kochiwanaba

return to Kochi.

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:19:15 GMT

i've been working my ass off since the moment january started, but i find myself in a weird limbo now. having finished off alot of the projects i was trying to get done, i am currently waiting to start some proper paying work, which will commence just as soon as two sets of lawyers can communicate and sort my contracts out. it's tiresome to be honest, having to wait for legalities to be sorted out, when i'm itching to start work.
anyway in this downtime i was planning to start ubu bubu 3, but today i stumbled on this great piece of kochi art. somebody drawing based on kochi, which has always been a work in progress this long, was pretty humbling to me, and i realised if i had to be waiting around to start serious work, i could maybe try and finish kochi in that time.
people often ask when kochi's gonna be finished (which again is pretty humbling, when i don't mention it that much) and i always say i need two weeks to finish it. i'm going to try starting today. whether i'll get it done i don't know, i might not have enough time, or i might need to get on other work. but by dammit i'm going to try and wrap this puppy up.

to be honest it's a bit tricky. i haven't drawn any kochi for probably a year. and it's such an intricate style, quite removed from what i've been doing since, that returning to it will always carry with it a worry for me ; the last ten pages of the book will look out of sync from the rest of it. and what i drew today looked a bit awkard, for sure. but i think it'll be okay, actually sliding back into pencil drawing felt really great, and i don't think it'll take too much practice to get back to the level i was working at.

i always planned this to be a 60-odd page book, but having reread through whats done i think i'd rather stretch it all out. give each drawing its own page, instead of trying to 'float' them together as if they were panels. fact is i'm proud of this work, and i'd like each drawing (of which there are probably a coupla hundred) to be given it's own frame.

i guess we'll see. maybe this comic'll actually see the light of day.

jx

kochi - sorry for the delay...

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:27:45 GMT

it's been a while since i've worked on Kochi, even longer since i've updated this. sorry about that. here's the situation, i got hmm maybe 40 pages done and finished. i still have to write the last scenes of the comic, and i'm guessing i've got maybe 20 pages left to draw. some of the pages will be splash pages towards the end, i'll be trying to not squeeze so much into them for the sake of pacing.

all my spare time this last month or two has been spent drawing the Bohda Te comic. i was dividing my time between it and Kochi, but decided it would be better to concentrate on one, get it done, then get onto the other. So once Bohda is done (maybe 10 pages left, but quicker to draw than Kochi) i'll get straight onto Kochi.

it sucks taking a break from it, but to be honest i think the distance has been healthy. i'm still real keen to get it done, andcoming up with new ideas for it all the time. what has surprised me, even though i haven't been working on it for a while, is how supportive people have been of Kochi, and how much they say they're looking forward to it. obviously this is a buzz for me, and only makes me want to work on it more. so thank you! it's very appreciated!

right, enough talking. i need to get back to finishing bohda te, or having a nap. one or the other.

jx

blinded by skull.

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:05:48 GMT

this morning i got up at 7, checked a few emails all bleary eyed like, then tried to work out how i'd get back to working on Kochi. despite getting so enthusiastic about the things i'm working on to the point my head could quite easily burst in goo bubbles, this is tempered by a real difficulty in actually pulling myself up to my desk and starting. once i've started, it's fine. but getting there takes the effort.
first thing in the morning it's harder to be all motivated, especially working at home, when that extra half hour in bed is just in the other room. sometimes i really do wish i had an office or somewhere to go to work, much though working at home is a luxury, it can be a real poison to the enthusiasm. anyway, the point of this rambling was, every now and then i get fired up by something i come across on the net, and this makes me want to be drawing comics so bad. often i'll read reviews of other people's comics, or see other works, or whatever. it's not a 'wow i really admire their work' kinda thing, it is, to be blunt, a 'dammit they're doing their stuff, i should be putting more stuff out too'. maybe it's a competitive edge, i dunno. whatever, it does the job, and makes me all whoopla and working.
this morning what poked me into the day was this interview with lawrence etherington, who is one half of the creative partnership known as blink twice . i came to know their work through meeting Robin, brother of lawrence and writer for the comics. i think it's fair to say they're one of the foremost self-published comic makers in the UK, they have a huge following and a wealth of material printed, all under their own steam. plus, they do all the convention circuits and self-promotion a comic type would need to do. all the stuff..well..i'm going to need to do. it's intimidating from the outside, but i'm hoping i can tap them for a little advice.
anyway the interview turns out to be very interesting, for anyone who's self-publishing comics or just reading them. for me, i listened to it while pencilling half a page of Kochi, and it only served to remind me why i'm trying to do this meself. because i'm enthusiastic about what i do.
also, lawrence plugs Bear. obviously that has nuuuuthin to do with any reason you should go listen :p

so today i started back on Kochi after too long away, pencilling kids being injured, largely.

i think this is random enough to not be giving any plot away, so it's safe to post it up here. but yes. things are starting to move around in the world of Kochi, and it's all the more fun to draw.

damn. now i need to think about the conventions next year. if i'm going to make a go of this i should really get to some, but will i have a comic ready in time? i'll be happy if this first issue is done by the end of the year, but then there's all the hooha of actually getting it printed..

jx

puking.

