How a page gets made!

Okay. Since I screwed up last time, I wanted to make sure that I did things right this time around, documenting a page in the many steps that it takes from conception to completion. I left out the writing, of course - I have a rough idea as to the plot, what needs to happen, and when; I work and rework the dialogue aloud until it finally sounds right to me, and then I start thumbnailing. This particular interchange is actually take 2; a month ago I made a page that, upon retrospection, would work much better as TWO pages, and I'm subsequently going back and doing these pages. The pacing on the old page felt rushed, the Captain Cane character gets really mad really fast and breaks something and then suddenly seems very reserved... it was just off. Hopefully, the NEW pages will do a better job of communicating his frustration with his current strategic impotence.

Knowing what my scene entails, with the dialogue worked out to about 95% certainty, I start thumbnailing.



I do this in my sketchbook, which I paperback-bind myself out at 8.5 x 11 with a bristolboard cover. I used to use xerox laser paper for the interior, but Staples, the very last place that was carrying it that I could find, has stopped doing so. Hammermill color copy paper is a reasonable substitute, but not nearly as good; it's the next best thing, though. Anyway, I lay out the page pretty close, setting up the shots.



Still in the sketchbook, I tighten my thumbnails up a bit and start concerning myself with staging dteails - where exactly on the ship they are, for example. It may not show in this page, but it is important to me. To aid with this, because my mind jumps all over and I forget such things, is a little model that I built for this purpose in the early stages of the book. I basically look at it as a rough blueprint, and sometimes hold it up to see how the rigging looks from a certain angle, etc. It's become a very helpful tool, though it also is a crutch -- trying to stage a scene while in Portland I screwed up the logistics pretty badly, and had to start from scratch when I got home.



Next I do my pencils. I have a template (a black rectangle the dimensions of my "live area" when printing) that I print out, and then I lay out my panels with a ruler and a Blue Col-Erase pencil. I ALWAYS use blue and as opposed to non-photo blue. Blue is better.
I next go in and do my lettering. I eyeball it, and always do it first. The lettering and word balloon is as much a part of the composition to me as the focal point, and it's important to have it in from the getgo. I do my lettering in Pilot Hi-Tec C pens, usually a .03. Sometimes I'll use a .04, but not often. After the balloons are done I lay in rough shapes with the blue pencil and then do some slightly tighter "pencils" with the Hi-Tec C. Tighter for me, anyway. I talked to Brian Hurtt the other day and he apologized for having loose pencils (which I thought was unnecessary, because his pencils are tight and beautiful)- I can't imagine trying to give my pencils to someone else to ink. They're blobs, and half the time don't look like what I expect them to.



Next, I scan the pencils in. I wear a coat inside our apartment because Liz and I are very frugal and we don't turn on the heat (or AC) unless we absolutely have to. take that, energy companies!



In photoshop I've made a print page, which automatically changes what's pasted into it from black to a 15% cyan. I blow it up to 10 x 15 (or pretty close)...



...and print it out on 11x17 Hammermill color copy paper. I would use bristol board, except that (1) it's much more expensive, (2) I had a different printer until a couple of weeks ago that could only handle thick paper/bristol about one-twentieth of the time, and (3) I mess up a lot and have to paste panels on top of other panels, and with Bristol that would be harder/unseemly. Plus I like the way my brush glides on this laser coating!



The first thing I do on the actual page is to draw my lines. I eyeball them; I don't use a ruler, and use a Faber-Castell PITT brush pen (black) to draw them. This gives 'em that down-home folksy charm!



Next I do my lettering. I use the same tool, a PITT brush pen, to do this, and do it as quickly and naturally as possible without the ink breaking up. My handwriting is terrible, but if I do it super fast with this pen it passes for decent. When I do bigger letters, I have to outline them and fill them in -- I left one open here so that you can see how that works. Then I throw the balloon borders around it - for this I vary between the PITT brush pen and the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, a hard-plastic Japanese import that has synthetic fibers and uses refillable cartridges. I've had some luck filling brush pens with my own ink, but not this one; I like to work fast - stupidly fast, I sometimes fear - and putting other ink in this one slows down the ink flow, giving a dry brushing effect when I rush over the page. So I use the cartridges - they're not waterproof, so I have to be careful about dragging my hand over ink that's been layed down, but it doesn't mess up much on this paper. On Bristol board, strangely enough, this ink smears all over the place!



