How trying to speed things up led to a story idea!
Okay, so issue #21 starts with Lloyd alone on his and Bear’s ship drifting through space. The ship’s clearly been damaged and looks to be low on power. How did this happen? How will he save himself? And most importantly… how did I come up with this idea?
Well… the answer for that last question is easy. I was trying to speed things up!
You see, I’ve realised that I’ve been taking my good time getting the LatB books out. Part is that I’ve had other projects on the go but also I’ve learned to relax a bit and take things easy (that’s a good thing, right?). That all being said I wanted to get back on track and speed up my production times a bit and it got me thinking back to issue #4 of the 80’s Alpha Flight comic where the main character, all dressed in white, ended up fighting a polar bear in a snow storm and a number of the pages were just white with sound effects and it was both a cheeky and awesome idea that I loved it!
This got me wondering if I could do similar and have Lloyd stuck on their ship in the dark. Kinda like this;
As I thought about it the story moved around starting with Lloyd talking to ‘Puts on a nearly powerless ship while at the same time Bear and Griff are out having some big adventure. It seemed messy and also maybe slightly boring so the chat got moved to a two pages special at the end of volume #5 and was more in a fact file than story (although it will get linked to this book and why Lloyd is alone on the ship)!
I then moved to Bear and Griff being stuck on the ship and being in some kind of danger but that REALLY didn’t work (especially as I knew that issue #22 was going to be Bear-centric)
Theeeennnnn I went back with Lloyd but I quickly realised that a full issue set in darkness just wouldn’t work. Like, I really didn’t have any good reason behind it all and at any moment – like what Lloyd ends up doing – he could put on his Bubble armour and then he’d have light!
So a bit more tinkering and finally (FINALLY!) I came up with a cause and from there it was down to imaging what Lloyd would do to fix it. And what was his solution? Ah, you’ll have to read the book when it’s finished to find out but for the moment check out how the page turned out with that panel above in it!
More soon! Bear hugs!
PS. That final panel was redone three (THREE!) times! Geez… But hey, it’s done! (What do you think?)
