About This Blog
This is a journal I've kept while completing my comic book story "The Big Wheel". The story features characters from my animated cartoon serial Teddy & Anna, which you can watch by going here. This is the first comic book work I've done in a long time, and definitely the first large series of drawings I've ever tried to make (22 in all).
The original artwork for "The Big Wheel" is approximately 4 1/2 feet tall by 3 1/2 feet wide. The panel and page images posted on this blog are photos (instead of scans) of the art, and will show the slight bowing and/or wrinkle of the paper.
"The Big Wheel" is currently (May 2004) being "published" in the front window of COOL, the Cultural Organization of Lowell, a nonprofit arts advocacy group in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts. Each weekday in May, a new page of the story will appear in the window, replacing the previous day's page. This blog will run concurrently with the page shown in the window -- for instance, Page 1 should be in the window on April 30, 2004; on that day, the blog entry for March 18-19, 2004 (the days I worked on Page 1) will be posted on this page. Most entries will feature some artwork -- sketches, preparatory layout drawings for a page, etc.
This blog is divided into sections. The first part ("The Beginning" -- creativity is my middle name) lumps together the days spent getting ready for the project. The second part ("The Race") has all the days that I worked on the comic, and will be updated incrementally. You'll be able to follow my progress and neuroses about getting the project done on time (or not.)
I hope you enjoy the comic and this blog! If you have any questions or comments, visit the contact page (where it says, "Contact the Animator") and drop me a line!
Thanks to my wife-to-be, Meghan Kriegel, for suggesting I keep this blog.
The Beginning
March 3, 2004 bookmark
An early sketch of Alfred.
Went to Van Gogh's Gear and picked up the supplies I ordered -- a small bottle of ink (the big 16oz one is in Limbo, e.g. "On Back Order"), some new brushes, and five rolls of paper. Each roll is about 40 inches wide, and 10 yards long, so I've got 150 feet of paper, or 72, 000 square inches. These numbers don't fill me with confidence about how I'll get to the end of this project.
I'm still working out the story. I know now it's going to be a Teddy & Anna story (thought briefly about doing a one-shot with new characters, or even a historical comic about Santos-Dumont), it's going to be a mystery, and it will feature a few new characters. I've thought up a dapper new villain and a nerdy kid scientist who Anna thinks is cute, but who is at the age where he can't stand girls. I hope I can develop Anna's personality a bit more with the new kid as her foil; Teddy will still be the random variable who crashes through walls and leaps before looking.
Made a test page to work out what scale everything should be -- lettering, figures, etc. That page is big. Five feet high. I wonder if I've made the panel gutters big enough to look right when this is printed? This is the boring technical stuff you have to consider. But it felt really nice making big bold ink lines.
March 4, 2004 bookmark
Working out story ideas ...
Drew three and a half pages of story sketches today. A few times I really got into the flow of it -- I could imagine music being played during the parade scene, and I would have the next panel's content coming into my head just as I finished drawing the previous panel. One scene seemed to flow logically into the next. Then I would sit back and think, "Is this any good? Am I ripping off Hergé? Is anybody going to be interested in this?" and grind to a halt. Tough to walk the line between creating too haphazardly and critiquing too much.
I think the best thing to do is approach it like prose writing, just bang it out as gleefully as you can, making as many connections as possible, and then go back over it and try to straighten it out. Thinking of that Charles Schulz essay too, where he suggests not thinking too much of the overall theme, but just drawing what comes into your head so you can get to know the characters. I just have to make sure that it all fits into 21 pages, and that I have something to start drawing soon so I can have material ready by April. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
March 6, 2004 bookmark
Drew an introductory page for the story (with big captions - maybe try to find a better pictorial way of opening the story.) I showed the first five pages of story sketches to Meghan. She seemed to like them, but was confused by the scene where Anna meets Alfred - she didn't understand that he was in an airship contest. Big relief for me. I can't tell what people are going to think of this thing.
Need to get more markers.