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:10:32 GMT

for my final year dissertation at art college, i wrote about the Tank Girl movie. i analysed it, compared it to the comics, whatever. me, i thought i'd done a good job, but i got a crap grade for it. clearly they weren't ready for such a highbrow subject matter :p
anyway part of my issue with the film was the way they had reduced what was an anarchist heroine into the hollywood mould by reducing her to shouting 'no...please no' when soldiers were shooting up her house. or she was crying about the kid. or something, i forget, it was a while ago i saw it. anyway my point was, while in small parts the movie got things right, they should never have made her into 'movie actress' by giving her lines like 'no...please no'. that ruined the whole tone for me, and made me physically cringe.

i mention this because i'm reaching a similar point myself. events in Kochi are spiralling upwards, and the tone of the story has changed. as a result alot of the characters are responding to the situation in exclamations, and i find i'm making alot of them say 'no!!' when something goes wrong. i'm loathe to do this, because it makes me cringe. but i'm finding myself having to think about what they would say when confronted by the things they're dealing with, and anyone in their place would scream 'no' from time to time.

i don't know why i have such a problem with the word.

maybe whats also worried me is how this comic would be labelled. i'm presuming it'll get tagged 'action comedy' or something dumb like that, which is missing the point. it's not supposed to be funny, nor is it supposed to be action-y, to me it's just meant to be sweet and fun to read. the same was true of Bear, which was never meant to be funny, or alternative, or whatever. i didn't sit down to write funny stuff. i just wrote what was in my head, and if it was amusing or a bit demented, then great. but to me Bear was always sweet, same as Kochi is. not funny. at all.

mneh. anyway, next week i start work on Space Raoul, so Kochi takes a back seat. although yesterday was the first day in a long time i actually got to spend the whole day drawing Kochi, and i loved every minute of it. so i'll be trying to find the time where possible.

oh also, apologies but from here i'm going to have to be even more vague about the story than before, lest i give it away. i can't even show many pictures, because they'll show whats happening, something i'm keen to protect. so instead, here's a girl being sick.

it's important to the storyline. no, really.
jx

end of the bohemian summer

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:44:09 GMT

hmm well okay so it didn't work out quite as well as i planned. i come to the point now where i really need to return to doing paid-work. taking the summer off to work on Kochi has been great, although i was hoping i'd have at least finished the first issue by the end of it. but i'd like to spend the most of my time doing work for the Dandy (it's fun AND it pays my rent. the novelty!), and as such Kochi will have to only have a coupla days a week put aside for it.
it's a shame, but yeah, i don't have the luxury of not earning money while i do my own work. as it is, i've finished 38 pages of Kochi so far, so i guess that's not such bad going. the only problem is i fear there's still quite a way to go. i've written most of it, but there's still another 10 or 20 pages left to write, let alone draw. and i've come to the stage where the drawings have taken on a new level of detail, as new features are introduced, so it's taking me longer to do each page.
also for the last week or so i've been working on bohdate.com, so i've really been away from it for a while. all of which has combined to knock a bit of the motivation out of me. the realising there's still so much to do, and then further whole issues after that, suddenly seems like a very steep uphill climb. and that i'll be doing it in my spare time, rather than concentrating days on it.
yeah. i'm not inclined to get back to work on it. but i've done so much by now, that will ensure that i don't just quit, because i'd hate to see it all go to waste. all the same, when i start again tomorrow (and then stop again for the next 3 days due to other commitments), i'll be bitching for most of the time.

it sucks. but i'm proud of this thing, and i want it to be seen. just got to keep my lazy ass fired up about it.

jx

annoying woman on a train.

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:29:57 GMT

i think i mentioned before, i started sketching out pencil sketches for Kochi over a year ago. then, i didn't know what i was doing, i had a vague idea of doing a comic in pencil and without panels, about kids, but really i was searching for some kinda direction to go with it. as such i drew lot of just random pages. this would be one of them.

ps. thanks for the help about bees! i've started the insect drawing properly today. it's gone in a, um, interesting direction...

chubby bugs and robots.

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:29:25 GMT

Kochi revolves around insects, in a way i can't really talk about with giving the whole shabang away. but they're a continuing feature in it, partly because they interest me. i really sucked at science at school, but when we had to draw insects i had the most fun and did far more work than i was supposed to. i found something i thought i could do. i think i've always wanted somewhere i could draw them again, and Kochi is where i'm planning to litter them. i make no claim to be a natural history illustrator, i draw dumb things with big heads, but i like drawing bugs, so thats good enough reason for me to inflict them on you :p
for this issue, i've been trying to create a new insect for my own purposes. it's been harder than i thought. i have the illustrated guide next to me, and i've been working through it practicing endless abdomen and thorax, trying to get something that works and yet still fits into the style of what i'm doing. the problem is i draw FAT, everyone i draw has a fat round head, chubby arms, even the scenery tends to be fat trees rather than thin ones. that's just what i lean towards in the way i draw. it's been tricky allying this to insects, who tend to be thin and sinewy.
actually, it's been a pain in the arse. i've been working on sketches for this insect for over a year. it started when i pitched a show idea to TV types, and one of the designs in there was a giant robot insect. it involved a level of detail i wasn't used to, but i think it worked pretty well. anyway they didn't buy it, but i'd wanted to use the basis for something else. my influence for its body shapes was a book on graffiti, where i'd seen some designs with great robot shapes which i'd tried to play off.
since then i've been collecting bugs in empty cassette holders, cushioned by cotton wool. i've picked bees off the pavement and carried them home, scooped up huge strange beetles. all already dead, i should add. they've all been absent minded research, trying to channel my brain into the right direction.
anyway, i've come to a point now where i'm going to have to write the last third of the comic, ready to start drawing it. so obviously i want to know what my insect looks like since it plays a big part here, and how it looks could influence how the story goes. i've spent most of my time working through weird, chiselled, thorny insects, but today i flipped it round and ended up with a chubby bug. actually it came from sketching out a bee

