This Is The Place... Infected pg2&3

Page two is difficult to discuss without also taking a look at the opposing page, which was designed to work alongside it.  Looking at them as a pair, I had a few ideas that I thought I would try out, things that in my head made just so much sense!  But what works swimmingly in my head makes other people's head swim, it turns out, and several ideas fell flat.  Let's hope I continue to learn these lessons and failure doesn't become a theme.

The first thought I had involved gutters, or the removal of them, making these four sort of super-panels that contained an emotional or physical bit of acting close up on the face, and a corresponding tall claustrophobic panel of physical acting.  Removing the gutters should mean the removal of time, and conversely, wider gutters would equal additional time.

Makes sense, right?  Sure, but it wasn't intuitive to the reader.  I had to explain it, which means it didn't come off well.  The tighter zooming was also meant to tie them together, but it was only marginally effective.

The second thought I had was having Alida jump off the first page and sort of roll to the bottom of the second, unconscious, with these flashbacks or maybe dream sequences playing out at different timelines in her head.

I've seen Scott Hampton pull it off, I think, though I forget where.  He quite effectively utilized wide gutters to show passing time, but time was linear, so it was intuitive.  In my instance, it was bouncing around in time, so it just doesn't feel natural.  It still functions, the story comes across, so I'm stuck with it unless I want to revisit the pages again, which I do not.

So that's the bad, it's out of the way, I learned some lessons, let's take a look at what worked.

Page two:

What I wanted to accomplish on page two was to demonstrate that even the quiet times on this miniature odyssey, the times when Alida should be at rest, are still fraught with the troubles of the physical struggle going on within.  The next page, when she is unconscious, you get a taste of the past, the origin of the troubles within her mind.  Followed by page four, more of the tough physical journey and actual manifestation of guilt over the events established in the flashbacks, the contrast to this page, the mental struggle within instead of the physical one.

In panel one, I figured I'd just do an aspect shot of the wheels on the train, a little motion blur, and the same sound effects from the last panel of page one, the clack-clack noises a train's wheels make against the seams of the metal tracks.  It is wide, giving the sense of a new environment, an establishing shot, without taking up valuable page space and hitting the reader over the head with what was foreshadowed on the previous page.  It's also cropped so close that it has the tiniest bit of claustrophobia, the beginning of a theme for the infected.

These next four panels, panels two through five, are meant to be a two camera shot, each zooming in as the action progresses, helping the reader along with the empathy that close-ups promote.  The second tier also moves the character upward and to the right, actual forward progress. Panel two, time passes, snow billows about.  Panel three, sickness, vomiting blood. Panel four, some associated pain followed by something grabbing Alida's attention. And finally, panel five in the sequence, Alida is up and at the edge of the boxcar door, gazing out into the cold, aspect shot of blood in the foreground.

Panel six is an inset panel, a close up of Alida's eye grabbing an image of the forest in front of her, making a reflection of a predatory maw complete with gaping incisors, her make up smeared from tears.

The next panel Alida is flying through the air and plopping down into the snow, harder than she intended, a bit out of control.

Page three:

This page was meant to show some flashbacks before picking Alida up off the ground and resuming her journey.  It's what tainted her mind and begat the internal struggle for control and maybe even Alida's soul.

Panels one and two make up the first flashback scene, back at her home, back when the real trouble started.  Luis is already dead, three shots to the chest and blood everywhere.  You get the sense that maybe Luis didn't go down easily and there are bloody footprints leading off to the background, where Alida lurks, wrapped in shadow.  You just missed the action, a moment too late, the hooror will be played out in the mind of the reader(where Hitchcock fans usually believe it's the scariest).  The next panel, the reader is a moment too soon, Alida towers over the helpless baby, gun in hand.  What happens next is implied, but the metaphoric five horses in the mobile hint that the baby isn't long for this world.  The horses, of course, meaning the senses, a little homage to the Q Lazzarus song from Silence of the Lambs, "Goodbye Horses".  Creepy!

The next tier is Alida grabbing a car, killing a random stranger in the process.  Pretty straight forward.  I deliberately kept the faces of the victims small or concealed, saving their empathetic close-ups for the next page.  This is just where the internal horror comes from, it's not the actual burden.

With wide gutters between all three tiers representing wide passages of time(another theme the infected deal with, passing out and waking up sometimes days later, time either severely muddled or completely oblivious to), we arrive at tier three.  Alida wakes up, feels the thing growing inside her, and presses onward.

This one came a long way in terms of storytelling.  My initial thought was some kind of weirdly shaped and fractured panels for the dream sequences, something to reflect her fractured personality or state of mind, but thankfully, my editor pulled in the reins.

