on, how well do you think this stacks up so far? If you're not normally into Pokemon, is this something you might be willing to read more of?
And of course, your questions are absolutely welcome too! ^_^
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you liked it!
Comments
Sierra Davis
An amazing start to a comic that I will no doubt enjoy!
Carin Maja Brooks
I love the choice of beginning in media res, and while I've never had much interest in Pokemon, this makes me excited. As for constructive criticism: The skies look as though it is mid morning and there is a heavy fog. The color at the bottoms of the frames is great. The grass is a bit too blue, even for Moon. Along with color, Maya seems oddly off, which could just be her being at a lower saturation. Also, with her tattoo, if you take its saturation down, it wouldn't pull to much from the scene while still being present.
