Lunarbistro.com is the
art, comics and sketch blog
of indigo kelleigh.
I don't really have much to say about it that I haven't already said, or that I won't say at some point soon, but I'd be remiss in not mentioning that Ellie Connelly has officially begun! Go, check it out, and don't forget to come back on friday when I post the second episode! whee!
It's official, Ellie Connelly launches next monday, July 21st! My update plan is to put up a new strip (1/4 of a page) every Monday, Wednesday and Friday when I have new content. some of the strips will be double-height half-pages, which will have to count as two updates, so I'd be skipping an update. I'll make mention of it in the blog when that happens, so hopefully it won't be a disappointment.
Now, at the moment I have seven pages completely ready to go, which gives me a buffer that should last until the middle of September, so I can promise at least a couple months of regular updates right off the bat. When those pages are finished running, I'll start posting the work I'm doing in the meantime, and hopefully I can maintain some sort of buffer. That being said, though, I expect to get to a point where I'll need to take a break from updating so I can get ahead again.
Until then, though, I hope you'll all follow along with the comic and join me on the adventure! And help spread the word!
Hey, happy 4th, all you American friends!
I'm spending a quiet night at home, listening to some Coast to Coast AM, coloring another page of Ellie.
Added a couple things to my to-do list this week, including designing the proposed Ellie Connelly forums, creating a small information site for the anthology I'm planning on curating over the next year, getting some things ready for San Diego Comicon later this month (it's coming up way more quickly than I think!)...
Haven't been finding as much time to do self-promotional illustrations as I'd hoped. Nor the Tarot cards, sadly. I'm going to try to get on those and crank out a few more in the next couple weeks.
Did some more work on Ellie this week, finished coloring page 5. On one hand it feels like incredibly slow progress - i'm averaging about a page a week thus far in the coloring, and this doesn't even count writing/laying out/drawing the page. On the other hand, I am getting pages done, and building a decent buffer for when I'm ready to continue. My current completion levels, then, are:
Pages laid out: 11
Pages Inked: 8
Pages colored: 5
My plan is, again, to start publicly posting the comic once I'm 8 colored pages ahead, and to work in 8 page sections through to the completion of the book. Each page will yield about a little more than a week's worth of updates, so that gives me about 10 weeks to finish the next 8 pages. I'm looking to start posting the comic in mid-July, right before I leave for San Diego Comicon. I'll keep you all posted on updates until then, and will also let you know when I'm ready to open up the Ellieconnelly.com site, which will probably happen a few days before I start posting the comics.
Hey, Internet!
For many cartoonists and self-publishers, tabling at a convention can be a downright chore, a source of anxiety, and at best a necessary evil. Cartoonists are a generally shy, socially insulated lot, and when it comes to tooting our own horns and selling our work, most of us are too terrified to come out of our shell long enough to engage the public. I've seen this firsthand at many a convention, including Stumptown, and I'm guilty of it myself. There are a few tips I've learned over the years, though, and I want to share them, but not here.
What I want to do is make a small minicomic with tips, tricks, and advice for people who've either never tabled at a convention before, or who just don't seem to have very good luck at it. And I want it to be a kind of definitive 'How To' kind of book, so I'm seeking any advice and tips you might have, to include.
The minicomic will be available for free to anyone who wants one, and I'll even be happy to make a pdf and host it for free download. So let's hear it! Reply here and I'll collect the info.
And please spread the word - let's get as much info into this mini as we can!
I know, I've been singing this same song for a long time now, but it's still true. Each week that goes by brings me closer to being able to start posting Ellie Connelly to the web. The latest round of progress includes working on some finishing touches to the site, and coloring more of the first 8-page section I'll be posting. I don't yet know how long it'll be before I can start posting the comics, but I'm hoping before I leave for San Diego, so I can spend some time there promoting the site.
Hey, I had the privilege of taking part in a group interview for the Inkstuds radio show yesterday, and now you can listen to it via podcast! Larry Marder, Dave Roman, and Tara McPherson carried the interview, thankfully, and we all talked a bit about why we got into comics in the first place.
I'm excited to say that I just finished inking page 8 of Ellie Connelly, which is a milestone of sorts. In the greater scheme of the overall book, it seems like a very small amount of progress - 8 pages completed of 128 total = only 120 pages to go! woot! - but this first 8 pages is a more-or-less self-contained bit of action that serves as a simple introduction to the characters and their style of adventure. My plan was to finish these first 8 pages, color the first two (at least) and then start talking to publishers. Which means, I'm almost ready to begin Phase 2, which has me more than a little excited, let me tell you. The last couple things I need to do now are to draw a couple Hero shots for some of the other main characters (who have so far only really existed in my notebooks), and color those two pages. I also need to start thinking of a cover design or two...