The initial art was rough, too, sloppy storytelling.  It's been ages since I looked at these pages, and I'm amazed how much better I've become over such a relatively short span of time!

More to come!

Infected, This Is The Place...

Spoiler alert!  If you haven't read Scott Sigler's book, Infected, you probably should stop reading here, because I'm about to analyze the crap out of it.

Page one:

Scott Sigler's book, Infected, begins in medias res, a prologue of just two and a half pages of text in the actual book.  But it's a compelling and brilliantly written two and a half pages that neatly delivers the entire narrative of the story, telling you everything you need to know  about the motivation of the antagonist, the mindset of the protagonist, conflict and resolution.  It's an entire tragic story compressed into the tiniest and maybe most important bit of the book.  It's what sold me on the story and, coupled with how much of it takes place within the mind and the confined apartment of Perry Dawsey, it would be a challenging project I knew I wanted to make into a graphic novel.

My approach for this is, I wanted to tell the whole story visually, without relying on text to convey what is in the mind of Alida Garcia, the prologue protagonist.  So much of her story is about regret, about her shortcomings, and her inner struggles with both the demons in her past and the demons literally growing under her skin.  

As an illegal immigrant, her whole life had been a struggle, getting physically north across the border and establishing herself, with her husband.  Having her baby, an anchor baby that meant salvation for her relationship with Luis, her finally being able to live without fear from the INS, or "La Magra".  Her struggle with classes, moving up from poverty to a middle class life, the American Dream.

But then she became infected with another child of sorts, this strange infection that brought alien thoughts of paranoia, predatory insanity, with a northerly migration, mirroring Alida's during her early struggling years, of it's own driving it and her into some unknown part of desolate Michigan forest in the biting chill of winter, an environment quite alien to her warm Mexican upbringing.  Like a new male lion taking over a pride, it killed off the rival males and her cub, laying claim to her body and everything she was.

All that in two and a half pages!

I started out writing down everything I wanted to cover, all the events, all the emotions, then plotted out how long I wanted to spend on each bit, deciding how long I wanted the reader to dwell on this first beat.  I arrived at five pages of pretty dense storytelling.  A beginning, middle, and end, with three acts.  It could be a movie all on it's own.

Page one, I wanted to cover all the major points, the epic journey, the emotions, the paranoia, the almost schizophrenic nature of her inner struggle.

Panel one starts with Alida  trekking across the snow, missing a shoe, disheveled, she's fallen to her knees and is looking over her shoulder for something or someone chasing her.  We look down on her, this lesser pathetic and weak thing.  The branches of the tree above her come between us, the viewer, and her, the protagonist.  They spread across the page, from left to right like an infection.

The next five panels, four insets and one big one, demonstrate largely through close ups the struggle going on in her mind and in her body. 

We start with scratching the wrist until it's bloody, noticing the infected hand is holding a gun.  I was thinking of what it takes for a coyote to gnaw off it's own paw when caught in a trap, something that must take the most immense inner strength to do for the sake of survival.

Panel three, Alida sheds tears.  Regret, panic, fear, she's ready to give up, she just wants it all to end.

Panel four, the engagement and wedding ring on her left hand that symbolized everything she ever wanted in life, her family, love, the ability to afford such luxuries in America, to have enough money to buy gold and precious stones, and the pride of overcoming such gargantuan obstacles.  If not for the regret, it would certainly be inspiration.

Panel five, a suggestion from my editor, Bob Pendarvis, "I kinda wish one of the faces might've used a hand or two. nothing like adding a hand to a close-up to increase the "acting" quotient. like, maybe she's cradling her head in the third face, but then turns head behind her in the last, eyes peering between fingers"   It was a great suggestion that added a lot to the panel, where she demonstrates the evil has taken over, she has a gun she isn't afraid to use, and she is partially hiding her face, an act of deception.

This all culminates in a stylistic panel six, Alida looking over her shoulder, angry and paranoid, maybe at the viewer, maybe at the beginning of the next part of her journey, the train.

And finally, panel seven, a more realistic view of the train meandering down the tracks.

There's a world of difference between how the page started in thumbnails and where it wound up, here is my very rough first take layout to go over with the editor.

Next post: My approach to how the art is portrayed and why, techniques, materials, scanners and resolutions.  Followed by a page two analysis!

A Thick Skin and Honest Critique

For seven years, from when I was in year twelve in high school,  I was fortunate enough to be employed as a graphic designer at a great little firm in Florida.  I spent time making art by hand or in the computer,  learning to design logos and tshirts and billboards and anything else(minus web design) under the sun that could be printed.  I cut my teeth on photoshop and Corel.  For a couple years, I was also the Art Director(which really just meant I was salaried, I was responsible for everyone's work, and I went from working 40 hours a week to 60 hours a week for a very minor raise that washed away when I worked overtime).

