Post “A Cage called home” wrap up AMA and general discussion

Okay so many things to say in this journal, and I’m not sure anyone will see this, but first off if you have any questions just go ahead and ask it even if this journal is dead, if I see it I’ll try my best to answer.

Secondly I’d like to thank everyone who’s made it this far, I had no delusions about how niche the thing I was making was, I can’t tell how happy I am for each person who read it all the way through. Also a special thanks to Eldra who helped me proofread the comic and provided support along the way.

Lastly as teased in the final page there will be a sequel to this which will close the book on The Cage, I hope to be able to get it out in a few months and I’ve already made great progress on it. It follows the hunt for the most dangerous breed of afflicted through the cramped shadowed corners of The Cage, and I am seriously super excited and hyped up for it.

This is seriously one of the most strange and exciting things I’ve done in my life, and I’m glad to have all of you along for the ride.

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Added:	5 years, 8 months ago 05 Aug 2018 19:49 CEST

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NocturnalComic

5 years, 8 months ago

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I wanted to just jump in here out of a question I just get my general feelings out there about “A cage called home”. Which is to say, I have mixed feelings about it, there is a lot of things that make me cringe and stuff like that inside it, I think it’s very obvious I don’t have a lot of writing experience and there are times where I think the story doesn’t know what it wants to be. These are all symptoms of its rocky development which is at the very least endearing to me. At I certain point I was able to settle on the idea that, whether or not I made something “good” I made something odd and special, at least to me, and I’m excited to improve my craft in the future.

GreenReaper

5 years, 8 months ago

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Edited 5 years, 8 months ago by Owner

First off, congratulations at actually starting and finishing a 40-page coloured comic.
Also I have a bunch of questions I stored up. >_>

You posted that fast! How long did it take to create each page? Any changes/corrections along the way?

You said over here that you made Kindling up as you went along. Did that happen with A Cage Called Home, or did you plot it out fully and/or create a storyboard - or something in-between?

What tools do you used to create the comic? It looks pretty edgy - vector art tools?

What was the hardest part? (A particular scene/character, or some overall portion of it.)

Is there anything signified by the particular colours of the glowing eyes?

I thought the writing might be Braille but it isn't. Is it based on anything in particular?
(I'm guessing it'd be easy enough to read via frequency analysis if I wasn't lazy.)

Not a question but . . . man, you killed the fox off?! That's dark. (OK, so there's probably more foxes...)

Ren looks quite different to Terrax and Dess[eral] - is he actually their offspring, or adopted?
(I'm guessing from 'wife' that Dess is female and Terrax is male.)
It seems weird that he'd be an entirely different species, but maybe it's not actually a species...

So far we've seen flame, water, shadow/amorphous afflicted - are there more? Water is badass but doesn't sound like "the most dangerous breed".

NocturnalComic

5 years, 8 months ago

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Edited 5 years, 8 months ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

1. The entire thing took me 6 months and were finished in parts at different time (plan, sketch, text, as well as redone pages) so I don't know how long, but whatever the answer is it was too long. The first 10 or so pages had so many art changes, the second page was redone completely which is why it looks so much better then the third one haha.

2.Definitely something in between so much of the story and world changed as I was writing it, the entire murder plot was completely different cause my thoughts of Innate magic was completely different. It used to be the body was filled with sand and someone was basically bending it to move it around and doing ventriloquism to make it talk, this was on top of affliction and like, shooting fireballs and stuff. Actually it was finally watching Avatar: The Last Airbender that made me changed it, I saw the value in a simpler more predictable innate magic system.

3. sai and photoshop

4.Definitely the story, I'm not a writer and I felt like I was just patching together parts of other stories I listen too, but I think I got the hang of it at the end at least a little.

5.Nope, the fact that there glowing is because there reflective, based off of cats, owls, lotsa nocturnal creatures actually now that I think of it. I'm not good enough to work in colour symbolism lol

6. Those are based on the runes of magic from kindling, they were the most pain in the ass thing to draw in that comic (mostly cause they followed body curvature) and I thought since I built this coffin might as well die in it! And now they compose all the text in nocturnal. There are actually a few scenes where I wanted to show something in text like the name of Banne's company on the blueprint then remembered I made a rule to not use English lol. It isn't nonsense writing though I made a font and typed out all the words, so it's a substitution cipher I guess, although probably a confusing hard to read one.

7. Yeah with this one particularly I wanted to stray really far from what kindling was, and was trying to speak my own voice, I'm a fairly nihilistic person in reality and I usually never show people that side of me, but it feels good to let it out in the comics.

8. This will be covered more in the sequel but yes, Ren is adopted, In my world Terrax and Des wouldn't be able to produce offspring, and even if they did it wouldn't look like Ren.

9.I'm not sure, you should ask Dess about the most dangerous breed of afflicted, I'm sure she would know :3. As for a non coy answer a lot of how affliction actually works will be explained in the sequel, but as far as OC's or whatever anything you could consider an "element" in a rpg game probably has an affliction for it.

GreenReaper

5 years, 8 months ago

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@ NocturnalComic

Thanks for the extensive replies! Regarding 5: at least it's one way to distinguish between otherwise-similar characters.

6: I could see it being useful for characters with no eyes (temporarily or permanently), at least if they're raised. Although wings as arms might also be an issue for reading them, but maybe Ren has echolocation.

7: I guess I was just impressed that you were willing to spend so much of the first half building up a character who obviously had a history with Terrax, and who was directly present on almost as many pages as Dess, only to whack 'em in the finale. It worked. Incidentally, seeing your icon and your comment about nihilism, I'm reminded of InsomniacOvrlrd's Sleepaway, which I'm guessing you might like if you haven't read it already.

As for 9: I guess there are not-so-dangerous afflictions, too. Or at least people with them who are not as dangerous - even if people are still afraid of them. (That moment when Heart is replaced by another Fire in Captain Planet - so sad, yet so true. What use is Heart, really? Unless you're the ruthless, manipulative type, of course. ;-p)