Art Style
For now Glider Ink doesn't have a set art style. The only hard requirement is supporting the project's themes:
Requirements
Realism - all the characters should be people, someone you could meet in a real world. No basement goblins or tech elves.
Optimism - which implies a full color palette, not only washed-out cyberpunk grays underlined with bright neon signs.
Up for discussion
Glider-Specific Needs
IRC Bubbles. Many characters communicate via
IRC protocol (
sample irssi screenshot) both on their computers and phones. This can be solved as a rectangular box between panels, on a panel's top or bottom. Can be used as a narrating technique, for example with
Cynic or
sh0dan commenting other character's actions.
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Nerdiness - most of characters of Glider Ink willingly spend their evening in a workshop, playing with technology, building things, and doing all these pointless algorithmic exercises - for fun! They clutter their minds with trivia about how first computer works and sometimes speak Klingon. With all that, they're still human - and very varied. They should be drawn so.
Presenting a physical hackerspace location in an interesting manner. Spaces range from lofts with mezzanines to cramped basements, almost always with interesting, colorful and dynamic lightning. The nerd/geek culture of inhabitants guarantees a lot of interesting backgrounds,
The state of “flow”, focus characteristic to deeply focused programmers, administrators and hackers in general. DO NOT DISTURB.
References
Strong Female Protagonist webcomic used to be my personal benchmark for simplicity and realism. It may have a little too much text - something this comic will have a problem with as well.
Stay Still Stay Silent has a beautiful, varied art style, it's own style for speech bubbles. Some characters are realistically plump, which is quite seldom in comics.
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