Tag: Writer Notes

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 4 part 3

Title Page

So the original version of Wild Things part 3 was much much longer. So in the redos I broke it up more so each part is the same size as other chapters. So the new chapter title page focuses on the important parts of the chapter which are Seth and Suryu’s meeting and Jeff being a captive. Also this is the first batch of redos colored by Mary Cagle. I asked Mary to take over coloring Sorcery 101’s redos cause coloring is the thing I think is the least amount of fun. I don’t know if it’s just I haven’t had the time to figure out how to do it in a way I enjoy or basically I’m generally unhappy with my own coloring. But either way I doing like it. And redoing pages are already frustrating and discouraging. I don’t think I could have gotten through it if it weren’t for Mary coloring. I basically gave Mary the general palette so they wouldn’t stand out too much. That worked pretty well and there weren’t many corrections the needed to be made through out her pages.

page 136 – 137

Connor is not a good student. Generally, I figure Connor is very smart but very lazy and has lot attitude. So this is the first of many scenes were he butts heads with Danny. This is a very common occurrence

Page 138 – 141

Poor Jeff. He’s scarred for life now. His first wolf night probably couldn’t have gone much worse. The guy wolf in the cage was in the background of the wolf demon fight earlier. Not much really to say beside that.

page 142 – 146

Suryu’s lackeys make their final appearance as Suryu makes her first one. Everything Suryu says about Seth is not true except for the being able to go out in the sun. I spread the scene out over a few more pages to give the art more room with all the dialogs.

I think this is also the first scene where I showed Seth picking at his fingernails. There’s a lot of talking in Sorcery 101 so I tried to give each character a little go to will talking or bored. Obviously Danny’s is smoking. Seth is usually picking at his nails with other nails or with his knife.

Suryu hitting on Seth has not much to do with Seth and more about being shitty to Asagi. I purposely avoid pronouns when Asagi is mentioned so when he finally showed up everything about him would be a surprise.

page 147 – 151

Back to Pat’s dump where Seth just barges in. It gets mentioned later that Pat’s lock is broken, making it easier for Seth to just show up and be an ass. Seth doesn’t ask for anything just demand it.

Then we get some exposition. Plus a little of Pat backstory.

Honestly, I’d leave out the whole auction thing. It’s over complicated and doesn’t come up again. Plus the whole vampire forcing werewolves to be servants is too close to werewolf verse vampires. I’m not crazy about that. And more vampires aren’t strong enough to force a shapeshifter into being their servant anyway.

And lastly Seth doesn’t drive through all of Sorcery 101 until the last chapter.

page 152 – 153

Plan making time and more exposition. I changed the dialog a bit when I redid this scene. I wanted to de-emphasize the whole claim on werewolves thing for similar reasons to why I don’t like the auction bit. It is needlessly over complicated and never comes up again.

I like that last panel of Seth. That smile isn’t reassuring at all.

Page 154 – 157

Everyone learns the full grossness of Seth’s house. Also dialog that is explain why they don’t do things a quicker way or in Seth’s mind a less fun way.

Seth helps thing but also usually makes them worse.

Page 158 – 160

Seth’s patience with Danny is not infinite. Originally, he was choking Danny. But I switched it to pulling his hair back cause that is more demeaning and less life threatening.

Danny could never hope to be as cool as Princess Leia.

page 161 – 163

Seth does his best to make a big badass impressive entrance only to have it completely ruined by Loki.

page 164 – 166

So Loki is about Seth’s age. He’s just a century or so younger. Aaron is closer to Pat’s age. That’s why despite his attention span Seth tells Loki the plan. Also anyone who has read From Scratch knows Aaron, like most people, hates Seth.

And just cause they are vampires doesn’t mean you don’t need a job. Aaron writes trashy porn books. They are mostly about pirates.

page 167 – 169

Suryu is talking to Kira who’s name you don’t get until the end of the series. However, she is in the background of every vampire party. Seth is going to distract Suryu with his dick. It makes for a good distraction.

There we go. These were all originally drawn in 2006. I redid them in 2012.

