Hey guys, I've been making my webcomic for an year now, and I thought I had it all sorted out.
But recently I watched some critique videos which led me to think if my story is good, narrative-wise. It is supposed to be a heartfelt story about how life changes very suddenly, and how stressing it can be. It incorporates some elements of Steven Universe that I previously thought to be very interesting and nice. Could you please take a look at it and tell me what I'm doing wrong? Because I definitely feel like something is going over my head (The story is supposed to be a little fast paced). Any reviews and critiques will be exchanged by a drawing of your OC! Just leave a reference image and we'll be sorted!
LINK TO THE COMIC (Done until 3/4 of chapter 3):
PRE PRODUCTION NOTES AND PLANNING (only Chapter 1, 2 & 3 scripts made so far):
CHAPTER 1 (Moonage Daydream)
Introduction of Characters and Story (Cozmata and Henry go to the bad part of the city because Cozmata wanted to do something exciting for a change. She gets her and Henry caught up in the Company’s business by being attacked by an Eyebot [The Company being a presumed-dead economical organization that sold weapons in the Federo-Etherian War which happened 15 years before the events of the comic])
CHAPTER 2 (Lady Stardust)
Lady Stardust Introduction (Lady Stardust is introduced and is set to have a past with the Company, she warns Cozmata about it and Cozmata gets extremely stressed and anxious, fearful of the Company [EXPANDED ON CHAPTER 4])
CHAPTER 3 (Life on Mars)
EV-4 Introduction (EV-4, the EVs, Sassypants and the Director are introduced. EV-4 decides to set off to Earth to understand what’s causing the eliminations of so many Eyebots in so little time [which is Cozmata]. She accidentally gets a Commando Eyebot with her in the Space Shuttle, which she nicknames Sassypants. They crash land on Juuna and are captured by pirates and EV-4 is given the chance to duel for their lives. She shoots before the countdown is over and the pirates get mad at them. They escape on one of the pirate hovers [speeders] and the chapter ends with them going towards Cozmata's house in the horizon).
CHAPTER 4 (Changes)
Cozmata Character Development (Cozmata starts getting paranoid about the Company coming to get her and her family, chapter ends with her family reassuring that it will be okay and that they’ll always be together, with EV-4 appearing at the end asking for help outside the house, picking up on where chapter 3 ended).
CHAPTER 5 (Where Are We Now?):
EV-4 Character Development - After escaping from the pirates, she meets up with the crew. After getting there, Cozmata sees the eyebot and is aggressive towards her, after EV-4 sees the remains of the eyebots, she says that she sent them and asked who destroyed them. Cozmata says how she tried to kill her and EV-4 says that the eyebots weren’t trying to eliminate her, but probably a Mark experiment, and she got caught in the action. She says that they didn’t see any “Mark Experiment, and that the only ones she were with were people. EV-4 confirms it, and says that they had to be eliminated to destroy any remains of the Old Company and start anew. Cozmata says that she was killing people, and EV-4 shows to not understand what is the meaning of death. Cozmata explains to her, making an analogy to having your memory wiped out, and since EV-4 herself has a great fear of being rebooted, she realizes what she was doing all along. She says that she’ll help to stop these attacks by going back and sabotaging the eyebot database. But that they need to help her rebuild her pod. Cozmata agrees, and she asks where she could stay. It cuts to Cozmata telling Henry about it, and Henry offering a place for EV-4 to stay for the day while Cozmata and the others empty a room for her to stay. EV-4 is taken to Henry’s house, and hidden. As his sister goes to the shop, she brags about the problem in the cash register. Henry asks if there’s anything he can do to help, but she says he’s too young. EV-4 stays the whole day at Henry’s house while his mom and sister are off, and she inspects the house trying to find out what is made for what. When Henry comes back, he explains that everything is made to help his mom on the house. He leaves for a few minutes to attend her sister, and while he’s gone, EV-4 makes a contraption out of home appliances that could help his mom, and that contraption starts running and trashing the house, and they have to stop it. After they do, Henry talks to her about why she did that, and she explains she wanted to help, but couldn’t. Henry says that she is like him, wanting to help but not knowing how. She comments on how she feels extremely guilty because she killed people not even knowing. Henry comforts her saying that she should work on bettering herself in the future. They hear a knocking on the door and it is Nimbus. She picks up EV-4 and takes her back. The chapter ends with EV-4 taking off her helmet and throwing it on the sands, representing her disaffiliation with the Company. It is revealed that Sassypants watched her do that right before the chapter ends, hinting that he is up to something.
CHAPTER 6 (Wild is The Wind):
Keen & Nimbus Character Development (They both go search for a piece to EV-4 in the city. Before they go, Cozmata asks to go with them, but they say she should help EV-4 with her pod. After not finding it, they ask the town sheriff which is an old friend of Nimbus where they could find the part. The sheriff points to the bad side of the city and there they go. They discover a small drug trafficking operation inside a shop in the bad part of the city when snooping around after the piece. They find it, but they've got to sneak towards it. They alert the traffickers accidentally, and while Nimbus tries to talk them out of the situation, Keen knows they'll be killed. Keen notices the water they knocked over and that alerted the traffickers is right under them, so she just kicks the wire extension that kept the lights on, killing all of the traffickers and allowing them to go home safely. When they get out, they go home. There, the chapter ends with them giving Cozmata the part for her to give to EV-4, and Cozmata saying she hoped it wasn't too much trouble.)
CHAPTER 7 (TVC 15):
Keen Character Development - Cozmata goes scavenging with her and EV-4, who came along to look for a part to fix her ship. Keen and Cozmata go to a ruin they never went to, before. They walk along the ship, and EV-4 starts asking about the nature of the ships they normally find. Cozmata explains that most ships are of exploration or warrish nature, and most are either Federational or Etherian. They reach a very big room, and in there they go about looking for the parts they need. Cozmata falls through a crumbling floor to a lower level, and after EV-4 and Keen failing to get Cozmata (because they refuse to work together), Cozmata is told by Keen (by gestures) to walk until she finds a set of stairs, and that they’d meet up soon. Keen and EV-4 walk until they reach a big lab. In the lab, they find out it was a Federational ship, and discover that this ship was a lab ship by seeing loads of research equipment. While they wait for the elevator, they listen to some weird sounds from the upper floor. When the elevator doors open, EV-4 screams for Cozmata. They receive no answer. Keen turns on a GPS device on her belt that will take them to Cozmata. They go and reach Cozmata’s GPS, and after picking it up they hear something coming in their direction. Keen pulls out a hand cannon and an infected person came out of the shadows. The person is deformed and walking slowly. As soon as it sees Keen and EV-4, it runs towards them, with Keen shooting it several times. After the creature is dead, they hear Cozmata screaming for them. They run towards Cozmata, and when reaching her, they see her inside a room. The wall behind her had collapsed, allowing her to reach this dead end. A creature similar to the one Keen killed falls behind Cozmata, and Keen desperately tries to open the door, which is broken. She starts throwing herself against the glass separating them. EV-4 looks at Cozmata, then at Keen. It’s her chance of doing something right. She throws herself against the glass too, breaking it. Keen shoots the infected being and hugs Cozmata, with tears on her eyes. Cozmata thanks EV-4, which gets happy with finally doing something good. They hear more sounds, and run back to the elevator. As soon as they reach it, a big infected cluster stops them, making them run towards the stairs. The creature chases them, and Cozmata presses a button that shuts a door on the monster when they reach the floor they came in through. Keen goes towards the computer there was in the lab, and looks for anything that could kill the monsters. EV-4 tells her to step aside, and using her technical skills, hacks into the mainframe of the ship, rigging it to explode. They run off, but right before the entrance, the floor collapses on Cozmata again. But this time, Keen catches her, and EV-4 catches Keen. They manage to run out of the ship and it explodes when they are far from it. Before they go back home, Cozmata thanks EV-4 and Keen puts her hand on EV-4’s shoulder, and the chapter ends with them going home, EV-4 feeling like she was ready to start again.
CHAPTER 8 (Let's Dance):
Nimbus Character Development – Cozmata and Henry arrange a date between Nimbus and Gary; a courier who has been Nimbus’ crush for quite a while and who has had a crush on Nimbus. The date is arranged in a diner of the Hub and ended up different from what the kids wanted, but good anyways. At the end, a Company abduction ship arrives and Keen is captured, revealing that Sassypants communicated the Company about her. Keen and him are taken by the ship and it flashes away.
CHAPTER 9 (Golden Years):
Nimbus is fixing a ship that she won in a gambling deal a long time ago to rescue Keen. She starts fixing it along with Cozmata, and Cozmata hears about how they met. Nimbus tells her that she was wrongly accused of being a traitor to the Cloud Theocracy and was banned from it, falling in Juuna and meeting Keen, who tries to get her adjusted to life in the plain lands. The ship is almost fixed by the end of the episode.
