by Austin the Artist
What Is HighChroma Studio
A little background
Growing up, I tinkered a lot with computers and technology. I was the kid who hacked the Nintendo DS, jail-broke iPod Touches, and tinkered with computers. I was into technology, and so I went to school for and graduated with a degree in computer science. However, I’ve always been an artist, too. Growing up, most of my peers in school knew me as the artist or “the kid who draws”.
At some point I decided I could combine both my technology and art interests by taking up videogame development as a career. I messed around with Unity (and eventually Unreal Engine 4 when that became free) and other tools alike and toyed around with making games, but I never fully followed through with it. Through this experience I discovered I was less into programming videogames, and more into storytelling aspect of it. Then old memories came to mind that revealed that I was always into storytelling. For example, a fourth-grade teacher gifted me a blank book formatted similar to a novel to write in. She must’ve seen something in me for her to gift me that out of the blue.
Fast forwarding to recent years
Beginning around 2018 I slowly got into anime, animation (I somehow missed out on watching most animated classics as a kid, so I watched most of them as an adult), and film making. I’d often watch VFX breakdowns, screenplay analysis, video essays, etc. My passion for storytelling, filmography, comics, etc. grew.
Comparing Traditional Novels & Comics
As for traditional novels, I always love picking up a well-constructed book with nicely formatted prose. As captivating as media like animation and movies can be, there’s something nice about picking up a book and getting lost in a story. On the other hand, I can spend time walking through a bookstore admiring all the books on the shelves and looking at the nice covers, but with book in hand, flipping through the pages, I often find myself wishing there was more imagery to accompany the text.
With comics, I get the visual stimulation of artwork and all the benefits of visual storytelling, but I generally prefer the appeal of prose formatted on a page as opposed to speech bubbles (just generally speaking, this isn’t always the case). In short, I love both the aspects of novels and comics, so I figured why not combine the two and get the best of both worlds, while minimizing the drawbacks of each.
In my opinion, I find comics often zoom by too quickly. Sequences that could span several moments in a movie, for example, can be taken in by a single page spread in a comic. I like using writing/prose to help “live in the moment” for a bit before moving on. I can control pacing better, choosing the appropriate time to add prose that paints the picture and invokes the feelings of things like smells, internal dialogue and more (not that this isn’t possible in comics).
Illustrated books
To me, illustrated books seem to be the happy medium, but this isn’t common. From my experience it’s either traditional novel, or comic/graphic novels. And illustrated books mainly consist of children’s books. Even so, the children’s books and illustrated books I’ve come across aren’t created with the purpose of “animating the art” sequentially, rather, it’s usually one illustration on the page that generally represents what’s happening. This makes sense though, because illustrated books aren’t meant to have tons of art to communicate everything that happens and comics aren’t meant to have multiple panels showing every move of action.
Cinema Novels
When looking at behind-the-scenes production of movies and such, I often see color keys and storyboards like these.
I often think they could release movies in book form. There are children’s book adaptations of Disney movies, but these are short 32-page children’s books with an illustration per page. What if, however, it was standard for studios to release a longer format illustrated book to correspond with their movies? This is what inspired the cinema novel.
As you can see on the studio page, I have many ideas for stories. Creating a movie (animated or live action) or a videogame for even just a single story is gargantuan enough an endeavor all its own, let alone for several works. This led me to the combined novel/comic/illustrated book thing described earlier. My version of these are cinema novels formatted in book form. There are considerations when formatting the physical book, though. I must use my discretion on what to leave out, however, because it’s unreasonable to include all of the art in the physical book. For example, an action that takes several drawings in the digital version of a cinema novel may be reduced in the physical book. With all of this in mind, the physical book is the secondary way cinema novels are meant to be experienced. The primary way I intend my audience to read cinema novels is online. The digital medium allows for the animation and film bit. I believe a little bit of added movement and sound goes a long way. Generously peppering in animation and music/sound elevates and brings everything to life.
In a sense, cinema novels are like 85% text and images, but that 15% of animation and sound, etc. added in creates unique experience. And this 15% number is only because I’m working solo. A team of artists can increase that number to say, 35% animation. In my opinion, this creates an experience just as exciting as full-fledged film, with a fraction of a fraction of the expense (both time and monetarily). A Thousand Pictures is my first complete cinema novel, but that’s just scratching the surface of the potential of what cinema novels can become. I hope this concept is picked up by more artists & writers. I’ll be excited to see what people come up with. I imagine in the future, some platform being created akin to webtoons, but instead for cinema novels.
The Novel Cinema
The Novel Cinema is just a fun way to brand and label the page, rather than just calling it “HighChroma Studio” because it acts like an online cinema/theater. It’s also a double entendre with “novel” both describing the medium itself, as well as cinema novels being an unconventional/unique/novel concept.
Entertainment Arts
I employ use of the term entertainment arts to distinguish artworks for uses in entertainment like comics, animation, film, videogames, or production art like concept and visual development art. This is my outlet as an artist, differing from fine art like portraiture or paintings in an art gallery, etc.
Many Concurrent Projects
Part of the reason I have so many concurrent projects is that it allows me to work on different things as inspiration strikes. For example, after watching some epic anime fight or superhero story, I can pour that inspiration into Artist X Artist, which is my closest thing to a superhero story. After watching something like The Little Prince on Netflix, I may feel inspired to work on Fable Story. After playing a video game like Little Big Planet, I can pour my inspiration into working on Whimsy Wacky World of Wool. Likewise, watching old documentaries on the history of traditional animation can inspire The Zany Adventures of Soda Pop (which has that retro, old school style), and nostalgic memories of playing PS2 era 3D platformer/adventures games like Sly Cooper inspire works like The Cartoon Express.
Perhaps I’ve gone a bit overboard with the number of concurrent works, but the idea is that I can hop between as inspiration strikes, especially since the outline and manuscripts are essentially finished because I worked on most of these off and on over the past few years. Also, it helps prevent forcing things that don’t make sense. For example, forcing a battle scene in a story where it doesn’t make sense because of just having watched something that inspired it, but having no outlet to “get it out of my system”.