/coc/ - Projects

Gonna eead theough this a bit before sleep. I'll see if i can get through the document in a timely fashion.

>>420332
> I don't want to fall into that trap of "I can do better now" though. I've seen too many artists never finish a comic because of that.

From what I recall, the big story beats are set like concrete, no amout of "whatabout"s is gonna make me think the herculean task of making any big sweeping changes fit back into the story worth it. Think most we were dealing with was connecting beats togehter issue by issue and hammering out odd dialogue.

>>420336
We'll just take it issue by issue then, hopefully I'll have tie to start re-reading through it later today.

I've made it through the prologue, if you want to try and start working on that, or I can read ahead afew issues to see if there's particular callbacks? though I don't recall that happening

>>420339
I'd say just focus on anything that stands out to you as bad right now. If you found something in the prologue then lay it on me.
I'm reading through the prologue and I'm already catching typos. I'm fixing them as I go in the doc.
Really dumb stuff like "nortal" and "lust-educing".

If we wanted a long shot callback, we could put a callback in the epilogue where /co/le gets a second round with Arms Guy, but we'll get to that when we get to that.

>>420340
As far as the story beats it seems fine. I do notice that the dialogue is light, a lot of "and they something like". We could add that in, but if it's we're doing straight spell check and flow check, we can move on.

>>420341
As I read through it I'm going to make changes here and there. I've already done so throughout issue 1. Nothing huge, just phrasing, chaining some instances of describing it as if it were comic page or a movie to just describing the scene itself... and adding in that SG is walking away from that bed with no modesty because it's just how the scene formed in my head.

As far as dialogue goes I'll keep it in mind and see about adding more as I read through, or adding in any suggestions you have.

What should our main focus be for this pass? Just re-familiarization and fixing anything we come across that we didn't notice before?
Or are we looking to seed in more call-forwards and callbacks?

>>420342
Sorry about no communication, gotta love last minute chores stapled on.

I guess I'm more curious of if you wanted to start adding more to the doc or more focus on tightening up what we already have. I can go either way, as I'm sure there's more spots that can use dialogue as we go on.

And speaking of treating this like a script or a comic, how do we want to treat this document as a whole?

>>420344
As I read through it I do see areas where I would add more, as in more description in general. More things happening with the scene presented. That can lead into more dialogue. It's just hard for me to insert spoken lines where none feel like they fit the scene. I'm the sort of person who doesn't feel the need to fill silence with words for the sake of it, so that makes this aspect more difficult for me than it should be. So if you find a spot you think someone should be saying something more, let me know and we can fit something in there.

I don't think I want to convert this to a comic script. The flow of movement and dynamic actions are better left to the imagination of the reader in this case.
This story as a whole should be more of a prose piece, so that will be more my focus. Chaining parts that say "scene change" or "cut to another scene" or just "later" I'll need to rework to actually describe the change rather than saying the change happens.

>>420345
Well, if you are offering to add more dialogue, we can start with the prologue. the main one that sticks out is just the bit of the Goddess of Shadow Puppetry Right, we didn't really come up with a name for her, did we. that was part of the plot of the story, though, right? overhearing the two women gushing over the action hero.

Moving onto the issue 1. First thing that I can nitpick is just changing the "Our story" to "The story" . I assume I put that in thinking this would be a comic script with a narrator (During the time I was reading early Spider-man so the narrator was much more "True Believer-y)

The other thing would likely be how the dialogue exchange is basically like a movie script rather than a flowing story, that many need some sprucing up.

>>420346
She does have a name, it just doesn't get revealed until near the end of the story and I've forgotten how to spell it since it was based off of an old name spelled backwards and changed a little.
Side note: I've started imagining her shadow being like Wanda from Baman Piderman (really glad that came back). Same energy.

OK, I can add something there.
“Oh my god, did you see how ripped he got for that roll?”
“I know, right? And the oil budget must’ve been straight from the 80s!”

Yeah, I think we were leaning into a movie/TV show script style in some parts with the name of who is speaking prefacing the lines. Depending on the situation I might keep that if I can't come up with a less repetitive way of showing who is saying what like the standard "said Cole", "Cole shouted", "asked Cole", etc. Not every line can have a description of what a person is doing when they say it since people usually relax more when they're just talking.

>>420347
Oh, you want the shadow like that? Anything tho get me to binge the later eps of that show, recall not having enough time to watch the series around the time she showed up. I do recall her shadow has a visual gag potential (most vivid is her shadow trying to get at Skathi's but is too weak to do anything)

the prologue dialogue looks fine to place hold. I guess it depends how you wanna play if off, but I feel like the dialogue is a bit off from what girls would say. Maybe some moms. I'd also space out the dialogue so it's obvious there's dialogue there you are using roll as opposed to "role", tho

If you want, I can take a crack on how to write out the issue 1 dialogue. I actually have a gmail now, so maybe I can request suggestion privileges?

