World creation in your comics, how do you do it? (Fantasy/Sci-fi)

[nathankschulz]

I kind of go with a 60/40 ratio. I figure out 60% of the story, world, and background before even writing the first script. I leave 40% to be discovered by me and just organic storytelling. This seems to have a nice balance of fresh and unknown seas, but with someone at least steering the ship away from the rocks, and leading the way to set destinations. That was a lot of nautical comparisons, but it kind of fits. Haha

You can tell what you think with my comic The Shrouded City.

[Panda007]

I usually plan the universe and THEN I set the characters free in it and see where it goes.

That being said, there are a lot of things you come up while making the story, things you wouldn't have thought of if you were only stuck to planning.

For my modern fantasy comic I changed some things in my mind after making the first few pages. Even to avoid plot holes I didn't think of before.

[mckarenart]

NO I DIDN'T KNOW THEM THANKS!!!!!!!!, now I only need a program to invent languages and then be completely happy, haha. A few months ago I've put myself on inventing the dragons' language, I will keep in this when it's the moment because of the comic in wich I'm working right now, and so because of my Tolkien-like-illness XD

[60Six]

There's one thing I always try to do in each and every one of my worlds: Make something that is very strange to us very ordinary to the inhabitants of said world. I really find it much more amusing when something that's very unusual to us is something mundane and ordinary to a world we're looking in on.
In my comic City of Blank, there are face stealing entities wandering the world that makes everyone have to wear masks. They're basically as common as squirrels or pigeons and it's nothing out of the ordinary to have one of these weird ghostly, face stealing creatures just wander into your kitchen (As they can walk through walls).
The abilities and commonness of these creatures as well as the constant need for masks make the entire world, affecting transportation, building structures, moral beliefs, legal matters, ect, and that's just scratching the surface. I won't go into a ton of detail since I'd have to explain the whole premise of the comic, but this one concept of common face stealing entities basically shaped the entire world.
Which is basically what I try to do with all of my stories: Shape a world around your concept. If you have a basic idea, think about how that idea would affect everything.

[demthorshie]

The world that I created within Cosmos Song started off as just a single idea. I wanted to base the comic in a parallel universe, I tend to like the idea of a parallel universe as opposed to the real-life universe we live in because there are a lot more opportunities for interesting things to happen in the story! I actually created the world long before the story was conceived. As a former game programmer, I love building worlds for the hell of it! xD

[69Michi]

I love making things up... hence most of my story has fantasy element in them haha

Right now I'm working on :Rebirth, and the setting is set in a post-apocalyptic world (Only prologue is up right now though, first chapter should be up soon...ish). The world in the story (the monsters, enemies, people, civilization, etc) are heavily influenced from all the previous stories I have written/read. I took a bit from this story of mine and slap it with a little of this other one of the same genre LMFAO. All in all, it's just about what sort of setting you have in mind, take that idea, combine it with your main casts and what story you wanna tell, AND THEN EXPAND IT.

[TaisSS]

Your style is really pretty! ɾ⚈▿⚈ɹ
Couldn't agree more! Being stuck forever in planning is truly not productive at all. It would be awful to get stuck there and never get the story out in the end.

Also, wish you the bests of lucks with your comic!!!

[eagle1]

I'm a big believer in world building, and consider it to be essential to a well done story. The Setting is one of the 5 Elements of Fiction, and it's amazing how many stories just leave it out or underestimate the importance of it.

You can see the Background area for NO-Earth and it's put together to make it easier for the people working on it to tell stories, as that's the main thing I am about. I love seeing stories where the setting affects the story. My general feeling is that if your story could have been dropped into any world, that it looses a lot of uniqueness that comes from having a setting dependent story.

Eagle
(And there are whole websites out there devoted to world creation)

[Kyosu]

thank you =3=)/
it's a hard dirty job but someone must do it ! and in this case i'm talking about me ! XD

[quakeulf]

I start scientifically and look at what has been done about this in real life already. There's a lot of great concept art, ideas and such from the US army, NASA and so forth, which is really good for my sci-fi works. I tend to base everything on as much reality as possible, the only freedom I take is that I don't go too much into detail explaining the chemical process of certain operations and how exactly those turbodrives and so forth are working. This is also boring for the reader, btw.

This helps me build the universe as what I see and how it was done and who was involved for what reason has a huge impact on my imagination. This also helps giving me limits so I don't go too far off, and I learn a lot as well going along. Did you know that concrete is the biggest building material available on the moon, and it has been called "lunarcrete"? I prefer the term "mooncrete", though.

[RandomEncounterComic]

We spend so much time as artists wondering about fantastical things, but what grounds the reader are the details that feel more honest and down to earth. Where do your inhabitants eat? What kind of clothing store would your character go to? Is it a busy city, or a quiet suburb? What kind of families live in your town? Until I can answer those kinds of questions I don't usually feel comfortable moving forward in a script.

I find that when I'm having a hard time thinking of a scene or setting that the best inspiration comes from exploring my surroundings. I'll spend a day checking out some local architecture or just wander around in google maps street view. It really helps to give perspective. I think the really fine details are important when it comes to character building as well. Folklore took me about a year of planning before I was comfortable drafting the first script, and even now I spend a lot of time on individual character creation.

