Reclaimer - A Halo 3 Comic

Welcome to Reclaimer, the first Halo-related comic that I am aware of that is built exclusively from screenshots captured from within the Halo 3 engine.  The first strip is a merely a proof-of-concept introduction for the series, a way for me to practice with manipulating screenshots in a comic book layout and a way for me to introduce readers to the style.

Please bear with me as I write this comic.  This is the first time I’ve ever tried to create a comic, so it will take me a little while to get used to the layout and to become familiar enough with the graphic editing tools (i.e. Photoshop and GIMP) I will be using to put this strip together.  My goal is to try to produce one new strip a week, primarily because I lead a very busy life and it takes a lot of time to set the scenes in Halo 3, watch the resulting films and snap the necessary screenshots, pull them into Photoshop to create the comic-style look to each one, then crop and resize everything until they fit onto the page properly.  But I will do my best to produce the comic on a regular schedule, which I expect will become easier as I do this more and become familiar with the necessary skills.

Please feel free to offer suggestions and ideas throughout.  Anything that can serve to make the comic better will, in the longrun, make Reclaimer more enjoyable for both you and me.

Today’s comic is the first ‘official’ strip of the series, even though the first comic itself sets up just a little of the background and context for events yet to come.  This is also the first strip I built with Photoshop, and let me just say that I will never go back to GIMP for this project.  GIMP makes an acceptable substitute for some project for when Photoshop isn’t available, but Photoshop is, by far, more user-friendly for this sort of work.  For instance, creating dialogue balloons in GIMP is an absolute nightmare.  In fact, doing just about anything in GIMP is more difficult than doing it in Photoshop due to the fact that most adjustments require 2-3 times as many steps to accomplish.

As you can see from the proof-of-concept strip, I had a difficult time positioning things with GIMP.  I didn’t worry overmuch about the final product, however, since I knew that the official story wouldn’t start until the next strip I produced.  The final product of that one, done in the aforementioned Photoshop, is much cleaner and professional looking.  It’s nice to be able to just nudge things into place where required.

So, with Chapter One, Part One, we’re introduced to two of our main characters.  Writing in this medium is much different than writing in story medium, so again please bear with me as I adapt.  I like most of the dialogue in this one, though a frame or two feel a bit stilted to me.  I’ll work on that – I promise.  In the meantime, we have a delicious hint of a conspiracy, plus the puzzle of the relationship between these characters.

As I mentioned in the previous news post, I intend to put together a new comic every week, at least to begin with.  This may become more frequent, however, as I get my storyline laid out and get comfortable enough with this process to replicate it several times a week.  I may also put a callout at some point for ‘actors’ to help me stage some scenes, so stay tuned here for that.

I hope you enjoy this comic.  I know I’m already having fun putting it together, and I look forward as much as you do to seeing where it goes.

So it seems I had some extra time on my hands this evening.  An excellent opportunity to produce another strip.  The conflict/dialogue between the Reclaimer and Ferial continues, with a few more details to pique the interest. 

The third frame was an experiment – I was trying to convey the sense of very fast motion resulting in the Reclaimer being knocked to his back.  I tried stacking five cropped images on top of each other and adjusting the opacity to allow each to show through a little.  The effect isn’t nearly as good as what I’d hoped for, so I’ll have to play around with some other ideas if I hope to try this again in the future.  I may just have to become acquainted with Photoshop’s magic wand.  If anyone knows of a good way to produce this effect, do please let me know.

Two additional things I’d like to point out in relation to today’s strip:

1) Those of you with sharp eyes may have noticed that I’m using a new font starting today.  It’s called Creative Block and can be downloaded from Blambot for free.  I went on a hunt for a good comic-style font yesterday.  I’d used Comic Sans Serif in the first two pages but wasn’t completely satisfied with the look.  I also don’t really have the spare cash right now to purchase one or two of the more professional comic book fonts, but there are really quite a few nice-looking free ones out there.  Creative Block is very suitable for this type of comic.  It’s not too cartoony, but it’s not too ‘real life,’ either.  I also used a font called Blam Blam available from Blambot, as well, for the impact frame, but I’m not completely happy with that font, either.  The font I really wanted to use will cost me $20 to buy, and may well be something I purchase later on.  For now, though, I’ll experiment with some free fonts and play with balloons to find a look I like.

2) Dark Tower fans will recognize some verbiage from Ferial at the end of today’s strip.  It’s an homage to that epic series and quiet shout-out to my fellow Gunslingers.  You can be certain it won’t be the last DT reference you’ll see in Reclaimer.