amegilla acraensis! impress your buddies!

bees underpin the whole basis of Kochi issue one (have i mentioned this?), so it was only fitting i guess that i should end up back with them for the final act. anyway i took this drawing and adapted it, and hopefully the end result works. if it doesn't, then i'm tipping these bugs out of their cassette cases and stamping on every f'in one of them.

to be perfectly honest, i think a part of me wants to do this comic to show i can draw more than just the chunky black simplicity of Bear. it's a style i enjoy, but i didn't want to be limited to it.

so there you go. my friend bard called me a beedophile, and maybe he's right. even if he's not, i'm nicking the word and claiming it as my own, because i think it's funny.

up yours bard :p

jx

ps. there are robots in Kochi too. i'll mention them sometime.

doomed art.

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:40:20 GMT

this is something that won't appear in the book, so i'll show it now, otherwise it'll never be seen and i always think that's a shame. it's of tubby midway through the argument i'm drawing them all in at the moment. he's in a sailor suit. as you do. this sketch was meant to be him looking despondant and confused, but it wasn't working. also i didn't want to put a mouth on him, but the space round his cheeks and chin is too big, so it'd look weird without a mouth in it somewhere. so instead of working away at it, i decided to leave it out. it's not really needed anyway, it was just an extra panel.
also i haven't drawn him for a while, so i found it a little tricky getting him right. with all these characters it's the first few pencil strokes that are the most important. the circle for the head, the lines on their face to denote which direction they're looking, and lastly the lump for a body. the head especially, while i can't claim to have put so much effort into each character that their head is acutely designed and individual, there is definitely a subconscious difference when i draw each of them. i have to know who i'm drawing, to draw the head outline. tubby is the most obvious example, his head is slightly bigger, slightly wider.
i think all of the characters might be getting a bit cuter, as i figured they might when i first started this. it's natural for them to evolve as your brain gets used to drawing them. i don't think it's detrimental in this case, it's just rounding them off, as it were. it's what they're wearing that's bugging me, toward the end they're all wearing costumes and while that's fun to draw at first, it gets boring by the 7th or 8th time you draw them. so i have in the back of my mind how their costumes can be altered, torn, lost, broken, throughout the pages, so their appearance is always changing, thus keeping it interesting to draw. you may note this when you come to read the comic. it's not inventiveness on my part, it's becoming easily bored :p
the kid in the panda suit, for example. i'm going to have to fuck that outfit up soon, it's becoming like a millstone round my neck...
apart from that, i haven't done much since last thursday, maybe a couple of pages, which sucks. mostly due to the final workings on the bohdate website, just getting it all ready. regardless, yet again i have to make myself knuckle down to get this comic done. keeping the momentum going is the most important thing. soon as i lose that, it's fucked.
i'm not sure how i'm going to find time to do a second issue, other work is looking to pile up alot towards the end of the year and keep going after that. i'd like to say i could continue doing this comic in my spare time, but in reality i suck at working any time after 6pm. my brain switches off. but with any luck i'll find a space to keep working on kochi, it's still fun at the moment.
it occurred to me that instead of doing a 56 page first issue, as i was thinking of, maybe i could split it up into two issues. that might be fun. but then, the first issue wouldn't have much going on in it, and it'd only be the second issue where the story started properly. i dunno. it's an idea.

anyway, since this is a journal, i realise i'm not so great at answering comments (though obviously they're all appreciated). if you have any questions about Kochi, about the printing of it, or the drawing of it, or i don't know, anything, leave it here. it'd be fun to communicate ^-^

rahhh±!
jx

the line between laziness and artistic style..

