Project Management

Working my way out of the quagmire I got myself into requires outlining my project's next tasks step by step. Here's my outline (subject to adaptation if necessary). Before posting any new pages on my other blog (click here) I need to complete the following tasks.

1.  Continue to write/insert new narrator rough draft pages in the first 35 pages (which comprises  Ecclesiastes 1 & 2). Those pages comprise what I've been calling Draft 5 (but viewers of that other blog know only as the first draft). I've yet to find the narrators' voice, father and son alien observers of Ecclesiastes University. They riff on the students' riffs on Dr. Q's lecture. It adds a layer of complexity AND clarity. Somebody's got to make sense of what those students are jabbering about. Once I've caught up to page 35 it's time to....

2.  Create model sheets for the 20 or so key characters. For your information, here's what a model sheet looks like for one famous cartoon character.



I need to nail down what each character looks like in various poses. Those model sheets will "force" me to be consistent as I draw the final draft, "force" me to clarify the appearance, facial expressions, and stature of each student (and Dr. Q and the aliens), and "force" me to slow down. I'm eager to tackle inking/coloring but I MUST hone the penciled roughs first. Once those characters are fleshed out then....

3. Print hard copies of the polished, edited, and "finished" (will I ever "finish?" I'm constantly tweaking) pages (which will probably end up growing from 35- 45 pages) of dialog in Publisher on card stock.

4. On that card stock I'll sketch with pencil the characters, setting, interior of the classroom and space ship, folds in clothing, props, costume, and visual details. Here's an exquisite pencil "rough" from MAD artist Tom Richmond. Here's a link to his fabulous web/blog.



5. Ink the penciled rough in black. Here's the above drawing "inked."



Using Tom Richmond as my inspiration is a fool's errand; he's the industry standard for cool, creative, and technically savvy. I am but a lowly left-handed Norwegian therapist/skeptic/theist prone to melancholy. Nevertheless, my motto is: "shoot for the moon; you may hit the fence."

6. Once "inked" I'll re-scan the pages into a digital format on a yet to be purchased gadget (Adobe Illustrator? Corel Draw? Bamboo Tablet?) and color it. Here's Tom's finished cover.




Having never created digital art before there's going to be a massive learning curve (do these technical learning curves ever stop?). But my goal is to draw the old fashioned way and then color and shade on a tablet. The class I took last February with Jason Seilor was digital and mind blowing. (I was born 40 years too early to "get" digital life but if Ecclesiastes 3 is correct it was meant to be). Those posted pages will be a new and improved First Draft but behind the scenes I'll call that Draft Six.

7. Once pages 1-45 (Ecclesiastes 1 & 2) are complete I'll slowly post them for First Readers to scrutinize, evaluate, and critique.

8. Unless audience feedback is entirely negative I'll then revert to adding new "rough sketches" for the remainder of the book for First Reader feedback. I can produce rough drafts faster than inked/colored drafts and want the entire book to be semi public before I ink/color the finished work.

As mentioned before, the reason I'm inking/coloring pages 1-45 before re-posting them is to introduce First Readers to the alien narrators with as much visual verve as possible. I'll unveil them with fear and trembling; if they "work" I'll receive a major deposit in my enthusiasm bank. If feedback is negative it'll be a huge withdrawal and completion will be laborious.

From this vantage point I'm determined to complete this work sometime in 2013. If the feedback is lackluster I'll grit my teeth and still produce a work of art that others ignore. I'm determined to finish this graphic novel regardless of audience appreciation. Some of my biggest heroes are those who forged ahead when popular opinion was against them--Galileo, Kafka, Dickenson, Van Gogh, Col. Sanders, and Henry Dargar. My book will hardly revolutionize cosmology, existentialism, poetry, painting, chicken, or illustrated novels, but again, shoot for the moon....

Tweaking Word Balloons

CREATING SPACES IN WORD BALLOONS

This action makes space for the word balloon “tail” that I’m going to draw by hand in Draft Four (printed hard copy), pointing the “tail” toward the mouth of the character who is speaking.