March 8, 2004 bookmark
Read up on Nikolai Tesla today, research for the story. Now I know what a Tesla Coil is, and basically how it works (still pretty ignorant about the physics of electricity though.) Amazing stuff -- the PBS site lists him as revolutionizing power transmission (AC over then-standard DC, which got him into some tussles with Edison), creating the first remote-controlled vehicle, having a hand in the creation of radio (Marconi used many of Tesla's patents), theorizing about radar and particle beams, etc. etc. And many of Tesla's papers disappeared after his death, after confiscation by a now-defunct government agency. This is the stuff that keeps conspiracy nuts awake at night. And cartoonists looking for a hint of plausibility for their stories.
Made more progress on the story, slowly figuring out how to compress everything to fit into 21 pages. Thought of some funny images too -- hopefully. Teddy hauling the gasbags for several airships behind him like a balloon vendor, etc.
Meghan talked up the story at the Lowell Cultural Roundtable tonight; she said that several people seemed interested. More positive reinforcement, I guess. It keeps me from thinking too hard about quitting.
March 9, 2004 bookmark
Story still slowly oozing into my forebrain. I sketched out some ideas while I was waiting at the optometrist's (for those who care: my eyesight seems to be ok.) I came up with the final few panels -- now to work backward and finish the middle.
March 10, 2004 bookmark
I've stopped drawing out the story in a linear way, and now I'm just jotting down ideas for dialogue and sketches for panels. The ideas tend to cluster around each other on the page. New characters keep popping in: the Electric Victorians, the police chief who has a bit part in the animated cartoon later on (but maybe he'll break into the big time in this comic :) .) I hope this story makes some sense. I really want to take some of these characters for a walk, figure out how they feel by themselves and how they interact with each other. Also feel the need for some dopey puns coming on ...
March 11, 2004 bookmark
Pro-Pel-O's Cereal print.
Tomorro-Cola print.
Dropped off some small framed prints (Pro-Pel-O's and Tomorro-Cola) at Revolving Museum for display in the small gallery off Van Gogh's Gear. Talked to a few people who had heard about the story and were interested in seeing it when it went up. I'm very flattered that people are interested, but also a bit nervous to work in public.
March 12-16, 2004 bookmark
The cover or "teaser" page.
Got the "cover page" done in bits and pieces, starting on Friday. I wanted the Teddy & Anna logo to look the same as on everything else, and I also wanted to use the ITC Anna font for the title THE BIG WHEEL, so some old-school tracing lay in my future.
I scaled up the Teddy logo in Illustrator, and printed it out on several pages (making sure that anything cut off by the maximum printable area was covered on another sheet.) Then I taped everything together, to make a complete logo that was about 9" high and 28" wide. Next, I broke out some tracing paper left over from an old project (Brian's rule of art supplies: never throw anything out, you never know when you'll need it later.) I traced the logo onto the tracing paper, then rubbed the back of the paper with the pencil and made a graphite transfer onto the title page taped to the drawing board. The logo was then 'inked' in marker. A big improvement over the dip pens I used to use -- no ink smudges, no drying time.
The title lettering followed the same process, but was a little trickier because it's more curvy than the Teddy logo. It looked nice and sharp at the end, thankfully. I wonder if anyone looking at the printed version of this will wonder if it's just a printed font.
That was Friday and part of Saturday. We were away for most of the weekend, so I didn't get back to work on the page until Monday. I drew the portraits of the main characters and put in the arcing generator tower (lots of work with a Q-tip filling in the blacks.) The page didn't look quite right yet. Finally decided it needed to 'pop' more, so on Tuesday I painted the sky in black (score: 5 Q-tips) and put some drop shadow edges on the Teddy & Anna logo. It looks 100 times better.
March 17, 2004 bookmark
OK, I've officially crossed the line. I just turned down paying work because it would take too much time away from the comic. It's the right decision, but I stammered a little when I called the agency back.
The Race
March 18-19, 2004 bookmark
At the Antiquarian Fair.
