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Whooooaaa!!! Dramatic right?
Okay, okay, so nothing much happens on this page. But we have to transition from the prologue to the present story SOMEHOW don’t we?
One of the fun things about having a blog is being able to treat it a bit like a director’s commentary on a DVD, only one page at a time. I’m a fan of hearing the thought process behind making graphic novels – both in terms of story construction and art creation. I’m one of the few who loves how-to and making-of books as much as the actual end product. My favorite DVD special feature would be an hour long segment of nothing but a camera looking over the shoulder of an artist I like while the artist paints in Photoshop, or animates in Maya.
So with that said, I figure there might be others out there with a similar fascination, in addition to just wanting to read a graphic novel.
Where to Begin?
I had the hardest time trying to figure out how to begin this story. I think it’s gone through five or six different versions. At first, it was going to begin with a totally different prologue, showing the larger world that it takes place in. I finally decided on the bedtime story idea, as I felt the most important thing was to show the emotional core, and the relationships between the characters first. The prologue sets things up for the rest of the book, but does so in a fun way. I also didn’t want to give away the larger world until a later point. It’s important that we experience the world WITH Brandt as he discovers it.
The downside is that I’m not starting with a BANG like a lot of stories do. There’s no Star Destroyer pursuing a Rebel Blockade Runner in this one. Not sure if that’s a bad thing or not. I definitely don’t want it to be boring. As you’ll see in the next few pages, I did try to add a bit of excitement and mysterious intrigue as the main story gets moving. However, sometimes I still wonder if I should have gone with the beginning that had lots of explosions. Hmmmm…
Back in 2004-2006, while working long hours at my video game job, merging vertices in Maya, I used to listen to the Fanboy Radio podcast. The thing that I really liked about the early days of this show was that they would interview comic creators, and at the end of each episode they would ask them, “So out of all the other mediums to tell your story in, Why Comics?” Each creator had their reasons, but today I thought I’d go with this theme and self-reflect a bit. Hopefully you all will end up finding this a bit interesting as well.
Complete Control
You can tell a story from beginning to end without someone else telling you how things ought to be done.
Now granted, it’s good to get some feedback from trusted individuals who get what you’re trying to do (colleagues, editors, etc.). Without naming names, we can all think of certain individuals who were given a bit TOO much creative control, and their work suffered for it. A healthy bit of objectivity can be a good thing to be able to clearly see the forest for the trees.
However, we can all probably think of creators who would have had their work stifled by too much input from outside sources too. In this case I will name names (J.K. Rowling).
As someone that really wants to tell stories, I don’t want to have to deal with all of the hassle of defending each one of my ideas from a committee. One of the things I love about graphic novels is that you can create an entire world and it’s all yours. You don’t have to collaborate with countless people like you would have to do if it were a movie. The story doesn’t have to go through a bunch of producers and directors who want to change things to fit their vision. For better or for worse, you can make the story true to your vision.
You Can Just Tell the Story
Doing MYTH as a graphic novel, rather than a film, or an animation, or even a novel, was an incredibly liberating thing for me. Suddenly I didn’t have to fight with technology anymore. I didn’t have to run each idea through the “can I do this?” filter before writing it into the script. There is truth to the idea that limitations foster creativity.
However, on the other hand, limitations can also keep many of the best ideas from taking form; especially when the budget is limited. Even with novels, I felt a limitation just trying to describe the scene I envisioned in my head through lines and lines of exposition.
The Story Is Closest To How You See It in Your Head
Now granted, this one is kind of dependent on how well you can translate what’s in your head, down onto paper. But I like the challenge that the only thing keeping me from showing my idea is my own artistic ability (or lack thereof). Graphic novels don’t have any limits really. Not even in length. You can make the characters look how you want them to look, and you can make the story as epic as you want. Your only limits are your drawing ability, your imagination, and the length of time you can stick with a project.
This last limit is the difficult one. Whether it’s the difficulty of finding time to devote to a project each day, or having the creative stamina to stick with a project for an extended period of time, graphic novels are HUGE endeavors. That having been said, when compared with alternative forms of media, and the work ethic that they take to create a comparable work, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. At least in my book, that is. In fact, this goes along with my next point.
The Time Factor and Other Things
Graphic novels STILL take a significantly less amount of time to create, than doing the same story as a movie or an animation. Making an animated film on your own requires a CRAZY amount of sacrifice; even more than with comics. You basically either have to give up your life, or work on it in your spare time for many, many years. Anything over five minutes is biting off more than you can chew. The project quickly becomes overwhelming because there’s so much that needs to be designed, modeled, animated, etc. This doesn’t even take into account rendering time.