1. Click on next page number on bottom of the page (pulling up a new page in Draft Three).
2. Place curser in first word balloon.
3. Click on drop down arrow next to page enlargement tool.
4. Click on 400% (which makes the word balloon as large as it can be).
5. Click on Line Tool.
6. Place curser somewhere on the bottom of the text box.
7. Drag it approximately ¼” creating a black line upon line.
8. Click on Line/Border Style Tool.
9. Click on 4 ½ pt. line width.
10. Click on Line Color (white).
11. With that new white line still “selected,” click the copy tool.
12. Slide page movement thingy bob on the bottom of the page to the right which moves the next word balloon into view (still at the 400% size).
13. Click paste. A new little white line (invisible on the white background) magically appears. Click and drag it to the bottom of the text box in the second word balloon.
14. Slide that page movement thingy bob to the right again which puts the word balloon in the third panel in view. Click paste, click and drag the invisible white line to the bottom of the text box and voila! The third word balloon is now ready for my hand drawn “tail.”
15. Slide the page movement thingy bob on the bottom of the page to the left. The page on the screen moves to the left so its left edge appears on the screen. Drag the page movement thingy bob on the right edge of the screen down thereby bringing into view the second row of three panels on the bottom half of the page.
16. Click paste again and position that white line on the bottom of the fourth text box.

Repeat 2568 times.

Someday remind me to describe these chores: re-positioning text boxes (repeat 200 times), connecting text boxes (200 times) and connecting panels (400 times). As tedious as all this is, in the long run it'll prevent reader eye fatigue by allowing me to put different characters in each panel rather than repeating the same character over and over. 

And they say creating a graphic novel is all thrills and chills and tense excitement.

Talk About Options.....

Once again my reach exceeds my grasp. Doing layouts is more time consuming than I initially realized. It's fun work, but can't be rushed. Take for example the following page of dialog. There are four speakers and six word balloons. (The final cartoon will have six speakers but I grabbed this page at random and am too impatient to find a page that better illustrates my point).


Since eyes scan left to right, top to bottom, Dr. Q is always in upper left hand corner. But there are dozens of variations of how to arrange the other speakers in the panels.


Rather than give four speakers four word balloons (Sample One below), I stretched the text in panels two and three, and four and five, in order to slow down time. The nanosecond it takes for readers to move their eyes from one panel to the next is just enough time to create the illusion of passing time.

SAMPLE ONE

With the magic of Publisher program I can combine panels; Sample Two (below) has been morphed from six to two panels...and I've added several non speaking characters. I'm toying with the idea of having these "extras" tell their own story in pantomime.

SAMPLE TWO

Now notice what happened in Sample Three (below). With a rearranging of word balloon "tails" and linking them I can move speakers around in the panels. Readers see the speakers with their word balloons when I place them to the left of the panel....or readers see the words first and find out later who is doing the speaking when I move speakers to the right.

SAMPLE THREE

These minor details aren't so minor. While I'm not really sure which way is best, my gut tells me to try 'em all and keep readers' attention with variation.

The option to make panels vertical isn't really an option. There are no tall buildings, aerial shots, or flying birds to accommodate. The pictures really are in service of the words and not the other way around. Getting too fancy with the illustrations would, I suspect, detract from the story.

What They (whoever they are) Don't Tell You about Creativity

Creativity isn't all bolts of insight. There are hours of tedium. I've spent the weekend changing fonts and font sizes. There has been lots of mouse clicking.

Once the font is correct I rearrange the text boxes in each panel. I'm finicky that the boxes be uniform, aligned 3/16s of an inch from the top of the panel, and centered.  There has been lots of mouse rolling around.

Between hours of tedium I tried in vain (apropos of Ecclesiastes) trying to download audio books from the library and then from iTunes. I also spent three hours trying to figure out if Publisher allows me to link text boxes and change them all at once. I'm actually pretty sure it can be done but I failed to crack the code. It has to do with Font Schemes and Style and Formatting. Failing these techy tasks I return to the tedium of tweaking thousands of boxes. I'm up to page 168 (there are 428 pages).

I want to maximize the drawing space in each panel so this means shrinking the text boxes as much as possible. I thus edit like crazy. One line is best, two better, three = max. Text boxes with four or more lines are the exception. 