Working on page 1. Amazing how you think that there's no way you could possibly come up with anything, and then some hours later there's drawings on the page. Here we have our introduction to Anna, Teddy, and Daddy, and to the Antiquarian Fair. It was a lot of fun putting in the drink-vending robot; I hope that all the detail on it is readable when this is reproduced.
The Sharpies are going to be my secret weapon: drawing vehicles/buildings/robots/panel borders is a snap, no drying time (did I mention that already?), and they even fill in some blacks in a pinch, though not nearly as densely as the india ink. I really had a "Duh" moment when I realized I could use markers, and not have to rely on the old dip pen standbys. Why make it any harder on myself than it already is?
I'm enjoying lettering again, too. I haven't had to do this particular art chore for years -- ruling lines, carefully rendering all-caps letters, etc. The breakthrough here: the balloons aren't perfect ellipses. This was another bit of received cartooning wisdom I got somewhere -- all the speech balloons had to be these perfectly milled shapes, safely enclosing the dialogue from the artwork. Now I look at the freehand balloons in Tintin, or Little Nemo , or any number of early comic strips, and realize why they're drawn that way: it's a lot easier, and more fun than a geometric shape you've slaved over.
At this rate, in another 15 years or so I should figure out that I don't have to rule the panel borders, either, or some other aspect of "loosening up" that I should have realized long ago.
March 20, 2004 bookmark
A bit bleary-eyed; hope this entry makes sense.
Finished the bottom panel of page 1 today. I finally ran out of Higgins Black Magic ink and switched to the other stuff. Not nearly as good -- thin and liquidy, it blobbed on the brush and made it tough to draw fine lines. Using it to fill in large areas of black was also a downer -- it's not nearly as dense as the Black Magic, and the thinner viscosity made the paper wrinkle. Maybe if I shake the bottle a bit -- try and mix the medium and the pigment better. Ah, that helps a bit. Never thought I'd get attached to an art product this late in the game! Really different than working on the computer.
Page 2 segues into Captain Gasbagge's speech, and the museum curator's vain attempts to get a word in edgewise. Anna also encounters something weird among the exhibits ...
March 21, 2004 bookmark
This guy's pushier than he looks.
More work on page 2. Cursed thin ink. Back to the store for the good stuff.
The museum curator (who we now know is curator of "technohistory") poked his head into the story at the bottom of page 1 and is giving indications that he might stay awhile. I'm sure people who have more practice at this have all their characters in mind before setting the whole thing to paper. Not me! Will this lassez-faire approach to storytelling get me through this project? Only time will tell ...
Actually, I think leaving room for spontaneous things to happen in the story makes the project more interesting to me. If I had the whole thing planned out in advance, I would just be "rendering" the story. This is similar to my approach to the Teddy animated material -- a story skeleton, leaving room for some improvisation.
March 22-25, 2004 bookmark
Page 2 took awhile to get finished -- well, actually, there's still one panel missing at this point. I'm looking for some antique, functional, but exotic-looking machinery to use in the panel where Anna is wandering around the Antiquarian Fair. Since it will be awhile before the pages start going up in the window, I'll have some time to research it.
I'm pleased with the drawings of Captain Gasbagge and the curator (need to come up with a better name for him, since he seems to have graduated from "extra" status).
March 26-28, 2004 bookmark
Page 3 in the window
(Click for larger version)
Page 3 features a good example of what I was searching for to use in the empty panel of page 2 -- an exotic-looking device that really existed. The "batplane" that I've depicted is based on an early prototype aircraft called the Avion III, built by French inventor Clément Ader in 1897. The Avion had bat-like folding wings and two giant propellers driven by a massive steam engine; the body looked sort of like a laundry cart. Unfortunately, it never got off the ground (probably the boilers were too heavy.) But in my world, of course, it sails right over Anna's head, belching smoke.
March 29-31, 2004 bookmark
Page 4 in the window
(Click for larger version)
Work on page 4 went well -- I made up some tiny thumbnail sketches for how the panels should go, and suddenly I was free to just concentrate on drawing well on the big page. Have to keep this process up, so I don't have to do so much worrying and pacing when working on the big page. The penciling/lettering stage took place over two days, the inking the third night.