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:10:50 GMT

...is a very thin one. personally i see alot of artists who i think draw pretty lazily, but then again who am i to comment on what they've developed as their style. effort doesn't really come into it in illustration, comics or otherwise, it all comes down to whether what you're doing works or not. and thats not something you can pin down, it's just a 'thing' about it. obviously drawing well is an advatange, but for all the poor bastards who spend days labouring over intricate pages of art, you gotta see the injustice at other artists pissing out quick sketches as finished art.
it's not something that gives me too much vitriol, if it were i'd have bitched about it alot more before. the reason i mention it here though is that i've been well aware as long as i'm drawing kochi, that some pictures are looser than others. it's something, in my case, i adopted from japanese comics, where some panels were drawn in very simple line doodle, in stark contrast to the elaborate scenes elsewhere on the page. i like it, i think it breaks it up and makes sure you don't get bogged down in the same stuff page after page. it's good to fuck with what you're doing every now and then.
i realise some of what i've drawn will be tagged laziness though, and thats fine. i can't lie, if i draw one scene in a very simple style for 'artistic' reasons, of course it makes my life alot easier. i am inherently lazy, it's only pushing that makes you do the things you want to do. likewise with the backgrounds, as previously stated it was a conscious decision to not draw much in the way of backgrounds, just enough to set the scene and then leave it. the last few pages i've drawn, there's an opening scene showing the field, then the rest is just characters talking on a white background. i don't want to do backgrounds all the time. it gets boring, to draw and to look at.
anyway, the example i was going to show was this, again of pandaboy (he suffers later in the comic, by the way. i'm itching to start fucking him up.)
this is him in one scene, obviously pretty quickly and loosely drawn,

hell he's even out of proportion. but the point is i think he works, especially in the context. i don't need to draw him all fancy for his purpose in this scene.

whereas later, i drew him properly,

because here he needed to be the focus, the main speaking point. i'll be drawing him properly a hell of alot in this comic, and each time alot goes into him, so i hope it makes up for every time i'm lazy...wait, every time i draw him quickly for artistic reasons...

otherwise, i'm just finishing off the last 1/6th of the 31st (i think) page, so thats okay. this is my break from doing it, typing this. i don't mean to use this journal to bitch about myself, but my feet are really killing me, and my legs. all this standing up to draw all day is starting to take its toll. my back used to lock mercilessly a few years ago when i worked like this, but i think it got used to it and so doesn't complain too much anymore. but now it's my feet. still, another hour or so to finish this page and i'll be done for the day. and then i'll go stretch my limbs by kicking children full-on in the face, or whatever the hell else it is i do...

cheers then!
jx

bad art.

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 16:28:19 GMT

i think somedays you just draw badly, no matter how hard you try.

today is one of those days. i've finished a page, but most of it bugs me so i've scanned it in and won't look at it again until this comic's finished. but yeah. the more you try to improve what you're drawing, the worse it looks. so i resign myself to starting again tomorrow.

yay!

jx

you didn't ask for it, so heeeeere it is!

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:50:44 GMT

kid in a panda suit.

there you go.
jx

the death of friendship.

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:05:26 GMT

today i pretty much ran out of things to draw, since i've drawn everything i've written so far. so i figured hey, it's probably a good time to write the rest of the comic, the second half, whatever. so today i wrote out the argument between the kids. the argument is an important point in the whole premise, it's when the first 25 pages of friendly banter and teasing becomes nasty and takes on grievances. not only that, but it's the catalyst to the more violent events at the end of the comic, so i wanted to make sure it worked right. i hope it does, i've managed to get an impressive amount of swearing in there regardless.
i remember meeting up with one of my friends as some giant sand quarry when i was a kid, and eventually it ended up a huge fight, both of us trying to genuinely ram sand down the other's throat. i can't even remember what it was about, but i remember being freaked out that things had turned so nasty. by the next day i think we were friends again. rather than me telling you this to impress upon you that i might be psychotic, i'm telling you this because i think it has a large bearing on the argument i wrote today. the cruelness of it. i want the friendships which i have spent all this time detailing and laying out to become irrepairably fractured by the end of the comic, and the rest of the series carries on from there. as each person falls more and more apart. i want to know what happens to these people as much as any reader does, thus keeping me interested in drawing it.
that's my plan anyway. tomorrow i start drawing it.
i've noticed after the last few days that i'm getting very little work done in the afternoons, i think the summer heat is making me incredibly unmotivated. so rather than fight this i've accepted it, and today i got up at 5.30 am to work through the cooler morning instead. it worked, i got a fair amount done, so i might try again tomorrow. as long as i can get enough work in before the world starts heating up, i don't feel so bad about not working so hard in the afternoons.

for the moment, since i haven't posted any new pictures up for a while, here's Lhys dancing with a cat..

cheers
jx

a day of drawing f*cking roof tiles.

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:32:15 GMT

my name is jamie smart. it is 4.30 in the afternoon. i would just like to state that, for the record, i'm stopping work for the day, because it is a bit boring.

i like telly.

jx

just get to the end of this one, first.

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:25:37 GMT

i've been thinking alot about what i do when i get to the end of this comic. i'm not sure i can go straight into publishing it, for a start the idea of a load of boxes full of comics filling the flat worries me a little, i just don't have the means to sell my own comic just yet. maybe i should rent storage space or something, i dunno. i also don't know how diamond works yet. there's alot to consider.
so i might have to sit on it for a little while, maybe a few months, before trying to tout it around. whatever, i thought after issue one was finished i should take a break of a month or so before i start issue 2, give myself enough time to gt excited about issue 2 and of course earn a little money with some paid work so i don't go to jail for tax evasion. mneh. but i thought it might be nice to work on another little comic in this break, something different to kochi. maybe to release around the same time.

today i thought i'd like to do a Space Raoul comic, properly. maybe in colour. i dunno. but yeah, that would be nice i think.

jx

5 weeks in.

