This Is The Place... Infected pg4&5

Page four is largely about the physical journey, the toll on Alida's body while she carries the burden of regret, stricken with powerlessness while somehow enduring more than any normal person would believe possible.

Akira Kurosawa was known for these long lens shots of action, often with that eastern sensibility that utilized depth over panning, with axial cuts during action to demonstrate longer passages of time.  I thought about that, and his favoring of cutting from these long lens shots to aspect shots detailing some essential mechanism and back again.  It gave a sense of time and scale to those beats that I enjoyed and really seemed to intuitively work for me.

With that in mind, I waded into page four with a long shot, Alida trudging through the forest.  I had a western audience in mind, so the action progresses left to right instead of foreground to background.

The next set of three panels, I was trying to play with time again, buttressing  the internal mechanics of her mind against the shots of her travels.  The removal of the gutters is meant to be an indication that it's all happening now, but in her mind, done without the conventional cloudy word balloon, which is effective, but a bit hokey for this sort of story.

Alida is still moving, attacked by the weather, attacked by her memories, attacked by the infection growing within.

The last panel, after being mired in her own mind, oblivious to the physical struggles in the real world, she is suddenly compelled to stop, suddenly sure she has arrived at her destination.  Two large oaks dwarf her, she looks up them as they reach like lovers for each other.  This is the place.

Kurosawa also used weather a lot, sometimes as almost a character on it's own.  I tried to push it a bit within the prologue as an antagonist, inspired by his work, but also trying not to over do it.  I think M Night Shyamalan tried to make his film, "The Happening", in that same direction, maybe believing that combining Kurosawa's nature/weather sensibilities with his surprise twist ending formula would make his film work with the brainy crowd as well as the plebeians. I think all he wound up doing was proving you really can take a good technique or formula too far and thoroughly butcher a movie with heavy handedness.  So, I try not hit the reader over the head with this, instead just quietly build the conflict.

Page Five:

That fight comes to a head on page five.

Right away, after arriving at the end of this odyssey, the moment she realizes this is the place, she abruptly commits suicide.  The protagonist dies on panel one.

In the book, she puts the gun to her temple and pulls the trigger, I picture a lot of angst and torment, maybe some screaming as she pushes hard to force her finger to pull the trigger, fighting the cold, fighting the infection, fighting her own survival instinct.

But I thought that story had already been visually told with the previous four pages, so I made a minor change, Alida puts the gun to her heart instead, a choice suicidal women often make, and she quietly ends her own life.  Less bang, more whimper.  I decided that it would be more interesting if, after suffering the duplicity of her mind led by the influence of her infection, after domination by those paranoid inner voices caused by her parasitic invaders, she was able to hide something from them as well.  Hidden was some untapped reservoir of strength and hope, powering an intent to foil the "triangles" by killing herself, their vessel, before they could do whatever it is that she was brought there to do.

The weather takes over, an incessant force of nature with endless patience, and with the passage of time, it washes away everything, Alida, the parasites, her tracks, any evidence of the struggle(minus a gunshot wound to the tree, which hold court above).

Did any of it even matter?  She still dies, she still loses, but the conflict for control is more pronounced, maybe humanity has a shot, maybe not.  Check out Scott Sigler's INFECTED if you want to know what happens next!  Look him up on iTunes for the FREE audiobook or check out his site or your local book store for the print version.  Or, stick around and find out more about the graphic novel!

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!

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.