The Crystal of Nysul - Chapter 2

Well this chapter took a long time! I did learn some neat photoshop workflow tricks though. A shout out to MCaesar and Zerok on the forums for feedbacks!

The Crystal of Nysul, Chapter 2 preview.

First of all, thank you for all the positive feedbacks for Chapter One! It means a lot and definitely motivates me to continue the series!

I've got some rough ideas of the sets I intend on using, and what direction the story may go. Progress will be slower for Chapter 2 however as I'm learning and experimenting with new effects. The previews below are by no means final, but it's a sneak peak!

What do you guys think?

The Crystal of Nysul

I guess The Taming was a valuable lesson for me in developing a story out of a photo series, a lesson that I took to heart when I started The Crystal of Nysul.

Temptation

After reading Callidus's interviews, I decided to follow his advise to find good source materials for my next manip. Having done a few Hive and Tech manips, I felt the need to explore magic themed MC, and stumbled upon BareMaidens.

Holy shit I'm already seeing an epic story unfold from some of the sets.... I said I didn't want to touch a long series for a while, but I'm already so inspired by this that I think I'm going to go ahead and tell another tale. The only difference is, I'll be doing shorter chapters, and finish each one before I start the uploads.

The Taming and a quick update.

This took way longer than it should have, but here's the full series for The Taming.

This year has been many firsts for me, and The Taming is the first time I tried to create a story with a picture series. I have to say it's a very hard process, especially when half the images had models looking directly at the camera. Whilst the source material was great, flexibility and variations were not. Or maybe I'm just not creative enough.

Tutorial: Comic Panels

Panel setup is a really difficult thing for us photo manipulators. As we don't draw our own material, we're slaves to how the photographer originally shoots the subject. With this lack of control we have more constrains in terms of setting up the panels. We need to setup our panels based on the source material, rather than setting up the panels and then drawing the material on top.

With that in mind, I'll take a fairly different approach to panel setups. Here's what I learn from working on The Taming.

There's not enough hours in the day

Last week I started on a little project with The Taming, which completely took over most of my alone time. It's been a great learning experience for me, and hopefully the knowledge will help in the future.

I decided to release each page as soon as I finished it, mostly due to impatience. I was keen to get feedback, which in turn helped keep me motivated. Thank you for all the comments so far by the way, I really appreciate them! I'll also take this opportunity to apologise for the wait between pages as a result....

Funny thing is, releasing the story a page at a time probably worked out best for me. I've started on no less than three stories for the MC Story Archive over the years, and submitted none. I'm just one of those writers who spends 95% of time on the opening paragraph, and the remaining 5% reading other people's writing instead.

I guess photo-manipulation is a bit different, a good source image can really tell a thousand words. And words.... they're not my strong point really.. So if anyone wants to collaborate, please feel free to give me a shout.

Meanwhile, The Taming will probably go on for about another 4 or 5 pages. I was lucky to have come across a couple of Faye Reagan sets towards the end that helps me tie up the plot that I really wanted to finish on. Not so lucky on the Charlotte Stokely front though so I'm afraid it gets slightly repetitive for her.

Less word more pictures? Here're some that I got from MetArt which I plan on playing with.

Ephemeral with Indiana A

Farfallino with Katy D

Minn with Rina A

Venezia with Olga G