Initially I
thought that Delirium Comix was going to be mostly stream of consciousness art
that was more concerned with images and emotions than plot. Mostly, this is because I’m lazy and I didn’t
want to bother with a lot of planning and agonizing over details. After wasting a couple of pages of Bristol board
though, I realized that I was going to have to break down and adhere to some
kind of structure to actually make some progress with this project.
Luckily, I had
a script that I’d started writing a few months back for something I was calling
“Kingdom of Monsters” that was going to be my take on the type of illustrated
fantasy stories that run in publications like Heavy Metal (one of my favorite
comic book publications by the way). I
didn’t necessarily think I was ready to do this, largely because in the past
year and a half I’ve only produced a handful of sketches and none of it was
what I would consider to be my best work.
But, ready or not, I decided that “Kingdom of Monsters” was going to be
the lead story for the first issue of Delirium Comix.
So, there’s a
bit of diversity in how people write scripts for comic books. Some people use a format that is basically a
modified version of what a movie script would look like (if you look at the
script for the graphic novel Batman: Arkham Asylum, you’ll see that this is the
format that Grant Morrison was using). A
more standard format involves a panel by panel breakdown of what’s happening in
the story. Since I wanted to keep myself
aware of how I was using sequential art to tell a story, I decided to stick
with the panel by panel descriptions.
Here’s what
page 10 of “Kingdom of Monsters” looked like as a script:
PAGE 10
PANEL
1. The mech hurtles
through the air as it tries to grab onto the
man’s leg.
2. The mech’s hand snaps
shut, narrowly missing the man’s leg.
3. The mech falls out of
view to the street below.
4. The man flies with
TEHRA in his arms.
MAN
We have to
go back.
5. TEHRA responds.
TEHRA
So…it’s not
a dream?
MAN
No.
From there, I started
storyboarding, sketching out a rough idea of the type of layout I wanted and
what the contents of each panel would look like. The level of detail contained in a storyboard
seems to be a matter of individual discretion; I usually go for a moderate
amount of detail just to give myself a good idea of what the finished panel I going
to look like before I start.
Storyboarding for this page took, maybe, fifteen minutes.
With
storyboarding out of the way, it’s time to start work on the pencils. Currently I am doing my work on vellum
surface Bristol board, measuring 9 inches by 12 inches and producing a two page
layout meant to be used for a digest-sized book. The other materials in use are pretty bare
bones; mechanical pencil; a Mars plastic eraser; a kneaded eraser; a ruler; a
t-square; and an Ames lettering guide (for making sure that lines of dialogue
are uniformly spaced).
Penciling for
me is still the most intimidating part of the process. Staring at a blank page and knowing that I
have to fill it with art that tells a story and is visually pleasing can be
quite daunting. At the same time, I have
always been very proud of the fact that I can look at a blank page, have a
vision of what could be there, and then make that vision come to life. It’s a simple act, but it’s not something
that everybody can do.
Pencils
typically take one or two hours to complete, depending on the complexity of the
scenes I’m trying to illustrate. Often I
will deviate from the storyboard while I am penciling, usually changing the
perspective or presentation of a panel
to make it more interesting.
With penciling
done, all that’s left to do is the inking.
Inking, even though I’ve done it with so many things over the years,
still scares me because I am terrified that if my hand isn’t steady enough that
I’m going to ruin a perfectly good drawing (it’s happened on occasion). So, while penciling is probably the hardest
part for me, the inking is remains the most nerve wracking.
I usually
start by inking the things that I think will require the most delicacy or give
me the most trouble. With “Kingdom of
Monsters” this is typically the female lead, Tehra, because her figure has less
detail and so the lines that are there need to be very clean and deliberate. Inking actually has a tendency to take longer
than penciling, generally between 2 and 3 hours per page.
In terms of
inking supplies, I use a set of Pitt Artist Pens with various nib sizes. I used to ink everything using a 102 crowquill and a bottle of India ink, but I’ve found that I like the look of the
artist’s pens better (in terms of line style) and with crow quills there’s
always the danger of too much ink running out of the nib and leaving a big glob
of black ink to ruin and otherwise good drawing.
I suppose I
could actually be doing most or all of this on a computer. I actually do have a Bamboo tablet (a pretty
great little device by the way, particularly for people like me who are
hobbyists rather than professionals) and GIMP is a piece of software more than
capable of handling penciling and inking duties. But, I enjoy producing physical pieces of art
and to me, there’s something too slick looking about computer assisted artwork,
even if you’re going through roughly the same process to produce it.
So that’s a
bit of insight into the creative process here at Calavera Studios as we press
forward with issue 1 of Delirium Comix.
Thanks for
reading and I’ll see you all later this week.
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