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 4 part 2

Title Page

The original title page has Suryu in it. I removed her since it turns out she doesn’t appear in this part. I didn’t really plan for most of the multipart chapters at first. I decided later that chapters/parts shouldn’t go over 40 pages. But once I figured that out it helped me make nicer title pages for each part. So like here the focus is on what is really the most important part of the chapter.

page 106 – 109

The french fry reenactment of the last chapter is super channeling Xander from the end of Buffy Season 2. Though Xander used fishsticks. But I wanted it to show Danny doesn’t really try to hide supernatural stuff. Later we find out Mel thinks he is joking, but I didn’t want any how could you hide this from me dramas.

We then get some expositions about Danny’s background. The conversation got cut down to stuff that will come up later. Any Danny’s response to Mel’s question on why he’s divorced is cause it’s a story that really doesn’t make him look good. I never go into it cause it’s not really important to Sorcery 101’s over all story. Jackie smirking when finding out Trish is cheating on Danny in the last chapter should give you a hint though.

And I wanted it to be a bit of a running gag that Danny’s dates kept getting interrupted. Both times it’s by someone who doesn’t have sex.

page 110 – 111

I think that I never really successfully made it clear how common supernatural stuff is in Sorcery 101 world. It’s not supposed to be super common, but the cast is just so in the thick of it that muddies the situation. But that’s what demon hunter with a gun is far more likely the cause of dead wolf demons.

page 112 – 115

I think Ally is actually the one who has a post date chat with Danny more than Brad. Obviously since Brad can’t say sex.

I try to put in stuff to show which werewolves are color blind. There are a few drawings by Rebecca where the colors are wrong. I know now that the Brad vision panel should be blues and yellows rather than greyscale.

I changed Rebecca’s reaction to being told to go to bed. Made it more bratty and violent to so it’s a little bit of a hint of her scene with Jeff. In the old version she just whines about wanting to stay up. Dialog is the same but the body laungage and expression are different.

Danny earns his keeps through babysitting.

page 116 – 117

Rebecca doesn’t interact with many people who aren’t Brad, Ally, and Danny. She has a very warped concept of normal. Brad doesn’t like being a werewolf, but he tries very hard to not let Rebecca know. He’s doesn’t want to pass on his hangups. This whole car scene was to get that across.

page 118 – 120

Rebecca’s doll Lenny is a real doll. It’s a lumberjack with a zipper in the back. Then you turn the doll inside out and it becomes a wolfman. Rebecca thinks Jeff smells funny cause his hair is dyed.

I like Jeff’s face while he listens to Danny and Brad.

page 121 – 122

I enjoyed staging this whole scene. Rebecca is pretty independent. She doesn’t see anything wrong with her getting Lenny on her own.

And to go back to her response to being told to go to bed. We have a similar response to being told to get down. The scene is mostly the same. But I changed the biting to a silohette cause I thought that would give the scene more of a punch.

And this whole turn of events is definitely my Buffy influence showing. I just really liked that Oz was a werewolf cause his cousin Jordy “Does not like to be tickled”

page 123 – 125

We have Rebecca realizing she made a huge mistake. She knows she is in BIG trouble. But she isn’t really old enough to be aware of how it effects Jeff’s life.

If you look closely, Jeff’s eyes are instantly yellow. And everyone passes out when they get bit. So Danny basically walked into the classroom and knew immediately that he needed to check what color Jeff’s eyes are.

page 126 – 128

Not much to say about this scene. We get some exposition.

Page 129 – 131

We get a look at Jeff’s house and some exposition about the private school Danny teaches at. For reference Connor lives in the school dorms and Jeff lives at home. Looking at this now I probably could have cut down Danny and Ally’s argument where they pass the buck. I cut it down to about half the length but I maybe should have trimmed it more.

Anyway on to underage drinking.

Page 132
Connor is a bad friend. And vomiting is hard to draw.

page 133 – 135

Jeff’s first transformation shows you that he dies his hair. Werewolf fur mimics be the natural hair of the werewolf. And I tried to be aware of where clothes would rip first. So mostly they are ripping along the seems and places that would get worn out the quickest.

Also to go with wolf form behavior not being immediately violent, I wanted to show drunk can barely stand human turns into drunk can barely stand wolf.

And Suryu’s lackeys make an entrance and never come back after this chapter. All her dudes are disposable. So she didn’t put much thought into wondering where Pat went after he managed to get away.

You also get how someone can tell the difference between a werewolf and a normal wolf/dog. Werewolves stay roughly the same size as a human and wolf. So they are slightly bigger, but the biggest tell will be human things that won’t fall off like Jeff’s earring.

