Six character model sheets to go, then I buy a Bamboo Wacom Tablet with which to color the scanned drawings.
When writing dialog it was easy to post my musings on this blog. Now that I'm drawing I find (oddly) that writing about drawing doesn't come effortlessly. I really am living in a new part of my brain.
Drawing a profile is easy. Drawing a front view is easy. Learning how to rotate them while keeping the likeness requires much concentrated visual thought. When looking at a profile it's easy to see how long/short the nose is. When looking at a frontal it's impossible to see how long/short the nose is. I once read that old time animators built clay 3-D models to turn 360 degrees. This can be done (so I've been told) with pixels and good animation software (which I don't have).
Which raises this question: is this work of a thousand actions a book of prose or a collection of drawings? Since there isn't a lot of action I gotta say it's a book of prose. So why all this effort with model sheets and a soon to be purchased software coloring tablet? I have faith that the symbiotic relation of word balloons and talking heads will create something bigger than the sum of its parts. If I fail, I fail. A year + wasted.
But once the finished pages are unleashed on an unsuspecting public my hope and dream is that I will have created a bona fide graphic novel of philosophical import.
In perusing the shelves of graphic novels at Barnes and Noble yesterday I was astounded at the quality of the illustrations and pictures. That wasn't enough to draw me into reading the stories, however.
What will draw readers into Ecclesiastes University? They must possess five preconditions: an interest in philosophy, humor, existentialism, depression/angst, and Hebrew wisdom literature. Without these I suspect my work will languish.
On a Personal Note
It was one year ago today that we moved my wife out of our house and into a nursing facility. In an uncharacteristic moment of lucidity she begged me today to let her come home. It was agony for me. I then visited our new and first grandchild who is 18 days old. It was ecstasy for me. Our 20 year old son moved out a month ago and after 35 years of constant laughter, noise, pet/home school mayhem of raising five kids I find myself home alone in the deafening silence. My hope is that this comic treatment of Ecclesiastes will help me (and others?) give shape to the existential quandary of life in an often precarious and sometimes profoundly meaningful universe.
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