Hello community!

I've been working on something akin to a graphic novel using the Sims 3. I'm not terribly familiar with graphic novel and/or manga stylization, but it seemed fun. The trouble is, I haven't found anything similar. There are a few things I'm curious about:

1) Is there somewhere I can see different styled graphic novels? I've googled and googled, but have just found instructions for old-school marvel styles (and most of those were pay sites, or just told you what books to buy). Honestly, I have no idea how big (pixels) to make each "page", how many pictures to include in each "page", how to make my layout dynamic and interesting, etc. Searching the web is a bit like a needle in a haystack if you don't know where to look.

2) Is there anyone else who's done a dramatic themed, graphic novel styled story using The Sims? Again, I've googled for a few days and have only found short comics.

3) Where would be the best place to share my story once its done? Since each page is laid out like a comic book or manga, people will have to be able to switch from picture to picture quickly, but it needs to be big enough for them to read the bubbles.

Hopefully all that made sense. In case it didn't, I'll include a picture of my first try at a "page" so you can understand what I'm currently picturing in my head. Yeah, I know it needs some help. I just don't know WHAT help. By all means, tell me if I've got it all wrong.

Any creative advice is greatly appreciated!

~Amaya

1) The Creativity/Stories section has a lot of stuff like this! If you're looking for just general stuff, my favourite graphic novel series is Morning Glories.

2) I very much enjoyed this one:

https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=427316

3) See #1

Huh, how did I miss that? Thanks!

IMO, if you're not already big on editing pictures and into graphic novels so you have a good idea of layouts and stuff, perhaps don't do a graphic novel style story to begin with. It's a lot harder to convey everything with only pictures and dialog and occasional small blurbs of exposition. Much easier to do a "traditional" sim story with pictures serving to help illustrate the text. I think you'll find that in itself is PLENTY of work to start with - it takes me usually two full evenings to do one chapter of my story, and that's without having to worry about a layout and conveying 99% of the action with images - just to take the pictures, do the text, and edit the pictures to make 'em prettier.

I'm not saying this to be discouraging - just that it's easy to burn out on something creative when it gets tedious and overly time-consuming, and it would be a shame to stop a story halfway through because it's too much of a pain in the ass to do it the way you have been, y'know?

Oh I totally agree, HystericalParoxysm! For the time being, I'm having quite a bit of fun playing around with this style of expression (even if I don't know what I'm doing). I'm 5 pages in, and HOPING I don't run out of steam before I get a hang of GIMP. *sigh* It would be a lot easier if GIMP didn't rage-quit on me every time I ran The Sims.