Consumers of this project will never know (unless they read this blog) what goes on behind the scenes. I'm making mental notes for where breaks occur, what the panel arrangements will be, and what the characters look like. Because character coherence isn't on the top of my to do list at present I store that (and 100 other) tasks in my brain along with other random questions:

1. Will readers think the author (me) was angry? I don't feel angry.
2. Is this graphic novel a subconscious reaction to living alone? I don't feel lonely.
3. Is it true when Ecclesiastes says envy motivates all toil? I don't feel envious. 
4. Are students' reactions to Dr. Q legitimately funny or just snarky on my part? I don't feel snarky. 
5. After editing a joke five times it loses it's edge. I imagine future readers laughing. But I don't feel funny. 
6. Where can I put this quote, "Ecclesiastes University sardonically skewers the Dostoevskian sense of despair and anxiety that faith in a scientific world creates."

Revised Time Line

In a previous post I mentioned I'd like to be done with Draft Two by May 15. That's only two weeks away. My self imposed deadline was overly ambitious!

Today I'm finishing EU17 (Ecclesiastes 7), page 272. I've still got 144 pages to go. Editing Draft One has been a fun but massive project since it was atrocious. Here are the challenges of creating Draft Two:

1. Characters: I wrote the words first and am now figuring out who said them. This task is sheer bliss but it's time consuming. God invented people in seven days. It takes me a little longer.
2. Character depth and consistency: My hope is to create characters readers care about. I gotta keep them "in character" and hopefully multidimensional (as if comic book characters can have depth).
3. Staging: who is on stage (in the panel), what's the fewest number of characters necessary to complete a thought unit, how often do I reveal a new character, and have characters storm out of classroom?
4. Text: the rough dialog in Draft One had potential. In Draft Two I'm sharpening the philosophy, theology, psychology, and humor sometimes eliminating the dialog entirely and rewriting from scratch.
5. Word balloons. I'm putting Publisher's Basic Shapes boxes around each text box. Six boxes per page times 272 pages (so far) is 1632 boxes too many! Again, highly time consuming. But this will save me having to hand draw them. Uniform and crisp text boxes will add a touch of gravitas and hopefully will subtlety accentuate the words; hand drawn boxes will be distracting.
6. Cutting and pasting. Rifling though my file of 20 characters, cutting out each face, scotch taping them to Draft Two is all very time consuming. 
7. Emailing. I do all this work on my lap top which is not hooked up to a printer. I therefore email finished files to my desk top (in the next room) and print hard copies there. 
8. Mulling. These first seven challenges are peppered with my ongoing inner dialog, "What's the time line of this thing? Do the characters change clothes? How do I get drop outs back into the classroom? How will Mr. Q respond when challenged by students? How will I divide the printed book? 416 Publisher pages will become 208 Paint pages. But there's no 208 page graphic novel. Do I print this as a four part trilogy? A ten part mini comic? Do I print hard copies at all or is it pure digital? Who will I get to proof read this? Do line editing? Evaluate the plot, humor, coherence, etc?"

Despite all these challenges...I'm still shooting for the May 15 deadline to complete Draft Two. 

I suspect I'm going to print a hard copy Draft Three on which I'll draw penciled layouts. (I'm anticipating the joy of designing pages, getting creative with panel shapes, and drawing detailed spreads of the whole class room). I dare not ink/color Draft Three however. That will be Draft Four. I'll give Draft Three to some folks for their feedback. Sigh....that puts me months behind schedule. Oh well. 

Progress Update and Boomer Reflections

After a difficult week slogging through EU5 (Eccl. 3:1-15), I finished touching up the gen-y-affirming script, carefully positioned and outlined each word balloon, and attached appropriate characters to all the word balloons. 

Sample page from EU5 (page 74)

Then this weekend I finished EU6 (Eccl. 3:16-22) with script and characters. I'm happy with the results, confident that another edit or two will make a good script even better. 

Sample page from EU6 (page 96)

I've printed EU 7 (Eccl. 4:1-12) and EU 8 (Eccl. 4:13-16) with placed and outlined word balloons awaiting dialog editing and assigning speakers to each word balloon (my delightful project this week). 


What slowed me down last week was the realization that the dialog I'd created was straight from my boomer brain and too antiquated for my intended audience (20 somethings). Thankfully, I've got a character (working name: Aging Hippie) who will be my voice concerning all things 60s related. 