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:52:05 GMT

yeah it's weird how much drawing affects your mood. if you draw something really great you feel on top of the world, and if you draw something that's just not right, it funks you and stops you being inclined to do anymore. or maybe i'm just overly precious. but today's been mixed, some good drawings, some bad ones, i'm hoping when they're mixed up on a page they'll average out. the drawings i don't like tend to be made smaller on the page, in case you're looking in future.
on the plus side i've finished what i've been viewing as the first half of the book. that is, the chunk of the book that is largely talking, character introduction, tone setting, rolling in butter etc....now i'm onto the second 'half', where all that gets f*cked up and everything changes round. it's been great fun doing the first half, but the second half has alot more dynamics in it so should be great to draw. but i guess we'll see.
so 25 pages in and the first half done, i guess that means the book'll be over 50 pages. fack, i really should look into printers for this thing and see what runs they do. far as i know they go up in 4s, so 24 pages, 28 pages, etc. but i figured i'd check into that properly when the comic's done. no point knowing your restrictions before you start something, takes the fun out of it.

so in summary of today ; drawing hair worse, drawing grass better.

thank yew.

jx

up and down.

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 16:04:11 GMT

while watching Firefly dvds last night (thanks leish!) i worked out the ending twist of the Kochi series. nothing to do with what i was actually watching, it's just i find when i'm watching tv, in particular good fun action stuff, i tend to think alot about my own stuff and any storylines i might be working on at the time. maybe it inspires me or something, i dunno. anyway with Kochi i've been mulling over alot of plot twists to carry readers through the (planned) six issues, to keep twisting and turning the story and changing how you see the characters. more than anything, it keeps it interesting for me, which is important to keep me excited about doing something. anyway the way to end the series occurred to me and it turns everything that's happened up to that point on it's head. those are the kind of endings i like. so when you re-read the series, you're coming at it from completely a different angle.
now i've just got to do the six issues to get there :p
i haven't got so much work done this week. i've been working on finishing up the Bohda Te website to get it ready for it's launch in a few weeks time, so that became a priority. but for the most part that's done, so i'm back to the comic. also this week i've had moments of crushing lack of momentum when i couldnt' physically draw anything. they're rare but they took days out of me. fortunately at the moment i'm on the up, and thinking about these storylines has got me psyched. to make up for lost time i got up at 6 this morning (sunday! gah!) and worked through the day to get two pages done, so i'm happy.
also today i drew a girl with her face eaten out from the inside. it's these heart-warming moments that'll keep me going.
jx
ps. not so much i can post up in terms of drawings (secret!), but in case anyone's interested here's Lhys in a sulk...

guh.

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:34:46 GMT

it all started so differently.
below is the rough i drew of a 'panel' (lets call them that) of a page in the comic. it's one of four drawings on the page, as three friends carry on a conversation. anyway this is the point where they leave the supermarket car park to go to the woods.

as you can see, i hardly rough in detail. just enough to give an idea of how they're going on the page, then i presume my brain will fit the rest in later. i presumed my brain would just draw three characters walking off, like is shown above. but then i started thinking, well, if they're leaving one area to go to another, i should probably show the transition, show the scenery they're walking through. what was intended as a little sketch taking half an hour ended up taking the whole afternoon (and most of the page, incidentally).

the bastard. anyway it's done now, and i'm relatively happy with it. the supermarket doesn't look so great in the background, some of the perspective lines are skewiff, and drawing the characters legs walking was for some reason proving impossible (which is why one of them is hopping like a counter on a board). despite these faults, and i'm sure people can find others, i'm happy with it. because i've been working to a theory for a while that when drawing something that is entirely your own, such as a comic or whatever, then whatever you draw is right, whether it is or not. if you make a mistake or parts of the picture don't work, you should leave it in (unless it's reeeeally pissing you off), because then the drawing more captures the moment in time you were working on it, rather than being reworked and produced. does this make any sense? it's in now way intended as a 'i draw comics, therefore whatever i draw is right, so you can all fuck off', because i think it's a way of thinking everyone should work to. when i'm drawing, especially buildings, some of the lines are wobbly, sometimes the angles don't work, whatever. but if i go back and rework it, then it's lost the spontaineous feel that art should have. some of my work don't look so great, but i did it as my mind saw it, therefore it's right.

well, that's how i see it, and it leaves my mind alot more open to just draw what it wants, without fear of fucking up. so any mistakes i make will be left in the comic for all to see, which i like. progress is going well actually, i've done a few pages in the last coupla days, although the heat today has now beaten me, as my hands are quite clammy and that doesn't lend itself too well to pencil-drawing, obviously. so instead i'm going to go shower, have a beer, and then watch dumb movies all night so i can get up early tomorrow and start the next page.

it feels good ^-^

jx

bookish.

