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November 21, 2005
On Creation
I wrote The Black Chamber over a year ago. Close to two years ago now, actually. It's in reality an amalgamation of two or three different stories I'd had, and I worked them together to create something a lot stronger, I believe.
Initially, I was writing with the idea that I would find an artist to draw it, which was the way that I had been working up to that point. However, I soon realized that just wouldn't be a reality. I had a look in mind. I wanted an American-style artist, from the vein of the EC era of guys like Wally Wood and Johnny Craig, but with the sensibilities of Goseki Kojima, as the story is a sort of take on some of the themes from Lone Wolf and Cub. I was telling Phil Hester this at a post-convention party, and he just laughed at me. He said, "Wait, you're telling me that you're trying to find a Goseki Kojima-level talent that'll work for free?"
That's when I realized that I'd have to draw it myself.
Only problem was, I couldn't draw for shit back then.
So, at first, I was thinking I'd do it all as a photo-novella, using Photoshop to make high-contrast black-and-white images. Yeah, that didn't work out at all.
But then, I had a burst of creativity, and came up with the idea to go with the Photoshop thing, but make it look like a comic. Here was my first experiment with that look:
I was pretty excited with that. I'd still have to photograph the entire comic, but I was up for it. So, I casted people for all of the 'roles' in the book, and over the course of a couple of months, I shot upwards of 600 photographs (digital, of course). I was very forturnate to find two leads who were as enthusiastic as I was. That 'style' evolved with time, and I got some interesting work out of it:
But, to be honest, as interesting as the look was, it was quite a bit flat and 'posed' looking. Even more important, it was way too time-consuming of a method to work. One panel alone took upwards of three hours to complete. So, I decided to experiment with other options of how to progress. Here was the first:
Yeah, that one didn't work out. I got in a bit of a funk over this, trying to figure out how to progress with the book. I'd been doing quite a bit of hand-drawing over all of this, and my prior method of doing Black Chamber had taught me quite a bit about how to render a figure. Plus, I'd taken several figure-drawing classes, and my classmates didn't understand why I didn't just hand-draw the danged book.
Frankly, I didn't either.
So, I started to, and it's proving to be the most beneficial, fulfilling and energizing method for progressing with the book. Here was my first pencilled page:
and inked:
I was stuck on how I would color the book, trying a couple different methods out:
But, I figured I'd go with this look:
...mainly because it was quick to do (twenty minutes to color this panel total), and because it kept the vibrancy of color that I'd had with the time-consuming Photoshop method.
I'm really excited for this book, and I hope that by the time it's done, people will enjoy reading it as much as I have making it.
Posted by Schamberger at November 21, 2005 06:48 AM