by Austin the Artist
What Is HighChroma Studio
A little background
Growing up, 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.
At some point I realized I could combine both my interests in technology and art by taking up videogame development. I messed around with Unity (and eventually Unreal Engine 4 when that became free) and other tools alike, toying around with creating games, but I never fully followed through with it. Through this experience I discovered I was less into programming videogames, and more into the storytelling aspect of it. Then old memories came to mind that revealed I was always into storytelling. For example, a fourth-grade teacher gifted me a blank book formatted similar to a novel for me 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've watched many 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. I daydreamed about having my own animation studio, but that seemed like a far-fetched dream. I brainstormed something I could achieve that's more attainable, like writing books or illustrating comics.
Comparing Traditional Novels & Comics
As for traditional novels, I always love picking up a well-constructed book with nicely formatted text laid out on the page. There’s something nice about picking up a book and getting lost in a story. On the other hand, after flipping through the pages for a while, 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 didn't want to do away with elements of novels altogether. I figured why not combine the two and get the best of both worlds, while minimizing the drawbacks of each. For instance, 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 realize that's precisely the point though; Comics aren’t meant to have a million panels showing every movement of action). I use the benefit of prose to help control pacing. I continued brainstorming in this fashion and decided to create illustrated novels as my main artistic outlet.
From my experience, illustrated novels aren't really a thing. I find there are either traditional novels or comics/graphic novels (although children's books are a thing, but that's a little different).
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. Sure, 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 longer format illustrated novels to correspond with their movies?
Furthermore, I eventually came across click through storyboards like those on Speaker Deck's website, and I found that clicking/tapping through storyboards can really give the feel of watching an animation. I immediately knew I wanted to create illustrated novels in this format, which I'm calling "Cinema Novels". As you can see on my studio page, I have many ideas for stories. Creating a movie (animated or otherwise) for even just a single story is gargantuan enough an endeavor all its own, let alone for several works. But creating cinema novels is manageable enough.
The Best of all the Worlds
A little bit of movement and life goes a long way. For the sake of conveying the point, I found that as little as "10-15% added movement" by way of clicking/tapping through a cinema novel can evoke the feeling of watching an animation. And this isn't all 24fps animation. Simply clicking through pages sequentially can evoke the feeling of watching a film. And this is a conservative approach from the perspective of a solo creator. But a small team of artists could create a cinema novel with say, 20-30% animation, some as simple click throughs, and others as full-fledged 24 fps animated cutscenes of varying length strategically dispersed throughout. This takes a fraction of the manpower, but the end result wouldn't feel like a fraction of the experience, in my opinion.
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 and writers. I’d be excited to see what people come up with, and I even envision some platform being created in the future akin to Webtoons, but instead for cinema novels.
The Novel Cinema
"The Novel Cinema" is just me having fun with branding and presenting the webpage as an online cinema/movie theater of sorts, especially as I finish and create more works over time. It’s also a double entendre with “novel” both describing the medium itself, as well as referring to cinema novels being an unconventional/novel concept.
Entertainment Arts
I employ use of the term entertainment arts to distinguish between art used in entertainment like comics, animation, film, videogames, or production/concept/visual development art, etc. which is distinct from fine art shown in art galleries, for example.
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 superhero or anime fight scene, 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 animation can inspire me to work on the Soda Pop Cartoon (which is an amalgamation of retro, old school animation styles), 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 most are fleshed out very well behind the scenes and in my head because I've worked on most of these off and on over the past few years. I'm doing my best to finish as many as I can this year.