バスク

A pose commonly associated with Loran.

ほら！すごく長い、髪の毛は。

臭いはすばらしいでしょう。

~Allegra

Lydram Speedpaint

Lydram. Did it in about an hour. He looks more like a bishounen than a scholar here. Oh well.

悲しいそうです。つまらないでしょう。

~Allegra.

BApie?

Yes, pie.  My good friend Cat is starting her own awesome magazine called BApie, or Big Apple Pie. I'm sure it'll be great, she always has interesting things to say. Relevance? She had asked me if I could have for her a few pages of Creeping Shadow for her to put in each issue. I agreed of course. Nora should be fine with it anyway. I would have discussed it before I posted this up here, but I'm not big on waiting for her to go online. But in any case, I should have 5-10 pages done for Cat by Nov. or Dec, or whenever the deadline for the first issue is. And if things work out, I may be able to submit to this International Manga Competition thing as well. We could kill two birds with one stone. And maybe with ten pages we could start posting the comic itself. Three birds.

焼き鳥とパイもおいしいそうです。

頂きます！

~Allegra

だめです、入ることは。

Reconsidering that whole International Manga competition. Sure I'd love to do it, and it would be great for us to win, but this would be going against the work of professionals. Sure, my art may be closer to professional than other people, but having it done by December is too much for me right now, and on top of that I don't think that the story is quite developed enough comic wise to hold any weight against other contestants. Maybe next year.

だめです、 入ることは。

残念です。

 ~Allegra

Progress in the Sidebar

Alright, work on the comic will now go thusly: I'm going to work on the outline and get as much mapped out in detail as possible, and Allegra's going to draw like a madwoman. Our goal is to have at least 12 pages done (completely) by the end of the year so as to enter an international manga competition (eep). So wish us luck! We'll need it.

Also, Allegra's friend Stephi is going to be helping out! She'll edit the script to make it fit better in the graphic novel format and help Alyssa with layouts. We'll put her info up soon...

~Nora

PS: I put the progress report on the sidebar, so I can just update that, instead of making new posts. Much simpler. I also added "Labels" to the sidebar; they're pretty self-explanatory, I think. Just to clarify: "real-world info" refers to anything describing what we are doing - I am working on the outline, Allegra is drawing, etc - while "story info" refers to what the characters are doing. At this point, the only thing under "story info" is the family tree, but there should be more there later...

Changes

I'm not in charge of the writing part of this, but I think that the story outline should be completed as soon as possible so that if the story changes so much that the beginning has to be redone, I wont have to get rid of pages and pages of work and we already rewrote the "prologue." Once the outline is completed the script will be continued, and meanwhile I'll catch up to where the script ends.

これで、買いてみた方か良いです

~Allegra

Progress

Prologue
Scene 1: Written

Chapter One
Scene 2: Written
Scene 3: Written

Chapter Two
Scene 4: Written
Scene 5: Written

Chapter Three
Scene 6: Written
Scene 7: Outline

Chapter Four+
Scene 8: Very Vague Outline
Scene 9: Very Vague Outline
Scene 10: Outline
Scene 11: Vague Outline
Scene 12: Vague Outline
Scene 13: Very Vague Outline
Scene 14: Very Vague Outline
Scene 15: Very Vague Outline

Omake
Ah about the omake, I think that we shouldn't really put it in the serious planning for the comic- those and the joke pages- being that they're not really serious. The ideas should be there, but they're not a real part of the comic so... we'll just keep them as ideas for now.

良くない？

〜Allegra

~Nora

Loran Speed-paint

Ah, a speedpaint of Loran. Took about an hour. He's older in this one.