This is Anna and Alfred's first meeting. Alfred's a smart guy, but has no use for girls at this stage of his life. He's more interested in building and flying airships. Anna is more interested in Alfred than in his ship (she's had some experience with airships already, which will eventually be told in the animated serial.)
April 1, 2004 bookmark
Stretched up blank page, page 5. Pencilled in some basic panel designs, then went back to the drawing board (across the hall) to work on more page layouts. Chugged away through most of the day, got 4 1/2 pages worked out. (Planning ahead!) Also lots of non-comics work today, dealing with web design jobs and a Flash project.
April 2, 2004 bookmark
More work on the overall story, laying out designs for future pages. Turned down more paying work. I have too much on my plate already.
April 3, 2004 bookmark
Wow, I've been at this for about a month now. It seems like it's always been happening. Sometimes I get a similiar feeling after working on a drawing for a few hours, I look at it and get the feeling that it's always been there, and not newly minted. A kind of deja vu feeling. I also secretly suspect that I've made the same drawings more than once, just scribbling down a figure doing some action; if I dug down into the pile of drawings on my shelf, I might find another version ...
April 4, 2004 bookmark
Layout for page 5.
Work on page 5, trying to get Anna and Alfred's gestures just right. Starting to get more confident, sketching in big shapes and then tackling them again with energy, refining them.
I've drawn more panel layout pages, working out how the story will go. Found it's easiest to do this in two stages, a tiny (probably 3" tall) thumbnail of the whole page, working out panel relationships, then re-drawing the same page on an entire sheet of paper, to fix where the figures and dialogue will be.
April 5, 2004 bookmark
Re-drew and inked in some panels on page 5; the middle tier is pretty much done. The perspective is wrong in panel 2; have to re-do that and get the wheel right on the hot dog bot. Day vanished quickly.
No work tonight, had errands to run.
April 6, 2004 bookmark
Page 5 in the window
(click for larger version)
Today's big job: tackling the crowd scene panel at the bottom of page 5, along with the smaller jobs of finishing panel 2 and fixing small errors. Moving back and forth between problem areas helps keep the work from being too overwhelming; I get the pleasure of seeing large portions of the page inked-in.
A lot of work carefully drawing the ellipses of the Pennyfarthing bicycles' front wheels, then inking them in ... they're all at different angles and distances to the viewer ... and then remembering to draw in the shadows of the wheels and riders. A good part of cartooning is learning where to quit -- when you can make a shortcut, leave off an extra bit of detail, just suggest the background, etc. I should get a better sense of when to quit.
The fun bit came in deciding to draw the two back riders as hulking thugs (like the guards No. 6 occasionally tangled with on The Prisoner; I felt that giving them striped shirts might be a little silly, though.) And I dropped in some folks from the funny papers in the crowd.
April 7, 2004 bookmark
Got page 6 up on the board and ruled the panel borders. Yeah, got a lot of work done there. Also dealing with paying gigs today ... just as I was looking over the online want ads and getting that familiar sinking feeling, I got some new business. Nice when it works out like that.
Had a visitor who works at the Middlesex Beat, she talked over some advertising options with Meghan. I should probably take out an ad too, when I can scrape the cash together. Showed her the work in progress.
April 8, 2004 bookmark
Layout for page 6.
Began penciling page 6. Nice gestures from Anna and Alfred, and fun drawing in the people in the crowd. Since they're not really germaine to the plot, I can be a bit more free with drawing their gestures and faces. The guy on the end looks a little like Oliver Hardy, I think. Should've given him a little bowler hat and put a tall and skinny guy next to him.
April 9, 2004 bookmark
Finished pencilling most of page 6, began inking. My favorite part. At some point I would like to experiment with just 'clear line' style linework, without the thick and thin of the brush. Derek Kirk Kim's work in this area has always been very nice and clean (and precise.) The pitfall with brushwork is that you can try to disguise sub-par drawing with interesting lines.
