Second go at Dragon Garage

I faced some difficulty working out the style for Dragon Garage, and there were many false starts. It became so frustrating I did another entire graphic novel in the meantime. 

With this version I tried for a light, squiggly line combined with a tone. Something different from what I've done before. 

Unfortunately, it didn't have the energy I was looking for. 

Back to the drawing board, as they say...

I like the first page, Zach looks worried, but the angle could be more dramatic

The framing is a little lacklustre here, a little straightforward. And the angles aren't extreme enough.

I like the dust in the top panel, it sets up the surprise for the villains in the third panel nicely.

Should have shown Zach getting out of the vehicle here, for context. Also, I'm not very consistent with his appearance. Ugh.

Back to Dungeons & Dragons

Classic

I haven't played Dungeons & Dragons in decades, but after reading my new book, a friend recommended I give being a Dungeon Master a go. Why? Dragon Garage follows a group of RPG players who open up a portal into their fantasy game world. Fun, drinking, and adventure ensue. 

Seemed like a good fit.

The main focus for Dragon Garage, for me, was the contrast between the modern and the medieval. Thanks at least in part to fairy tales, the Middle Ages is viewed through an idealized lens. We tend to think of princesses and knights, rather than dysentery, famine and bed bugs. 

I wanted to mix up the focus and smash them all together: ideal and real, medieval and modern, the fantastical and the grounded. 

A generic fantasy role playing game was a device through which I could explore that. 

I remember (fondly) playing Dungeons & Dragons in public school, but wasn't particularly good at it (to be fair, I don't think very many of us were... there was much open the door, kill the monster, take their stuff). The rules are dense and extensive, so taking it up again could be a time consuming challenge which I might not be up to.

So I deferred and, at first, declined.

Ultimately, it was The Expanse that changed my mind: Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck created the book series based on role playing game sessions. It's a brilliant idea: run your plot through interactive sessions, and test the logic. A great way to spot holes in a fantasy or sci-fi series: test it! 

Soon as I mentioned this to a few other friends, they put me on to Critical Role, which features a phenomenally talented gang of voice actors running through Dungeons and Dragons adventures. There's an entire media empire around it now, including a TV show and comic books. 

The players and set up of Critical Role. Impressive, most impressive...

So I'm late to the party, but undeterred. Running a D&D (or other RPG) game could help work out scenarios for future books, as well as generate 'happy accident' material that was truly authentic. 

With that in mind, I set about building out the world of Dragon Garage for player characters. At first I thought I'd build everything, the whole world; very quickly I discovered this is a crap ton of work, far more than the amount of world building you'd need for a novel.

A Megadungeon was a necessity, because when I was a kid, it was all about the Megadungeon. Every DM had their own. Gary Gygax had the platonic ideal in Castle Greyhawk (not that I ever saw it), and so I resolved to have my own: Castle Druidun!

Seemed a good idea at the time. 

Of course, a megadungeon is a stupid amount of work. No one sane is going to try and do this right off the bat. Fortunately, I laugh at sanity: I've tackled full on prose novels, even screenplays! In fact, making a megadungeon is rather to writing a novel, just more compartmentalized and interactive, like an enhanced version of Choose Your Own Adventure. 

Childhood library classics!

Over the years, I've tried my hand at comic books, graphic novels, prose novels, short stories, comedy skits, joke strips, and improv, so why not this?

Intially, I filled the dungeon with my own creations, but before long I turned to decades worth of fantasy trope D&D material to flesh it out. It's just too big a job for one person, especially when you have hundreds of dungeon rooms to fill, and there's amazingly creative material to pull from. I can edit out stuff later, should this path prove fruitful and I have the opportunity to do a sequel to Dragon Garage. 

Fingers crossed; there's so much more to explore and play with in the world of Arthea.

I thought I'd put up the material here, for fun, as the experiment progresses. We'll see what happens, and how far I get with it.

One big change from the book: I had the players roll up characters native to the fantasy world, rather than playing their real selves. It'd be too complicated for me to pull off initially, not until I'm more seasoned at this. 

An awesome megadungeon example I found by Tim Hartin

A megadungeon is a nice, 'simple' realm for adventuring, with built in guard rails. Or training wheels, as the case may be. There are rooms and tunnels and all the choices reside within that framework. It's much harder to mess up than, say, an open world space opera mixed with horror (which is what I originally wanted to do). 

There's a reason why shooter video games occur within finite structures.

What is an imaginary world? Where is it? Same place as Santa Claus, the United States, and Narnia: in our minds. Think about it. Nations only exist through agreement in, and enforcement of, the collective imagination.

Welcome to the World of Arthea...!

Dragon Garage: genesis part deux

The first go at the first page, from 2017-2018

To get the story of Dragon Garage to work as a TV show or a movie would require me to simplify everything, front load the fantasy elements, and relegate the set up to flashbacks. 

I can understand why: modern entertainment has to hook people fast. But I didn't want to do that. Not with this.

I like a nice linear build up, and thankfully, the graphic novel format offers a more forgiving arena in which to play, where I don't have to worry (as much) about 'channel' hopping. I still kept the story trim, but I didn't want to lose all the niche stuff I found interesting (Ultimately I still cut most of it... kill your darlings). 

The collision of fantasy and reality, of the medieval with modernity, fascinated me and I wanted to explore that aspect in depth. I didn't do as much as I would have liked in the first volume, as I admit it's not all prime time material, outside PBS. Hopefully it can be organically incorporated into future books.

