Greetings, new readers! I actually posted this page on April 6th, 2016. I simply set the date earlier so that it would appear before the first page, which marks the real debut of the comic.
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Chapter 01
11 comics.
Greetings, internet! I’m Steve, and this is the official debut of my webcomic, Battle Kreaturez! This project finds its origins in a comic I created when I was in Grade Eight, the first issue of which was written in the September of 1999. Since then it’s gone through seven reboots, culminating in this one.
Up until now I’ve been chipping away at my outlines while waiting for my artistic abilities to catch up to the imagery in my head. I’ve revised my scripts to a pulp and I feel like my art has managed to reach some baseline standard of presentable quality. Like the lowly cicada, “Battle Kreaturez” has been incubating for 16 years and it’s finally ready to crawl out of the dirt, spread its wings and take flight! Anyway, enjoy the prologue!
And now begins the actual plot! The upcoming match was only added to the story recently. The next one isn’t for a few more chapters and I decided my readers shouldn’t have to wait to see an actual battle in a webcomic called “Battle Kreaturez”. This scene also serves as a convenient opportunity to demonstrate how the basic mechanics of the premise function.
It’s the third week into the comic and I’ve finally introduced one of my main characters! I need to build up a backlog and start posting more frequently. That said, it’s a good thing I’m drawing these pages weeks in advance because the 5th panel on this page was just awful in the initial version; I managed to salvage it just a few days before posting this. The panel layouts on these early pages are… functional, but unimaginative. I was rusty at comic making when I started work on this chapter. This intro panel for Ben is where they start to get a bit more dynamic.
A month in and we’re finally seeing a goddamn battle in a webcomic called “Battle Kreaturez”. I need to put my nose to the grindstone and build a bigger backlog so this doesn’t take another four weeks just to finish. But drawing comics is haaaaaaard ;____; For a fight scene this panel layout is still too overly utilitarian and not dynamic enough. Oh well, at least you can tell what’s going on.
Ben’s humiliation continues. I feel like this page was where I finally shook off the rust and hit my stride in regards to comic making. I’ve standardized my approach to constructing the pages, and the artwork and panel layout have become more dynamic.
Fighting fighting fighting more fighting. I wasn’t satisfied with the initial drawings for this page and ended up redrawing most of it. I think the kick and the blade block are the only panels left over from the first version.
Skyler was a very recent addition to the story. Like, so recent that if I hadn’t gotten delayed this summer he’d have never appeared at all! I threw him in as just some mean jock to kick Ben while he’s down but he intrigued me so I decided to expand his role and elevate him to major character status.
EDIT April 19th, 2019
As I mentioned previously, Skyler was added to the story late during its development. In the original version of Chapter 01, Ben just fought some random Tamer, but after making Skyler into a major antagonist, I decided it would be better if he fought Ben instead, so I George Lucased him into the previous pages. This necessitated redrawing page 9 to preserve the story flow.