When I was still so young, I have to say, it felt pretty fantastic to just be making art for a living.  And it's hard to imagine a better way to get your feet wet than diving right into the deep end of the pool, sink or swim.  But I like that sort of thing, the challenge of it.

What I learned was, in the end, that I didn't want to be a graphic designer.  That was the single biggest lesson I walked away with, and I consider it time well spent.  I also learned little things along the way, how to deal with customers, I learned not to fall in love with every little thing I did(because the customer or art director, regardless of the reason or benefit of it, always wanted a little change to great work, almost like adding their own little immortal bit or signature to the creative process).  I learned the value of a client and what it cost to lose one, I learned how process printing works, screen printing, embroidery, offset presses, I even learned automotive paint.

But the second most important lesson I learned was the value of critique.

Sure, we all enjoy praise, it feels warm and fuzzy.  Wow, that sure looks great.  I can't believe how good that looks, you're amazing!  Again and again, it never gets old, receiving praise feels good.  Damned good. Great, even.

But what purpose does praise really serve, in the practical sense, to an artist?  In it's essence, it's positive reinforcement which, logically speaking, is designed to get you to repeat a pattern of behavior.  How does that help an artist grow, retreading the same old path with repeated behavior?  The words "good enough" come to mind.  And how depressing must it be to become "good enough", call it quits, to mentally check out and coast the rest of the way through life?

To me, all life is can be summed up in a single sentence; Life is the pursuit of perfection.  That's it.  Once you achieve it, well, crap, you are the dog that caught the car, now what do you do?  A dog chasing cars seems kind of dumb, but it's the same thing we as artists do, we hone our artistic craft the way the dog hones his hunting craft, endlessly chasing perfection down the road, the closer we get, the more dust is kicked in our eyes and the more alive we feel.

If you want to grow as an artist, it doesn't help all that much to know what you got right, it doesn't help you to know it's the best work in the room.  What you need to know is what is wrong with it, what doesn't work.  Michaelangelo said every block of stone has a sculpture inside, it's the task of the sculptor to discover it.  In your work, the deeper you get into it, the harder it is to have perspective, what rough bit of stone needs to be cut away to really free the sculpture inside?

That's where a good artist is well served by a thick skin and honest critique.

If hearing your perspective is off, your composition looks thrown together, not thought out, and your anatomy sucks makes you feel like a lump of crap, you probably need to rethink how your brain is wired.  Whoever just told you that awful stuff about your work, the work you spent hours laboring over, that you lost sleep over, that you missed TV shows to work on, that you neglected relationships to slave at, that guy is one of the best assets you have.  That guy that you want to knee-jerk react to with a frown or a dirty remark under your breath, he just gave you more insight than all your formative years of praise from your mom and all who gazed in awe at the kitchen fridge magnet art gallery.

To be clear, "that sucks" is not critique.  Neither is "I don't like it", or any flavor of blather that doesn't speak about specific issues within the work in question.  That's not delivering critique, that's being a hater.  Learn to spot the difference.

If you can get a small group of honest people willing to really trash your work in your entourage, if you can restrain yourself from hating those guys for their tactless delivery, your work will grow in leaps and bounds.  If praise should be handed out, mete it to those guys, that's where positive reinforcement belongs, that's the sort of behavior you want repeated.  One of those guys is worth a thousand groupies lavishing shallow praise.

I had the good fortune to work with honest people who paid me for my work.  They expected a lot in return, they didn't tolerate mediocrity. They told me what was wrong and where and why, and if they could, how to fix it.  And rarely, if ever, did I hear praise for my work.  And it was the best time of my life in terms of artistic growth.

The Protagonist Brain(partIII)

Any expression of idea is wide open for interpretation, and in a collaboration, interpretation is inevitable. In your own private inner mindscape, the protagonist is always your own brain, the antagonist is every communication obstacle between your idea and it's understanding by the reader.

When considering your approach to storytelling, it's far more complicated than merely showing a procession of progressive images that illustrate a story.  Film is a medium best suited for showing action, a novel is best suited for describing thought, but sequential art contains limited text and limited imagery, leaving it somewhere in between.  Does that make it better or worse than the other two mediums that bookend storytelling?  That's a tough question that is largely determined through execution.

It's the artists job to sort out what the book is going to both show and tell you.  Compound that complexity when you start throwing color into the equation.  It's up to you to make the collaboration of text and images mutually beneficial, leaving them leaning on each other, supported by one another.  In that same way, the art and color should serve to improve and inform it's counterpart.