Now, people have done it, mind you. In fact, I used to hold these people up as shining examples of what could be done, given enough sacrifice. However, when it came to these animated films, I was hard pressed to find very many, single-person productions over five minutes which didn’t suffer from a lack in quality on some level. Either the animation was simplistic, or the writing was bad, or the acting was off. Some were just plain laughable. Sure, it could theoretically be done. Anything IS possible. But there is a fine line between being idealistic, and being unrealistic.
Final Words
In the end, what it came down to for me was, “WHAT DO I MOST ENJOY THE PROCESS OF?” For me, it was drawing and expressing my ideas with minimal effort. Sure I’d love to SEE my characters move, or to HEAR them talk, or to have a rousing EMOTIONAL MUSIC SCORE playing in the background (this is the hardest one for me). But comics and graphic novels give ways to suggest these things as well, and more than anything else, they allow me to draw my characters and stories with lots of appeal, and to just get it out there for others to see. Maybe I didn’t have it so wrong back in 7th grade after all.
So why comics? Because they’re FUN.
Full-Color Printing
Well work continues as I slowly get word out about this little blog and graphic novel. I’ve also been looking into the possibilities for printing it once I finish. Right now Ka-Blam is looking pretty nice for a self-publishing route. Although of course, getting a publishing deal might be better. But it’s amazing to think that it’s no longer a show-stopper.
I remember back when I was in my teens and trying to self-publish stuff. What a dismal scenerio! Either self-publish in B&W with a color cover for around $2,000…or print an “ash-can” version at kinkos on B&W photocopy machines. Wow. I remember working my tail off all summer back in 9th grade on a full-color comic with my buddy, Jeremy Putnam. It was drawn on 11X17 poster board, inked with crow-quill pens (which we had no idea how to use, btw), and colored with Crayola markers (yes, I’m serious).
And then we found out about the prohibitive cost that it would take to print the book in full color at the local copy store. Our dreams shattered a bit that day. From then on out, we were forced to work within the parameters of black and white.
So yes, I know that technically, print-on-demand books aren’t as professional as their offset printing counterparts. But I’m just glad to have the option.
Motivation
Wow, I am so excited about graphic novels, comics and storytelling right now. Here are a few things that have been keeping me motivated lately. Maybe they can motivate you too!
First up is a You Tube video posted by illustration.org about Kazu Kibuishi, the creator of Amulet. I just bought Book 4 on Saturday, and it looks to be the best of the series so far. In this interview he flips through his binder and shows some of the behind the scenes work for Amulet. Very informative and inspirational to see his process. I might adopt his smaller page style myself. It does seem MUCH faster to produce work, assuming I can maintain the level of detail I want in the artwork without giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome in the process.
Secondly, we have Jake Parker, a fellow Utah-artist. He’s got a formidable body of work you can view on his blog, but there’s one post in particular that I think most independent creators would find interesting…
…Such a cool little story/idea.
Finally, we have Comics Are Great, hosted by Jerzy Drozd. Now this guy is prolific, wish I could figure out how to juggle as many hats as he does. Hmmm, maybe if I just didn’t sleep? Jerzy does a weekly comics show from Ann Arbor District Library called, Comics Are Great, where he interviews various comics creators. In this episode, Jerzy interviews Dave Roman and Jake Parker about world building. What a great episode!
Hope these motivate you guys as much as they have me!
Wow, this page is kind of old. There’s actually a whole year between the time I illustrated this page and the next one. The characters look slightly off-model, especially Penchack (the grandpa). I think I’ll end up going back and changing it to better reflect the model sheets.
Well since I’m actually getting into the story this week, I’m going to be starting my efforts to advertise and get word out about this blog/website. There’s so much to learn and figure out about how to build an audience for an online graphic novel, that I really don’t even know where to begin. One step at a time I guess.
I remember back in 2009 when I started this. I thought it would be as easy as putting together a preview of the book, finding an agent, landing a publishing deal, and BOOM! I’d have a book in Barnes and Noble and I’d be able to do this full-time. Then I found out that it didn’t work that way. Well, theoretically it did. but in actuality, it didn’t. Then I just got confused about the entire process. But the one thing that became extremely clear to me was that this was going to be much, much harder than I had anticipated.
If this had been any other story, I probably would have given up by now. But I’m pretty darn passionate about this story, and I’m committed to telling it. So, I’m going to keep moving forward with this thing. Maybe I won’t find a publishing deal, and this will be self-published. I’m okay with that now. I’m still determined to get it into book stores; it may just take a little longer than I’d originally thought.
But then again, isn’t that what happens when we embark upon any endeavor? It’s almost always ten times harder than we think it’ll be. There are times where we think about calling it quits too. But the success comes from sticking to it, even when things don’t work out how we thought they would. In a way, that’s what the whole “hero’s journey” is about isn’t it? After all, a story without much conflict isn’t very exciting.