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 18:03:34 GMT

i'm going to have to make myself some kinda schedule or calendar, so i can see how much i'm doing every week. this week i think i did a few pages, but i'm not sure. seriously, i don't get it, i'm working on this full-time but i'm just not getting enough done. it's frustrating.
anyway, as i was worried about before the book's looking to run at least into the 40-page mark, if not more. i wanted it initially to be a 24 page things, but there's no way it could. partly because i'm spacing things out more on a page now, partly because the story is taking a while to build up. personally i hate comic books where you can read every page in a coupla seconds, and the whole book within minutes. i'm all for pacing and scene-setting, but if people are buying your work you should give them something to get their teeth into, i figure. also it demeans the artwork, since a comic with beautiful artwork can be quickly scanned and put aside and all those months spent drawing it were for nothing.
it's weird drawing comics anyway, since it may take you a month, two, three, to draw a comic book, or if it's your first comic book then arguably your whole life up until now has led you to this point...and someone reads it in ten minutes. the amount of work put in doesn't seem to equate to the amount of time spent reading it. but thats' how this works, can't argue with it. same with a movie, all those years of work and different tradesmen plying their wares, only for it to be over in an hour and a half. as i say, it seems wrong, but that's how it is, and me my with extraordinarily limited attention span can't exactly comment on it.
when this comic goes over 40 pages though it leads me to wonder how i should be presenting it. i could take it a bit further and make it a proper book, although i wanted it to be an issue of a comic rather than a book. so it'd be a long issue. or it could be a special issue, as i was discussing with someone the other day, a comic book but nicely done enough to be a collector's item too. i really don't know how to go with this.
does anyone have any thoughts? when i looked through the royalty sheets for bear, i noticed the books (collecting 5 issues) sold a hell of alot more than the individual issues, so from that i presume people prefer to buy books than issues, but i'd be interested to know what anyone's personal take or preference is.
it'd be useful to know ^-^

jx

backgrounds

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:36:35 GMT

my dad used to be an architect, by all accounts a very good one. ironically his dad always wanted him to be a cartoonist, but instead he chose a skilled, proper, job. i instead ended up doing the more silly stuff. the reason i mention this is because i was always amazed by how different me and my dad worked, his illustrations were acutely accurate, the finest lines drawn precisely and exactly creating a whole, perfect, image. i on the other hand, am the most haphazard drawer you could imagine, i've spent my career drawing randomly, wobbly, smudgy, cramming things in and forsaking overall neatness for the sake of filling a page with..stuff.
i like drawing buildings though, i've always had a thing for drawing cathedrals and grandiose buildings, i think maybe in the intricate detail i can hide the fact i don't know what i'm doing, if that makes sense. but although my buildings are a mess, they're my mess, and somehow they seem to work in the context i'm doing them.
this is the first proper background i've done for this, apart from a few trees and hills on previous pages. i was kinda tentative about drawing backgrounds, or maybe just bored by the idea of it. alot of this comic is without backgrounds because i found them so tedious, and i know alot of other comic artists feel the same. so my idea was that a background doesn't need to be constantly referred to in every frame, just hinted at occasionally, enough to let the reader know where the scene is based. whether it'll work or not, i dunno.
but this is the supermarket, outside which dweevil (for that is now his name) weaves his bullshit story (which is now something other than the tapeworm one - sorry, i decided against it). it's based roughly on the supermarket i used to go to, apart from the huge pig obviously. it took pretty much this afternoon to draw, i'm not sure, i think it looks okay, but i've been staring at it for so long all i can see is the faults in it.

whatever, i'm not doing it again :p

jx

wheee

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:37:26 GMT

mister fozzles.

i think i mentioned before that while the comic will be predominantly pencil-drawn, it will have the occasional other medium punctuating it, such as here. mister fozzles isn't a character, more of a picture that goes along with another anecdote. although i'm considering whether to reference him again later in the comic, as he could be good cropping up. dunno.

inking felt really good to do. i haven't inked anything for maybe a couple of months now, which is a real change of pace considering before that i was inking all day every day. i got caught up in my enthusiasm for pencilling and my mind shifted into that gear, but the two are very different mediums. inking's alot easier to switch off mentally while you're doing it, so it's really relaxing to do. while pencilling you have to be constantly thinking about what you're doing, so it probably involves more effort. both have their pros and cons i guess, but since most of my work's been in ink i've always figured i was an inker. so coming back to it was a buzz.

although coming back to work as a whole felt good, i haven't really drawn anything properly since maybe wednesday last week, not so much due to slacking more to life being busy full o'stuff. when i don't draw for a while my mind goes into a real funk, which i only realised when we moved house and i didn't draw anything for about a month, i spent the entire time incredibly down and i didn't know why. it was only when i started work again that i felt back to normal. guess i'm tied to doing this stuff then, for the sake of my mental health.

but yes, back into work now. i found myself thinking today of how i want to posters to look for the comic when i send them to stores. posters to me have always seemed like one of the most fun things to work on in regards to a comic. but i'm getting ahead of myself, should probably get the thing drawn first. today i tried writing some of the later parts of the comic - the middle of the comic i'm finding difficult to nail so i thought writing the end might help me fill the gaps. not sure if it did.

and now, i eat.

jx

dylan/mike/dweevil/i dunno...