There you go. This chapter was originally made February 2006 through April 2006. I redrew them at the beginning of 2011.

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 4 part 1

Title Page

First multi-chapter story. The original cover was kinda everyone just standing around so in the redo I changed it pretty drastically. I wanted to push some ominousness to the cover since Danny and Brad are damsels in distress the whole chapter.

page 74

This page is mostly unchanged dialog wise. Brad’s uncomfortable talking about anything sexy. Ally’s on her own way it comes time to give Rebecca the talk. I mostly upped my background game cause I actually like drawing backgrounds. Putting in stuff like the pigeons and random folks is fun.

page 75 – 76

And by having random folks on the street makes it less obvious the two wolf demons are gonna jump em in panel 1. It allows for a nicer build up. The dialog got cut down a little. The part that got cut is a joke about Brad eating at lot, but there were other opportunities to show that more naturally. Brad and Danny getting grabbed is pretty straight forward.

page 77 – 78

Seth’s house is a sty. But you can see the demon skull on his book shelf in panel 5. We also meet Tommy. I never really found I a place to explain Tommy. But he’s been Seth’s side-kick for all most of Seth’s time as a vampire. Seth is listening to Mother’s Little Helper by the Rolling Stones while he paints. That’s what he does when not murdering folks. In the newer version since the background is more detailed you can see some rolled up canvas and in later pages paints left out.

I changed Seth’s response to Ally’s question. Originally he said it’s a sick and twisted assumption, but while doing redos I figured Seth probably doesn’t give that much of a shit about Ally’s opinion and he’s probably been hearing it since Anne Rice books came out.

Page 79 – 80

Scene got condensed a little so some of the page after these two got move into these. I took out Seth getting to their how super fast, because he’s not THAT easily bribed. Also Ally has known Seth longer than Brad and Danny, so while she knows he isn’t top babysitter material she knows he is up to something that would require being allowed to hang around. So she figures an hour or so isn’t going to get Rebecca hurt.

Page 81 – 82

I cut down Brad and Danny being captured a lot. It was originally 3 pages. Now it’s one. I just kept the details about why Brad and Danny weren’t escaping and the first mention of Alpha Phoenix.

And more of Pat’s terrible apartment. There is no bathroom door. Lots of wholes in the walls. Floor boards don’t line up. He is basically squatting in an abandoned motel, it is weird for a vampire. Also, we get a better look at Pat’s arms and chest. When I learned to draw more body types, Pat was the biggest change. Mages are very organized and have emphasis on being best at monster killing. So he should be in better shape than Danny and Brad. So I gave him the broadest shoulder of the bunch of them.

Also this is first time Ally and Pat meet. I don’t know how make folks picked up on it, but they have the same nose.

Page 83-85

Pat is not big on saving werewolves. He is also the exact opposite of Danny’s first teacher Lope. Lope wants to help everyone, where as Pat doesn’t really want to help anyone. It took Seth’s particular brand of charm to get him to teach Danny. Here you get the first hint of Seth being invested with Danny’s sorcery lessons.

Ally takes no shits. She knows Brad is sensitive about werewolfness and isn’t gonna let anyone knock him.

Page 86

Like I said, Seth wouldn’t hurt Rebecca. However, he is fine with traumatizing her.

page 87 – 88

Exposition time. Vampire powers get better the more people they kill. So Pat slightly stronger than a human cause he’s not a centuries old murderer like Seth. Mage powers run on light magic so they can’t stay in a vampire forever. Pat’s been a vampire for about 90 years.

He learned sorcery so he could defend himself and keep up in a fight. But Ally is used to Danny and Brad as backup and they aren’t much in a fight. Vampire powers Pat does have are super hearing.

page 89 – 91

Ally and Pat are the get shit done squad. Ally knows how to kick ass and take names. Pat does know his sorcery.

Ally took on 4 werewolves at once and only 1 got the better of her. So she did pretty well.

page 92

We get Brad’s first change that is shown. Brad isn’t completely in control and never really will be cause he doesn’t like being a werewolf. That’s why hurt Ally is his berserker button. Not all werewolves have that.

page 93
Danny is currently the white mage of the group. Shit in a fight but good to have around. This spell he learned from Lope not Pat. So it’s not Latin.

page 94 – 95

While Brad isn’t in full control, his wolf does recognize people. So wolf won’t hurt Ally or Danny. I thought that was important to establish. Like with all the creatures in the Sorcery 101 world are not good or evil by nature. Now while werewolves are dangerous its cause a wild animal is dangerous. They don’t go out of their way to attack humans unless threatened. There is usually something easier to take down. So Wolf Brad is only dangerous when he or his family is threatened.