All right, the big speed bump for this page: the panels showing the man pedaling the bicycle, with all the radiating spokes. I blithely sketched this out on the panel layout sheet, thinking "This will be a nice effect." Now I struggle with getting the spacing and perspective right for those spokes. Not fun. Bad self.
To Google for image research. Turns out the original Pennyfarthing bicycles (or "ordinaries") had radial spokes, as I'm depicting it on this page. Around 1876, someone figured out that tangential spokes -- not radiating from the center of the wheel, but touching the center at a tangent -- would support more weight and increase the strength of the wheel. Interesting, but not entirely helpful.
A trip to the basement to excavate my bicycle shows that tangential spokes haven't gone away. This is also not helpful, but I notice that where the spokes intersect (when viewed at an angle), they form a pattern:
(pic to come later today ...)
The intersections of the spokes form another oval shape, around the central oval from which the spokes radiate. This is a helpful clue. Finally, after some more redrawing, I break out the marker and triangle and make the final marks. It looks OK; probably a 3D render of this shape would be different than I've drawn it, but if I've gotten the idea across, I'm happy (grumble, grumble.) Enough for today.
April 10, 2004 bookmark
Finished page 6 today, starting on page 7. I made use of my secret weapon, the tracing paper, and managed to improve the drawing of the spokes a bit before transferring it back to the page. Much happier with this redrawn version. And, put in the gumball machine spewing gumballs into the air. Goofiness factor 10.
April 17, 2004 bookmark
Layout for page 7
Began formatting this blog today -- putting together the webpage for it. Probably spent too much time on the blog, and not enough on the comic.
Finishing up page 7 -- 12 panels, lots of tough figure drawing problems.
April 18, 2004 bookmark
Gumballs keep fallin'
on my head ...
Finished the last few panels of page 7. This page is like a guest that's stayed at your house for too long, draped their dirty socks on your TV, and has begun rooting through the flowerpots looking for buried treasure. This page needs to go away now.
Here's a panel I like.
April 21-22, 2004 bookmark
Page 7 was one of those pages where I couldn't make a right move, it seemed. I had to keep looking at the central panels of the hotdog vending robot and the little kid, to at least gete the sense that some portion of the page came off. In retrospect I'm sure it will look better to me.
Layout for page 8.
Page 8: much easier. Fewer panels, fewer details, just goofy action with Teddy. His speech balloon with the gears was another last-minute addition, and kind of a guilty pleasure, for a few reasons.
The guilty pleasure stems from a kind of, well, sneaky sense of freedom. I'm used to a certain kind of storytelling that I use in the Teddy & Anna animated cartoon. The animated cartoon has no sound effects track and no dialogue track; I use title cards and music cues to spice things up and help the narrative along. Also, because of the technical limitations of web animation, I don't make (much) use of things like cross-dissolves, fade-ins, etc. So I've really divested myself of a whole bag of cinematic narrative tricks that are normally used to get the story across.
But, with a comic book ... well, it's all lines on paper -- no recording, no equipment required to view, most everyone knows what a big droplet emanating from a character's head means, etc. I could just go crazy with the graphic symbols! But I don't, because I started on this project with the idea (as much as I can say I had anything really planned out here) to do a straight-up, pantomime comic -- few or no sound effects, no narrative captions, no wacky panel progressions, etc. Restrained, elegant -- something like the later Tintin albums. But it's so much fun to make use of the graphic tools available to me, and useful, too, as the deadline comes closer ...
Teddy's a whiz at Boggle.
The other reason that it's a guilty pleasure, is that Teddy is basically expressionless (but possibly not emotionless). In the animated cartoon he doesn't get any dialogue, either. So it felt like a stretch to give him a speech balloon (which actually should be a thought balloon, since his thought process is what's being conveyed here.)
All right, enough comic-book nerdiness. Back to work.
April 23, 2004 bookmark
Page 9 went relatively quickly! My biggest hurdle in getting a page done is lack of confidence. On several pages I've almost painted myself into a corner, pencilling in and then inking every part of a panel (or page) but the Hard Part.
Ben's girlfriend comes back
from the hairdresser.