I use this same pen to do my inks, because it's the fastest I've found. Dipping a brush takes too long for me, and no other brush pen gives me the speed and control that this one does. Usually I go through each panel and do the linework, leaving the black areas as open spaces until I finish with the panel. Here I left 'em all open! This is, perhaps surprisingly, the fastest part of a page... days of work to get to this, which took about ten minutes. Bear in mind that while I may seem to work fast when you work my preparation time in I'm no faster than anybody else.
The little book next to the drawing is a sketchbook I made with a lot of the character designs in it. I reference it a lot to try and keep my environmental (background) characters looking consistent.


Next I fill in my black areas! For the REALLY big spaces I use a black Permopaque marker; for smaller areas I use the PITT brush pen again.



I finish, and look for things that could be strengthened. The balloon stem in the first panel could be placed better, so I use Maxon white comic ink and a Loew-Cornell brush to change it. I go through and make tiny corrections here and there throughout the page.



Hey, now that the stem's moved, my composition has changed! To recreate the original balance, I need to add an element; in this case an environmental character whose physical features were modeled on Atlanta cartoonist Justin Wagner, a friend and classmate of mine.



When I'm finished, I scan it in three passes and assemble it in the computer.



Voila! Next I stick the file in the Oni FTP site, because I'd only screw up trying to size it to print. It's in their hands now!

This was supposed to be a "process" thread... but I'm a dope.

Well, the jumper inks are done (there were only twenty or so pages), so now I can get back to Crogan's. Whoo! I was going to do a step-by-step with this page, but I forgot to document the middle steps. After writing and thumbnailing, I do my pre-pencils in blue...


...and tighten them up with a Pilot Hi-Tec C pen (usually 0.3). Then I knock out my sections of black with a Faber-Castell Pitt Brush pen.


I do these small and relatively loose - I want to allow myself spontaneity in the inking stage.

Okay, here's where I forget to document the next bunch of steps, but here's the page finished:



Hopefully sometime soon I'll do this right.


Wrapping up, here are some watercolor sketches I did last night.

Post-Holiday Catch-Up Blog

Man! I've gotten SO bad about updating this blog. It's been a busy but relatively unproductive couple of weeks. The little bit of time I've spent working on actually drawing has been used to ink more of Brian Hurtt's JUMPER pages.



I've been doing LOADS of research for the Foreign Legion book (at the expense of working on the Pirate one) lately. I've found lots of good image reference, have been building a little fort to use for staging the scenes, (the same way I built a ship for the same reasons), etc. The bad side of the staging in the pirate book is that it's impossible for me to maintain any sort of consistency WITHOUT referencing the model. I tried to pencil a couple of pages in Portland, only to realize upon my return that I had the crew massed at the wrong side of the ship. So while traveling I've been ignoring the book. I have about another fifteen-twenty pages of heavy ship work, a battle twixt three of them, and other such issues to wade through... when that's done, though, the majority of the remainder of the story takes place on land, which will make the staging go SO much faster. I just have to get to it. Luckily I don't have another nautical tale pressing for another couple of years.

Just before Christmas I did a commission for a friend to give her husband. This husband is a big Iron Man fan, so I made this, printed it in benday dots, stapled it on old paper, etc - she floated it in a frame. The final product turned out pretty good, I thought. Always a fan of incorporating portraits into preexisting properties.



The recipient's name is REAGAN Haneline. See what I did there? Heh.

Oh, and Liz and I got a new car! New to us, anyway. We've been driving her 93 Chevy Lumina since forever (she's had it since she got her license) but it was limping along to the point that it was no longer reliable/dangerous. So we found this 97 Ford Taurus sedan in great shape. We're REALLY happy with it. It's roomy!



