Blog: Instroduction to Story tutorials

Seems like using the blog to push Weebits forward seems like it would be a good way to get the content out of my head as I continue to make progress on it.

For the first blog, I think we can start with a general outline of the structure that the tutorials will take.

Premise

Kion finished high school and didn't go to university because he's not sure what he wants to do in like. He works a part time job in order to live on his own, while he barely manages to afford his own apartment. He knows he wants to do something in life but isn't sure of how to apply himself.

He goes to work and has a decent relationship with his friends there and has them come over to his house to game on occasion. However he has absolutely no luck when it comes to talking to girls.

The story starts when kion gets home from work one fall night. He takes a shower and makes some tea. He stares at his computer for a little while, but too tired to do anything after his shift he falls asleep.

Later Kion wakes up to see his computer screen flickering ominously in the dark. He thought he turned it off, but he walks over to investigate when he gets sucked into his computer.

F42AE7C6-272F-46E6-A923-8B3BC0C8D161

Suddenly Kion finds himself falling into a cave with mushrooms. He screams as he falls to the floor with a thud.

kion-drops

In the dark Kion hears an ominous "Fu-fu-fu", that echoes and gets louder as it approaches him. Dashie puts her face right in front of Kion and says, "that looked like it hurt!!!". Or alternatively Dashie could say, "kill it with fire!!" and start stomping on Kion's face.

This is where Kion first meets Dashie. This section serves to set up the characters and start the tutorial. Kion asks for the way out, and then Dashie looks confused, and says, "oh right, out, yeah I think I can help you!".

This is where Dashie guides Kion to the entrance to the cave which is blocked by Bricks starting the Brickout tutorial. Before the tutorial, Kion looks confused as to how to start and Dashie helps him get started with his setup.

flowchart TD

A[Kion Gets Home From Work]
B[Kion Falls into Computer]
C[Kion Meets Dashie]
D[Dashie helps Kion get equipped]
E[Start Brickout Tutorial]

A --> B
B --> C
C --> D
D --> E

Approach

In terms of approach we can storyboard out the flow of each of these scenes. I'm not good at drawing, but I should at least be able to represent which character, what their expression is and what they're saying.

For Kion getting home from work, this will probably bleed into the end of "Weebo Paradise". But either way the content should remain the same.

For tools, what I can probably do is use my Boox tablet with a template to be able to create a black and white sequence for each scene.

Another part that's been a little frustrating is what the hierarchy of a web comic is, and what we want to call each one of these units. We have three tutorials. Using the term tutorial is pretty boring. I like it when anime adapt their themes into their naming conventions, but let's not focus on that for now. Let's use the term, "chapters".

The introduction to Brickout is Chapter 0. Brickout is Chapter 1. Snake is Chapter 2. And Tetris is Chapter 3.

Which means that each Chapter is broken out into different scenes. A scene is anytime the time or location changes. Or it could represent a change in action in the same location.

In this case we have five scenes.

Scene 1: Kion get's off from work. Goes home, takes a shower
Scene 2: Kion wakes up in the middle of the night
Scene 3: Kion falls down the rabbit hole, meets Dashie
Scene 4: Dashie shows Kion the exit
Scene 5: Dashie explains to kion how to use his equipment
Start of Brickout Tutorial

I don't think we need to worry about grouping chapters correctly, just that we have some mechanism to categorize scenes.

Prologue

Summary

The story starts one night as Kion gets off work from his part time job as McWeebies. Kion is taking the order for the last customer. He's tired but manages to squeeze out a smile as he hands over the order.

The staff locks the door and Kion's exhaustion catches up with him. Kion's coworker (meme driven development) asks Kion if he wants to join him in Waifu's of Legends after work. Kion declines saying that he plans on working on his game after getting home from work.

After a small amount of cleaning, the staff turns off the lights and locks the door. They wave goodbye and head back to their cars.

Kion gets back to his apartment. He lives on the fourth floor of a run-down apartment complex. He puts in his key and lets himself in the door. He puts his keys down in the entrance to his apartment, and heads to the bathroom.

He puts his work clothes in the washing machine and takes a shower. Once he gets out he changes into a shirt and shorts. He walks into the small kitchen of his apartment and heats up water to make cup noodles.

He sits watching tv to de-stress from work. He gets carried away watching anime, but forces himself to turn it off to go over and sit at his computer. At his computer Kion tries to think of what he wanted to do. He has a lot of idea for games he would like to make but has no where to start.

He tries to look up tutorials online and look up guides. It starts to get chilly, so he gets up to put on a hoodie and make a cup of coffee to try and focus. He comes back and sits down at his computer, but he gets tried and falls asleep at his computer.

Kion suddenly wakes up at 3:02 am. He realizes that he drooled all over his computer when he dozes off. The monitor is flickering, Kion panics as he thinks he broke his computer. He picks up his coffee cup as he starts to wipe his keyboard, but as he does it he gets pulled into his computer with his coffee cup dropping on the ground in his apartment.

Notes

This should get Kion from the real world to be pulled into the Digital world to start his adventure. In terms of what happens from there, it might be pretty clunky in terms of the flow of getting introduced to Dashie to the point of starting the first tutorial.

But we can save that for another post. In terms of approach for this scene, we should try and do a sketch of each frame to try and convey the movement for the scene. From there we can try to make manga panels or otherwise do a first pass before going into a higher fidelity.

Filling out more of the scenes. We've got the introduction, brickout, snake, and currently implementing Tetris.

Summary

kion-dgl / astro-dashgl.org