The Hard Part varies from instance to instance, but it's often a character's hand, a head from a strange angle, or a perspective problem (wheels, cars, etc.) Sometimes THP consists of the entire page, which means it's time for caffeine. What I do instead of working on THP is look out the window, or paw through the avalanche of late 70's/early 80's comics on the floor (mmm, Marvel Two-in-One #31 ... haven't read this one in a couple of days), or the worst time-waster, surfing the web. Working across the hall from the computer cuts down on distractions quite a bit, but the prospect of having to draw another crowd scene sends me straight into any sort of distraction.
But I'm feeling the heat, now -- I need to get 12 pages done by next Friday (April 30) to give myself a fighting chance of keeping to schedule. "So, get confident, you weakling!" I told myself, and started to draw, and it went smoothly for the most part. It also helps that after 8 pages of setting the stage, I am now drawing a page with some action. Teddy finally makes an appearance, with the usual resulting property damage.
April 24, 2004 bookmark
Valet parking.
Finished inking page 9, and did the Hard Part -- drew the first panel, an empty square of white on an otherwise completed page. Figured out some decent gestures for Anna (the first go-round, she looked like she was preparing to pull something out of her utility belt.)
To the left you can see the panel that I was most happy with from this page.
April 25, 2004 bookmark
No comic work today, busy with paying gigs ...
April 26, 2004 bookmark
Still no time to work on the comic, but maybe the mortgage will be paid.
April 27, 2004 bookmark
COOL corner (page 5 shown here.)
Periphreal work on the comic today: I took the teaser page down to COOL to put it in the window. Some preliminary decisions were made (corner window by the crosswalk, center of the window) and some preparations were necessary (Meghan, Stephanie and I took turns scraping some paint off the pane). Then, the moment of truth: I hoisted the page into place and suction-cupped it to the window on the corner of Market and Werthen. It looked good! Not too wrinkly, and very sharp and graphic through the glass. Now I just have to do this twenty-one more times. Page 1 goes up on Friday.
View from inside COOL (page 5.)
We got some interest from outside pretty quickly. At one point, an SUV began to turn the corner, stopped midway through the intersection, backed up until it was parallel with the window, and then continued on its route. Traffic-stopping comics!
April 30, 2004 bookmark
The debut! I put page 1 up in the window today. Now it's really out there, for better or for worse.
May 1-2, 2004 bookmark
Meghan was away at Somerville Open Studios over the weekend; I spent the time pacing between the room with the big blank page (soon to be page 10) and the room with the computer, the computer that said Yes, I'm happy to entertain you and Another game of Robotron? and Hey, there's an interesting thread on Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind on that discussion board. Also I figured out a few more elements of the story.
Finally, on Sunday afternoon I ruled out the panel borders and started sketching things in. I know what's supposed to go there, but how to say it best? How do I fit everything in that needs to happen on this page, in order to keep the pace up? Not confident enough.
May 3, 2004 bookmark
Wacky machines at the Fair.
Backtracking: I finished a few spots on page 2 tonight, because it's going in the window tomorrow. I'd left off one panel because I was trying to find an appropriate technological item for Anna to pass by -- I think I finally settled on a telegraph key and another telegraph-related device.
I'd hoped to come across some object during my image research, that was clearly pre-1930, functional, but elaborately so -- like (it now occurs to me) a Linotype machine. I saw one of these in action at Quercus Press in Waltham, and it was mesmerizing to watch: a giant clanking heap of machinery that pours molten lead into letter molds, manufacturing lines of type on the fly. But there's no way I could capture something so complex in a single panel without the aid of Dick Tracy-style arrows and captions, so the telegraph key it is.
Also did some more pencilling on page 10 today. Slow work -- I keep writing Gasbagge out of the scene, then back in, then re-thinking it ... Also had to ask to see if it was too silly (in a story with superpowered teddy bears and ambulatory gumball machines) for someone to perch in the branches of a tree and survey the city through a spyglass. After awhile, you just can't tell ...