Oh! Big news from the work side - while in Portland, I mentioned an old idea that I'd had to James and Randy at Oni Press, and it turned into a longer discussion of the project. It's something that I wouldn't have the time to do alone, but I thought of someone tht I'd love to work on with it - funnily enough, they suggested the same person. Good ol' Chad Thomas - Chad Thomas. Chad is a GREAT cartoonist whom I respect a lot, and I told him about the project and he got excited, too. Anyway, we met up over the holidays and spent long and fruitful (though intellectually frustrating) hours working out story points, etc. Chad's got a really good sense of theme and narrative impact, and led us in all kinds of great directions in regards to where the books could and should go. He also had to sit through my grumpy side -- Although I like to consider myself an affable person, generally, I tend to get grumbly and unpleasant when I'm trying to work out story points and they don't simply fall into place. So I'm grateful for his patience.

He also knocked out some truly amazing character sketches. I expect that if you don't see some stuff on his blog soon, you may see it on mine. I'm excited about it - it's a globe-trotting kid's adventure project.

Inking

The next couple of weeks are going to be crunch time, with duties split between Christmas visitin' and inking twenty-something pages of the "Jumper" graphic novel, Jumpscars.
Brian Hurtt's pencils are gorgeous, as usual. He's the artist behind The Damned, a twenties/mob story set in a mix of Hell and Chicago. Check it out! He's one of my favorite artists these days, giving mainstream projects that hint of cartooning that they so often lack, to their own detriment.



I've also been remiss about replying to my e-mails lately, being extremely busy... anyone has hasn't received a response, just sit tight... I'll get to it soon!

Back from Portland

I'm back from Portland, Oregon, where I've spent the last two weeks! As part of my MFA requirements, I needed a field internship, and the good folks at Oni Press (publishers of my forthcoming graphic novel series) allowed me to do it with them.

I stayed with Oni editor-in-chief James Lucas Jones and his family, and they were so hospitable, really making me feel like family the whole time I was there. Jen is a great cook, so I ate like a king the whole time.

A breakdown of what I did there:

• Helped out (and ransacked a bunch of books) from the Oni Office

Here's James (in the back) and Randy (in the front), doing their editorial duty

• Played a lot with Zadie, who, at five, is the youngest member of the Jones household

• I spent a couple of afternoons catching up on Crogan's Vengeance at Periscope Studios, where Jeff Parker, Colleen Coover, and a host of other remarkable comic-folk do their thing. It was great - reference books everywhere, shop talk, food carts across the street, etc.

A shot of the studio


Jeff and Colleen


Ron hard at work

• I got a tour of the
Dark Horse offices. Big staff and a fancy building, and with a statue of Usagi at the reception's desk... if that doesn't put you in good spirits, well, then you probably shouldn't be there.

• I flatted a bunch of pages for the "Jumper" graphic novel, to aid in the coloring process

• I spent almost two days at Powell's, a used bookstore the size of a city block and perhaps my favorite store on Earth

• Read a BUNCH of graphic novels. I'm pretty bad about keeping up-to-date, but I read a bunch of James' books (their house is stacked with 'em) - here's a partial list of what I can remember:
American Born Chinese, Black Diamond Detective Agency, the Plain Janes, CCS's Houdini, the Salon, Tales from the Farm (Oh, I saw Brett and Leigh at Top Shelf, too), The Maxx vol. VI: Friends of Maxx, The Three Paradoxes, Fox Bunny Funnies, Vampire Loves, Salamander Dreams, Garage Band, and my hands-down-gotta-get-a-copy-for-myself-favorite, Sam Hiti's Tiempos Finales. I've only seen Hiti's drawings, never his comics (remember, I never know anything until well after everyone else knows it). GET THIS BOOK (the big orange version). Just wait for me to get it first.