So here I am, I have these grand ideas of how I see the book in my head. I hammered out the approach for one aspect of the story, the scenes involving the "infected". The first samples I get back look great, some minor tweaks need to be made to fine tune my art style with the colorist's sensibilities.  Maybe that was just beginner's luck.

Now the second approach is tested, the parts of the stories told through bare line work, no moody ink washes, just line and color. I was looking for a similar flatter look for the foreground characters, and a more painterly or textured background to make them pop. I deliberately left some very sparse line work on the page, and eagerly awaited the first samples to return. And when they did, the departure from expectation to reality really snapped into focus.

On the right, it's one of my first attempts trying to convey my vision to the colorist, and as you can plainly see by way of revisions, I pretty well butchered it.  Back and forth, again and again, because I wasn't clearly communicating my ideas either visually or verbally.  I wasted a lot of time that you normally don't have to squander, so I needed to figure something out, a better way to communicate and fast!

I am now including some very basic lighting guides, no longer leaving it entirely to the colorist to divine where the light is coming from.  I'm also adding a lot more texture to the backgrounds, which is sometimes a major chore, but it's beginning to come across.

This is an ongoing work in progress, my intention is to document the process, my thoughts and views on the work along the way.  I'm quite sure there are many lessons to still be learned, but I've come a long way in figuring out a way over or around many of the larger hurdles involved in making a comic, from start to finish.  This is a collaboration, open to interpretation, from the people I work with down to the ones who will finally be reading it.   I hope you find an angle you find interesting within this blog, as a fellow creator, as a fan/reader of comics, or just someone looking to rubberneck at the train wrecks as they happen!

The Protagonist Brain(part II)

Professor Paul Hudson taught me a lot of things during my time in the sequential art building at SCAD. He was a meticulous man with an incredible eye for detail, accuracy, perspective, anatomy. All things he brought to his amazing work, taught to his students, and imparted into their techniques. Invaluable technical knowledge that greatly informed and improved everything I've done since taking his classes back in 2004-2005.

But the single most important thing I soaked up was his endless pursuit of perfection in everything he does, under the mantra "A day without mistakes is a wasted day, as you learned nothing."

A healthy attitude to couple with a dislike for your own work. It keeps you from becoming bitter and drives you to continually reinvent your approach, refine your tools, explore alternate techniques. To generally try your damnedest to make daily progress towards the mirage on the horizon that is perfection and the complacency that would come with it. It's the recognition and the satisfaction that comes from looking at the work you did yesterday, seeing the faults and being pleased with finding them or having someone point it out(if you are so lucky).

Working on Scott Sigler's graphic novel adaptation of his book, "INFECTED", I thought a lot about my artistic approach, trying to keep in mind how the brain works, it's desire for simplicity and the clarity that can come with it, and the beauty and fascination you can impart with realistic perspective, details, lighting, everything you see in reality but usually lose in the process of making comics.

I decided upon a two pronged approach for the story, which, all characters and their various motivations aside, really has two opposing points of literal "view". The view of the infected, and the view of the uninfected.

The approach for the infected seemed like an easy enough problem to solve, throw in some ink washes, be a bit messy, impart some energy into the brush strokes. Some vertical panels to promote an overall sense of claustrophobia as the paranoia sets in and infection begins to cloud their minds, taking over.

For the uninfected parts of the story, I figured I would lean a bit more on clean line work, more intrinsic detail, a more traditional comic look.

For the uninfected, though, this posed a bit of a problem. How do I maintain a sense of unity with the art if I didn't come up with an alternate way of handling things to match the rich texture that ink washes can impart? Further, how do I make it as simple as possible for the reader to recognize the action, the characters, the moving parts of the story within each rendered panel equally?

I thought a bit about the work of Josh Middleton, who tries to remove all the unnecessary lines from his work, paring it down to it's essence, relying more on his colors to fill in the work. He does all his own colors, and the collaboration of mediums works really well together, as they inform each other, and maintain the same exact direction and goal in the hands of the same artist. I liked the idea of it and decided that the moving characters in both parts of the story, infected and uninfected, would share a more simple look, devoid of spotted blacks, intricate detail.

The backgrounds can be handled very differently, one with rendered washes with these stark characters popping out, the other either leaning on color or dealing with more richly illustrated backgrounds, with the bright, simple looking characters standing out equally.

It solves the problem of lending unity to two different looks within the same book, and helps the brain along in recognizing the characters, the movement, the energy of a scene that you might otherwise lose with a heavily detailed style.

But this would cause some crippling problems of it's own, as I would soon find out.