Stephanie and I have made some changes to the schedule, because she's concerned that downtown traffic might be lighter on Fridays. Friday's page will stay up through the weekend and through Monday. So now the schedule is Tuesday-Friday. I can definitely use the extra time to finish new pages!
May 4, 2004 bookmark
Page 2 went up today. Some nice feedback from local artists.
May 5, 2004 bookmark
Page 3 went up today. I spent some time making a "The Big Wheel" title graphic, which will be a thin strip hanging above the daily page, and also a "The Story So Far..." page. The story page has a little fake travelogue to introduce the general setting of the story:
Welcome, traveler, to the Modern City. It's a beautiful day in the summer of 1930. Today's weather report is clear and sunny -- international airship flights should have clear flying all the way into the Central Aerodrome. In business news, domestic robot production is up 150%, and two new computing cores are nearing completion in Downtown's bustling Skyscraper Row. In Fashion news -- fedoras are still 'in' this year.
It's fun to make up these little extras.
May 6, 2004 bookmark
Page 4 went up today. (Monotonous, isn't it?)
May 7, 2004 bookmark
Two pages at COOL corner.
Some interesting changes at COOL -- the sculptures in the other windows were moved out, and so I gained an extra window in the front. Stephanie's suggestion was to feature each page for two days -- the latest page in the rightmost window, the previous page in the left. Hopefully this will help casual passers-by to follow what's going on. So, up goes page 5.
More of the same.
Working on page 10, finishing the pencils and getting started on inks. This is a juicy page, compared to page 9 -- lots of contrast and interesting shapes (I hope.)
May 9, 2004 bookmark
Finally finished up the last bits of page 10. This is my favorite page so far -- six tall panels of art that was fun to draw, with more borderline-obsessive leaf-shape patterns (our heroes are up in a tree, taking stock of the situation.) It takes a while to ink in all those black shapes. But the result is woth it. And now the plot is in motion. Modern City's power is going out, the people are in a panic, and law enforcement is running into some obstacles. The game's afoot!
May 11, 2004 bookmark
Research, research, research for page 11. Alfred's airship is based on Alberto Santos-Dumont's ship No. 9, circa 1903. No. 9 was S-D's "man about town" airship: he cruised around Paris in the thing, landing at cafés for a quick apertif, upstaging parades, and generally upholding his status as an aeronautical celebrity (as Horton wrote in The Age of the Airship, "Women named their sons after him, and men their drinks.")
So, this would be the perfect ship for my band of heroes to tool around Modern City in. But I didn't have quite enough information, so off to trusty Google. I found some vintage articles describing No. 9's dimensions, and even a few pages with great pictures. Wonderful thing, that Internet.
But not a lot of actual drawing done today. Page 6 went up in the window. My time is being whittled away ...
May 12, 2004 bookmark
Today was a big day: I hung page 7 in the window, and had an interview with Lowell Sun reporter Kathleen Deeley about the comic. Sun photographer Michael Pigeon took some shots of me hauling the big pages around. (He also got some shots of me trying and failing to get the newest page out of the plastic tube I transport them in -- it was a humid day, and the page seemed to be glued to the inside of the tube. Lucille Ball-esque physical comedy ensued. "The artist's struggle," I quipped.)
May 14, 2004 bookmark
Production has really slowed down ... getting down to the wire. If you've been following this blog for awhile, you've probably noticed that the entry dates are coming closer to the current date. It looks as though I am going to be only about a week ahead on the drawings; hope I can keep that lead time.
The article in the Lowell Sun ran today. Whenever an interview opportunity comes up, I think about a quote from Kurt Vonnegut:
Playboy showed me a transcript of what I had said into their tape recorder, and it was obvious to me that I had at least one thing in common with Joseph Conrad: English was my second language.
The article came out pretty well, I think; I didn't sound completely dense. And it was definitely cool to see some of my artwork as a teaser on the front page of the paper.
May 15, 2004 bookmark
Finished the last bit of page 11, and stretched up page 12. Now I'm less than a week ahead -- only about two days. Have to finish page 12 no later than Tuesday, and 13 by Wednesday to keep on schedule.
