And that wraps up Part 1! Thanks to everyone who has followed my little comic. And don’t forget: I’ll be returning with regular updates on the 6th of Sept, after the big move to Brooklyn!!
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The heavy pencils stage, or finished pencils, is where I start making the big decisions. Some cartoonists will switch to a different hardness of pencil here to differentiate it from their light pencils (in fact some folks I know use colored pencils), but I prefer to use the same mechanical pencil as in the previous stage.
Click on the image to enlarge!
Above you can see me fleshing out the characters and location. I’m working out facial expressions and placing props and markers that allow the reader to understand where they characters are in relation to one another. This is especially important as i tend to move my “camera” around a lot. For those of you who tend to draw panels from the same angle, this will be less of an issue.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the inked page!
Today I’d like to talk a bit about my penciling process. Once I’ve thumb-nailed out my page, I throw my Bristol (in this case Strathmore 500 Plate) onto my light-box and mark off my page template (I’ll cover this in another post. Promise!). You’ll notice below that I actually have two pages traced out. I like to work two up on a page to a) allow me to see page spreads (even when working on a web comic) and b) to save cash. Hey, I’m a starving artist, man!
Click on the image to enlarge!
Anyway, to pencil I use a regular mechanical pencil with .09mm lead. I used to use fancier blue pencils, but I find that I prefer regular lead as it erases cleanly. I tend to draw, erase, redraw, re-erase over and over, and the ghost images I got with even the best blue pencil lead (Eno Soft Blue- erased surprisingly well) got really annoying. At this point in the drawing I’m more concerned with arranging basic shapes and forms, so I’m not too caught up with details. It’s incredibly important to make sure the images guide the reader’s eye where you want it to go, so this is also a good point to begin considering your black-spotting (i.e. which areas of the panel will have solid black areas).
I also letter at this stage. In fact, I generally place my text and work balloons before drawing anything in the panels. This is a tip I picked up from Eddie Campbell. it keeps your dialoge from getting cramped, and allows you to plan how you will be guiding the reader’s eye easier. I’ll go over how I letter in another post.
That’s all for now folks!
I’ve been very pleased with the response to the comics-making Tweets that I’ve been posting, so I thought I’d start posting a bit about MY process when it comes to making DRIFTWOOD. Below is my thumbnail for this week’s upcoming page 33:
Now, most comics I draw start out life as a written outline of the basic plots points before I begin thumb-nailing it. But sometimes, such as in the case of DRIFTWOOD, I write in the thumb-nail stage. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term “thumb-nails,” this refers to quick, rough drawings of the page. The point is to be able to work out your ideas quickly. On mine you can see, on the right-hand side, a numbered breakdown of both actions and dialogue, grouped with brackets into panels. The numbered dialogue corresponds to the numbered word bubbles in the drawing to the left. The drawing itself is very simple; consisting of stick figures and broad, basic facial expressions.
So now that I’ve figured out my page, I can move on to the pencil stage. I’ll discuss that tomorrow. Stay tuned!
OUTBOUND #2
in the Boston Area at the following stores:
THE MILLION YEAR PICNIC
99 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA – (617) 492-6763
HUB COMICS
19 Bow Street, Somerville, MA -(617) 718-0987
NEW ENGLAND COMICS
14A Eliot Street, Cambridge, MA -(617) 354-5352
more locations coming shortly!
This is a bit of an oldie, but I never had a chance to post this. Last year I contributed to a fantastic music-themed called Side B. Featuring a cover by the wonderful Lucy Knisley, the anthology was reviewed by Xaviar Xerexes of ComixTalk.
I would guess the decision to go with mostly short comics (many are two pages) was intentional — it helps to make it all feel like a pop album; lots of short blasts of brillance with a few longer ballads and experimental instrumental pieces in the middle. Many of the comics are fairly straightforward odes to the simple pleasures of loving music (and often the musicans that make it). I think I liked many of these the best including the contributions by Jeffrey Brown (“Cat Power Will Save Me”), Todd Webb (“Untitled”), Steve Orlando (“Rock and Roll All Fifth Period”), Lucy Knisley (“The Clean Slate”), Katie Shanahan (“Musical Misfit”), and well I could probably list a whole bunch more. There’s a lot like this in the book.
There are also some more tonal pieces, less linear, more driven by the imagery like Brian Butler’s “Where Do Shows Come From” and Morgan Pielli’s “The First Song”. There’s something obvious yet necessary about approaching the subject of music in comics this way. Music is something you can experience without thinking about it too much (how many times have you loved a song without really bothering about the lyrics all that much?) and a comic can attempt to create the same state of emotion. It’s hard to do but these and some of the other similar comics are worthy efforts.
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