Interestingly, I watched The Way this weekend. The main character, Martin Sheen, is a man in his 60s who traveled to Spain and he met a woman in her 20s (?) who was angry and said to Sheen,

"Hey Boomer! You know, as in Baby Boomer? You have all of the signs of that desperate generation taking its last breath trying to screw the rest of us over one last time. The only thing missing from you, Boomer, is one of those stupid looking pony tails and collection of James Taylor songs on your ipod."

He said, "I love James Taylor, and I don't have an ipod."

I was somewhat taken aback by this jab. Either I'm naive, or blessed with friendly acquaintances in their 20s. I'm not used to being the butt of another's animosity. With no recollection of any attempt on my part to screw anyone over I feel I've been unjustly criticized. (Maybe I'm being too sensitive; after all, she didn't say it to me).


On my next edit I plan on expunging all gen-y, off-putting comments from my ancient brain. To replace them perfectly I'd need to interview current university students but do not plan on doing so. This project is growing in size and I'm going to sacrifice perfect dialog in favor of completion. A graphic novel with less than perfect dialog is better than no graphic novel at all. 


First draft: 68 or 69 large pages with hand written dialog.
Second draft: Publisher pages with six panels and typed dialog.
Third draft: Publisher pages with polished dialog and Scotch taped characters (EU6 brought me to page 97).

End of Week Update

I'm up to page 66 in rough draft #2 (encompassing Ecclesiastes 1:1-2:26). I've sharpened the text, identified who the main characters are, and decided who belongs to which word balloon. Untangling the myriad of loose themes is highly pleasurable. I work on this project before breakfast, in my office before clients show up, and after visiting Vicki. When I get home I print Publisher pages, edit the dialog again (it's amazing how weak the first draft is), cut and tape images as I create characters from those strung together word balloons.

One of the more tedious tasks is using my mouse to put thin line word balloons around the dialog boxes. Six per page, 66 pages = 396 word balloons so far. I shudder to think how many more there will be.

This graphic novel will NOT be 64 pages long like Tin Tin my inspiration. I guesstimate Ecclesiastes U will be 450 pages...way too unwieldy for one volume. So I'll have to publish it in sections. We'll see.

One of my daughters told me about STEAMPUNK yesterday.

How can I get this character into my comic?

Let the Editing Begin!

I've laid aside my 69 hand drawn pages with doodles, scribblings, and first draft text and am now working exclusively with the 25 Publisher files, each page of which has six panels.

The first of those 25 files was opened this week for the first time since I wrote it last December. As mentioned, I did NOT review what I wrote on purpose; I wanted to "flesh out" the whole narrative arc first.

That first file (named EU1) contains the text from Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 and is 19 pages long. Here's what I'm discovering.

1.  One of the characters in this fictional graphic novel speaks text that I did not write. This is perhaps unique in story writing. I am given dialog I cannot change, alter, or edit. Mr. Q speaks and I deal with it.

2.  As a writer I react to, interact with, and make my actors act upon Mr. Q's words. Think of a grain of sand in an oyster....I hope to create pearls around that often aggravating irritation.

3.  The me who interacts with Mr. Q has one brain, but that brain has neural multiplicity. Just like a shopper looks at a used car through various lenses (cost, mileage, color, MPG, leg room), I looked at Mr. Q's words through a variety of lenses, none of which was explicit or discreet. I just read quip from Mr. Q and jotted whatever came to mind. After 3 months I came up with 400+ pages of random reactions.

4.  Now that I'm revisiting my random reactions I'm sorting through them, bunching them according to common themes, and shaping characters from those common themes. For example, many student quotes were silly, off the cuff comments (like Chandler on Friends). Other quotes were absurdly serious, deferring, and loyal to Mr. Q (like Dwight Shrute on the Office). Still other quotes were panicky and reactive (think of the anxious Chicken Little). There is also an aging hippie, a vegan foodie, and a scientific materialist who embraces atheism. There are also bit parts played by an agnostic, Earnest Hemingway, a pregnant student, and even me in a cameo role (a conceit I copy from Alfred Hitchcock).

5. This seems like an odd way to create characters. I've never taken a creative writing course or asked any novelists how they come up with their characters. Maybe they all start with words/point of view and then figure out age, gender, costume, back story, and appearance later. I somehow had the notion that writers start with a body and give it attitude and then words; I'm staring with words, giving the speaker of those words attitude, and someday will flesh them out in 2-D. (If this were a play or movie it'd be 3-D).