>>420348
With any luck there are going to new episodes of that show very soon. Re-watching them as they're being re-uploaded to the animator's actual youtube channel as been a rare joy this week. Ghost Night 2 in particular does a lot of neat visual gags with her and shadows.

>roll
Fuck. This is what happens when I do stuff late at night... or ever with how tired I am all the time now.

Sure, I'm fine with granting suggestion privileges. I think I've enabled that now.

>>420349
Putting in my bit of edit suggestions, not really liking how google comits a suggestion if you take longer than a second to type

Did we have an idea of the type of costume Cole wore in the prologue? I was thinking something super milquetoast, the spandex suit with trunks ala superman, maybe not even a cape. I only ask because I'm thinking of him making a comment on how SG goes with a theme and he thinks to himself "Well, it's not like yours was particularly great."

>>420350
Yeah, I got an email saying there's been like 150 suggestions.

A couple things to note, first:
"When you're doing dialogue like this-" says the anon behind the screen.
"-and another character is talking, either as part of the conversation or in response-" interjects the shadow of the anon behind the screen.
"-you don't put a paragraph space between the lines." concludes the anon.
The most you do is an indentation before the dialogue paragraph starts. The extra blank paragraph between the lines is double spacing, which is something that has been ingrained in my mind not to do.

Second, if we're chaining all instances of /co/le to Cole in the story then the doc does give me an option to use find and replace all. If we're making that decision now for the sake of not getting thrown off by google doc highlighting all of them as wrong, then there is a quick fix option.

As for /co/le's super suit in the prologue, I like the idea of him wearing full body spandex. Since his gifted gloves from the goddess have stripes we can have his original suit have similar stripes that go from his fingers all the way up the arms and then looping down and around the body. Yes, modesty trunks sound like a good idea.

I'm gonna go through and review these changes now.

>>420351
Oh crap sorry!

As for the note, Good to note. I'll try to remember that. I know I had a cheat sheet for dialogue, maybe I Oughta look through that a bit more

Oh yeah, /Co/le is nice as a title, but I think in this instance just going Cole is good since it just seems we're going the route of "hero with no alias"

>>420352
Yeah. I'm working my way down the doc and I'm trying not to butt in where I see you actively doing stuff.
I'm going to work my way back through the prologue and see how indentations will work in google docs for the dialogue. Usually a spoken line doesn't need to have a paragraph space between it and the descriptor paragraph preceding it so long as they are related.

I already did the find and replace all for Cole so that should make things a little smoother going forward.

Ah, yeah, that's what happened, Kept forgetting the indents

>>420354
When it's a long paragraph describing a scene and just one character's perspective, it's usually fine to leave dialogue at the end of that paragraph. I was trying the indentations in the prologue and a lot of them didn't look right, not the way I remember being taught anyway. It might come down to visual appeal.
Once two people are talking in the same scene, that's where they really become useful.

I'm trying to stay at least two paragraphs behind you, but it may be easier if I just look through the next wave of changes tomorrow since I know how it feels to have written something, have a better idea or want to make further tweaks, go back and change stuff, but then someone else has already put in notes or something.

>>420353
You think we're lacking on the shadow gags right where I'm working, or do you want to keep it to just what we have and keep it from too much stuff happening?

>>420356
The shadow is an extension of her being. I may write them as two separate characters, but it's more like her subconscious, or a manifestation of her powers as a constant force on her surroundings.
In the current scene you're at, right before she rocks /co/le's world it looks like, I think there shouldn't be too much focus on her shadow. She wants /co/le looking at HER.

I think the best place for a shadow gag would be after she's done riding him. Her shadow grabbing his shadow contentedly.

>>420357
Alright, I think that'll do for my bit of edits. I think I should've at least reformatted the dialogue properly through the first issue. I did have one bit of the godess' shadow, but you can tell me if it's too much. Either way, I've put my suggestions for today.

>>420359
I think that works. I did some further edits to it so her shadow splits into many arms to lift him off his feet after he tries to resist the one hand on his shoulder.

As for the final line being
>“I think my situation might require a meeting right now."
I don't think that's better than
>"Looks like I don’t have time to wait for them to call me back after all.”

The line is a callback to when Cole was talking about The Collective at the start of the chapter. He was talking about them in terms of actors getting callbacks for roles which I wanted to mirror here.

>>420360
Fair enough, but I still think there needs to be a change to it. maybe just shortening it.