When I had a window of bonus time (thank you Covid), I set about redoing Dragon Garage as a graphic novel. The change in format brought changes in tone: I put more humour in my comics than in my scripts. Not sure why. Jokes and gags just occur as I draw. Perhaps it's because I'm meditating longer on the scenes.

I'd also been watching a lot of anti-hero TV, and that had seeped into the initial pitch and script. I excised a lot of that. Not all, but a lot, making the book far less dark and tragic, which suits the material better. And I added a back half (the pilot script would have been 45 minutes, but it really needed about 2 hours), without concern for page count / time limitations. It took as long as it needed.

A more New Yorker-esque version of the characters

Dragon Garage became a comedy-adventure, while still leaning more towards the adventure side. All of the threats to the characters are treated seriously. They are in frequent mortal peril, and yet they can see the humour in their outlandish situations. The comedy is driven by character and observation, and by what real dramas just gloss over and ignore, like gaffes. 

They say drama is real life with the boring bits removed. It also strips out the missteps, pratfalls, and screw ups. Look at the outtakes from any movie. In the finished film, Guff McDraw will spin his pistol and shoot the villain down in one smooth motion. In the outtakes, we see the actor dropping the gun repeatedly, or hitting himself in the head with the pistol butt. Not dramatic, but more human. Even the expert gunslinger will mess up sometimes, with tragic consequences.

Dragon Garage gleefully incorporates the gaffes. 

It took multiple attempts at nailing a style over three or four (?) years before settling, and even that evolved as I went. I had to either pick a look, or be locked in holding pattern for all eternity, pumping out endless variations. 

Character designs from 2020 or so...

Once I got up steam, the book pages whizzed by. I added an appendix (every good fantasy book, as JRR Tolkien knows, needs an appendix!) in the form of Zach's Journal, covering material I cut from the book proper, and to tease tales to come. I then added an outtake page from the fictional Heroic Journey's Bestiary, covering goblins, just for fun.

And that's the convoluted path DG took to completion. 

I hope you enjoy it!

Take a gander over on Amazon. 

Character designs from the 2018 attempt

Dragon Garage genesis part un

The pitch doc cover, in a 'clear line' (if wibbly wobbly) style. People thought it was dated.

Dragon Garage evolved over more than a decade; it started out as one of a cluster of ideas I came up with after doing my first graphic novel, Nil: A Land Beyond Belief. Rex Libris, Warlord of Io and Rebel Angels (in very different proto-form) were also part of this batch. I picked Rex as an antidote to Nil, and the serialized comic book ran for 13 bonkers issues.

It took me years to work out an acceptable vector style for Warlord of Io. For Dragon Garage, I didn't think a digital look would work at all: it would have to be hand drawn.

I tried a couple goes at it, using a linear look, but the style was deemed 'old and dated', so I abandoned the effort. 

Instead, I pitched it as a TV show. 

By this time, I'd had a couple Hollywood options and made some contacts. I collaborated with them on some projects, and they were asking for more ideas, so I pulled out the pile in my ideas drawer. I later collaborated with an actress/writer in Berlin on a number of television concepts, which we put to studios like Sony and Disney.

Nothing substantial came of that, naturally. It's incredibly difficult for outsiders to break into the business. Writers mostly do spec scripts to get picked up by existing shows, and get a seat at a preexisting writer's room table. Comics are optioned often from highly successful series, but any film or show coming out of that will be written by seasoned professionals, not the person who originally came up with the idea. 

You have to be exceptionally talented, successful and skilled to bridge that gap.And / or a self starter. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are all four of the above: they did an animated short holiday card for George Clooney (it's hilarious, look it up), and out of that was born South Park. They've not looked back since. They proved themselves in the medium by doing. No one wants to make a leap-of-faith on talent if there's a solid, proven bridge right beside it. 

I am nowhere near that level, but it's something to aspire to. 

Wreathed in a comforting blanket of (relative) ignorance, I made a pitch doc for Dragon Garage, and a pilot script. I workshopped it in a screenwriting class. Incorporating feedback proved a major stumbling block: good scripts are incredibly tight, and everything is connected. Pull one string, and the whole story can unravel into an unsightly pile of knots. That's a hazard you face when trying to shove new or revised material in.

I also ran it by working industry professionals. Their feedback was the same: the set up took too long, and there wasn't enough action (among other things). You have ten minutes tops to hook the viewer, likely less, and if you don't, they'll just flip to another of hundreds of streaming options. 

This is one reason why I think Game of Thrones started out with a massacre by the White Walkers. That was the hook. The mystery of the albino ice goons intrigued me far more than the Stark kids practicing archery in the mud.

Yet as a novice, I found it hard to incorporate the changes. It went from (what I saw) as a lean and clean script to bumpy and messy. Changes cascaded through scenes, and every time I looked, I realized there was more that needed to be adjusted.

As far as interest in the idea, there was a nibble, and then... nothing. Which is the default, expected result when you aim for the sky.

But there are other mediums out there...

Kirkus review of Dragon Garage

 

Great review of Dragon Garage from Kirkus:

"Turner’s graphic tale is both silly and sincere, gratuitous and grounded. The five protagonists are delightfully nerdy and bursting with love—love they have for each other and love the author clearly has for them. They, rendered in intricate black-and-white illustrations, keep the reader eagerly turning pages to find out what else Arthea has in store. It’s a breezy, evenly paced story full of humor and escapist fun."

Check it out here. 

Process video of Dragon Garage

 A process video from Dragon Garage. I created the book in ProCreate, using a single brush style:

There is audio commentary, but the volume is fairly low.

Announcing Dragon Garage

My latest and greatest book has hit the virtual shelves on Amazon! 

Please do take a gander...