Final Project Update

One week until the due date of the final project--also the last class of the semester. I've had to cut down my story to 17 pages and remove much of the latter part of the storyline in order to make the deadline. Getting accustomed to a totally new computer program (Manga Studio EX4) has taken more time than I originally anticipated, although now that I'm getting the hang of it it's turning out to be a fantastic tool.

This first chapter now ends when Juno realizes that the girl she's found is actually a robot; I chose to cut off the story with Alice formally introducing herself. Stopping chapter 1 here is probably better for chapter 2, if it ever gets made--it will consist of what was originally supposed to go in chapter 1 (Alice's backstory, James's introduction, Juno's decision to flee the city with Alice), but I'll be able to take more pages to explain things by separating these events in their own chapter. Had they been in chapter 1, I probably would have crammed them into 10 pages or so to meet my deadline; in a totally separate chapter, I can take 17 pages to cover the material instead. On the downside, this makes the first chapter rather slow, and the story will not really begin until chapter 2. I probably should have planned this out better before jumping in, to avoid the slow pacing of chapter 1. At this point it's too late to make any major changes, but I'll keep this in mind when working on other projects or continuing this one.

Here are my sketches of chapter 1, the final project will basically follow these sketches. A few pages had to have their panels altered because I had issues creating the right layouts in Manga Studio.