Secondary to this plan, i'm going to continue coloring the first 8 pages, and then when finished with that I'll start posting the comic for all to read, starting with the entire first page as one big inaugural update! Don't worry, I'll be trumpeting to every corner of the intertubes when that happens.
Just got tipped off on a 200-page adaptation of Hamlet by Neil Babra that looks absolutely fantastic. I can't wait to pick up a copy! This looks like an exhaustive adaptation, and according to Neil he included the entire play (based on a modern plain-English 'translation' of the Shakespeare), and even used several film adaptations for reference and inspiration for lighting, character acting and such. More info here.
So, as I've been struggling with myself to continue working on Ellie Connelly, so I can actually start putting up some comics on the site, I've been finding myself getting bogged down in historical details. This is the first time I've done a period piece, and I just can't seem to let myself slide on what I would normally consider small details.
For example, on page 8 (the current page-in-progress) there's a very brief, one-panel shot of the exterior of Ellie's home in New York City. In 1892. Wanting to keep a level of historical realism in this story, I've been finding myself researching a lot about Irish immigrants and different neighborhoods in NYC at that time. I've learned that there were a lot of Irish living in Greenwich Village in the 1890s, and I know there are a lot of good rowhouses there (since I decided to put Ellie in NY, I wanted her to live in a brownstone, or a rowhouse, or something like that). But then I started letting myself get all wrapped up in WHICH house? Like, I needed to find the street she may have lived on, and the right style of house - one with nice architectural detail, but not too much to draw.
All for one panel.
And now that I think I've found the house, I'm stuck thinking about the interior, how the house is laid out, where the doors are, that sort of thing. And it got me wondering, am I the only cartoonist I know who worries about that stuff? And, how important IS the historical realism? I mean, if it's getting in the way of me telling the story, should it really matter?
I know that a lot of filmmakers go to extensive lengths to reproduce time periods for their movies, and they have to actually MAKE the stuff, a lot of the time. Is it too much to ask that we cartoonists do the same kind of research?
And I also have to keep in mind that, though only a very small part of this book even takes place in NYC, it is hopefully only the first such story, and that subsequent adventures will show more of the city, of Ellie's home, and her neighborhood, so I think these are important things to think about, even if I'm not going to be using it all right now.
It's not much of an issue with contemporary settings - you can look at most any magazine or movie to see what people are wearing. But if you're setting a story in a particular city, how extensively do you research the city, the neighborhoods? How much photo reference do you use?
I guess I should consider myself lucky that the house I have in mind is still standing, and I could go take pictures of it if I were anywhere near NYC...
sort of. The domain is there now (ellieconnelly.com), and there's a 'coming soon' message and the beginnings of a site design. I'm excited to actually be making it real finally. I'll be taking my time to make sure the site is really right before I start posting real comics there, but don't worry, when I do I'll be sure to let y'all know.
I also spent some time last night polishing the plot of the story, making sure it was going to work in the 8-page chunks I've decided to use as a structure.
My friend John was asking which coloring scheme I'm going to use, and to be honest I'm not sure yet. A refresher:
L: The strict black & white tones - R: Simple flat colors
'The Best of Both Worlds' mixed style.
While I really like the look of the bottom, mixed style, there's certainly something to be said for the speed and clarity of the simple flat colors. At this point, I'm going to lean into the 'it depends' camp. My priority is to get the updates up on a regular basis once I begin, and while I have seven pages inked already, I don't have any fully colored yet, in any style. So, at a minimum I'll be posting black and white line art. If I have time, I'll add flat colors, and if I have a lot of time (or find a faster way to do it) I'll add in the black and white shading.
It's either that or lose my sanity.
Hey, my site remodel is complete!
It took me close to a month to design it, but only a couple days to make the files work. The most recent burst of enthusiasm and inspiration for the project came actually from my day-job, of all things. I was tasked last week with designing a couple blogs - one for our company, and one for our clients. Many hours were spent tinkering with css and html templates, learning the finer points of ExpressionEngine, and looking at about a bazillion other blogs for ideas and layouts. And oddly enough, when those two projects were done, I had a much better idea about what I wanted to do with my own site.
