For the most part, everyone here is on this list because I have worked with you on projects or you are creative friends that I have met through different adventures in my life.
Well, I would like to officially invite you to this little discussion group i have put together to see if you all could help me to develop a tool. I come from an illustration background and am mostly a penciler. I have tried a few times to develop my own comics or stories and have fallen short of glory in my attempts. Many times because I did NOT put the PROPER work into developing the story and characters. I have a great friend and writer, Devon, that tried years ago to help me understand character building and I honestly shut down at the thought of the inner workings of the character’s story. I learned a lot from that situation including my weaknesses and what I need to work on.
Over the last year or so I began a new story called Kodi the Starfish. It is meant to be a mostly all ages story set in outer space. The content and theme of this story has brought me great excitement but now that I stand at the end of my known universe (my limited skill sets) and look out at the vast space around me, I feel that sinking feeling again and have come to a realization…I need some new tools!
Following that realization, I thought this would be great opportunity to engage the communities of experienced artists that I have connected with over the years. I look to learn from your successes and failures and cut my learning curve down dramatically and help us all in the end. I have now started to build my new “Toolkit” and have begun this closed discussion group to better adjust the tools. My goal is to create a product that can aid the “writer challenged” to capture, organize and then harness our ideas properly to create great stories. Then, we can do what we do best, take the written work and create awesome art from it to make our own comics and books!!
As of yet, when I am finished I look to have this be a free tool to send to you all and have available for download. I am simply trying to create a solution to my writing weaknesses that can help me annotate and organize the story. This will not replace the crafting of good ideas, only the practical organization of story and visual development that needs to happen before a comic can really hit the ground running with a solid foundation to fuel it.
If you would like to be part of the community that helps to hammer these ideas together and boil them down to their simplest forms, I would be very honored to have you. I already have some sheets developed that will work great as starters to the project. Please let me know if you have any questions and I will try to explain things as well as I can.
Currently here is the idea of schedule.
Week 1 – (this coming week) Introduction and goal setting.
Week 2 – The Writing capture stage. I wanting to make sure that I hit all of the basics of story writing; synopsis, pitch, outline, theme and such.
Week 3 – Visual Development – character concepting, setting concepts, reference gathering, etc.
Week 4 – Production – This is where the regular penciling, coloring and lettering happens. I would LOVE to learn the different ways that you all are more efficient or different in your approaches to this area. I am mostly a penciler so I would really enjoy learning coloring and lettering trick.
Week 5 – Production (Print or Digital End Product Preparation) and Promotion – This is mainly a wrap up and strategy time to learn the best ways to notify the audience that the product exists and its best delivery methods.
In closing, I would like to take this week to get to know some of you more and understand where you are in your similar stages. In the end, my goal is to provide all of you with new information and a tool that will help you continue to be amazing while still keeping your creative sanity. If you feel that you know a few other artists that could help and be helped by this then please let me know. I am moderating this closed group and though I don’t want it to get too large to control, I do want to ensure that we are as well rounded as possible.
My best to you all and thank you for influencing me in the ways that you have.
Thank you all so very much,
Derrick “Captain Dutz” Utz
Below are the first drafts of the pages!
DutzWorks 
