Dirge: Chronicles of Midghar

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The History of Dirge's Creation
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Dirge was created way back on the 24th of December 2003, spawned by an unhealthy love of two specific anime: Dragonball Z and Naruto. I wanted to combine the ideas and to put them on paper quickly, so I went straight to a storyboard-like design, ignoring speech and using only basic icons or gestures to indicate conversation. The story reads left-to-right, like a western comic, while retaining a strong manga influence in its style.

However, during he time I was drawing pages around the 50-mark I decided that I wanted to make this idea my own (however I think I had this idea earlier, yet continuity wouldn't allow an instant change), so from then on I went about trying to erase any obvious traces of the aforementioned animes from the story. At this point the story was still simply called "The Ninja Storyboard".

There is constant background work on this project: writing sub-stories/plots that occur later, creating hundreds of characters while giving as many as possibe individuality and character traits. Though without a doubt, the main project is now the script to accompany the speechless Storyboard pages.

After years of deliberation and around the time of page 60, I decided on a name. Dirge: Chronicles of Midghar. Why? Well, a Dirge is a sad song, the kind played at a funeral (fitting nicely with the theme of war and death in the story), while the island it is set on is called Midghar (an alteration on the Norse name for Earth, "Midgard"). The stylisation remains true to its original form besides the level of detail rising, still in its storyboard state until it was originally planned to end at Page 70. From this point on a proper manga-styled comic was intended to be begun, starting back at the beginning of the story (before the storyboard began) and continuing through with the highly revised plot that been in creation whilst continuing to draw the pages.

However, on the 13th of April 2009 the supposed manga series had not begun (bar two rough sketches) after a year of inactivity. This was due to a number of personal reasons, as well as a lack of self-confidence of my skills. From this point, instead of starting a full-blown managa, I decided to continue with the storyboard style, following on from the end of Scroll 1 (the equivalent to seasons in a series) with Scroll 2, implementing the next story arc (or rather, the continuing story arc from the previous scroll) that I had already thought through and written ideas for. The biggest change to this continuation is the inclusion of speech, to give a better sense of story to the action, hopefully bringing the world of Dirge closer to the reader than ever before.

Just how long this continuation of the storyboard will continue for is uncertain, as is the wait for a proper manga-version of the series. What is certain is that I shall continue to practice my skills at drawing until the point I am confident with my ability to pull off such a project, or perhaps until I gain some aid in the creation. It is uncertain what the future holds, but I'm sure it will be good!

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The Story of Dirge
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Set in the near-future of an alternate Earth, the lands are still recovering after a vicious World War 3 bathed the planet in nuclear radiation. All political superpowers have been obliterated and the people of Earth are reverting back to a nomadic state, creating closed civilisations of villages and towns, as all forms of long-distance communication and travel have been rendered useless without some form of power source.

Years after the war a small band of travellers went in search of somewhere new to call their own, to escape the horrors of this hell humanity had created itself. This group was spearheaded by a young Kengui Ash, taking a ship and setting sail with nothing but an old map to guide them. By accident they run ashore at an unmarked island a number of days sailing later and deem it perfect. They begin to set up camp, sending some men back to recruit others interested in a new life, receiving great enthusiasm.

Upon this deserted island they found a large number of remains, both buildings and humans, with the two concentrations being at either end of the landmass. One side red, the other blue, both appearing to be from an ancient warrior society set around the feudal period. These ancient buildings became a good place to begin their new refugee camp, as well as being a gold mind of secrets to discover...

Skiping forward a number of years and you reach the present day of the story. What used to be a small camp has now become a thriving self-sufficient village named 'Light Town', intended to be a symbol of hope and their the path to a prosperous future. However, the island's new population could not be left undiscovered forever, and it wasn't long before a ship scouted the island out. Realising this was the beginning of something bad, the original 7 founders decided to set up defences around the village before the unknown force returned. While exploring a catacomb of caverns under the village they found an orb, which seemed to have been damaged - probably caused by the World War. When the enemy ship returned a month later, fighting began almost instantly, and many innocents died against the trained soldiers. The only way to stop this attack was to block the enemy from getting re-enforcements from the land, and Ash-san thought he knew how to do that. Figuring the orb was the key to this island staying undiscovered for so long, he set about trying to fix it while fighting raged on above. With re-enforcements on the horizon, Ash-san managed to fix the orb, instantly rendering the island completely intangible from the outside world. Realising that escape had become impossible, the enemy forces decided to call a truce while they set up a more permanent camp on the other side of the island... and so the cycle began again.

This group, now calling themselves the 'Darkness', was a group that rose up after WW3 peace through their land by unifying everyone under one rule: theirs. Now, years laters, the fractured peace was still in place and everything had been relatively calm... until recently. A coup de ta was staged within the ranks of Darkness and now they've become openly hostile, though this was mainly avoided by the members of Lightown (as it had come to be called) staying within their defensive walls. In response to this threat, the new generation is being taught how to fight back - suddenly their peaceful life has become a matter of kill or be killed.

The story mainly follows that of the teenage Team Gamma: Yuri Karisho, Maya Amusaki and Birah Khyto, as they train, defend and ultimately fight back against the hellish invaders of their once-peaceful island.

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Plans for Dirge
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The Scrip writing is an ongoing process, which at some point will be adapted into a book format. These will be released as soon as I am confidant they are good enough for reading, while in the correct order.

The storyboard has continued on past the original ending-point of page 70, due to its relative ease to produce compared to a full manga-styled comic.

When the manga does begin, it will follow the story prior to the storyboard's first page and give a proper introduction to the characters and situation. As all my art, it will continue to be drawn traditionally with pencils and pens, with only minor touch-ups on the computer.

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Index of Dirge Pictures
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An Index can be found here: [link]