The Merry Melony Production Blog

This is a blog following the production of "Merry Melony", an interactive graphic novel about a girl in a surreal dream-like world.

I'm Eric Drobile, Lead Animator at Reel FX Studios and cocreator of the worlds most fattening webcomic, Hatefarm. Hope you found this blog helpful and/or entertaining! If you have any comments, questions or crits, don't hesitate to use the "Ask Me Anything" link below.

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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor

 

Here’s a rough sketch of Melony’s sister. (currently nameless other than “Sis”.) I hope to give it the full inking and color treatment. I thought it was time to start exploring both environment and “panel” look. I have become so enthralled with the way Sam Kieth (yeah it’s spelled that way) does his panels in The Maxx. They are dynamic, expressive, and anything but ordinary. Depending on the mood and environment, they change from simple to outlines to having an actual presence…being made up of sticks, leaves, or perhaps splatters and broken bits of whatever. I figured I should start experimenting with this sooner rather than later, so after several attempts my panels feel less like I am just biting off of him and have a bit of my own flavor. But for reals, the man can draw! I ordered Volume 1 of the Maxx anthology but now I am going to have to get the whole thing, as well as his other comics…. I just finished Scott McCloud’s “Reinventing Comics” and it gave me a lot to think about. I didn’t find it to be nearly as all-around educational as his first book, “Understanding Comics”, but it was still pretty good. In fact, if you can only read some of it, I would say just fast forward to the last 50 pages. There is some mind blowing speculation about how comics will be in the future — particularly digital comics. He wrote the book in 2000, so it sometimes feels dated, but other times he is right on point. I particularly loved the way he talked about abandoning the concept of “pages” in digital format. If we have the technology to make the comic one giant flowing wall mural, why not do that? Or even better, have the comic zig zag in different dimensions and bring it in through 3D planes? Still dealing with panels, still dealing with the space inbetween the panels, but there is a lot of room to revolutionize the way they come on to screen, the way they leave the screen, and so on.  It’s a little daunting, because the possibilities are endless, but I want Merry Melony to be anything but “next page” and “previous page”.The original intention was to format the comic for Ipad resolution, and to eventually have MM on the Ipad. But now I’m rethinking it so that I could just focus formatting it to PC screens. Maybe there is a way to effectively do both. I dunno!

Here’s a rough sketch of Melony’s sister. (currently nameless other than “Sis”.) I hope to give it the full inking and color treatment. I thought it was time to start exploring both environment and “panel” look.

I have become so enthralled with the way Sam Kieth (yeah it’s spelled that way) does his panels in The Maxx. They are dynamic, expressive, and anything but ordinary. Depending on the mood and environment, they change from simple to outlines to having an actual presence…being made up of sticks, leaves, or perhaps splatters and broken bits of whatever. I figured I should start experimenting with this sooner rather than later, so after several attempts my panels feel less like I am just biting off of him and have a bit of my own flavor. But for reals, the man can draw! I ordered Volume 1 of the Maxx anthology but now I am going to have to get the whole thing, as well as his other comics….

I just finished Scott McCloud’s “Reinventing Comics” and it gave me a lot to think about. I didn’t find it to be nearly as all-around educational as his first book, “Understanding Comics”, but it was still pretty good. In fact, if you can only read some of it, I would say just fast forward to the last 50 pages. There is some mind blowing speculation about how comics will be in the future — particularly digital comics. He wrote the book in 2000, so it sometimes feels dated, but other times he is right on point. I particularly loved the way he talked about abandoning the concept of “pages” in digital format. If we have the technology to make the comic one giant flowing wall mural, why not do that? Or even better, have the comic zig zag in different dimensions and bring it in through 3D planes? Still dealing with panels, still dealing with the space inbetween the panels, but there is a lot of room to revolutionize the way they come on to screen, the way they leave the screen, and so on.  It’s a little daunting, because the possibilities are endless, but I want Merry Melony to be anything but “next page” and “previous page”.

The original intention was to format the comic for Ipad resolution, and to eventually have MM on the Ipad. But now I’m rethinking it so that I could just focus formatting it to PC screens. Maybe there is a way to effectively do both. I dunno!