Aug 31 2010

Process: Oyster War pg. 20 Start to Finish

Well, here’s the finished colored version of pg. 20 of Oyster War that I’ve been posting intermittently at various stages of completion.  If I had to do it over again, I’d probably have picked a different page from this chapter to highlight since this page wound up using mostly literal color, not the more expressive/narrative color that I find much more interesting. At any rate, here’s the finished page, along with reposted inks, pencils and thumbnail pages so you can see the whole process start to finish:

Aug 26 2010

Sketchbook 8/26

I haven’t posted anything from my sketchbook recently, so here’re some hands from the current issues of TIME and Vanity Fair.

Aug 22 2010

Proposals: Out with the Old, In with the New

While there are a few (like maybe one or two) editors who’ve not definitively responded to the Count of Monte Cristo graphic novel proposal I’d been working on a month or two ago, it looks like it’s time to consider it officially dead in the water–or at least, “shelved” for the time being.  I’m continuing to work on Oyster War as time allows, but I’m also starting work on another GN proposal based on an idea (albeit a pretty vague one) that I’ve been kicking around for a while: a GN about a line cook who’s a touring musician on the weekends.  Things culinary are hot, hot, hot in the prose publishing world, but the domestic comics world hasn’t really touched much on food and cooking as a subject. There are, though, several excellent cooking Manga that have been pretty influential in pushing me this direction: mainly Oishinbo, but also things like Antique Bakery and Iron Wok.  I’m not going to divulge too much until I’ve got things more sorted out story-wise, but I decided to move ahead with this as a proposal–instead of any number of other things that I’ve got gestating at the moment–mainly because I finally figured out a way to interconnect the culinary and musical portions of the story.

Now, if you know anything about me personally, you know that I worked in kitchens throughout the 90s and was in fact a touring musician on the weekends.  This is not a coincidence.  Rest assured, those of you who knew me then, this is a work of fiction. I can’t help, though, but to draw on some of my own experiences from that period as I start putting this together.  I am, though, designing the characters in the band as deliberate visual homages to the guys that I played music with back in those halcyon days.  I imagine that by the time ink hits paper to do some test pages they’ll look a lot less similar to anyone “real life,” but I’m using them as a starting point.  In the preliminary character designs above you can see the main character (nameless at the moment, designated in my notes only as “H.P.” for “hero/protagonist”) on the left in chef gear and then in his street clothes, and his bandmates to the right.  I can see now that I’ve got them all together that I really need to rework the two guys with dark hair so that they’re not so similar in basic shape.

Tentatively, the book’s called “In The Weeds,” a phrase that you will know if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant.

Aug 08 2010

I’m a “Character” in Today’s NY Times

My friend (and screenwriter) Angus MacLachlan has a short article in the “Lives” section of today’s New York Times. It’s a true story that takes place in our neighborhood (Angus lives around the corner from me) and the pictured chair lived in my studio for about a year between the events detailed in the story, although it was green then and smelled vaguely of dog pee.

Angus had sent me an early draft of this story in which he’d changed my name to “Dan Toole.”  I requested a rewrite with that altered it to “Dr. Magnus R. Steele” but apparently the Times requires writers to use real names for this feature, so it’s back to “Ben Towle” here.  They even had a fact checker call apparently. (This fact check guy must have been on a smoke break during the buildup to the Iraq War.  [Zing!!!]) Anyway, here’s the article.

Aug 05 2010

Oyster War Page Progress: Inks

As mentioned a few posts back, I’ve picked a page from the current chapter of Oyster War to post progress on as it moves to completion.  I’ve now got that particular page inked, so here it is:

As with most everything I draw, this page looked a lot more impressive in my brain, but I still think it turned out reasonably well.  I’ve got three more pages to ink and then I’m going to start coloring this chapter.  For reference, here’s the pencils of this same page: