Nov 17 2009

Count of Monte Cristo – Thumbnails

Just for fun, I thought I’d drum up maybe five pages or so of my imagined graphic novel adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo.  This obviously isn’t a “front burner” project for me at the moment, but I’ll post progress on these pages as I work on them with an eye toward discussing process.  So, here are five pages of thumbnails:

01

021

03

04

05

This is of course (if you’re familiar with the story) the scene in which Edmund has switched places with the corpse of his recently-departed jailmate.  He assumes he’ll be taken out and buried in a shallow grave and then, once the guards have left, he’ll be able to cut him out of his sack and dig himself out the grave with his 19th century “shiv.”  This is of course not the case, though…  As it says, “The sea is the cemetery of the Chateau d’If.”

As you can see, I work in multiple colors–a trick I picked up when I very, very briefly worked in animation.  I start in light blue, then move to orange, red and finally a regular B pencil.  This allows me to go over and over an image, building it up and correcting as I go.  I can go in with Photoshop  and pull all the non-pencil color out as I move to the next phase.

I’m using a standard 9-panel grid as a base.  I tend to favor this, as well as a slightly more square than usual page shape, for most of my work.   I’m just guessing at the sizes needed for caption boxes and voice balloons at this point.

Nov 11 2009

If This Isn’t Paul Pope…

…then someone’s stealing his bit.

I saw this ad in a local weekly and I immediately thought, “Paul Pope.”  I think I was reacting to the loose brush-work and the way the lips are drawn in the image.  On the other hand, that gooey amorphous figure above (a snowboarder on a lift, I think) doesn’t really look like anything Paul Pope would do.

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Nov 07 2009

‘My Dinner with Crumb’ II Posted

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Rob Ullman’s posted the second installment (the first is here) of his “Traffic and Weather” comic strip documenting a recent bizarre happenstance in which we both wound up going out to dinner and drinks with a number of folks, including R.  Crumb.  We’d just finished hearing Crumb and Françoise Mouly speak about Genesis in Richmond and were standing around in the lobby with Ed Sizemore trying to get a few folks together for some drinks.  Pretty much everyone Rob and/or I knew, though, seemed to have somewhere else to be, so we parted ways and started heading for Rob’s house.  Rob mentioned on the way home that Richmond writer/comics scholar Tom De Haven said that he and a few folks (including his wife, pictured there in the middle)  were going to a nearby hotel restaurant, so on a lark we decided to stop by there.

According to that first strip, Rob was apparently aware that there was some possibility that Crumb and Françoise Mouly might be joining the group we were heading out to meet; I, on the other hand, just thought we’d be meeting Tom and maybe a few other Richmond comics folk.  I was about as surprised seeing R. Crumb and Françoise Mouly show up at our table as I would have been if we’d been joined by Osama Bin Laden and J.D. Salinger.  Like Rob, I didn’t talk to Crumb much at all–which is actually OK with me, since I can’t imagine what in the world I’d have to talk about with Robert Crumb (and as depicted, there was some guy chewing his ear off the whole time anyway).  I did, though, get a chance to talk with Kim Deitch and his wife Pamela.  While Crumb is obviously the underground comics guy historically-speaking, I’m actually a much bigger fan of–and am a lot more familiar with– Kim Deitch’s work, so hanging out with them was a real treat for me.  I tried not to pester Kim about comics stuff overmuch, though, so we mainly talked about cats.

I spoke a bit to Françoise Mouly as well toward the end of the evening.  In a testament to my complete and utter lack of self-promotional business acumen, I talked to her mainly about my daughter’s love of Jeff Smith’s Little Mouse children’s book, which is published by her TOON Books imprint, never mentioning that I’m a cartoonist myself.   It occurred to me, though, that being out of town in Richmond, VA may be just about the only time the art director of The New Yorker can go out for a meal in peace with out a bunch of hard-up freelancers putting the pester on her for work.

All in all it was a really fun trip to Richmond all around–from the talk, to hanging out with Rob and his wife and daughter, to the dinner with so many fun folks.  Can I put “Had dinner with R. Crumb” on my resume?

Nov 04 2009

First Look: Final Amelia Book

I just received a copy of the finished, hardcover Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean and I can tell you, with as much objectivity as I can possibly muster, that it looks really, really fantastic.

I’d like to think that I did a reasonably good job “faking it” as far as the book designs of my last few GNs go, but when you want a design that’s really top-notch, what you need is–not surprisingly–an actual designer.  In this case, it’s the great work of the folks at Black Eye Design that’s on display here.  Anyway, here are a few pics, including an interior spread that’s no longer line screen gray-toned, but instead a be-yooo0-teefull Pantone two-color print job!

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amelia_03

amelia_01

Nov 03 2009

R. Crumb in Richmond – Part II

The second, and final, part of my guest coverage of the recent R. Crumb/Françoise Mouly appearance in Richmond, VA is now posted over at ComicsWorthReading:

Robert Crumb is a well-known aficionado of old-time American blues, jazz, and ragtime music, and this love of music has often found its way into his artwork. Among the many examples of this is the image Françoise showed next: one of Crumb’s portraits of a musician, the blues singer/guitarist Robert Johnson.

I’d seen a pen and ink version of this image before, but not this full-color version, which is apparently from an edition of prints. When the image appeared on-screen, Crumb remarked jokingly to Mouly, “The guy who owns (this photograph) is very litigious. I hope you don’t get sued!” I later found the print for sale on the official R. Crumb website and noted that it was listed with copyright indicia crediting the image to the “Delta Haze Corporation,” which made me wonder if Crumb’s comments stem from first-hand experience. Prompted for why he does so much music-related drawing, he said, “Music has such a profound effect on me, I just want to express my affection.” Crumb did mention, though, that he never listens to music while he works because he finds it too absorbing and that it demands his entire attention. [ more… ]

Robert Crumb is a well-known aficionado of old-time American blues, jazz, and ragtime music, and this love of music has often found its way into his artwork. Among the many examples of this is the image Françoise showed next: one of Crumb’s portraits of a musician, the blues singer/guitarist Robert Johnson.

Robert Johnson

I’d seen a pen and ink version of this image before, but not this full-color version, which is apparently from an edition of prints. When the image appeared on-screen, Crumb remarked jokingly to Mouly, “The guy who owns (this photograph) is very litigious. I hope you don’t get sued!” I later found the print for sale on the official R. Crumb website and noted that it was listed with copyright indicia crediting the image to the “Delta Haze Corporation,” which made me wonder if Crumb’s comments stem from first-hand experience. Prompted for why he does so much music-related drawing, he said, “Music has such a profound effect on me, I just want to express my affection.” Crumb did mention, though, that he never listens to music while he works because he finds it too absorbing and that it demands his entire attention.