Webcomic Idea: MTF Transexual

So yesterday I found this webcomic called Rain, which gave me this idea. I don't want to share it in Real Life, so...

The Working Title is The Alex Conspiracy, or TAC.

There is a male sophmore Ordinary High-School Student, Chris, who serves as the narrator and Audience Surrogate, and his friend is a female sophmore, Lizzy, who is adventurous, a little gun-ho, who is a lesbian.

During the first day of school at Gardener Private High, there is a new student in named Alexandra Robinson, or just Alex. Her aunt is one of the new counselors. Both Chris and Lizzy find her attractive. However, she seems very, very, timid, and a little paranoid.

On the forth day of school, after Alex freaks out after bumping into someone and slipping, Lizzy decides to eavesdrop outside of the counselors office after school. Chris is dragged along. Then they hear an exchange between Alex and her aunt, but there is something wrong with her voice...

Then Ms. Robinson opens the door.

It turns out that Alexandra is actually Alexander, a male-to-female transexual, who is in the computers (I can't spell restrigered) as a male, because "she" didn't want to be bullied and outed, after an incident in her last school. The only reason why she was able to do this because of Ms. Robinson's connections. She went to school with the Vice Principal, a sectray has a transexual daughter, the gym teacher is a lesbian, she dated another teacher...you get the idea. A total of six staff members are a part of "The Conspiracy".

Chris and Lizzy are forced swear to secrecy, because not only Alex would be expelled if her gender is revealed, but all the staff members involved might be fired, and the school would be sued, and Alex's self-esteem would shatter, plunging her over the Despair Event Horizon.

The webcomic itself is a Slice-of-Life story dealing with both normal high school problems, and the problems of being queer. I will draw it under a simple manga style, and the story would either last one year, or two.

So here are my questions:

• Is this ripping off Rain too much? I tried making it my own work, but several of the characters I listed fit the archetypes and the bare-bone premise is the same.
• Is this plasiable?
• What are some plot lines I should do?
• What are some pitfalls I should avoid while dealing with Transsexuals?
• What software should I use? Currently, I have the character designs down pat, but I don't know how to do the backgrounds.
• Critque?

I will post more information.

edited 10th Feb '11 3:57:10 PM by chihuahua0

A webcomic about an mtf transsexual with a character named Zoë. Huh.

edited 10th Feb '11 3:46:00 PM by Tzetze

Oops.

I consider calling her Lizzy, but I wanted to give that name to The Libby. I'll change it to Lizzy then.

It's fine for the premise to be the same so long as you take it somewhere different as the story progresses.

It's plausible enough. Situational Comedies (Sit Coms) are defined as "comedies based on unusual or bizarre situations," after all.

Also, what laws might Alex and "her" aunt be breaking?

EDIT: Also, what orientation do transgenders usually have? Are they attrached to people of their physical gender, or their physlogical gender?

ANOTHER EDIT: Sorry for all the questions, but what format should I use when writing out the story? What type of script format?

edited 10th Feb '11 6:43:05 PM by chihuahua0

As far as I know, Alex and her aunt wouldn't be breaking any laws by enrolling Alex in a new school as a girl. This might vary depending on the setting, but where I am from (New England) this wouldn't be illegal.

There is no standard transgender sexuality. Different transgender people have different preferences. I have noticed, among the trans people I've known, a penchant for bisexuality, but they were all young and still figuring out their sexuality at the time.

Hope that helps.

Thanks. Although for Rule of Drama, if Alex is found out, she would get expelled for lieing.

Also, if people believe it's true, it doesn't really matter if it is.

There's also the fact that while she may not be breaking any laws, revealing that she's transgendered at the right sort of school could really screw up her life, ether with public outcry or getting cornered and beaten up. Even if at this school in particular that wouldn't happen, that doesn't mean that it didn't go that way at the last one.

That's a great reason. Maybe that what happened at her last school.

Also, I can't figure out how to set the funishure against the backgrounds.

Also, what software should I use?

BUMP

BUMP again.

Photoshop? Paint.NET? GIMP? Does it actually matter that much, if you can draw?

Your software should be a pencil, some paper, and a scanner. :P

EDIT: And a computer, of course, but without that, how are you posting here?

edited 13th Feb '11 1:59:31 PM by Zersk

Well, firstly, I need software to clean the drawings up, and to make the backgrounds. Also, I need software to produce panels and speech bubbles. I was considering Comic Life, but it's not free, and I don't want to spend any money on software. I already have lots of paper, pencils and pens, a printer-scanner, and of course, a computer.

Another problem is how to draw the pictures. Should I draw half of a page on one piece of paper? Use one piece of paper per panel?

Depends on how detailed you want to be. Doujinshi artists (if I recall correctly), draw on A4 size paper, which is slightly larger than a normal piece of paper. I don't know much about line drawings in photoshop, mostly just what my friend does with photo manipulation. I've used Flash to do vector traces of my line drawings, but I imagine it'd take too long to do on a reliable schedule.

Comic Life is awesome in its simplicity, I'll give you that. I don't know of any software you can get for free that's like it, though — things like GIMP and Photoshop can have really steep learning curves, IME.

If you're planning on drawing, inking, or doing a lot of coloring with the software, its probably a good idea to get a tablet, even if only a small one. If you're just going to clean a picture up to make it presentable and fixing minor mistakes you can get away with just a mouse, but anything more than that will be hell to deal with.

Also, unless you're a a big fan of very detailed scenery porn or willing to be patient with constructing a comic in a new and alien program, I'd suggest doing it all on one page, with formatting, and using paper as close to the size of the scanning bed as possible. It will save you a lot of grief.

edited 13th Feb '11 5:51:15 PM by Dec

I'm not really interested in the background, as long as it looks decent.

So, large paper, got it. I could get card stock, and make a rough sketch on 8x11 paper. I just need to find a way to line panel borders as neatly as possible.

How does a writing tablet work? Do you use it to edit an image on the computer screen?

Using a tablets is akin to using a mouse, in terms of how it works with the computer. Drawing things with a mouse, however, is a lot harder than drawing with a tablet pen, and is a sure way to mess up your hand if you're doing it a lot. It takes a lot more time to make something drawn with a mouse look decent, as well.

Also, tablets usually have added features that are useful for drawing, such as pressure sensitivity and a multitude of buttons to assign shortcuts to. Sometimes they even come with image editing software, which can be pretty nice — my Bamboo tablet came with Photoshop Elements, for example, which has a lot of similar features to regular Photoshop.

They can be expensive, though. Even the tiny tablet I got was about $200. Its worth it, but that's only because I use it often enough to warrant it.

I just need to find a way to line panel borders as neatly as possible.

Go to the drugstore and buy some of that really thick poster board paper for school projects, or find something similar around the house from a box or something. Then, once you have that and the paper you're using, trace out where you want the outside edge of all the panels to be, measure it, and use those measurements to cut out a segment of poster board. Voila — a comic template.◊ Just trace around that sucker for each new page and you have a standardized drawing space to fill with panels to your hearts content.

If you want the panels themselves to be standardized, you could probably cut them out of the template itself and trace those too, if you're careful. Otherwise, just sketch them in and straighten them with a ruler when you're done placing things.

edited 13th Feb '11 8:35:02 PM by Dec

Thank you for all the advice. I won't be able to buy a tablet now, but I can find poster boards. Until then, I could clean it up buy editing out each pixels.

Also, I have some more story ideas:

There are a lot of after-school clubs at the school my comic will take place in. Three clubs that will be featured will be the LBGT Club (Lizzy), the Otaku Club (Alex), and a sports club (Chris). I will focused the first couple of arcs or so around the hijinks of these clubs, the stuggles of being in high school...and Alex's attempts of trying to keep her secret.

Now I need advice for my story.

Actually, I'm thinking of placing Chris into another club. What do you call a club where the goal is to do activities to help the community, like picking up litter or selling lollipops for charity?

I'm also thinking of writing a short story as a teaser and prequel. It will take place the summer before the comic, when The Libby loses her dog, and she offers fifty dollars and a kiss to whoever finds her doggy. Hilary Ensures.

BUM Py.

"Also, what orientation do transgenders usually have? Are they attrached to people of their physical gender, or their physlogical gender?"

It varies. From what I've heard, they're more often attracted to people of their physical gender (which is possibly why some people confuse them with gays) but that's probably not as overwhelmingly common as heterosexuality in cisgender people.

Thanks.

BUMP.