While doing redos, I cut out Brad throwing up cause it was messing with the pacing of the scene.

Pat also doesn’t care that Brad is naked killing demons is more important. He is so annoyed that no one care about killing demons but him.

page 96 – 99

Seth is pro Brad wolfing out and murdering everyone. Also Danny’s dog is growling at Seth cause it can sense evil. And the scars on Brad’s chest are cause super healing doesn’t mean you don’t scar. One is from when Danny shot him. The other is Suzanne attacked him after seeing him get chatty with Seth.

Seth’s child care tactics are based on least amount of effort possible.

page 100-104

And to go back to Ally being quit to go on the attack when Pat insulted Brad. We see why here.

page 105

And here we see what Pat was up to in the mean time. End with dead wolf demons.

That’s all for this chapter. I originally wrote it November 2005 then redid is late 2009.

Here is another batch of writer notes on Sorcery 101. If you want to read ahead on these got ahead on these head over to my patreon.

Chapter 3

Title page

This is the first chapter where we see Danny’s day job and his piano tie.

Page 49

Both Danny and the dream girls’ outfits are James Bond references. King is a good dog.

Pages 50-51

Connor and Jeff make their first appearances. The other kid’s name is Bobby. He is usually in the background of Jeff and Connor at school scenes. Around the time I was redoing this, I was drawing the chapter where Connor comes out so I pushed his overcompensating in this chapter. Originally, Connor had some exposition about Danny’s royalty background but it’s not really important yet and it’s more realistic if, instead of saying crazy rumors, Connor just overcompensates.

We set up that Jeff is tutored by Danny so he can get bit later. I made sure to show Dave listening to Jeff talking so we know where he heard it.

Pages 52-53

Connor gets away with a lot of sass.

Danny telling Dave about love spells is to contrast chapter one. He gets to be the responsible one in this chapter, at least for a little while. Note Danny putting his bag on Dave’s desk–Lets me do some background action while something more mundane happens in the foreground.

Grammar is hard. I feel Jeff’s pain.

Pages 54 – 58

First scene in the magic shop. Also, Mel is in the background. It’s mostly gag gifts or based off tourist trinket I saw from sale while visiting Salem, MA. The useful stuff is hidden or special ordered, like Pat’s book. This is the first Dwyn book. Also, we get that Pat is short for Patrice. That is also my mom’s name.

Danny and Mel flirting got cut down.

Pat’s home is as shitty on the outside as it is inside.

Pages 59 – 60

Pat lives in a shit hole. He doesn’t care. Pat’s priorities are all about the book.

Pages 61-63

This is why Ramon knows about magic. Meg knows her stuff but she probably should have given them all the details before leaving. The love spell probably also affected the girl in the picture.

Pages 64-65

Connor wouldn’t have been affected if he wasn’t already gay. Danny knows enough about sorcery at this point to put that together. He just sat on that knowledge for quite awhile.

Pages 66-67

Look at Danny being all adult.

Pages 68-70

Right up until Ramon shows up. Meg already had the popcorn. She’s used to Ramon overreacting.

Pages 71-72

And Pat is here to put a stop to all this. Chibi him with a cape is pretty cute.

Page 73

I don’t know how Pat got to the house. I made sure it was clear from the coloring that Pat was completely in shadow.

I originally made it in September 2005 and then redrew it in 2009

Hi folks! If you aren’t supporting the Patreon, then you are reading this after everything has wrapped up, so thanks for sticking around my site after the comic is over. I feel like the past few years I’ve been trying to make sure people know there is more on the site than Sorcery 101. I don’t know how successful I am.

Chapter 2

Title page

Hey look, it’s Seth. He’s a bad bad man. Seth basically exists because, in vampire stuff, there’s always a bad boy vampire who’s cool with all the murder but then the audience likes them so they end up becoming a good guy and stop all the murder. Seth is playing off that: making the audience think that he’s okay and a “good guy” but Seth is never a good person. Him playing off that was always to trick you into not realizing he’s the antagonist.