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 15:56:34 GMT

this is the stoner kid who weaves the aforementioned tapeworm story in the comic, he doesn't play a major part but will come more to the fore later in the series. as you might tell i don't quite have his name down yet, though i have a rough idea of the kind of name i want it to be. sure he'll come together when he needs to.
thanks for the input on the tapeworm story, it was interesting to hear how people responded to it. by and large the response seemed positive, but i'm still unsure as to whether it fits in with the tone of the rest of the story. seriously, this is never something that was an issue with Bear, putting a story about a tapeworm in would have been quite easy. but here, for some reason, i'm really unsure.
this week has been crap for work, my plan of gettinig up early and working 12 hours a day has gone thpbhthhh, and i've only done a few pages at most this week. i have nothing to blame for it, it's solely down to me being lazy and not knuckling down when i should. maybe someday soon the realisation that as long as i'm working on this comic, i'm not earning any money, will dawn on me and spur me into gear. i think it's partly due to the bulk of the comic being quite slow-paced, and i'm wanting to draw more action stuff. but this is all groundwork that needs to be laid, so it's still important. i'll get back into the groove soon. up until tuesday morning i won't have much chance to work on it, but from then on my week's pretty free.

i guess that's the update - i've been slacking off. also today i finally got the 400 photos developed from Boots for all the background research, took two weeks because for the first week they decided they didn't print from dvdr, but chose to wait till i came in to pick them up to tell me. anyway i got them now, slightly over exposed but good enough to work from, so i can start building this world, in my head at least.

so yeah. week (what is it, 3? 4?) and things ain't moving so great. but SOON. wheee! ^-^

jx

soiled.

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 16:45:40 GMT

while on a train on sunday, i wrote a story.

there are a couple of monologues/stories like this that crop up in the comic, by and large they're not immediately relevant to the story but they have an underlying resonance to the themes. i'm not sure whether to use this one though, i think it's a bit, well, nasty. don't get me wrong, some of the things in the comic aren't exactly pleasant or polite, but this story leaves me feeling a little grubby, and makes me worry that including it might slightly lower the tone of something which tastefully skates around bad taste.

any opinions?

jx

funk.

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:26:56 GMT

i've reached the lull. i'm, hmm..maybe 13 pages in (i keep coming up with different totals every time i count), and i'm not sure what happened but it's been a real struggle actually attempting to draw anything today. i know all artists get this, and i get it frequently, but it's still a shock when you're merrily creating something fuelled solely by enthusiasm for it, and then you lose your momentum. from this point you have to push yourself forward.
don't get me wrong, i'm obviously still whoopla about this comic, right now i think it's the best thing i've done. that might be part of the problem though, in that i'm keen to get towards the end of it, since my mind's already there and my hand is trying to fill in the pages until then. the first two thirds or so of the comic is scene-setting, quite gentle getting to know everyone and just ambling about, before in the last third, where the pace changes (and as such, so do the things i'm drawing). and while it's fun and relaxing and interesting to be drawing this first part, i'll be honest i'm itching to get to the later stuff. at the moment i'm drawing alot of heads talking, and i think i'm starting to glaze over a bit now, which is a bad thing to do if you want to keep what you're doing looking fresh.
also, and possibly because of what i said above, the stuff i'm drawing at the moment's not so great. actually i think it's kinda shitty. it's passable, i wouldn't put it in if it wasn't, but to my own judgemental eye it doesn't look like it should. the heads are starting to get misshapen, the characters' bodies seem to be getting bigger (making them look older, contrary to what i thought would happen after a while, i thought my mind would try and make them cuter and younger), and the composition isn't so interesting. it's just been today and yesterday, but i can't get my groove back on. and when you draw something you're not keen on, the next thing you draw isn't as good either because you're disheartened by the first drawing (is that just me?).
i think also it's starting to wear on my feet. while i ink sitting down, which was perfect for Bear, i pencil standing up. i'm not sure why this is, maybe because getting the extra height lets me see better what i'm drawing (whereas inking, as you may know from chasing amy, is just tracing). but yeah so i'm basically spending all day standing up, hunched over my desk, which can't be beneficial to anyone. i need to rethink how i'm doing this.

ha, sorry, don't mean to moan. as i say, i'm still loving doing this, and humbled by the comments this journal's getting, but every now and then i'm bound to lose momentum a little bit. as anyone who knows me will testify, i get incredibly excitable about a new idea, but by the next week it's become boring and i've become excitable about some other idea. i'm fickle, i guess. i find it really hard to stick with doing one thing for a long time, i get bored so easily. but i can see myself enjoying this comic right till the end of the issue at least, so thats a good sign. i've got the next coupla days filled with family engagements so i'll be getting some time off to work out where the story's going next, so maybe that'll bring me back to it drawing like i think i should.