And so, here we are! The newly redesigned and redirected Lunar Bistro! One of the things that's different is that I won't be running episodic comics at the top of the blog anymore. I'll still be posting comics here and there when time allows, but they'll just be going up on the Comics page in their entirety. Any comics that are going to be posted episodically, like the current Circle Weave run, or the upcoming Ellie Connelly, will be done on their own self-styled sites. Which brings me to the next step of the redesign:
The Circle Weave needs a site update. Not a whole new style, I'm pretty happy with how it looks, actually, but I need to update the codebase, get the blog up and running again, and re-post all the comics using the new technique I've got planned. This new technique is the key to me running episodic comics in the future, actually, and was part of what was holding me up on this whole redesign.
The way it's going to work is this: each comic's blog will be set up using MovableType, with a category set aside for 'comic updates'. When I post a new episode to this category, it shows up at the top of the homepage, separate from the other regular blog posts, and also on its own separate rss feed. Since Circle Weave has already been posted, and is currently a 'dead' comic, I don't feel bad using it to experiment with this process. I want to make sure it's good and solid before I start relying on it for Ellie.
Which brings me to Ellie. I'm only 7 pages in, and none of it is fully colored. I'm not happy about my progress so far, but it's something. And when I think about it, it's close to seven weeks worth of updates, even if I just post it in black and white, or with simple colors for the time being. I can always go back later and update the colors when I have time. It's my hope that simply posting the work regularly and getting feedback on it will encourage me to continue working and pushing forward with the project.
So, I'm hoping to have the site up and running (meaning with new comics and all) in time for Stumptown in April.
So, yeah, that's my plan. This site will continue to be my general comics/art/sketch blog, and if I manage to start regularly doing stuff for Illustration Friday it'll go here as well. And there will always be updates about the comics I'm working on, or wanting to work on.
Yep, it's true! I've finally added paid ads to my site. I know, i know. Why bother putting ads there when I never have new content? Well, I decided, it doesn't cost me anything to put them there, and my site does get a small amount of traffic... Also, there are a number of things in-the-offing for the site, and I wanted paid ads to be a part of it, so I wanted to give them a test-run.
So, new things in the works!
First, I'm going to start posting comics again! Hoorah and huzzah. This site was originally intended to be my posting ground for all of my comics, but after I finished re-running Chutney Point, I found I didn't have any new comics to post. Sadly, that's still largely the case. Work continues to progress on Ellie Connelly, but it's still too slow-going to post updates regularly. In the meantime, I've decided to re-present the first four chapters of The Circle Weave, for the first time since I cancelled the series two years ago. I won't be adding any new material, not yet. But it should be something to look at, at least, as I continue on Ellie.
Speaking of Ellie, what I would like to do is to post the story in chapters as I complete them, rather than waiting until the entire book is finished. Each chapter should be roughly 8-10 pages, of about 3-4 updates apiece. My target schedule is 3 updates a week, so figure about 10 weeks per chapter, more or less. I've just finished the 7th page today, so i'd say Chapter 1 should be ready to start posting by the time the first chapter of The Circle Weave is completed again, in April.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing more activity here on the site. Woot!
Hey, spent a good long day at Periscope again yesterday, and yes, I am now completely sure that creating/writing/drawing comics is what I want to do with my life.
I woke up pretty early, and went into the studio about 11. Finished pencilling the next page of Ellie, then took a lunch/phone meeting for my day job (from which I am otherwise on vacation). Returned to the studio to finish the pencils, then lettered and inked the whole page (more or less) before David Hahn gave me a ride home at 10:30pm or so. There's still some background stuff I need to do on page 6, and a little bit of detail stuff, but otherwise it's done, and I'm one page closer to being ready to show it to publishers.
But the most important thing for me yesterday was getting back into that zone that I'd too long let wither. Suddenly, I'm thinking again in ways I haven't in years - about texturing, and tools, and when I'm going to work on the next page, and what's going to be on it. And the page after that, and so on. It's really nice to be back.
Now I just hope I can hold onto that feeling for a while. I'm not planning on going out this weekend until the new year's party, so don't expect to hear from me at all until then! With any luck, I'll have two more pages to show for it come 2008.
Spent a day at Periscope Studios today, pretending to be a professional comics ar-Teest. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, since I haven't sat down and drawn any comics at all in months, let alone drawing in front of other people, but it was incredibly inspirational! I finished the fourth page of a short work I've been slogging through for over a year (only 8 more pages to go!). Showing my completed Ellie pages to Colleen, Jeff and David, I received so much encouragement to continue working on the book that I've been plugging away at page 6 of that story all evening, and will be bringing it back to Periscope with me tomorrow to pencil and ink!
So, to the folks at Periscope, thanks! And to me, huzzah!
