Above: the in-progress cover for the comic.
Hello folks! It’s been several months since I posted an update on The Secret Name but I will let you know that I have been chipping away at it since last year, and just needed to take several breaks. During the time of my lack of updates, I finally was able to tighten out the outline, synopsis, and provide a much better summary for the comic. So here we are, the final summary of The Secret Name:
It’s love at first sight as farm hand Zahir introduces himself to his new neighbor Suha’ri, a novelist who’s too shy to tell him what he writes for a living even when they start dating. After some investigating, Zahir discovers what his new boyfriend writes: steamy erotica! Since he’s too shy to admit it, Zahir decides to surprise Suha’ri with a little bit of light reading in bed, and Zahir reveals a secret of his own…
This comic was originally supposed to be 35-36 pages long in order to meet a comic collective’s guideline, but since they rejected me I lengthened it, and it somehow became 62 pages in script and thumbnailing. Not including the bonus illustrations and he back cover illustration. Here’s some screenshots of what I’m talking about, along with a preview of one of the sex scenes ^_^
This is supposed to be a one-shot, lol. So far I have only one part left for my comic script, which is the final sex scene now that I have finally decided how I’m going to go through with it. Here’s a screenshot of how I set up my comic project and the script in Scrivener!
The reason it’s set up this way is because I will be releasing a PDF of the script with commentary in it for those who will purchase the Fan Edition (previously called “Omake Edition”) in the future. This will be different from the comic transcript I will be providing for free for accessibility purposes, since I don’t want to paywall accessibility.
Another successful thing I’ve done for the comic is create the final logo for the project. It went through many designs before I learned how to use Inkscape and make something more neat. The idea behind the logo design is based on vintage romance novels, shown in the middle:
Lastly, I’d like to share the inspo board for The Secret Name. It’s a hefty file, so be prepared to wait a little for it to load.
This was made in a program called PureRef, which you can download here. Think of the world of TSN as a low fantasy world inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle, but it’s also a modern fantasy type world with computers and smartphones, but no cars. The story takes place in an unnamed fantasy world I like to play around with, and my projecy Induced Lunacy is actually set in the same world. I’m not sure if it’ll be on the same timeline, though, since there seems to be less modern tech in Induced Lunacy. Anyways, I can’t list the sources for every image on the board at the moment, but I’ll try to come back to this post and do so once I can find them all.
As for when I plan on releasing The Secret Name… hopefully sometime this year! I wanted to release it before spring ends, but there’s no way that’s happening at the pace I’m going lol. I also am having arm problems again, not just my wrist but my whole arm- I know what’s causing it, so I just have to rest it a lot. But, hopefully I’ll have half of the comic done by summer?? We will see! Thanks for reading, and hope you’re just as excited for this comic’s completion as much as I am!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask away in the comments below ^_^