ちょっとこわい。えを書くのはコンピュターでの方が上手と思う。

〜Allegra

Progress

Prologue
Scene 1: Written

Chapter One
Scene 2: Written
Scene 3: Written

Chapter Two
Scene 4: Written
Scene 5: Written
Scene 5.8 (joke page): Written
Scene 5.9 (joke page): Written

Chapter Three
Scene 6: Outline, Mostly Written
Scene 7: Outline

Chapter Four+
Scene 8: Very Vague Outline
Scene 9: Very Vague Outline
Scene 10: Outline
Scene 11: Vague Outline
Scene 12: Vague Outline
Scene 13: Very Vague Outline
Scene 14: Very Vague Outline
Scene 15: Very Vague Outline

Omake
Omake 1: Outline

~Nora

Art Dump (2 - Other Characters...)

Robin! The answer to the eternal question of "What to wear?" Nothing! This is from about a year ago.

Allegra~ Certainly not a year ago... right..? Im thinking no earlier than last March. Which is what... six, seven months? Oh well. Why did I draw her naked? because I felt like it. She shouldn't appear naked in any part of the comic, unless Nora decides to put in some sex scene.. which she probably won't. Honestly I think it would be fun to draw.~

~I got rid of this one 'cause its quite a spoiler. Luckily no one's seen it.~

So, that's that. 'til next time...

~Nora

Art Dump (1 - Loran)

Well, here's some old art of Allegra's that she's sent to me over the years. I'm putting this stuff up instead of her because she got a new computer recently, and a lot of it isn't on there... So yeah. Here y'go.

Loran first:

This is a reeeeaaaally old one, from 9th or 10th grade... That's three or four years. I like it, though... Even if the scan's a little wonky...

Allegra~ This is from freshman year. I remember this being around the time that we decided Loran had really long hair.. or maybe it was me. But he does. Maybe its not AS long as we first decided, but its certainly not short, or anything close to it. Oddly enough I'm still happy with this picture. Even though the scan IS a little wonky.~

Sketch of Loran, a month or two into working on the comic. Yup.

w00t, mostly-naked Loran! Yup. An unfinished piece from a couple months ago. Allegra will finish it eventually...

Unfinished Loran...

Here's part of a picture of Loran that I spent today working on. Or yesterday... where has the day gone..? Anyhow, Alyssa commented saying that he looks like he's plotting something, I hadn't really planned on it looking like that, then again I didn't really plan on it looking like anything in particular. Also his hair is down-ish, and there are bangs, I kind of needed for there to be something covering his eyes a bit, so I guess he normally slicks them back. I'm happy with his hair, and his lips, lol. ><;

すごくハンサムな、ロラン様は。

〜Allegra

Some Changes (pt2)

Yup. As Allegra said about an hour ago, we've decided (after much distress) to rework the first scene. No changes that'll affect the plot; just the overall flow. And we're both happy with the result! I'll get to re-writing it tomorrow (later today, really).

In other news, we're welcoming a new person to our crew! Allegra's roommate has agreed to help with layouts. Her name is Alyssa Alecci (which is an awesome name), and I've added her contact info and a link to her DevArt to the sidebar (look right, if you haven't noticed it yet).

Progress, yay!

Sleep now.

~Nora

Some Changes

We've decided to change the first scene, if only a bit. After a lot of bickering we came to a. compromise. Which is great, because i get to do it over again- i can make it look better. ><

~Allegra

がんばります！

Family Tree

The Naiyu family tree

  -Don't look if you don't want anything SPOILED for you-

(click to enlarge):

Huge, isn't it? Yeah. Gah.

Oh, and by the way, the posts are going to be signed from now on! So you'll be able to tell which of us is writing which posts. Yay!

~Nora

Origins

Well, here we are.

Come a long way.

The universe of Creeping Shadow has existed since 2002, when Nora noticed Allegra scribbling in a little red book every day. After days of wheedling to see it, Nora finally managed to yoink it away and read it. It was the story of a boy named Artemis, living in the Pokemon world.

Rest assured, the current story has nothing to do with fighting monsters. As far as we know.

