Webcomic Review - The Dreamland Chronicles

I spent my whole afternoon reading this webcomic called The Dreamland Chronicles.  I don't know what about it caught me this time around, since I've had people point me at it before and didn't pay attention to it, but somehow after reading the first fifty pages yesterday it managed to invade my dreams (which is unusual).  At the moment it holds the rank of #7 on Top Web Comics, and it deserves that position.

It's the story of a guy who travels to Dreamland whenever he sleeps and how he gets caught up in saving it while trying to help his friends and lady love.

Dreamland Chronicles has been updating on a regular, every weekday basis since 2006 and is done with 3D computer animation technology, which is a ton of work.  It has a grand scale of plot and action with good characters.  Over the years the art has gone from pretty good but stiff CG to having panels that look like they came out of a legit Dreamworks or Pixar movie.

The beginning is a bit rough for the first 2-3 chapters, but that tends to be the case with a lot of webcomics when they're starting out.  Some of the character interaction didn't make sense, but once the rough patch was over the characters stayed truthful to themselves and made a lot more sense.

Go check it out!  It's got romance, adventure, beautiful hard work, and fantasy all rolled into one story.  It also manages to stay pretty clean and family-friendly as well!  I give it four stars out of five.

Something exciting came in my mail!

I've been saving up money, and I finally had enough!  I ordered the box set for the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, and it's here!!!  It's so beautiful!

Front of the box.

Back of the box.

That's my cat Waltz behind the box.  Look at all those books!

All the pretty covers!  There's 27 volumes, one extra novel (written all in words), and a double-sided poster inside.

And you know what else is awesome?  There's a slot in my funny-shelfed Ikea bookcase that the box fits in perfectly.

I can't wait to read the whole series again.  I love Fullmetal Alchemist oh so much.  It has fantastic characters, good depth, strong story, and it ends right.  The main bad guy ends up a little too powerful in the end in my personal opinion, but the author compensated for that enough and it wasn't so over the top that I'm willing to let it slide.  It's not a kid story, I wouldn't advise reading it until you're at least 16, but it's worth waiting for.  VERY worth it.  I will treasure this series forever and look forward to owning all the anime that goes with it whenever that happens.

Let's finish catching up, shall we?

Hey!  It's the first day of almost-freedom for me!  I'm all done with my classes, but have two projects to rework by Tuesday next week.  I should be at work today, but I caught the plague my parents had and didn't want to expose anyone.  Hopefully I'll be better tomorrow.  I better be.

Anyways!  Now that I have (almost) no more homework, I have a little time to finish catching up moving stuff over to this blog.  Let's start with Fur and Fangs stuff, and for simplicity's sake we'll focus on the two main characters.  Warning, this might be long.

This is my very first ever drawing of Walter, done way back in early 2011.  I was trying to figure out what he looked like in the short story I wrote about him when he was a kid, before he and Kevin were in the same universe.

I think this is the second drawing I ever did of Walter, and the first one I did of Kevin.  I thought I had their relationship dynamic down in this image, but I was wrong.  It's very different.

Now I started trying to develop them into workable characters.  I took this drawing of Walter and showed it to my teacher, Jake Parker, and he did a draw over on it that dramatically changed my approach.

This was my first attempt at a new style with a skinnier Walter.  I wanted Walter to be skinny, and Jake encouraged me to push that.  Looking back now, this drawing is atrocious (I cringe looking at it), but it was a step in the right direction.

And the next drawing of Walter!  Now we don't look as horrible.  I was trying to figure out how he would look different in vampire-mode.

Now we have another drawing of Kevin and Walter.  At this point I was seriously struggling with Kevin.  He refused to be drawn by himself.  After this, though, he started cooperating more.

An attempt to figure out Kevin more.

Meanwhile, I'm also trying to figure out what Kevin's wolf-form looks like.

It still needs work.

And another attempt at a full-body ref for Kevin.  His face still isn't quite right.

A friend of mine decided to draw some fan art of Walter after hearing some of my story, before I'd decided what he looked like, and I really liked what she did with his hair.  I decided to play with his hair and get rid of the stupid downward-facing curl on the top of his head.  I came up with a "cool" hairstyle for him that he will get later on, and then a regular hairstyle for before and when he's being lazy about his hair.

Walter has a sister.  This was more practice drawing Walter.

More trying to figure out Kevin.  I decided most of his siblings sleep with him.

And the wolf-form is still needing work.

A straight pen drawing of Kevin just before the end of the year in 2011.

Now on to 2012!

So, I started drawing them every now and then while I wrote a significant portion of the story.

And we still haven't gotten the wolf-form figured out yet, but it's much better than it was before!

Another drawing!  I wanted to try and see what ways I might try to ink the comic once I started making it, so I inked it up in Photoshop.

We are then brought to this image.  It's been around a year since I drew and inked it, but it's still one of my favorites of these two.  They finally settled into looking like themselves, and they've stuck to this since, and the inking style has stayed similar as well.

Then we have some expression practice to help me learn about Walter better and to try to draw him consistently.  I should do this with all of them.

However, I still didn't know what Kevin's wolf-form looked like, so I sat down and pounded it out until I was happy with it.  I ended up with this.  Granted, it still wasn't perfect, but it was good enough for me to start working with it.

And there we pretty much have it!  That is the evolution of Kevin and Walter over the course of a year, pretty much from June-ish 2011 to June-ish 2012.  To see how they've been doing since the comic started in September 2012, please go read the comic!  :)

(Wow, I was really terrible at drawing back when I started working with them!  o.O  This was an eye-opening post to do.  Not that I'm amazing now, but wow!  I'm a lot better than that.)