Page 20

Brad sure looooooves Star Wars. I like Star Wars and know bits and pieces of trivia because I’ve fallen into a few Wookipedia-holes, but I don’t love it as much as Brad. I think Star Wars Episode 2 was the first movie I watched and thought “Wow, that movie was not worth what I paid for the ticket.” Brad probably thinks it’s okay, not as good as the original trilogy, but okay.

Werewolves eat a lot. Originally, Rebecca broke Danny’s finger to show she was strong, too. I cut that, though, because her knocking Danny down last chapter was enough and all it did was add a clunky healing spell exposition.

Pages 21-22

Danny’s car is the one really expensive thing he owns so that’s why only he can drive it. Plus, it’s got the steering wheel on the wrong side so someone not used to that may have trouble. Once again, some dialogue is changed to make Danny less of a perv.

Page 23

So we get to Ally’s bar. It has no sign because it’s a secret bar. Also, Danny is once again checking ladies out.

Pages 24 – 25

Exposition while Danny talks to vampire ladies. They would totally eat him, or try. Seth wouldn’t let some other vampire eat Danny. Also, we get Chelsey introduced. I never actually intentionally make a character attractive. I let both readers and the characters say who’s hot.

Pages 26-27

This scene had more dialogue and an exchange between Ally and Chelsey that was all cut. Ally was too mean and dismissive of Chelsey. They both came off badly. Chelsey talking herself up is nicer. Also, I got to put that nice background detail of her giving the demons the wrong drinks.

Pages 28-30

There are no other demons that look like this lady in the comic anymore. I hadn’t really nailed down what the demons looked like at this point. If I designed her now, she wouldn’t have scales.

Pages 31-32

It’s probably not clear but Brad’s phone is vibrating, not ringing. He knows to turn off his phone in the movies. Pat never gets a new phone. If this happened later to Danny, Pat probably would have helped. But for now, it has to be clear that Seth is Danny’s last resort.

Pages 33-35

Seth’s intro. He’s hitting on teenagers. He is always hitting on teenagers when he’s getting a meal. It didn’t occur to me until later on in the story but I went with it. In the original, it was just a goth girl because, well, goth kids would be into Seth’s look. They were in an alleyway, but in the redo, I put him inside so we could have fun red lighting for him. You know, cause he’s evil.

Seth and Danny’s mental connection is more or less the main plot of Sorcery 101 so I wanted to introduce Seth with that.

I always like having normal folks reacting to Seth.

Pages 36-39

It is safe to assume that a front desk person was murdered for that key. Much like all Seth and Danny scenes, Seth is calm while Danny reacts. Danny’s pain is always funny to Seth. It’s kind of funny to me, too. He’s fun to torture. He deserves it a lot of the time. Danny’s boner is killed with transphobia. If I did a second round of redos, I would probably change that line. Danny is correct. Seth would think breaking his wrist is funny.

Pages 40-41

Seth left out the part where he murdered her. Every demon bar probably knows Seth. He drinks A LOT. Also, to Seth stabbing and violence is usually the answer.

Pages 42-44

This scene is mostly unchanged. I spread the conversation over more pages to give it more room to breath.

Exposition time: Being a vampire doesn’t make you evil. This isn’t Buffy. So all of Seth’s terrible behavior is pure him.

It is intentionally supposed to be unclear if this is meant for laughs. But this is your first hint that Seth is the antagonist. There was a comment on one of the end chapters asking if Seth has always been this evil. The answer is yes. These are the pages I linked them to. Also, Seth can see inside Danny’s mind so while Danny hasn’t said Seth’s gay out loud in the comic yet, he’s thought it. Seth is bi but wouldn’t say he is. He doesn’t think about that stuff.

Seth flat out tells Danny he can do all this horrible shit to him. Danny never brings it up again or tells anyone. That is first sign Seth is fucking with Danny’s head. It’s very, very subtle but I was planning those seeds from the beginning.

Pages 45-46

EXPOSITION. Also Seth knows how to pick pocket people.

Page 47

Violence is always the answer when Seth’s around.

Page 48

Seth does keep the skull. If you look hard for it, you can find it in his piles of junk. Danny is okay with people getting murdered in front of him when Seth’s around. OR IS HE…..?

That’s it for chapter two. It was originally made July 2005 and was redone in 2008.