Month: June 2021

Today, you’ll finally be getting full details on my top secret project. As I announced in the last post, I’ve been working on a webcomic. This is my first-ever venture into that medium and I’m excited to share the product of my learning experience with my readers here on Stardriftnights.

So, here are all the details:

Title: The project’s official title is This Time.

Genre: Is time-travel a genre? It’s set in recent (but pre-covid) years and centers around college students. There’s no romance, but maybe it could be categorized as drama. That’s probably what I would tag it as if I were posting on Webtoon, which I’m not, at least not now.

Premise: One bright spring morning an exhausted college student discovers her friend and final project partner has jumped off the clock tower in the middle of campus. After spending the day in shock she drops into restless sleep and wakes up a week prior to the suicide. Can she discover what went wrong with her soft-spoken classmate? Is it possible to change fate, or are they both locked into a merciless clockwork of cause and effect?

Inspiration: This story came directly from a vivid dream I had one night. In the dream I was watching a film starring the South Korean actor/singer Do Kyungsoo. I don’t have celebrity dreams very often, but for some reason I’ve had four or five dreams featuring this guy. Anyway, in this film (I only remember the final scene) he was climbing a spiral staircase on the inside of a clock-tower on a dark rainy night. There was a girl in a long tan raincoat chasing him, constantly pleading with him to stop, but he wouldn’t. I never did see the girl’s face. The scene was really long and dragged out for an amount of time that was almost too much to keep the suspense.

In the end, Kyungsoo jumped off the tower. The film basically ended right there. In the dream, I remember strongly objecting to this. Why would anybody end a film like that? I kept thinking about the dream for a long time afterward. I didn’t even know why the Kyungsoo character jumped off the tower. I didn’t know who the girl was, or why she was there trying to stop him. I wondered why she couldn’t stop him.

It was a great writing prompt.

Turns out, I really like drawing Do Kyungsoo. The story developed quickly, and a lot more thought and feeling went into it than I was expecting—maybe that’s why it got so long. The aesthetic is very pretty, and despite the heavy subject-matter, I think it has kind of a dreamy, wistful tone. It’s set in early spring, just as the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom.

So, when does it come out, and where can you read it when it does?

UPDATE: I suppose you’ve noticed This Time hasn’t released yet. I didn’t forget about it. I also didn’t give up on it. It turns out, I need to get the basic technicalities of digital art figured out before I start releasing this comic. I know, surprise, surprise. I want to do this right and not be frustrated the whole time I’m working on it, so I’m going to see if I can get a couple of basic digital art lessons before proceeding.

But, it’s still coming! I promise. I will announce the new release date when I decide I’m actually ready. Please keep watching!

Today, I’ll be answering the big question. I’ve mentioned several times on this blog and elsewhere that I’m working on a top secret project. Today is the reveal.

I’m about to try something new. It’s a project that merges two out of three of my major creative passions, and combines their powers into something I find incredibly satisfying. It’s a reckless jump out of a low-flying plane into a world I’ve only observed from the outside. I’m going in, now. Watch this.

All dramatics aside, I’m really excited for it. I’m really holding off on telling you exactly what it is because I’m trying to make sure the reveal itself ends up “below the fold,” if you know what that means. Just open it up and read the whole post already, because here it is.

Guys, I’m breaking into webcomics.

Yeah. I’ve been researching for a long time. Turns out I find the whole process very creatively invigorating. I love combining art and writing in such a harmonious way. I really like visual storytelling. I have an extremely visual imagination. I see lighting and camera angles while I’m writing. And I’ve always wanted to tell stories with my art—as much as I like my art to be beautiful, I also want to create a narrative with it. I want to take the viewer somewhere.

Hence, comics. When I was a kid, I used to make stick-figure stories. They were expressive little figures, simple as they were. I think I learned a lot about portraying action and emotion through body-language back then. When I started thumbnailing the secret project, I was excited to see how much I could say with a lot of minimalist scribbling. The process of getting the story down in that form was exhilarating.

So, specifics. Just what can you expect from this webcomic? Probably not too much. This is my first-ever attempt in this medium, and, crazier still, the first few pages are honestly my first few completed pieces of digital art. I’m brand-new to digital. I just recently bought my drawing tablet—and it isn’t a flashy one. No screen display, or anything. You watch the laptop screen while you draw. It actually feels a little like blind-drawing, at first.

You’re going to see my learning-curve over the course of the comic, which will be interesting. I’m working on page three and am already way more confident than I was on page one.

I wanted to start with a short-run comic. Maybe four episodes, I thought. Nothing over-ambitious. So, I developed this fairly simple story with a three-person cast, and wrote the script. Well, as it turned out, it’s a whole 60 pages long. Oops. So, what have we learned about A. L. Buehrer and short stories?

I’m using this story to learn the medium. I have bigger plans for the future, later this year. But in the mean time, you’ve got about twelve episodes ahead of you here. I can’t wait to start releasing them.

When? Soon. I’ll actually announce the date in my next post. I’ll also announce the project’s title, premise, and inspiration in that post, so watch for it. I’ve got the next post scheduled for Monday, the 7^th.

Now, I’ve got to get back to work. See you all Monday!