Final Outline

At long last, the final outline for the Pearl Diver is finished.  It's been almost a year since I started the project, and the draft went through 3 revisions.  Judging from the way my creative process works, the next step now is just to illustrate the graphic novel from the outline and skip the process of writing it in prose.  The outline has enough dialogue and minor details for the book.

The characters grew in number as I went through the revisions.  Some characters were removed, while others shifted from being the villain to a more heroic character.  Others were radically changed both in character and physical features.

My thought process has also changed in terms of sketching the diver.  This time she can interact with a diverse selection of characters, so she is now more than just a pin-up.

Ross Andru

Here is the diver again with a sample story of her tracking down killers.  The sketch is a homage to one of my favorite comic book illustrators, Ross Andru.  Andru worked on The Amazing Spiderman in the late seventies and is known for his use of foreshadowing to make his poses more dynamic.

Once again the sketch was started in sketchbook pro, first using the pencil pal to draw the foundation of the sketch then using the signature ink brush to darken and accentuate the lines.  Later a blend mode called glow was used to make the color of the diver less uniform. There's not much of a setting for the story just a lamp shade, a chair, and a door.  The objects, however, serve as a place holder for the characters.

This sketch has its share of mistakes that's worth noting.  First the panel right below the yellow arrow was mistakenly drawn from left to right (hence the need for an arrow.).  In the panel where the diver kicks the gunman her bikini bottom was mistakenly rendered in blue instead of grey.  The grey color of her bikini was supposed to transition to the grey color of her leg.  Another shortcoming for the sketch are the dialogue bubbles without the use of tails. Finding a quick method to draw the tails with the same width as the bubble is still a work in progress.

Once again the final sketch was composited in procreate.  First a similar blend mode called color dodge was used to replicate the initial blend mode from sketchbook pro, then a more vibrant color was achieved by adjusting the curves.

At this point in time the novella for the diver is now in its second draft.  Hopefully the story will come out more condensed and cohesive.

final image

Character sheet

Here is the character sheet for all ten characters in the Pearl Diver.  Ruka was the last character I added to give Torquemada a foil to flesh out his character.  At the moment the novella is one third done, and I'm still writing the introduction for Ruka's character.

The original concept for the story was a kid trying to find a hero, but another concept is also emerging from the story, namely the retelling of old filipino folklore in a modern fashion.  The most popular stories from my childhood were the manananggal, the kapre, and the mangkukulam, i.e. the vampire, the giant, and the witch.

The diver is now becoming a cross between a superhero story and gothic horror.  This goes along the same vein of stories told by Marvel in The Tomb of Dracula, whereby Dracula becomes the protagonist fighting evil monsters who are worse than himself.  The diver, however, is hardly the prince of darkness.

On a technical note, the final image was completed in an app called Procreate.  I wanted to test drive this software for along time on my iPad Pro, and this project made me realize what an amazing app it truly is.  This could very well replace Photoshop on my desktop, but I still need to try out the masking features.

final image