Sort of. At least, the circleweave.com site is back up and running, still frozen on the most recent episode. The site was completely awol for most of the last year, laying neglected on one server or other. Well, I've got it superficially working again, so you can at least read the archives. I'll create a link to it from the Comics page, but until then you can reach it here.
The Events list for this weekend's Stumptown Comics Fest has been updated, and it's HUUUGE!
We've got a pre-show party at Guapo Comics, a Drink-&-Draw benefit for the CBLDF, Two full days of panels and workshops including a full day of classes and curriculum presented by PNCA, Spotlights with each of our special guests, a showcase featuring the Too Much Coffee Man Opera, a Dr. Sketchy's Life Drawing session, Two official afterparties on Saturday night, and an unofficial post-Fest gathering at coffeeshop/gallery/pool hall/internet gaming hub Backspace!
Oh, plus a two-day guerilla art show at the Sequential Art gallery.
And, of course, the Comics Fest itself! Saturday & Sunday, the 29th & 30th, from 10:am to 6:pm at the Lloyd Center Doubletree Hotel - 1000 NE Multnomah Blvd. Over 120 tables, more than 200 exhibitors, seven Special Guests, and more comics than you can shake a caber at!
It is Comics Fest Weekend in Portland!
This book has been getting a lot (A LOT) of buzz lately, and it seems for good reason - a print collection of over 300 of Winsor McCay's classic Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend comic strip, plus a DVD of EVERY Rarebit Fiend strip, including the ones that didn't get printed here. This is easily the most comprehensive presentation of this work ever, and it was wholly designed, compiled, restored and published by one man. There have been a few collections of this comic over the years, but I don't believe that any have come as close to being a complete package as this.
It may seem a bit pricey, but consider that it's handbound and limited to 1000 copies. I already ordered mine, and will post a review when it comes in.
Okay, so, here we go!
Those Crazy Martians! is a comic I used to do, oh, about a hundred years ago. The idea was that there was this hidden army of martian invaders trying to take over the earth, but they kept choosing the most idiotic, ineffectual means to do so, like replacing our mayonnaise with sour cream, and such. Sometimes they'd just get completely distracted and stay up all night watching billiards championships on tv, as I'm sure we all are wont to do... ahem. Anyway.
So, I've been wanting to find a way to get back into the habit of drawing every day, and I think I want to use this old comic strip to do that. But I'm going to need your help! In the spirit of improv theater, I'm going to take suggestions from you all as to what should be the focus of the next strip. This one came from Lori, who said, 'Have someone in a dressing room!'
So, I'm looking for a noun, or an emotion, or something. Hit me with your best!
So, I booked my ticket yesterday for my trip to MoCCA in New York next month. I'm really excited about this, my first trip to this show. I won't have a table or anything, I'm just going to check it out and see what it's like. The reputation of MoCCA and SPX, as well as APE, have been much of the inspiration for Stumptown (for me, at least) over the years, and I'm really curious to see how these East Coast shows really do compare with what we're doing over here. I'm hoping to get a chance to sit down with the MoCCA organizers as well, and share experiences. I'm also looking forward to getting to see Matt Feazell again after over a decade! This is also my first trip to New York, which is exciting, but I'm afraid I won't have much time to tour the city while I'm there. Ah, well. There's always next time.
Yeah, I temporarily took down the 'Current Comic' part of this page. I was getting tired of having the tail end of the 'Breakfast at the Lunar Bistro' story up there for so long. I am going to be starting to post 'The Night I Flew' soon, but until then I thought it was best to just hide the section. I did rearrange the Comics page a bit, though, and hopefully you can see how it's all going to go down, with separate areas for longer works and for minis and short stories.
One of these days I'll set up the forum. possibly. And I'm thinking of swapping out the rocket on the homepage with something else. Not sure what yet. Any suggestions?
Cartoonist Johnny Hart, whose award-winning "B.C." comic strip appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers worldwide, died Saturday while working at his home in Endicott, New York. He was 76.
"He had a stroke," Hart's wife, Bobby, said Sunday. "He died at his storyboard."
I never counted myself as a fan of Johnny Hart's work - B.C. was always 'too religious' for me, which seemed to smack of false advertising from a comic set in (and named after) the period before Jesus' birth - but I can't ignore that many of my earliest fond memories of reading the comics page on visits to my grandparents' house included Hart's work. He lived his life creating the work that he wanted to, was able to provide for himself and his family while doing so, and was allowed to continue on right up to the day he died. I have to give him some respect for that, and to that end, I say 'Nice job, Johnny Hart.' Good luck and godspeed.