Adding a few extra edit, mainly spelling mistakes I made, but notably adding an indent for the post coitus dialogue.

I also noticed you changed up the edit I made to SG excusing her design choice. just wanna know the thought behind it, in case i need to take it into account for the future

>>420361
SG's design choice is very much so a "ha ha, yeah, magic is hard, OK?" to hide her horniness, but there is some truth to it. She really didn't have enough magic to make a full outfit in her present state, but still had enough to where she only needed a little help when making what she actually wanted to make.
So while the outfit is exactly what she wanted, more actually would've been beyond her. She doesn't want Cole catching onto either the outfit simply being her kinks or her diminished state.

I don't think I conveyed it well when trying to mix the intent I wanted with the changes made. I'll have another look at it later.

>>420362
Hmmm, might just need to adjust the descriptors, then, perhaps? make it more obvious that she's hiding her diminished state rather than her horniness, make it a gag at the end of her explanation that the appeal is a happy coincidence, or maybe imply she's starting to lose patience with her new boy toy literally in the bedroom.

Not quite sure how to tackle this, or if we *should* rather than just putting a pin on it for the time being, don't wanna take too long on one spot, might make us lose steam.

>>420363
We'll stick a pin in it for now. The main thing is she's dodging the question and has more than one reason. She wants to make a good impression, but isn't going to let that stop her from getting what she wants.

I think I got about half-way through issue 3's formatting. I'm trying to add more descriptions as I go. I can't believe I didn't keep a master note with a description of each character handy for quick reference, so I'm making one as I go and I may need to go back and change things that I've changed if I did give a physical description of the gods later on.

>>420364
Oh man, your already on 3? Gotta play some catch up. Lemme see what i can do today

>>420364
While on the subject, what does it look like we have for descriptors? I assume a good thing to keep in mind is the established stuff we have already for the general pantheon.

1) Statuesque/ attractive (Excluding SG, who is plain)

2?) Tattoos relating to their area of divinity

3?) Potential Ancient Greece leaning fashion from what SG wears (I know pettiness is one of the things we hammered down as a common trait of the whole pantheon, so maybe they try and look different from each other?)

did you have other ideas in mind for the general look?

>>420366
For the god of drums I was actually leaning more into African folklore. I think that's where I anagram'd his name from. His arms and legs are thick as hundred year old tree trunks and his belly is actually like a drum. He leans more into that "strong-fat" category that you see some gods depicted as. Like wine gods.

The paper goddess (the drum god's wife) has more east Asian influences. Pale, tall, looks like she's wearing origami robes. I haven't made my way down to her yet.

The folding goddess (drum and paper's daughter) I'm not really sure of. I haven't gotten down to that part of the doc yet. She might be more Greek looking.

The War god is pretty much your typical bearded Zeus looking guy. Hyper masculine. Huge arms and chest.

The fabric goddess is more traditionally Athenian I think. Though it might be more fun if her outfit is different each time. Like she starts off as Greek, then after drums loses her outfit has more African elements, then after paper loses she takes on more east Asian elements, then after their daughter loses she takes on more Greek elements again, and then after War loses she might have something more unique.

I didn't base the pantheon on any one religion, they're "old and forgotten" and with how magic and belief works they might not have even personally all been in the same group during their primes. Having them look different is likely for the best, giving them distinctive tattoos or markings also works.
It's also possible that the gods who remain as silhouettes don't even remember who they are or what they used to look like, yet somehow persist as vague concepts. Because SG was always made so aware of how much her looks paled in comparison, she never lost her actual form. The attention or lack of attention from the other gods may have even been a stabilizing factor for preserving her own identity/divinity. But that's just me rambling, the only way to use any of that would be in Six-Nine-Six's initial hypothesis.

>>420367
I do think there should be some thing saying they are connected, as a big contention is that /Co/le has to play by their rules, and being from entirely differing pantheons might muddy that up. But them dressing different isn't much of a problem, like I said, it might better advertise their pettiness and need to one up each other. Maybe they pick up different fashions from different areas because they can point to those areas as "Look! they still like my domain there!"

We can discuss the tattoo situation later, just good to have the thought jotted down somewhere.

But that's also good, we have some bodytypes

Drums: Strongfat/BrickShithouse/Dadbod? (Thinking Sig Curtis from FMA) Will have to look up some of the traditional getup of Africa.

Paper: Classic Eastern Beauty standard, might be hard to discern her exact proportions since her fashion kind of flattens curves of the body, but she's thin ( take your pick of a nice faced girl in a kimono) if we had to see her body I'd put it as a small chest and a perky butt

Folding: Workshop later, but I would be thinking a mix of her parents? maybe a more bulky girl with a nice fat percentage still (hard to think of a reference as this grey area is mainly taken up by social media models) Maybe her outfit is more modern? Wants to stand out from her parents so just takes cues from the now and not step on her old parent's design choices?

