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New Comics from Me
Oct. 3rd, 2009 09:34 amYesterday I printed three 24 page comics for This Is Not Art Zine Fair. Two comics reprint two of my web comics (one about Real Life, the the other from Second Life) and the third is all new material.
In part, all three were done to test a number of ideas I had about the two graphic novels I'm doing for my Masters in Fine Art. I needed to see if writing a script first, and using half-tones, would make a difference to how I produce comics. While the conditions under which I did that weren't ideal (three months of work and preparation reduced to 2 weeks due to illness and other problems) I think I did get a result.
Normally I don't write scripts for my comics. Individual stories tend to be either short or "made up as I go". In the first case it's all in my head and tends to come out naturally. In the second case (especially for one of the web comics I do) that hasn't been a big issue as it's led to a few surprises, but it has been an issue for another when I just ran out of plot! And of course if I try and draw a 100+ page graphic novel without a script, then it's not going to be very coherent is it? I used Zhura (an online service).to write the scripts as I didn't have to install anything and could access it anywhere I got get net access. Once I started I found that describing what went into each panel, dialogue, et cetera, forced me to organise things, and once written I knew exactly what had to be done where. Rather than work sequentially then, I was able to do panels in a more convenient order and source photo references easily.
This might be an obvious thing to everyone else, but a major difference for me. I have much more confidence now that I will get those graphic novels done.