Starting Friday, I'll be posting the pages from my years-old minicomic, 'Breakfast at the Lunar Bistro', the comic from which this site got its name. This has only been available from me as a mini, and even at that it hasn't been available in a long time. I just finished adding some color (sort of) to it, and getting it ready for its online debut. Wee! I don't think I'm going to go back and post ALL of my old minicomics, but there is some old stuff there that I'm still proud of for one reason or another.
So, yeah! This is the last page of Chutney Point. At least, that's the last page of it I ever drew. As I've alluded to earlier, I've considered returning to this material to work up a sequel of sorts, but that's a long way off (Chutney Point has traditionally been my 'back-burner' story, to be worked on when I need a break from another, larger project). Anyway, the entire story of Chutney Point is now completely available in the Comics archive! Hoorah!
So, at this point I was hoping to have Ellie Connelly finished, or enough of it at least that I could feel comfortable beginning to post it here. But as it stands right now, I've only got the first page mostly done, and only the first 28 pages or so even roughly plotted out. I need to make a lah-hot more progress before I'm ready to start posting it in the 'Current Comic' section. In the meantime, my plan is to finish cleaning up a couple of my minicomics and post them - "The Night I Flew", my 24-hour comic, and "Breakfast at the Lunar Bistro", the minicomic/poem I wrote years ago, from which I took the name for this site. So. I'm not sure which one's going up first, but that's the plan.
When those are done, I'll probably re-post the first four chapters of The Circle Weave, just to keep something regularly updating here. And hopefully by the time THAT is done, I'll have some Ellie to share with y'all.
So, this is the end of Chutney Point, starting here on page 141. The story was only originally supposed to be 140 pages, but once I started scripting the second half, I realized that I needed an extra 12 pages to wrap everything up, which made Act 7 almost a double-length issue. It was kind of cool, though - sort of a bonus for people who were reading it, I suppose. Anyway, this is the start of those extra 12 pages.
So, after Chutney Point concludes, I won't have any new comics to put up in its place, unfortunately. I'd been hoping to use the time running CP to get enough material together on Ellie that I could start running those first pages immediately, but my entire year was spent writing and rewriting the script. And now I'm beginning to rewrite it again, as rough layouts. So after six drafts now, I still don't have any finished artwork from the book which I could run. I've been getting anxious to try a couple finished pages to see how they'll look, though, and might try to do up one or two this week as I continue on the roughs. I've also got 'The Night I Flew' all scanned in, ready to be cleaned up, colored, and posted, and will probably try to have that up in the meantime, until I've got enough Ellie work completed to start posting it.
I really don't want to let the 'current comic' section go blank...
When I was younger, in high school, and almost all of my free time was spent either drawing comics or reading, there were days when I would get into my car, roll down the window (because it was finally warm and pleasant enough outside to roll the window down again), feel the crisp cool air as I drove to the comic store with MY music playing on the radio, and just feel happy. Happy to be young and alive, happy to be free, inspired to create and happpy to have the time to do so.
I don't get days like that very often anymore, but as I was driving home from dropping W off with her mom, returning books and movies that were checked out or rented weeks ago, I rolled the window down in the car, turned up my music, and was hit with the real feeling that today is, in fact, one of those days.
Courtesy Les McClaine, of Johny Crossbones fame:
http://lesmcclaine.livejournal.com/11581.html
Sounds like he's trying to gather interest right now, and I'm excited to see it! I've been thinking for a while that it'd be nice to have a more comics-focused gathering of cartoonists in town (the one I go to regularly is more of a social gathering, with the ratio of cartoonists to non-cartoonists is roughly 1:1, and talk often revolves around forms of popular entertainment other than comics).
Put the wrong date in the database for today's strip - it was forward-dated a whole year, of course. Glad I actually noticed it.
I wonder sometimes how many people are actually visiting regularly. I had hoped to do some actual promotion of this website after I launched it a year ago, but never really got around to it, other than putting links to it in the signatures on all my web-forum identities (might have been more effective advertising if I was a more habitual poster to said forums). I see comments pop up from time to time, but not very often, and usually from some spam-bot. I'm definitely planning to do more promotion once Chutney Point has finished its run and I start putting up more recent comics (memo to self - draw some more recent comics!) and sketches and art from upcoming stuff. I'm going to need some filler material to post while I continue preparing the Ellie book and the Other book. I've even considered (cruel though it may be) reposting the first four chapters of The Circle Weave, just so I have something going up every couple days.
Who knows...
Oh, I do have an update to make in the next couple days on that Other story I mentioned, the more literary GN I've been starting to tinker with. Keep your specs on, it's coming...
So, what have I been up to?