CHAPTER 10 (Ashes to Ashes):
They are checking their provisions and fixing more things, then they realize they need more protection, so Cozmata goes to the city with Henry to look for Lady Stardust (After she asks him if he wants to help her, as it can be dangerous. She learned to respect other's opinions and preferences). They find her and try to convince her to go. She refuses to go out of fear. They are attacked by Agatha (who is now a Company mark-hunter). She gets shot and wounded and they bring her to the crew's home. When she wakes up, she is stripped from all her weapons. After noticing she is Agatha, LS wants to talk to her. After a pirate raid that was looking for EV-4 attacks, Lady Stardust protects Agatha while she is tied up. That makes Agatha start rethinking her conceptions about LS, but doesn't quite forgiving her yet.
CHAPTER 11 (Oh! You Pretty Things):
They are still fixing and rechecking everything to board. Lady Stardust chats with Agatha and when Agatha gets untied, she doesn't have the courage to kill Lady Stardust, so she runs away. Lady Stardust goes after her and she talks to her, convincing her to give Lady Stardust another chance. She does, reluctantly.
CHAPTER 12 (Space Oddity) :
They are loading to board. Cozmata, Nimbus, EV-4, Agatha and Lady Stardust board while Henry stays at Juuna because he's too afraid (This scene shows how Cozmata learned to let Henry take his own decisions and to keep him out of things he doesn’t want to be part of).
They go to space and EV-4 realizes she knows only half of the map to the location, as it must have been erased from her memory to prevent any invasions. They have to visit the capital planet to get information from a guy Lady Stardust knows. They board the planet, and after some world building and misadventures, Cozmata, Agatha and LS reach the place LS's friend would supposedly be. (AGATHA'S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT)
CHAPTER 13 (I'm Afraid of Americans):
Lady Stardust takes Cozmata & Agatha to see the person that would be able to say where the Company space station is, but they find out the place is just the beginning of a couple of codes that would reveal his location. They find the person through the use of hints and codes left by him. The person finds the place using their technology and following hints they've been collecting for years. They say the crew has only 12 chances in 100 of surviving and succeeding.
CHAPTER 14 (Rock 'n' Roll Suicide):
Cozmata and the others are very worried, and they start doubting if they should really proceed with this suicide mission. Nimbus is determined to proceed, while Cozmata & Lady Stardust think they will die. Agatha is going along, as she wants to study Lady Stardust and see if she has truly changed.
They get ambushed by Ol’ Jack Pirates and have to team up so they get rid of them. At the end, Agatha trusts Lady Stardust more. They proceed to the space station, after almost all reaching a consensus that they'll save Keen.
CHAPTER 15 (Starman):
They arrive in the Company's location, and Nimbus has to go out in space to open an entrance (which EV-4 tells them about).
She opens the entrance and all of them enter through space. They start going through the hallways to look for Keen. Keen is shown to be in a white, empty cell alone. She manages to escape after a scientist in a screen explains what her purpose is. Cozmata, Nimbus, Agatha, Lady Stardust and EV-4 split up, but not before EV-4 tracks down Keen’s cell. EV-4, LS and Agatha go to sabotage the Eyebot mainframe, and Cozmata and Nimbus go to rescue Keen. They do, after she escapes by learning about her hidden peculiarity, after a computer tells her why she is there (which is because of the Mark program, that made genetically engineered kids, put them in test families and took them back to see how they had behaved towards other humans. They escaped after they found out they were gonna be killed because of the Company's bankrupcy. The Marks are now being eliminated to destroy any remains of the Old Company and start anew on the Director’s plan.
She finds EV-4’s group and the Cozmata’s group gets to the place where Keen would be. Cozmata tries opening the door, but she is teleported to a room, alone. Nimbus is right after communicated that EV-4 found Keen. In there, she meets the Director (which is an AI), which explains that he had been rebuilding the Company after the indirect bankruptcy the Federation inflicted on them when they found out the Company was selling weapons to both sides during the Federo-Etherian War. And now that the station has been discovered he must destroy everything about the Mark project. Cozmata convinces him that the EVs don’t need to die, and that they can go live in Juuna. The Director hadn’t thought about this outcome as he didn’t expect the invaders to be peaceful enough to allow them to escape. As the EVs are entering the space shuttles, two Federation of United Planets fighters show up, revealing that the way to the station had been found by the route that Nimbus’ ship made. The pilots try to ask for reinforcements but by the time they arrive at the station and ask for it, it’s too far off the Federation communication net. The Director stays behind while he distracts the fighters and Cozmata along with the EVs and the crew escape. The Director self-destructs the station, erasing the Company forever and destroying the two fighters. The series ends with the EVs putting up a statue of the Director, and Cozmata coming along with the fact life is always changing, and these changes are chances of good things coming to you.