This article may also be found, along with loads of other stuff on the 6 Icons Blog which is a journal of my current primary incredibly exciting project. Exciting mostly because it’s the first thing I’ve ever worked on that I thought might turn a coin… Read on at that location.

It’s a well known fact that a writer with little to do will retreat into a corner and write something. That, after all, is how they ended up becoming writers in the first place. We seem to have entered a phase in the development of 6 Icons where I have very little to actually do.

I’ve animated about a third of the first episode and written some notes for further development but aside from that I’m just hanging about waiting for the first pictures to emerge.

There’s the continuing problem of the music, of course. But we’ve got a direction we really need to have more of an episode for that.

So this writer has little to do.

Guess what he’s done next.

I didn’t want to start something new in this inevitable downtime while the Doodler gets his head properly round the project (after all as any fool knows writing a decent script is child’s play, drawing all the pictures for it… tough, very tough). So I went back to revise an old work. This is going well but I’m even reaching the end of that project now as well.

That leads us into a calendrical coincidence. It is now creeping up on Mid September. Which means it will soon be October, and after October comes November.

And what does November mean?

Well, that’s a question I’ll leave you to think about until nearer the time. Until then I shall just drop the title “Uncian” which may mean something if you have been paying attention.

This article may also be found, along with loads of other stuff on the 6 Icons Blog which is a journal of my current primary incredibly exciting project. Exciting mostly because it’s the first thing I’ve ever worked on that I thought might turn a coin… Read on at that location.

We finally have three minutes worth of animatic and sat contemplating this last night. Essentially work continues. It’s really very tedious, we’re not having prima donna strops and retiring to our Winnebagos. We’re just quietly continuing to work away and while it doesn’t make for a superb dramatic blog experience at least we’re inching ever closer to Episode 1, Chapter 1.

I would like to tell you a little about the setting of our story, known colloquially as the Good Earth. It is known as such although there is no “Bad Earth” with which to contrast it. The Good Earth is generally known to be an abundant place to live. Indeed all shortage and poverty that exists on the Good Earth is created by its inhabitants. It is blessed with rich seas, and plentiful croplands. The population is advanced but small. If it weren’t for their many disagreements the place would be a paradise.

There are three major continental landmasses, Lacertillia, Uncia and Duntroon. Roughly speaking Jungle/Tropic, Temperate/Desert, Arctic/Mountainous. Lacertillia to the West devolves into a pepper of small islands called the Titan Archipelago. The major conurbations of the planet are to be found on the gigantic landmass Uncia which is actually named for a goddess who came out of the icy Northlands of Duntroon uniting many of the tribes before eventually dividing her Empire into three.

All of the land masses are joined by the Northern Ice Sheet and the two northlands Metatheria in the East and Phaethon in the North. The only inhabitable mountain territories in Duntroon are the land of Aquila which is in the south east bordering the gigantic Corda Valley and in the North West the mysterious kingdom of the Duntrooni who seldom interact with any of the other of the Good Earth’s inhabitants.

The majority of the Good Earth, about three quarters of it, is covered by the vast Titan Ocean and in the distant far flung centre of this ocean are a tiny scattering of islands now referred to as the Broken Islands. Weapons testing have left them hollow, haunted shells.

Anyway I can tell you all this in words but hopefully soon you will be able to see some pictures. And we haven’t even got into the urban areas, the history or the mythology of the Good Earth yet.

Trust me, this is a deep, rich world where we’re hoping you’ll enjoy spending a lot of time.

This article may also be found, along with loads of other stuff on the 6 Icons Blog which is a journal of my current primary incredibly exciting project. Exciting mostly because it’s the first thing I’ve ever worked on that I thought might turn a coin… Read on at that location.

It’s been a quiet week in Icon land but that is actually quite a good thing. The reasonb being is that in a quiet week everyone can get their head down and do some work.

I’ve been animating madly and the Doodler’s got further into the whole drawing program thing, basically the team’s been working away quietly and that means that we’re inching ever closer to our first chapter and from there the rest of the exciting saga.

I’d love to post up something a little bit more detailed but I don’t think I really have anything worth looking at. A script for a comic book is only really of interest when the comic book exists. If you’ve got no pictures per se it’s impossible to really get all gung ho about how great the script will look when it’s drawn, after all that depends who draws it.

Rest assured the Doodler’s doing some good stuff and we’re both loving the slowly evolving animatic, when his drawings and my animatic collide we’re going to have one helluva light show for you all.

Until then I’ll get thinking about what else I can tell you about the world of the Six Icons.

This article may also be found, along with loads of other stuff on the 6 Icons Blog which is a journal of my current primary incredibly exciting project. Exciting mostly because it’s the first thing I’ve ever worked on that I thought might turn a coin… Read on at that location.

To coincide with the release (in the UK) of The Dark Knight this week and given all the chat about the characters so far I thought this Sunday I’d talk a little bit about why we’re talking about icons. This whole project started in the first place because I asked the Doodler what it was he really wanted to draw. You can see examples of his answer below. (Not on the leostableford version.)

From my point of view I had never written any kind of comic strip before and I knew that what I wanted to do was keep my storytelling simple. The reason is that in the past I have made the odd attempt at comic stuff and it’s not a novel. In a comic you have very little time to riff, you have to stay pretty glib and communicate in short bursts. This gives comic writing a laconic air that suits a particular type of humour.

I wanted to talk about the concept of icons because comic book characters are, quite literally, iconic. In a way this project is going to be a comic project about comic strips and their subjects. In one way this is quite a clever idea but it’s mostly clever because it’s so dumb.

I figured that all the gaps in my talent as a comic strip writer might end up papered over a little better if I was writing a script for these characters because they are the kind of characters comics are supposed to be about.

Hopefully this will shine through in the finished product, for that, you will have to wait and see.