May 17, 2004 bookmark
Work on page 12 progressing slowly, slowly ... There's a lot of fun stuff going on here: our heroes finally get off the ground, and their airship starts nosing its way through the city buildings. Then, Gasbagge is looking through his telescope again, and locates the bad guys on their Pennyfarthing bikes. But these interesting scenes mean lots of perspective views to be measured out and rendered. If that sounds mechanical, it mostly is: maybe 20% of the work is deciding on the angle of attack, so to speak, and the remaining 80% is making sure it looks right, with no buildings appearing to jut out at 45-degree angles or some such.
May 19, 2004 bookmark
Finally finished page 12 ("no later than Tuesday", hah!) Tomorrow it goes into the window. Page 13 will probably make its appearance on Saturday instead of Friday.
May 23, 2004 bookmark
Page 13 is done. I had a lot of fun drawing in the large center panel with the perspective view of the city. That panel also probably took up 80% of the time spent on this page (lots ... of ... windows ... to ... color ... in ... black ...) We get a glimpse of the Museum where the baddies are holed up, and inside, a look at ... a singing trio with a microphone?
Because I'm not producing as fast as I would like, the pages will now update irregularly in the windows at COOL. I will do my best to make it a Monday - Wednesday - Friday schedule. There are 8 pages remaining in the story.
May 26, 2004 bookmark
Page 14 finished tonight. This is the point in the story where the villain appears and explains what he's done and what he wants. When I write up a villain or villainous character, I usually try to make them not actively evil or bad, but just supremely self-interested and self-serving, a "looking out for Number One" personality. The Fox (aka the Fat Man) in the animated cartoons is primarily an art thief and treasure hunter, and he has a personal sense of why what he is doing is right by his lights (something else I will be happy to bring up later in the animated serial ... sometime soon ... ) His associates have their own reasons for being in his gang.
Well, I've tried to do the same thing with Billy Ohm, leader of the Electric Victorians in "The Big Wheel." He/they have a reason for making the city's robots go kablooie, stealing all the power, bringing the city to a screeching halt, etc. Villains with only a generalized malevolent motivation are boring and two-dimensional; there's no hint of humanity to make them interesting.
Tomorrow I'm scheduled for an interview on University of Massachusetts/Lowell radio -- live radio. Heh. Erg. Um. Just practicing.
May 27, 2004 bookmark
I made a mistake in the last blog entry - it was supposed to be dated Wednesday, May 26 instead of Thursday, May 27. Duh.
So I went to the UML campus this morning and had a nice conversation with John Penny and Dan Toomey on their show "Thinking Out Loud". We talked about my comic and animation work, making a living as a cartoonist (or not), the influx of artists into Lowell, etc. John and Dan put me at my ease and the whole experience was pleasant.
Going into the talk, I thought that I would be petrified -- the last time I was at a radio station (Tufts University's WMFO), my DJ friend asked if I wanted to announce the station's call letters, and I had to wave him off because I couldn't even speak. This time around, though, I was able to just start talking. Hearing my voice amplified in the headphones was very reassuring for some reason.
Page 14 went up in the window. We're two-thirds of the way there! Now there are some action scenes to take care of ...
June 8, 2004 bookmark
Whatever it is, it goes 'ZZZ'.
Page 15 marks the appearance of The Big Wheel, the Electric Victorians' secret weapon against the Modern. Our friend the musuem curator also gets his due from Billy Ohm, for his part in the plot. But the police are closing in ... it may be a short-lived revolution.
Meghan and I have begun photographing the pages, the first part of the process of making a book out of The Big Wheel. Because the pages are slightly wrinkled from the ink application, I thought that I would have to scan each page in 8" x 11" chunks and reassemble them in Photoshop to get a useable digital image. This was not a task I looked forward to. But Meghan was convinced that she could get good digital shots of the pages, and just short of hitting me over the head with her tripod, overcame my stubborn pessimism and went to work. Of course she was right -- she's a professional photographer -- and the page images look great.
Well ... I guess I'll marry her. Does eleven days from now sounds like a good date, Meghan?