Well, after I finished decompressing from the Comics Fest in october, I took a couple months to just kind of drift aimlessly. I find sometimes that that's the easiest way for me to find my focus. It's like being in a creativity deprivation chamber - once it's all off my mind, I can more easily feel which project is calling to me most to finish it.
I was surprised to discover that the project that was calling me most wasn't the Tarot set, or the Ellie Connelly story, or anything else that I've talked about here so far, but was actually a completely different story, or rather a series of character sketches that I've been developing in notes and sketchbooks for over a year. I didn't know where I wanted to take it before, but the overall vision is coming into view lately, so I'd really like to capitalize on that interest before I lose it again.
That's not to say that I'm going to let Ellie go, in fact I've recently been doing some structural work on the story and revisiting the plot to make it fit. I'd like to plan to have the story done by the end of 2007, but we'll see about that. It's only 128 pages, I'd like to think I can manage that. I should at least have some more art from it to show pretty soon.
And the Tarot. Well, that one's suffered the most lately, as I haven't finished any new cards in a couple months now. Death is about half-done and waiting for me to get around to it again. The sample cards I had at my table at Stumptown pretty much disappeared, and it sounded like I got a lot of positive feedback on them (I wasn't at my table most of the time, so I can't say for sure). I do want to finish them, and am also hoping to have them done by halloween 2007.
So, 2007 will, I hope, be a very productive year for me.
Well, the buzz from the Comics Fest has completely died down, I paid the remainder of my outstanding bill to the Convention Center, so it's officially finished. Phew! I was grateful for the chance to talk to people like Paul Chadwick and Kazu Kibuishi about crafting graphic novels, structuring a plot, and selling to publishers. I look forward to making good on all the excellent advice they gave me.
In the weeks since the Fest, I've finally returned some of my personal comics projects to the Front Burner. As I continue to move forward on Ellie, I'm also going to be toying with two other projects. One is a grand-scale contemporary philosophical drama (for lack of a concise description), following events in the lives of several childhood friends as they reunite and re-evaluate their lives. I'm hoping not to simply retread familiar territory, and at the least I'm hoping it will be therapeutic for me as I continue to deal with my nearly-annual mid-life crises of spirit.
The second project I'm working on is actually going to be a whole bunch of mini projects. Basically, i want to get into minicomics again. I've lost the ability to tell a short, clear story, opting instead for much longer epics. So, I'm charging myself with creating a new short comic every month or two and, at the end of the year, collecting them all into a single volume. It's an idea I had several years ago while thinking about the way that songs are written, and music albums compiled. It struck me that albums were, with some exception, analagous to collections of short stories, and wouldn't that be an interesting way to present comics? So, i'm approaching these stories with the mindset of a songwriter. They won't all be poetry (though the first one most definitely will be), but I hope they'll have a similar feel, an internal rhythm, a hint of visual music. I'm hoping to have my first 'single' done in a couple weeks, and will post it here when it's finished.
Actually, The Night I Flew should be considered the first 'single'. I need to post that in the comics archive.
The Stumptown Comics Fest is this coming weekend, and preparations continue apace! We've got a great lineup of guests and exhibitors this year, and I'm trying really hard to not let the difficulties of organizing this thing keep me from being able to just enjoy it. Luckily, this year we've got a serious army of volunteers to help make sure everything goes off without a hitch, so I should be able to remove myself from that aspect a bit and just take it in for what it is - the coolest comics show in the Pacific Northwest.
Peripheral to the Fest itself are a literal ton of other comics-related goings-on here in Portland. Here's a sampling:
* Zinesters Talking: Sean Bieri and Aaron Renier read from their comics at the Central Branch of the Multnomah County Library this Tuesday from 6-8.
* Steve Lieber's hosting a pre-Fest party for exhibitors and friends on Thursday night.
* 40-Hour Man Celebration: Steve Lafler's band The Morals, and The Rheas (featuring Fantagraphics editor Eric Reynolds) will be performing at The Know on Alberta to celebrate the release of Lafler's new book 40-Hour Man. 2026 NE Alberta St, Friday Oct 27, 8-10pm.
* The Land of Fake-Believe: Fronted by Jesse Reklaw, join 9 minicomics artists for readings of their work at one of the coolest comic shops in Portland. Saturday, post-Fest 9-11:pm
* Comic Tonic: The Official Comics Fest after-party, co-sponsored by Top Shelf Comics and Oni Press, will be at the Voodoo Lounge starting at 9:pm.
All in all, a very fun, very busy, very comics-loaded week. See you there!
I've got some progress to report. Not much, though. The Comics Fest proceeds apace, it is now lsightly more than a month away, and things continue to largely fall into place. Some slight bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when wrangling a tornado this large.