Anyway, after this, Allegra let Nora read The Book (as they called it) whenever she wrote something. When she got fed up with her friend's impatience, she convinced Nora to add to it herself - so I did. We traded back and forth, scribbling random thoughts and bits of what-might-be-plot (completely ignoring the silly teachers) for the entirety of 8th grade. Our lives basically revolved around it. We sat at lunch and sang "Artie's got a lovely bunch of coconuts (deedle-dee-dee)". Our friends heard enough about the characters to be able to keep up in conversation about them.

We pulled one of those friends, Goomba, into the group near the end of the school year, to complete the tedious task of typing up what we'd written so far of The Book - which, at this point, spanned about three notebooks. The next fall heralded the beginning of high school: Allegra going on to La Guardia, an art school, and I staying at Brooklyn Friends, a small private school in Brooklyn Heights. We kept in touch, but work on The Book dwindled.

Until, the summer between 10th and 11th grades, Allegra's parents decided to drag her and a friend on a cruise.

So we spent a week in a dark room doing nothing but sleeping, eating, playing DDR, and rewriting The Book with what we hoped was more of a plot than the original had. Many changes were made. Such as a move from the world of Pokemon to something resembling this one. (Though, of course, only the first few pages actually had anything to do with that world, before Artemis was whisked away to the insanity of Plot.) We also made more characters. And made some of the characters we had evil. It was necessary.

In any case, The Book was rewritten.

And, in our laziness, mostly forgotten once we returned to land.

Then, in 12th grade, Allegra IMs me out of the blue.

And somewhere in there it was decided that I would do the writing. So I sat down and wrote out the script for the first two scenes. Ta-da!

Anyway, we've been bumbling along for about a year now. We have an actual PLOT planned (gasp)! (Sort of.) And a family tree. And concept sketches. Not to mention twenty-odd pages of script and quite a few pages of, y'know, comic.

So we figured we should probably do something with all this work. And the idea came up of a webcomic.

The first step was a title. Up until this afternoon, we had referred to it as "The Comic". (Yes, I know, we're very original - "The Book", "The Comic", what's next, "The TV Show"?)

So I brainstormed.

I asked a friend for title-advice, and he said "pick something that's a theme". And I said "Dude, we have a crapload of characters, all of whom display character development. Even the tone of the story changes drastically from light and happy in the beginning to dark and morbid toward the end. There is no theme."

But I pondered a bit more, and I came up with three options:

1. "Naiyu" - Loran's family name, which is taken by Robin and their children. It was the only solid theme I could think of. It wouldn't work very well for a final name, but would make a fine working title.
2. "Ghost of a Rose" - Based on the song (of the same name) by Blackmore's Night. I thought of it because Allegra mentioned awhile ago that it reminds her of Robin's relationship with an as-yet-unmentioned astronomer. But, seeing as that won't come into play for quite awhile... Not so appropriate.
3. "Creeping Shadow" - Named after a song from, believe it or not, a video game called Shadow of the Colussus. It has gorgeous music, by the way. Nice graphics, too. Anyway, Allegra said several months ago that she liked to listen to it while drawing, that it put her in the right mood for this story... So I flipped through a few of the song titles idly, and this one caught my eye. And it's pretty appropriate, implying light at the beginning, but a growing darkness that comes to dominate by the end - just what I'd been looking for.

So I proposed these ideas to Allegra, who liked the third most, and, since I agreed... Well, the logical solution was to use it. So we did. Hence the name of the blog: Creeping Shadow.

So, welcome! I hope you enjoy the journey.

Creeping Shadow

Creeping Shadow is a fantasy comic (soon to be webcomic) following the events of the royal family of Naiyrul. It begins with a promiscuous, ambitious young king, Loran, who decides to marry the newly-coronated queen of Teresia, the much smaller neighboring country, so as to merge the two and become ruler of the entire continent. The story truly begins when Robin (the Teresian queen) arrives in the capital of Naiyrul, and he sets about seducing her.

Writer/Editor: Nora Grosvenor
Artist: Allegra Northern
Story: Both