My secret other life.
The internet has ended what tiny anonymity I had as a teacher and comics creator. One day a student put their hand and said" I know what you do. You make comics" Oh I said and how do you know that? " I Google all the new teachers" he said.
I have begun to merge the two professions into one manageable mental space. I teach at a school. I make comics at home. I teach about making comics online.
Below is a cross-post from some comic teaching I do over at
nerdsraging.com to give you a look at some way that you can use blogs to teach interset specific content. It's just a collection of words and pictures, which incidentally is
comics. zap.
Ideas Take Shape. But only when you let them.
All my ideas arrive to my subconscious
in tiny abused parcels. Inside are disparate broken things with sharp
edges and too many pieces. I collect the ones I like best and see if
they make anything. What I’m left with are fragments of dreams,
conversations, images, which I scrawl down in messy scribbles on
whatever paper is around when the idea strikes.
Once I have that. I take a shot at an image. Pow.
If it sticks or it brings up new images then I chase that for as long it keeps going.
For
my own work I rarely work from a complete script. I write down the
beats, the moments and the timing. I draw a map of the plot. I rough out
page layouts. This is NOT how most of your favorite comics are made.
But then I do it all (or most of it) myself, which grants me a much
different perspective on the creative process.
“Regular” comics have a virtual army of
creative talent to get them made. I mean it. Check those credits again,
I’m not just talking about the three names on the cover. All those
people require a special sort of organizational drive from editorial.
An original idea leaves the head of the writer, arrives on paper then in
a very short time is interpreted by artists (penciler, inker, colorist)
and fit into a much larger continuity. When it works you get something
amazing. When it falls apart, well, we’ve all seen those results.
What’s interesting to me is that when it doesn’t work no one person is
to blame. Everyone is. I mean that. The whole team falls together, so
they should really be taking a greater interest in the whole. I know, I
know: “Deadline this” and “deadline that.” And “I did my job” and
“that’s not my responsibility”. I can’t offer up a solution, but if
market forces are driving books into the creative arena that the team is
not happy with, well, I for one am happy to wait longer for something
everyone is proud of then to get something open with the only virtue
being that it was finished on time.
With the Imagination Manifesto
I had a core story that kept spawning new ideas, so I spun them into
their own parallel tales. The five stories in those three hardcovers are
thematically linked, and I think, all add to the overall vision. This
was arguably, not the best way to tell a story, but I kept as close to
my vision as I could, and I took what time it needed, and I am proud of
the book. The finished product created a world. I also kept the rights
to that project. Creative control remains mine. With Insane Jane: Avenging Star I
worked from what you might call a Stan Lee style script, and I was
given a huge amount of creative freedom, though the credit of the final
story rest with Zachary Hunchar. On Lovern Kindzierski’s Underworld (forthcoming
from Renegade Arts) I’m working with a man who has lived and breathed
comic storytelling for most of his life but who seems to understand the
kind of process I use and what it can do. ( Once I get permission from
Renegade I’ll share some of that work-in-progress.)
Creator-owned-written
and illustrated books are their own islands in the vast landscape of
comicland. David Mack, Erik Larsen, Toby Cypress, Steve Niles, Scott
Morse, Frank Millar, Warren Ellis, Jeff Smith, are all do-it-yourself
pioneers. Many books that they have made follow different rules than
the big-company-books and the passion shows. I think we can agree that
books pointed at the bottom line are different than books made because
“That story just needed telling.”
I
don’t care how you start or what medium you use. Write down your ideas.
Find the one that works. Make an image that works for that idea. Give
it a few days then look at it and see what it inspires. Repeat as needed
until your project is done. Get that story down. Get started. Stop the
excuses. Make the Book.
Your homework this week: Scribble down
your ideas and the images that come from them. Do this without excuses.
I mean it.Then go and read Rodd Racer by Toby Cypress
If I could chose to add or delete 30 minutes to my day I would add 30 minutes in the morning before I leave for work. I sleep in to the latest time possible every morning (I love sleep) and I never eat breakfast. I would add 30 minutes to every morning so that once I am ready to go to work I could stop, sit down, eat breakfast and maybe even read the newspaper. By read the newspaper I really mean do the crossword puzzle! :)
I
don’t care how you start or what medium you use. Write down your ideas.
Find the one that works. Make an image that works for that idea. Give
it a few days then look at it and see what it inspires. Repeat as needed
until your project is done. Get that story down. Get started. Stop the
excuses. Make the Book.
