How detailed is your fictional world?

[mattcleaver]

Well that can be perfectly fine, it really depends on the type of comic and what you want to do with it CX

[scythe]

I have an entire alternate history of civilisation written out. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and it's likely that no one will ever read it, which is important, coz spoilers.

[kazukitakamura126]

I build the general world before i start the story then I add or take things out based on what makes sense or what can illicit a stronger emotional reaction. I believe its important to have a strong foundation and learn to improvise that way your story can evolve along with its creator/creators.

[Damatris]

Fallacy's world is both detailed and not. It's heavily based on Viking times so I can simply use tons of facts and customs from that period and aply it to the needs of the story. And considering I'm bit of a history nerd, I have plenty of information.

but considering it's still fantasy, I have taken some conscious liberties and expanded other parts, taking them to the direction I need. I also have thought out the whole magic system, especially shapeshifting as it's the most prominent and noticable feature. I seriously wrote an essay about it for myself so I don't accidentally make it inconsistent. It will partly be explained during the story but a lot of details probably won't come up.

I hevily prefer doing the "show, don't tell" method with this world as a lot of the things are quite insignificant details even if I really like adding them to the background.

[Zanreo]

My characters mostly live in the "real world" (since well, based on real-world events) so I haven't really made up a ot of stuff about it myself. The most would be thinking about how these company characters "work" - what is it like living as a personified company? Do they have any ways to easily visit companies in other places (since they're usually shown meeting up in person to represent interactions between them) or do they have to use regular travel for that? (I like the idea that they each have a big house which included portals to each of their work buildings/offices, branches around the world, ect. )What keeps them from physically aging? What's it like for them walking around around regular humans - does anyone know who/what they are (or do they pretend to be regular humans, maybe with a cover-up name? Still, they've been shown having presentations clearly presenting themselves as the company they are...), does anyone get suspicious about this person who never seems to age after 20-30-40+ years? I haven't really thought about it a lot so far, and not sure I'm going to touch upon/explain most of these since it's a silly series that doesn't have to make much sense, a lot of it's all up in the air and very open for fan theories

[mappypaint]

University of Speed's world is set in the not too distant future. It mostly takes place in a university made by a giant automobile company. I've written all the details I needed for now, details like: The length of the racetrack, track layouts, record times, number of corners, where the buildings are located along the track, racecar models, even the car specs. I wont bore the readers with most of the details though so most of the details wont be shown to them.XD

[webcomicguru]

I posted this question in another forum and i'd like to hear what you guess think:

"Have any of you been so wrapped-up in the details of your world that you've had difficulty just getting started/continuing the actual comic-making? Does it sometimes become a distraction?"

[AnnaLandin]

Have any of you been so wrapped-up in the details of your world that you've had difficulty just getting started/continuing the actual comic-making?

It's happened in the past - I've got loads of unfinished projects in various folders that ended up victims of that particular fate. I'm better at just doing these days; I love worldbuilding, and I do it all the time, but I've learned enough about my process that I can build the basics - enough to get started on - and then sort of keep building stuff in parallell with the actual scripting process.

Does it sometimes become a distraction?

Yes. Yes it does. Even today, there are moments when I'm halfway through storyboarding or scripting or writing dialogue for a particular scene, and then my brain will snag on something and go running off down the rabbit hole after it. Then I look up, hours later, to find I've spent the entire afternoon constructing elaborate technology for airships, or the precise political groundwork underlying the expansionist ambitions of a fictional empire and its impact on the relations between settlers and native peoples in a nation I just made up, or the organisational framework of a social movement in a city caught up in the magical equivalent of an industrial revolution - or something.

It's fun! I enjoy that sort of thing, and sometimes exploring the technology, politics or current affairs surrounding your story helps you understand the characters better, or might give you a new way to solve a particular plot-issue - but it can also be very, very distracting. It certainly slows down the writing process.

[blastryoku]

The world of my comic Curse lineage is kinda detailed but not too complex, just 5 countries, 2 belief systems, 2 languages, 2 currency, almost everything on pairs XD everything major is already laid out and minor things i make it up as i continue the story.

[webcomicguru]

Good thinking. Keep it simple yet detailed enough for realism. Some creators fall down the world-building wormhole and never come back.