• Did the "First Thursday" gallery hop with Joe, the Oni Man Upstairs

• Went to a Hanukkah party at Greg Rucka's and Jen Van Meter's. Greg has the coolest basement studio EVER. EVER. Plus the food was really good, and Jen took the time to explain to me the symbolic meanings of the foods prepared (again, SO good)

• I got back in time for my 27th birthday! That's right, I'm 27. Out of the mid-twenties, and into the late twenties. Woo! I got a drill (to customize my drawing table), a copy of George MacDonald Fraser's WWII Burmese memoirs, Flight of the Conchords, volume 1 of Young Indiana Jones, a bathroom scale, a ledger, and a Christmas shirt! What a haul.


Also, upon returning, I discovered that my big inkjet printer (on which I print my pencils in blue line) no longer works. So I've been at a semi-standstill, and have used the time to relax and watch a couple of those Young Indiana Jones episodes. While watching, I took the time to customize and paint a few miniature soldiers, shown here next to my pocket-knife for scale (these are REALLY tiny):


I turned some WWI Ottoman machine gunners into British Empire-era Aphgan Hillfolk with a machine gun; turned a couple of Wellington's staff members into Arab riders, and turned an Ancients Elephant into an Empire-era hunting elephant, complete with rider (slightly modified Zulu Wars Officer). I made all the elephant back accoutrements from scratch - it was a lot of fun.


I want to make a few miniature dioramas, but I've neither the space or the time, currently, but I am going to build a foreign legion fort as a tool for staging scenes in the next Crogan's book, so I'll have to make time for that. Ha!

This is one of my non-comic related nerdy hobbies, of which I have quite a few.

Anyway, I'm going to be updating my website considerably sometime in the extremely near future... keep an eye on the comics page for complete stories, including The Hero, Regina Rich, Middle School Detective, and maybe a couple of others, plus lots of new illustrations, posters, etc.

Oh, and since I mentioned Young Indiana Jones before, I want to gripe for a second. Once again, George Lucas has stuck his clumsy revisionist hands into something that doesn't need fixing. The episodes no longer have the intros with George Hall playing elderly Indiana; instead, there's a condescending narration by some overly enthusiastic kid purporting to be young Indy -- the first episode's intro seemed so bad that I thought "Man, was it really this bad? I remembered it being better," which luckily it was once we got past the ever-present Lucas tampering. Why can't you leave well-enough alone, George Lucas? Why do you have to make wonderful things and then ruin them later? Luckily, this one isn't ruined beyond repair, just a little clumsy at the beginning. I expect that the Harrison Ford intro (which used to be called "the Mystery of the Blues," not sure if it still is) is also gone. Oh, well. Granted, the kid actors in the old intros are eye-goungingly bad, but it's still better than the new version.

I'm also not a fan of the chronological setup, instead of the way-they-were-aired setup; the second part of the "curse of the jackal (now called "my first adventure" - barf) is gonna be some ten-fifteen episodes later, I'd reckon. So shame on Lucasfilm for AGAIN changing things better left alone; that said, I am EXTREMELY glad that these are once more available.

Youngest fan, + sketches

My aunt Kristen sent this to me yesterday. Ubercutie Iain Brannon (my cousin Allie's son) likes Crogan's. Woo!


Also, while I was vacationing for Thanksgiving, I did a few more sketches and plot treatments for the next Crogan's installment. I'm not posting all of them, as some give away key plot points, but here are a few that are spoiler-free.





I also sketched Frank Sellous, the 19th/early 20th century big-game hunter...



and the first Voldemort I've ever drawn that is even semi-scary:

Indy samples

I did some audition samples for some sketch cards today. Here they are!


Henry Jones, Sr - 5x7 on Bristol Board (sorry 'bout the side being cropped - I always forget that blogger crops anything over 400 pixels)


A member of the brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword - 4x6 on Bristol Board

Did 'em with the pocket brush pen filled with Holbein black, and colored with the Faber-Castell brush markers. Very pleased with how they turned out.

If you want to buy the originals, I'll sell 'em at we-just-forked-over-hundreds-of-dollars-to-make-our-old-car-meet-the-
Atlanta-emmision-standards-so-that-we-can-renew-our-tags-each-year-so-
now-we-could-use-holiday-money prices. $25 for the rifleman, $50 for the Sean Connery. Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested.