The 8-Bit Tarot has again been rejected by US Games for publication, this even with a glowing recommendation on my behalf from Tarot.com. So, I'm still looking for a publisher for this set, and new card production has slowed to a crawl since finishing The Moon last month. The gallery show at Pushdot has been rescheduled, though, and will now happen in November of 2007. Plenty of time to finish the deck, I hope. Unless, of course, I need to self-publish it.
I picked up a couple books by Orson Scott Card yesterday about writing - specifically writing Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and also one about developing characters, which is always one of my weak points. I've never written anything by Card before, but he comes highly recommended, and these books make a lot of good points without being very 'this is exactly how it's done. Do it this way or fail,' which I like.
Well, San Diego was about what you'd expect from Comicon - Large, overcrowded, with a decided lack of focus on comics, for the most part. Probably the most difficult thing for me about SDCC is dealing with the fact that I have to walk twice as far as I should have to in order to see all the stuff I want to see. It was set up with a lot of great indie and small press comics off about a city block to the left, and another section of small press, and the artist's alley area, about another city block to the left. And in between? About two city blocks worth of video games, toys, movies, and other pop culture ephemera that had absolutely nothing to do with comics. Seriously! Snakes on a Plane? Nintendo DS? Hot Wheels? If they could compress all the actual comics content at SDCC into one city block, that would be about the best Comicon ever. I suspect that in a few years they won't even be able to call it Comicon anymore, with the movie studios and anime booths taking over.
Yep, it's that time again, when cartoonists descend en masse to that little burg known to the rest of the world as San Diego, but which we all know is really named "Comicon, USA". I'm actually going to be there this year, for the first time since ('03? '04?) I published the Chutney Point collection. I won't have a table this time, but I'll be making the rounds at all the small press tables, handing out postcards for Stumptown, and trading copies of The Night I Flew. I'm hoping to meet up with Scott McCloud, to finally meet Jeff Smith, and to talk to Paul Chadwick about the Comics Fest, now that he's confirmed that he'll be here.
I arrive in San Diego on Thursday, and I'll be back here Sunday night, after which I plan to dive headlong into tweaking the Ellie story for three full days, and hopefully having a new draft finished by the time I wake up on thursday.
Here's my 24-hour comic, presented in all its quickly-scanned-in, not-yet-cleaned-up-for-print glory.
Click the title to continue:
Did I just do a 24-hour comic - in 18 hours?!? Yes, Yes I did. I'm home much earlier than expected, so I'm going to get some sleep and then post the comic in the morning. And then history will decide if it was all worth the effort.
So today there's a 24-hour comics shindig at David's house. This isn't the first time he's invited me to these (he hosts a 24-hr comics day every few months, it seems), but it's the first one I'm actually planning on doing. I'm a little nervous and annoyed at myself because it's supposed to go from 8am-8am, and here I am, up a full three hours early. In the effort of not wasting any time, I've already pencilled in the panel borders on the first half of my pages and put together my ipod playlist for the day.
I tried a 24-hour comic once, about 14 years ago, i think (1992? sounds about right), but I had to bail on it after my hand started to cramp in the 14th hour. Plus, I was going it alone, so there wasn't much motivation to see it through. Here's hoping the social atmosphere and peer pressure will keep me going. And when it's all over, for good or bad, I'll post it here.
So, I had a great time going to see Alison Bechdel last night at Powell's. if you look in her photo from the event, look toward the right half of the image, see that grey pillar? Yeah, I'm about five people behind that. The crowd was huge! It reinforced to me that I need to seriously go back and actually read all of Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison's comic strip, with which I've been peripherally familiar for at least a decade, possibly longer. Her new book, Fun Home, is a great read so far, and I'm glad I had a chance to tell her how much it impresses me anytime someone takes something so painfully personal down on paper for others to see. Also, it gave me a chance to hang out with Colleen, Jenn, Kip, Erika, Dylan, Steve, Craig and Susan (hel-lo, Susan!) for some nice friendly chit-chat.
When I got home, I was inspired to, well, work on comics. So I'm making some progress on my Ellie Connelly pitch package, now that I've inked the Henry page. When I get home tonight I'll post that one for you all to see. For now, though, back to work.
96 pages, and it's done! I can't express how relieved I am to have the script complete. And now I can finally begin the arduous task of actually drawing all 96 pages. I'm going to be drawing larger than I'm used to, on 14x17" bristol, and will probably be constantly forcing myself to resist the urge to over-render everything (I have a tendency to use a lot of texturing in my black-and-white work).