6.  As I plow through those 19 pages of random quips and quotes I'm adjusting the size of the word balloons so they are uniform (Publisher has a nifty "shapes" tool which I use to outline the text boxes with round edged rectangles). I'm also mindful of pagination; I'll start EU2 with page 20.

7.  I then printed a paper copy of those 19 pages and read and reread them all in one sitting trying to imagine the flow, how this narrative arc is getting launched, and the trajectories that are being established. Since this is the first scene, readers will be making many important assumptions, so I gotta get 'em right. I want all the loose threads to eventually be tied up.

8. The decision to not draw anything yet (faces, rooms, desks, lap tops, costume, etc) forces me to stick with character development via ideas. I'm imagining characters as pure thought (like Plato's or Jung's arch types). Only later will the word become flesh (or in this case, ink).

9.  Since I do not plan on including any chapter divisions (a decision I may reverse), I do plan on helping readers distinguish each passage (what Bible scholars call a pericope) by coloring the backgrounds differently. In the case of EU1, text 1:1-8a will have a different color background from 1:8b-11.

10.  Editing text on paper is easier for me than on a screen. Seeing my dialog on a page as future readers will see it (the finished product will be a book, not an eBook--another decision I may reverse), I have greater empathy with my readers. Consequently, I'm astonished at how much editing I did on EU1. The text is now (so it seems in this moment) crisper, snappier, and funnier. This is evolution at work; much of the first creation survived, but natural selection has not been kind to many other of those first words--extinction! The remaining words are fit for survival. During this geologic era at least.

It strikes me just now (as it often does when I mix metaphors or create clunky prose) that if I were an English teacher teaching creative writing I'd love to stumble upon this blog wherein students can listen to one guy's creative process.

But then, I've been overly influenced by that nutty quote by Edgar Allan Poe, "If you find yourself being burned at the stake be sure to jot down all your experiences." I not only love to create but I love to describe the creative process, an experience very unlike torture.

Finished First Rough Draft!

A pile of sixty-nine large (14" x 18") hand written notes have been converted to twenty five Publisher files, each of which contain about 20 pages, each of which consists of six panels. I've got a huge drawing task ahead of me. I am going to pencil, hand ink, and then hand color approximately 3000 individual panels.

Each of those 3000 individual panels already contain the word balloons and text I started writing last Christmas. Converting the book of Ecclesiastes into a classroom dialog was a blast. I was able to ponder each word and react to it.

Achieving this milestone marks the end of stage one and the beginning of stage two: reread and edit while fleshing out the characters. I do not want to design the classroom or costumes yet.

At the same time I read somewhere that some movie makers edit their script just before filming. We'll just have to see what stage two entails. Stay tuned.

Ecclesiastes 7:1-2 (second draft)

Tasks Accomplished So Far

I've read six commentaries on Ecclesiastes as well as a number of related works (I'm currently reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and just finished Tom Sawyer where Mark Twain puts in Huck Finn's mouth these Ecclesiastic-like words, "Bein' rich aint what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and  sweat and sweat and wishin' you was dead all the time").

I've plotted the "story line" of the graphic novel as follows:

Setting: university classroom packed with students of all and no philosophical/theological persuasions.

Professor: Mr. Q. Q stands for Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes.

Dialog: Mr. Q will stand in front of the class and his word balloons will contain every word/phrase of Ecclesiastes. Readers (hopefully) won't know his "lecture" is really taken from a written manuscript; few things are as boring as listening to someone read their speech. Students will then discuss with each other their impressions, reactions, and puzzlement over Mr. Q's unorthodox philosophy.

Title: I began calling the graphic novel ANGST 101. I then changed it to HAPPINESS 101. I dropped that and settled on ECCLESIASTES U. This is subject to change as well but that's the working title at present.

Humor: I'm no Conan O'Brien but I do aspire to balance the pessimism of Mr. Q's lectures with the wit and wisdom of class members.

Layout: As I create this classroom dialog between Mr. Q and a variety of students, I'm typing text into six panels in Publisher 8.5" x 11" (landscape). Mr. Q gets first panel, each of his sentences beginning with a capital Old English font. Student reactions take up the remaining five panels. Here's a sample taken at random.

Current status:  I have written the dialog for Ecclesiastes chapters 1-6. I've six chapters to go.