Writing / planning is a lot easier when you know what kind of food your cast will enjoy, or how they would react to seeing their favorite childhood toy. It's a fine detail that adds that extra bit of nuance to your world, and it's definitely worth taking time on!

I hope that helps give you a bit of direction! Don't hesitate reaching out to others for feedback if you ever want to know if something you're doing works. Peer review is awesome!

-Adam

[LeoKi]

now I only need a program to invent languages

Language is too complex to automate but some software can help organizing your creation ^^
This page may help, beware of moved sites, google around the broken links.

[mckarenart]

Wow. Yeah, very useful indeed Added to favourites in 3, 2, 1...

[KSlinger]

I take a kind of 'cross that bridge when I come to it' approach to world building. If I suddenly have an urgent need to explain why something is the way it is or how something works, I go away and think about it. On the other hand, some concepts present themselves or I've been hanging onto them for a long time as a core pillar of the story and these form general ground rules from which I improvise.

With designs I feel it out characters/environments on the page. Sometimes I have a very clear idea and other times I have to play around. Jed was a doodle whose core 'look' settled over the few pages. I can't remember what early versions of Morris looked like but I know they were quite different.

In terms of world history and culture I omit anything that isn't absolutely necessary. A lot of the time readers don't need help filling in the blanks and seeing (as I do) the scope of possibilities that are presented to them. Dropping hints and details is enough, and I've never had anyone ask for more OR get the wrong idea about what they're seeing (as far as I know).

Honestly, if I thought about my world too much I'd probably end up doubting myself. There are a lot of tropes and cookie-cutter concepts that get used in Fantasy stories these days and, frankly, I can't keep track of them all. What good will it do me to sit and worry if my ideas are original enough? I mean no harm or offense to anyone. I'm just going what feels right.

[mckarenart]

Hey I'm trying this word generator I found there. I just want you to know that I'M THE HAPPIEST PERSON IN THE WORRRRLD hahah, I'm investigating it and it will be very usefull to me for create my own dragon's language * _ *

[jackalope212]

I usually start with the characters, then I build the world around them. Or sometimes I start a basic theme then build the world and characters around that.
For example: one of my comics - Super Kids - I started with the characters (a group of teen super heroes who are trying to fight crime), then I built the world around them (the local media and common folk see them as a much needed more powerful police force while the authorities and government see them as vigilantes and want to lock them up or experiment on them.
My other comic - Food Sense - started with a theme (teen going to cooking school), and from there I created a character and the school he attends, along with the people he will meet and befriend or create enemies out of.
Now I have another project in the works that also started with a combination of characters and a basic theme, and now I'm building the world around them.

(I know these aren't 100% sci-fi or fantasy, but I thought it could be useful)

[Killercroc]

Usually I just don't do much world building. I get bored of it easily

For Silver Vein I've had to do it in small measures though. I think fantasy requires a little more of it since it's often about places far removed from our own world. That said, when I world build for Silver Vein it often follows the story and not the other way around. It might make things less cohesive at times but I cover more ground faster with the story that way. It's that "smoke and mirrors" thing a lot of authors speak about when writing. Show the readers just enough so that they'll fill in the rest themselves. Since I'm discovery writing most of the series I often stop and think about the rules of the world when I reach a point where a character has to interact with others. Much of it comes from trying to understand for myself why characters act the way they do and what they are presently looking at.

I think much of my difficulty with staying interested is that I just don't have the tools. To be able to think of a lot of things like political systems and such you need to read a lot about history and other subjects related to it. I've just not had the time to get into that yet.

[LeoKi]

Great! :)) I remember some discussions on some forums about how a 'realistic' dragon language could sound like, if they have no lips to pronounce 'p' or 'b' but can do plenty of different 's'-like sounds. In that word generator you can encode constraints on how sounds get combined to that effect.

Also, I found back some info that you might find interesting: A crazily detailed document here and a podcast there.

Have fun!

[mckarenart]

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaha awesome. The language I'm making it's some like gaelic but my dragons speak when they are in humanoid form (yeah, they can transform). Currently I have 214 words XD

[ErithEl]

they will just keep on adding things to their world's history, politics, rules and such as they go.

When I first started writing Burning Bright, this is what I did because I just wanted to get to the story already! Part-way through, though, it started to get confusing and I realized I had to stop writing the script, and actually write down some facts about the world beforehand.

Now I have maps, a brief history, a belief system, and appox. 900 words of the Thyrian language. I'm also STILL having fun delving deeper into society and culture in different parts of the world, and working on their economy.

One of my favorite things I've come across in my own world building is coming up with saying they would use. In our own world, every language and culture has different sayings that don't translate into other languages, and it would be the same for any created world, I think.

The hardest part for anybody is to refrain from adding all these elements into the story in a long prologue or pages and pages of "backstory" type dialogue. My plan for the future is to create a "behind the scenes" book to sell where I can include all the details about the world, so I don't bog down the story with them!