A month's worth o' stuff

Wow, it's been nigh on a month since I last updated this thing. Sorry! it's been a busy few weeks. First, I finally finished the second "chapter" of Crogan's Vengeance. This chapter was almost all exposition, which requires a lot of work in order to make it interesting/exciting. I think that I succeeded (or at least I hope that I have), but it sure took longer than expected. Though there will be rises and falls, the rest of the book is a lot more action-oriented and plot-driven, and that's always a lot easier to stage. Here's a panel from one of the pages:


I later drew the villain of the book, a cruel fella named D'or, a little more realistically than I generally do, just as a sketchbook exercise.


So Crogan's has been the big time-consumer. We HAVE had some R & R, though -- Liz and I took our first trip to the Atlanta Zoo, which is a really good one. I've always been wary of big-city zoos, because the best zoo I've ever been to was the small one in Alexandria, Louisiana, and my first bigger one (Nashville) was such a huge step down. This one definitely measures up, though, and we had a great time. The baby gorillas are the highlight, no question. Here's a couple of pictures:




Oh, I guess it's obvious from the pic, but I chopped off my mop of curls.

A couple of weekends ago, Shawn Crystal recommended me to artist supply sales rep Mike Grecian as someone who could help out with demos at the Artfolio event at Binders, the art supply store that I use for anything remotely comic related. I'm usually disinclined to do anything salesman-related, as I don't like lying to people and have always felt that pushy sales is almost a form of fraud, but Mike represents the best products that you can get -- Faber-Castell for pens and colors, Holbein for inks and paints, Escoda for Brushes -- and so I had no qualms about extolling their virtues to everyone who wanted a demo. Anybody who hangs around me knows that I'm always trying to push new tools on them any time I find ones that I love, and of the some twenty tools that I regular use, eighteen of them are handled by Mike. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to do a tools blog soon, so I'll try and get that up over the next week or so.

Since I was demonstrating a lot of media that I usually don't use - watercolors, oils, gauche, etc - I got to play around a lot more than usual, and now I'm more inclined than ever to start using colors in my drawings. Here's an Indiana Jones sketch that I did (Adam Hughes and Allison Sohn were there, too, and were telling me about an upcoming Indy sketch card thing, which got me excited to try some stuff out):

It was done with the PITT artist pens, the Faber-Castell Watercolor pencils, and the blues were put in with their new pro-grade water-soluble oil. that's right: WATER-SOLUBLE OIL PAINT. Who'd have believed it, huh?

Anyway, the demo went great, I had a fantastic time, and Mike was ridiculously generous with passing on the demo materials to me afterwards. One of the things he gave me was a set of the Faber-Castell Color Brush pens. I LOVE these, but haven't ever bought more than a couple at a time for tones because they aren't "essential" for my comic stuff. They're great for doing color tests. James asked for a book order not too long ago, and this is helping me flush that out, in terms of spine covers. Here's part of a page from the sketchbook:


I also knocked out some X-Men, just for the heck of it.


This last weekend was the Comics Art Forum in Savannah, one of SCAD's big events for the Sequential Art Department. This year we had Jeff Parker, Jill Thompson, Chris Brunner, Kazimir Strzepek, Heidi Arnhold, Mark Schultz, and a few others. I rode up with Shawn, Chris Brunner, and Cara M., and the event was loads of fun. I took a workshop with Jeff Parker, and his talking about working on the Fantastic Four with Weiringo got me thinking about how I'd do the FF... here's a sketch that gives a fair idea.


There was lots of eating and drinking and general merriment, and I got a hold of the much-touted Leo Geo mini-comic by John Chad. It's amazing. Find it. I can't find a web-site address for him, but if you want a copy I'll pass on his e-mail if he says it's all right.

The last night was spent in Kaz's room. Here are some pics:


Coleman in his Zissou hat, Kaz in a tie


Jeremy and John Chad


Two Blue eyed Swiss boys: Kevin Burkhalter and yours truly


Andrew Greenstone and Alex Bullett of the Danger Park collective


Nate and Jarrett at the SA building


Chris B. at the panel