[avalonmao]

Holy crap....that's really detailed! Amazing

[ConradComics]

I have noticed most of the stories in my head are set in a modern earth/earth-like world, almost certainly to cut down on the world-building required. I have fleshed out the fantasy/super-natural elements of those stories in case the setting moves to those locations; but for the most part, those hidden worlds are; um... hidden, or only exist in the past. Both are the case in my manga-style comic I've posted on Tapastic. I just haven't progressed far enough yet to show it.

[shazzbaa]

Have any of you been so wrapped-up in the details of your world that you've had difficulty just getting started/continuing the actual comic-making? Does it sometimes become a distraction?"

I tend to have a different version of this struggle -- developing something that doesn't matter and then being tempted to shove it into the story. So like, I delve into the culture of the neighbouring country that doesn't really play a role in the story, and then I get attached to this creation, and then I'm like "can I....insert someone from this country.....into the story anywhere...?????"

Sometimes this is helpful! : D Sometimes this is just another temptation I must resist. : [

[scythe]

I want to hear about these airships.

[webcomicguru]

That's when you start a spin-off series about the neighboring country!

[webcomicguru]

As distracting as it can be, it's a good idea to save unused material in folders. You never know when you might be able to use it in the future.

[AnnaLandin]

@scythe They won't be appearing in Grassblades, I can promise you that! XD

They're for a fantasy world that's sort of industrialised - I guess it's kind of steampunk, but also kind of not? Steam-tech is definitely there, but not everything depends on it, and the world lacks some of the common Victorian-era morals and social systems that tend to get imported into steampunk along with the tech.

There are several types of airships, and one of the on-going things in the background of the story is the shift from old-fashioned wooden vessels over to a more modern iron-clad type. Still sailing vessels, but with sturdier hulls and rams built into the fore of the ship. I'm not 100% settled on exactly what it is that makes them fly, but I'm thinking of combining steam-tech/mechanical solutions (for the general running of the machinery aboard the ship) with some sort of semi-magical natural resource that kind of levitates, and which is used to lift the ship into the air. So the levitating mineral/whatever would be controling the vertical position of the ship, while the wind and various steam-tech/machinery controls the horisontal position of the ship.

At least one of the older models of ship has folding wings on the side made of sturdy sailcloth stretched over reinforced wood - it looks kind of like a mechanical bat-wing - that they use to manouver with. The iron-clads come in several different varieties - some with the folding bat-wing (made with heavier, more durable materials) and some with a more fixed-wing solution, with smaller wing-like structures bolted onto the sides of the ship, that can only be tilted slightly - whereas the bat-wing can be folded in all the way to lie nearly flat against the hull, but can also be stretched out into the full width of the wingspan.

... I confess that some of this might have been heavily influenced by how much I loved the airships in Final Fantasy IX. >.>

[tableflipstudios]

:EPOCH Files is pretty much planned out by L and I.
She can do most of the stuff I make up for the 'future' but at the end of the day, we won't make it too complex for both the readers and us.

Double Scoop is pretty much 1.5% fiction. Lol.

-Grim

[daryake9]

I LOVE worldbuilding and i'm constantly making up new stuff. I only recently posted a bit of worldbuilding on my comic (bc I kinda forgot to mention a few details for the readers lmao).
It's all pretty detailed. The comic I'm doing is just the backstory of one of my three maincharacters, the other two come from completely different backgrounds which are still partly in development, after like five years or so.
So far I have:

Humans:
126 different tribes belonging to 24 ethnic groups (and that's just in two countries)
17 Countries
29 Languages (with dialects and variations)
40 Cities
3 political systems (still working on them)
(so far) 6 writing systems.

Non-Human Species:
41 Cities
4 regions
9 dialects of the same language
Political System

Various other thing such as climate, history, weapons, most common types of magic, how magic works, gods, systems of belief, economical stuff.
This won't all be featured in the comic though, since the purpose of it is for me to kinda develop Niwa (my protag in the comic) and her personality and culture and stuff (and of course my art skills ), so I will focus on that. Maybe one day I'll make my entire story into a comic but that's to big a project for me now, so yeah.

Also, does anyone have tips how to magic could influence technology? Or how magic can influence the development of technology?

[daryake9]

As someone who has been in this wormhole for years, I second this. I often feel like I do more worldbuilding than actually working on the storyline :/