As ever, we'll see how it goes.
but hooray!
Seems like everytime I manage a swift bout of creativity, it's followed immediately be several days of lethargy and inactivity. I'm now at page 76+ of the rewrite (the '+' refers to an extra bit I haven't numbered out yet due to a sizable gap that needs to be filled in), and I'm hoping to wrap it up this weekend. I've got nothing really to distract me for the next two days, except for a gaming session with some friends tonight, and the notion that I should rearrange my workspace so I'm not craning my neck into the corner anymore. Also, I'm finally actually looking forward to starting to draw this, as opposed to the sense of dread I've been feeling on account of my not having enough visual reference for the time period. A quick trip to Powell's and I've now got about a dozen good books filled with pictures and drawings from the day. Also, realizing that SDCC is coming up much quicker than I think it is means I need to get on the ball if I'm going to have any pages from this to show there. So, that's where I'm at today.
Oh! And, apparently, Chutney Point #2 is now finished (see the Current Comic above), so #3 starts on Monday! Whee!
So, for the 4th time, I am at page 28 in the Ellie Connelly script. It's definitely evolving in bits here and there, and overall I'm much happier with the tone of the story than I was with earlier drafts. There's a lot more character coming through, and I'm angling to develop some of the secondary characters quite a bit more than previously, which should actually help to build the mystery, if anything.
I still think I need to add a bit more DANGER! and PERIL!, so I'll work on that. Luckily tomorrow's a holiday, so I think I'll spend my day trying to get back up to page 50 or so. One thing I noticed is that I've already expanded the script by roughly 5 pages somehow. I'm curious to see how long this thing will be when it's actually finished.
I've also been continuing to develop designs for the characters, and I hope to start posting some more finished sketches of them as the script nears completion.
Progress moves slowly. I've completed a third draft for this first story, which mostly addressed problems I had with the opening sequence. It's a tough spot, because it has little to do withh the rest of the story, but is meant to serve as an introduction to Ellie and her assistant Henry. The problem I had (and continue to have) with this sequence is that I simply failed to capture who these characters are. A problem which arises, I suspect, from the fact that I myself am not sure who these characters are. But I know that the way they're currently presented in the third draft opening isn't consistent with the way they're presented in the rest of the third draft (which was really just the rest of the second draft copy/pasted into place with the pages renumbered). Also, the tone set up in the most recent opening is far more dynamic and 'pulp'-y than the rest of the older material. So, yes, I'm going back *again* to rewrite the opening. I'm only a couple pages in at this point, but I'm already far happier with the characterization I'm presenting now. And I will continue on from here, rewriting as much of the rest of the story as I have to in order to keep them consistent. But I'm not planning to let the further rewriting delay my beginning drawing the opening sequence. Once it's complete I intend to at least lay down some rough layout pencils. In the meantime, it's back to the keyboard!
Yep, Chutney Point, Act 2 starts posting today. So far it's just the cover, but hey, it's a start.
Also, I'm about 2/3 done with the King of Coins, the next card in my 8-Bit Tarot deck, after just a couple hours work. I need to get cracking on these if I'm to have the whole deck done in a year. It might sound like a long way off, but there's still 50-some-odd cards to do. And the Ellie Connelly script is finished (mostly) and taking a breather. I scripted up to the end, and it's a page shy of being a nice, even number, so I'll go back and add a bit more here and there to square it off. After that, I'm on to drawing, which is a great place to be. Check back tomorrow for the Tarot card!
So, Cosmic Monkey Comics is having a sale this weekend, and man! They have got to have the highest awesome-comics-per-square-foot ratio in town! I picked up copies of Jessica Abel's La Perdida, Hellboy: Wake The Devil, Osamu Tezuka's Adolf vols 2 & 3, two volumes of Rick Geary's Treasury of Victorian Murder series, as well as two issues of his "Blanche Goes To..." series (I never even knew there was more than 'Blanche Goes To Paris'!) and the first of a 3-issue series he did with Craig McKenney about the Brontës titled, appropriately enough, The Brontës. And also, I finally landed a copy of Tales of the Beanworld #1, thanks to Cosmic Monkey's owner Andy, who held onto it for me, and a preview copy of a new series based on Buckaroo Banzai. I mean, none of the characters look like the actors who portrayed them, but hey, it's the freaking Hong Kong Cavaliers! Who am I to complain?
And Andy's so cool, he even gave WIllow a little Teletubby toy that'd she was playing with while I nosed around the shelves.
So, yeah - this sale is going on sunday as well, so head on over if you haven't already met your quota of great comics this week.
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