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Well, here is another post about writing. I have writing on the brain. Today, I’ll go into my process. Obviously, everything starts with an idea. This can be anything from a vague notion rattling around in my head to a phrase I’ve scribbled in my sketchbook or on a pad of paper, like so:
The Idea
For those of you that can’t read my handwriting which is probably EVERYone, that says “Gay Frogs: one gives the over shit about the number of friends, one bitches about being added to groups”.
This idea came from an argument I had with good buddy Chris Sonnenburg. I’ve known Chris for over 20 years, so we tend to argue like…well, a married couple. We had this ridiculous argument over FACEBOOK chat of all things about friending and grouping on Facebook. The next step was scripting. All I did was basically try to remember the argument verbatim. That, looked like this:
Script
That’s right, I write longhand on a legal pad JUST like George Lucas!!
Unlike George, however, I edit and rewrite and boil things down, sometimes all on the same page (thus all the scribbling in the margins and the arrows).
Next, some thumbnails. Sometimes I do these in my sketchbook, but this time, I did them in the legal pad, like so:
I have no idea why I wrote “Walter Kelly”. What I’m trying to do here is explore staging ideas, rough out the main poses, explore some acting ideas, etc.
Anyway, the next step is to scribble the strip into Photoshop using the Cintiq. I scribble the dialogue in so that I can a) be sure that there will be room for it, and b) fiddle with the wording a little. Believe it or not, even though my comics are a bit verbose, I am always looking for ways to condense the wording to improve the way the joke plays.
The Photoshop Rough
This is how I write the “gag-a-day” strips that exist outside of the longer story arcs. The process for the story strips is a bit different, as I usually have some story point I’m trying to convey, as well as a joke I’m trying to put across. I’ll talk more about that, and the graphic novel in future posts.
Thanks for reading!
-John
Hey all!
Made some headway this week on the graphic novel. Roughed out about 5 more pages. I’m anxious to get to the end of this chapter so I can go back and kind of tighten things up. This is the chunk I intend to show to the publisher to sell them on the idea of doing the book. It has to be good. The art has to be the best I can possibly do. I’ll be reaching and putting forth an effort to make it really shine. As of yet, I have no idea how many pages it will be. If I think about that, it frightens me to my core, so I don’t think about it.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I’ve always read, but it’s been decades since I read this much. I’ve finished 5 novels and I’m halfway through a sixth since the new year. The effect this has had on me is that it has made me more thoughtful and more careful about my own writing, both at work and on the strip. It may account for why the strip has gotten so verbose in the past month.
My method of writing the strip has changed a lot over the course of 5 years. In the beginning, I resisted the notion of writing ahead, or even of “writing” at all. I did not script in the least bit. I’d always begin by just drawing panel one, and then hoping I’d think of a funny way to wrap it up by panel 4. Even when I started doing the longer story arcs, I never planned ahead or plotted. This may have been a reaction against what I do at work. In animation, we exaustively plan, plot, write and re-write every thing, the intention being that we are honing the story to perfection. Unfortunately, I’d been on some movies where we ground the fun and the life out of them via this process and others that never got going at all due to the hand-wringing and re-working. They died in utero, killed by the very process that was supposed to bring them to life. The strip was supposed to be a way of releasing pent up creative energy, and so I used it as a vacation from the writing process. I improv-ed, I vamped. I just made shit up, to use the venacular of “the streets”.
Eventually, I found that if I wanted a larger audience, I needed to write. I began to loosely plot things out, and then riff around within that plot. Now, I script everything. Out of every 5 scripts I write, I keep maybe 2. I hone, I refine. How is this different from what I do at work?
Well that’s easy. I’m in control of the process. Period. The other is that I’m not a slave to the script. If I’m halfway through drawing a strip and I think of a better punchline, I use it.
I am now applying this process to the material for the graphic novel. How is this affecting material that I basically made up as I went along 5 years ago?
Well…I’ll tell you next friday.
-John
PS: Here is a list of what I’ve read so far this year, in case you are curious. I’ve loved everything so far.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
Then we Came to The End by Joshua Ferris
Ask the Dust by John Fante
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (in progress)
REad a book, people!
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Hey all!
Now you are all probably wondering “Hey, no new strip today?” The answer is yes, there is no new strip today and there will be no new strip on friday for quite a while. The reason is that I am working on a graphic novel based on the first big Story arc I did with the characters. You know the one, it’s the story where Chippy keeps calling Boba “candy-coated monkey jizz”. It’s the story where we met Carl, the Pink Unicorn, and where Chippy had that first fateful battle with Paco. It’s a big story, and I’ve been told by many that read beginning to end, it actually reads like a big movie. It will be a lot of work re-drawing and re-lettering the strips. I’ll also be adding bridging material so that it reads like a graphic novel and not a collection of strips.
It’s a lot of work, folks. I’ve managed to rough out 25 pages, but it’s been impossible to make any progress while I also do the strip 3 times a week. I related this problem to friend and story artist Josh Pruett, and he recommended perhaps cutting back to 2 times a week until the graphic novel is finished. That sounded like a good idea to me, but I thought that to kind of fill the void, I’ll do a blog post on Friday where I will maybe talk process, perhaps show some roughs from the graphic novel, or maybe the strip. Anyway, there will be SOMETHING here for you all on Friday, it just won’t be a strip.
Thank you for reading and thank you for your patience. We’ll be back Monday with a new comic.
See you all later!!! And watch this space for further developments!
-John
New Strip Wednesday, No strip on Monday..Here is why…
on January 24, 2011 at 10:12 pmPosted In: Blog
I have a pretty nice studio space in my home that includes both a giant traditional drawing table and a smaller table that holds my Cintiq, my Imac, and my scanner. It’s a shitty, wobbly table that we bought from Ikea. It worked for 3 years, but I have found that the more I rely on my Cintiq for both my work and this strip, I’ve found that the Ikea table just doesn’t cut it, so yesterday, Sara and I found this beautiful, new super-stable table that cost only $179! I spent Sunday night putting it together, and now I have to unhook EVERYTHING, mount the powerstrips on the wall, re-hook everything up…blah blah blah…ugh. It’s going to take all night. Soooo…there will be a new strip on Wednesday. Sorry about this. I probably could have just said “Technical Difficulties”, but I thought I owed you all a better explaination than that. Anyway, Thanks for reading!!!!
-John