i still need to think of a f'in name for this comic, too... :p

jx

Tubby

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:39:52 GMT

Tubby is covered in butter. that's all we can really say at the moment.
when i was at school there was this kid in my year called Tubby. we'd just moved to a new area so i started getting the train to school every day, and got to know a small group of friends who did the same. Tubby was one of them. really nice guy. but everyone called him Tubby, always had, always did. it was at least a year before i even discovered his real name, and once i did i called him by that instead of his nickname, although i think by then he'd kinda forgotten what his real name sounds like. obviously when he first started school someone had called him Tubby and it had stuck, and in that cruel, unintentionally mentally-soul-destroying kinda way that could leave you with some serious issues, what was a taunt now was stuck as his name. turns out he was a very normal kid, he seemed to take it in good humour, although i'm sure it hurt. i found it incredibly unfair that he'd be stuck with this insult, even, defined by it.
I called my character Tubby not to make fun of him, not even as reference to this kid i knew. i called him that because i wanted to show how insults can become engrained on kids and no matter how much they hurt, people just won't quit doing it. tubby's a victim of the thoughtless, impulsive, naively cruel sensibilities of kids. i really hope i get this across, since i'm not going to spend my time making easy cracks at the fat kid. to be honest he's one of my favourites, partly because he's incredibly sweet in how he handles things, partly because i know what's going to happen to him later in the story and the things he goes through.
but also this refers to another thing that's been on my mind while writing this, the language of it. i want my characters to refer to things as retarded, gay, whatever. not because it's fun to be offensive, but because this is how they would talk. they're good people, but they're kids, and they talk in un-pc language. it's hardly me sitting here writing homophobic diatribes, rather, these words should be acceptable being used here because they're being used in CONTEXT. i know i'm probably overthinking it, and i know comics are filled with every kind of gratuity, but i'm also acutely aware that people can take what you're doing the wrong way, which is why i wanted to lay it down here. if anyone has any opinions on what i've said, i'd love to hear feedback. it'd be nice to get a feel for how a reader would respond to these kinda things.

but anyway. managing to do roughly a page a day, when i've finished typing this i gotta go scan the last 3 pages, something which in itself is taking a while since each picture needs to be adjusted and then made to fit a page. but right now i've still got alot of enthusiasm for this and haven't grown bored of drawing the same characters, which is a good sign. i've got a long train journey on sunday, i'm thinking i'll try and write more of the story then.

oh, and since the first post i have of course thrown away the pencil shavings a few times, and yet they always seem to amass incredibly quickly. couple this with my laziness at not clearing them away, even though they're right next to me, and soon you start to notice strange patterns in their form. soon i think they're going to evolve intelligence.

jx

ps. thank you for the kind words on the Lhys drawing by the way, it was obviously very appreciated ^-^ while it'd be egotistical to say i only do my work for a response, it's incredibly gratifying when someone's nice about what i do and makes me want to do more of it...

meet lhys.

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:57:00 GMT

lhys is the axis around which every other character, and the story itself, revolves, in ways i couldn't begin to explain. it's so nice having a character who by nature is very simplistic and yet plays a very complicated part in the scheme of things. allow me to be coy in the details, for obvious reasons, but the first issue ends with her part in the story beginning to be revealed in a way (i hope) wasn't expected.
as i said, i'm doing this whole book in pencil (although i'm considering inserting other media at points, where required), so what lies above these words is essentially a finished drawing, albeit one which i haven't yet treated (the plan is to tweak all the pencil drawings to introduce slight colour). obviously it makes me nervous putting something out that i'm calling finished, even though it may look like it's not. this was a conscious choice though, i wanted a sketchy look, some of the characters aren't always finished off - for me it feels very natural and organic to do things like this. and as i said before, it's still taking me as long to do a page as it did when i was inking. basically i draw each picture (there may be between one or six on a page) on it's own sheet of paper, treat it as its own drawing, then put the pictures together on t'puter. this means i can concentrate on each picture rather than subconsciously viewing it as part of a page, which i think is important.
the reasons i'm working in pencil are many. for a long time i'm been frustrated at how no matter how well you can ink something, it never retains the spontainaity of the pencil drawing underneath. inking something makes it different, even though it may be the same picture, it makes it graphic, rather than illustrated (in my mind, anyway). i always loved working in pencil, i loved the natural feel and look of it, and how it could be so much more expressive than ink, but i consigned myself to inking my comics because that's how i figured things worked.
then i started to notice other people had been pencilling comics for a while, most notably Herobear and the kid, and aaron a's serenity rose. both done beautifully, perfect examples of how pencil can be employed to express the most delicate of emotions and the most sweeping of actions. seeing that working entirely in pencil was possible, and not just 'being lazy', it put the idea in my head for a couple of years as to how i could do what i'd wanted to do for so long, that is make a comic that can't just be lumped into another 'goth' pigeonhole, but could stand on it's own merits. and as the idea for this comic came about, the concept and the style seemed to fit each other nicely.

meh, don't know if you're interested, but that's how i came to pencils. i'll still go back to inking sometimes, but for now pencils are working for me.
i noticed today i've done 11 pages of this comic, which is more than i thought. this is good but also a little worrying, i haven't filled in half of what i wanted to do so far which is, general scene-building. i've a feeling this comic is going to run well into 40 pages, if not more.

rar.
jx