top of page

#0010 RED Story

Writer's picture: AlexanderAlexander

While I’ve got The Visions of Bezek cooking in the oven, let’s talk about the next project for ZanderverZ. It’s called RED Story.

RED Story is a visual short story intended for release in 2023 that falls within the horror and mystery genres. Though it provides a standalone story, at a later date, it will be part of a collection of visual short stories entitled Redivium.

Redivium idea draft

Redivium is a collection of thirteen stories that overlap a little. It’s a good deal less intricate than The Visions of Bezek, where twenty-two different stories come together to tell a much larger story. Each story within Redivium is depicted through a different art style. Red Story, for example, is primarily developed in digital pen.



The humble beginnings in 2005



The idea for this project was derived from a series of drawings I did while in high school. They were based around a redheaded female character. Over a decade later, in 2020, I was in the process of scanning all my old paper art files when I rediscovered these drawings. I decided they’d be a good fit for testing my new drawing tablet. The original work didn’t really have a storyline, so I had to develop one.









The title was simple. Red is the color of her hair. The original art was black ink supplemented only by a red ink for her hair. I wanted to maintain a similar style while drawing digitally.




The story came together fairly easily. It’s loosely based on hypnagogic hallucinations. These are a type of hallucination that often occur as a person drifts to sleep, similar to those dreams we have between five minute alarm clock snoozes. As such, the narrative follows the protagonist while he drifts to sleep in his bed.




“As I lie awake in bed restless, my mind jumps around like a child at play, thoughtlessly running from one recollection to the next. Each memory is tied to the next by her, as if those moments are being formed into a paved path inside my mind, and as I walk it, I find that sleep seems more distant than these moments of her.”



“The first time I noticed her still burns like hot coals in my memories. It was at college in my art course. Her beauty was inescapable. From that instance forward, her visage remained with me, demanding my surrender. I named her RED.”




“Back then, she had a fiancé. No. That’s not right. I guess those days are a little blurry. There was no fiancé. There was no one else. Only her. She didn’t belong to anyone. That’s the story.”

Soon, I’ll be embarking on a final draft for this story. It’s crazy to believe it’s been over three years since that draft. It seems like just yesterday that I got the drawing tablet. Unfortunately, I designed the previous draft all in a landscape layout, which I’m going to have to transform into a portrait layout for Redivium. That’ll be fun (/s).


Be sure to sign up for the Whispers Newsletter so you can get updates on the project along the way.




Comments


bottom of page