War: Classic Heroic Proportions (Think giga chad would probably be a good reference, maybe Arny)

Fabric: I always had the though of her being an older, more sultry looking woman. classic villainess look (Think Doc Ock from Spiderverse) I like that idea of dressing in their preferred fashion, maybe have her still one up them? (a more flattering peplos robe to SG's Chiton, for a quick example)

While I do like the idea of them fading out of a discernible form, I don't think it really adds to the story unless you think it would be a good call back near the end when gods are trying to claim all the pantheon's power. Plus, it's more likely better to just not waste too much resources deciding the background gods of the pantheon, I have a hard enough time not getting granular in the story as is lol.

>>420368
Sig Curtis is a good example of strongfat.

The mental picture forming for paper is either Douyin or Geisha style makeup with the flowing robes mostly obscuring her features, if not outright being what her body looks like.

Maybe Folding has more wraps or working class attire? The kind of things you see fishermen wearing. Or maybe the opposite and she's more French with a dress with infinite folds?

I don't think Fabric should look older. Mature, sure, but not wrinkled. Maybe her hair should have some textile patterns in it. If she was smarter, she could've usurped the position of computer god since computers came from textile manufacturing, but she didn't see that possibility.

The entire last section of my post was just me going down a thought rabbit hole as I often do. Keeping them a unified pantheon is the best option as it keeps things simple since two other pantheons do come into play later. Like I said, speculative discussions like this may be useful if we need to buff up any of Six-Nine-Six's dialogue.

>>420369
>The mental picture forming for paper is either Douyin or Geisha style makeup with the flowing robes mostly obscuring her features, if not outright being what her body looks like.
I think Douyin is a good one to go for. I dunno about making her outfit her entire being, might be a tad too out there compared to the rest of the pantheon. I'd make suggestions of visual gags to maybe come with a middle ground, but that would be retreading into trying to make this a comic script
>Maybe Folding has more wraps or working class attire? The kind of things you see fishermen wearing. Or maybe the opposite and she's more French with a dress with infinite folds?
>I don't think Fabric should look older. Mature, sure, but not wrinkled. Maybe her hair should have some textile patterns in it. If she was smarter, she could've usurped the position of computer god since computers came from textile manufacturing, but she didn't see that possibility.
>The entire last section of my post was just me going down a thought rabbit hole as I often do. Keeping them a unified pantheon is the best option as it keeps things simple since two other pantheons do come into play later. Like I said, speculative discussions like this may be useful if we need to buff up any of Six-Nine-Six's dialogue.
Will have to put more focus on him this time around, not sure we gave him too much "screen time". Hell, it took me to reading through issue 2 to remember he was a white sheet. I kept looking at his reff and just assuming he was green

>>420370
oops, forgot my thoughts on Fabric. I can concede not being wrinkly, but yeah... is it called sharper features? A fun hypothetical, maybe 696 can bring that up in the end on how it could be all that much worse.

>>420372
oh no, i picked up on reading and found the bit he turns green right after paused.

but yeah, not trying to make her masculine. Like I said, classic Villainess face. Maleficent is probably what I'm thinking of

>>420373
I can see the first version of her face working (she had two different faces in that movie). It's probably the chin type you're after.

>>420374
most likely, chin and maybe a more pronounced nose (the line of the arch is visible as opposed tot he usual minimum of the nostrils and ball of the nose.)

While on the subject of Fabric, I could've sworn we a wanted to add her into the prologue. no worries if we did, we'll put a pin on that too, just wanted it written down

>>420370
Crap, forgot folding as well!
That infinite folding french design is a pretty damn good idea

>>420375
It's been so many years I don't remember. I'm sure I could check the other thread for any mention of it, but do you think she needs to be added to the prologue? Where would she slot in? The most SG mentions of her is needing to ask for a favor.
It might make the prologue overcrowded.

>>420376
OK, so Folding has more of the... not chubby but thick? Well rounded? Hearty? I'll go with hearty body type. The type of body that has some mass to it, but also usually comes with HUGE tracts of land.

>>420378
I was thinking more "healthy" than fit, but either works.

Looma didn't start to really scheme until Donyoru got involved. If she was scheming anything before then, it would've been very small time pranks on SG but that doesn't fit her personality. She would've helped SG with the outfit out of sheer boredom before realizing there was power to be had when Donyoru approached her.
Her meddling with Cole's costume is too minor for her to leach much of anything off of him.