Page 5a

This half page took about 3.5 hours with breaks to schedule clients, wash clothes, and cook. I'm still having technical difficulties which are aggravating to the max. For some reason I'm obsessed with speed; if I were to slow down and enjoy the process my output might improve. Why speed? I'm staring at 500+ half pages (many alien pages are not even written or sketched yet) of rough drafts that need to be printed as empty text/panel pages, inked by hand with pencils, light table, and fine tip fountain pen (fun but labor intensive as I'm still fleshing out each character [costume, physiognomy, age, skin color, size], scanned, colored (fun and highly labor intensive as I continue to flail around in the deep end of this digital pool), shaded (not fun as I haven't a clue at what I'm doing both technologically or light/shade and value-wise), merged, and posted. If I increase my speed to 3 hours per half page (an ambitious estimate at this point) that's 1500 hours. If I work 25 hours a week that's 60 weeks. Even though I've been hacking away at this graphic novel for 15 months (with a 3 month hiatus), can I sustain interest for another year+? Speigelman took 11 years to draw MAUS but he was young when he started. I'm racing against my biological clock which, once the alarm goes off, I'll be infirm, decrepit, and unable to conceive--IE., manipulate pens, mouse, touch pads, scanners, etc. Also, there's a weird symbiotic relationship between my wife's deteriorating health and my obsession with mental challenges. Distracting myself with 101 tasks of creating a graphic novel is therapeutic, or so I like to believe.

Page 3

Dr. Q has entered the building. Still no gradient fills in the background; this quest is maddening. These first postings are still tentative. I anticipate at some point reaching the tipping point where I'm no longer experimenting with software, tweaking techniques, and fumbling with tools. This page took two days (6-7 hours total) but will (he said optimistically) be shortened as I increase in skill. I can't want until I can do one page per hour. I often chuckle when agonizing over minute details that readers of this graphic novel will spend about 3 to 5 seconds per page. I suppose this is the essence of art. Weeks, months, and years of producing translate into mere moments of consuming. What eggs me on is the hope that there will be many readers spending those moments in consuming. One artist spends 360 seconds creating a page in hopes that 360 readers will spend at least one second reading a page. Do other artists make these calculations? 

15 Characters

Each of the following characters have names and histories and model sheets. I post them here without those details (and in varying degrees of shading) from a weird obligation I feel to dispel the imaginary assumption I believe readers may have that my recent infrequent blog posts are due to inactivity. In actuality, I've been feverishly chipping away at creating these characters. There are five more yet to create, including the main character, Dr. Q. (I work on this project in between running a private practice counseling business, visiting my ailing wife in her nursing home, and washing the accumulated dishes in my kitchen sink).

Two Aliens Before Breakfast

As my speed at digital painting increases I'm applying short cuts, tips and tricks, and training my hands and eyes to work simultaneously. The nearest analogy I can think of is playing the guitar: right hand strums, left hand fingers the fret board. With this WACOM tablet, my right hand manipulates the keys on my lap top key board while the left monkeys with the stylus. Here are two coloring jobs I did before breakfast this AM. I'm still learning how to adjust pixels and resolution sizes and not even attempting shading yet.

Three Characters in Color

Qohelet wrote, "What is crooked cannot be made straight." I believe it. 

Vicki and I once read and applied assiduously the principles of de-clutter king, Don Aslett. In his humorous and helpful book CLUTTER's LAST STAND he wrote something to the effect, "Writers are notorious for saving their rough drafts as if they'd someday need proof that they actually wrote their book." Sadly, I'm crooked that way and despite Aslett's best efforts, I still save my rough drafts. He couldn't straighten me out.  

Take these for example. They're the halting, amateurish, scribblings of a novice colorist and do not deserve to be saved much less posted for the world to see. And yet, in this memoir blog of the evolution of my first graphic novel I feel compelled to document every stage in the process. Forgive me, Don. (This female pose is a swipe from Tom Richmond).

Characters: First Glimpse

When musing on Ecclesiastes I think, "These reflections are weak; exquisite dialog will beef up the plot."

When editing dialog I think, "These word balloons are weak; exquisite characters will beef up the story."

When creating characters I think, "These talking heads are boring; an exquisite narrative arc will beef up the plot."

When shaping the plot I think, "This plot is weak; exquisite model sheets will beef up the message."

When drawing model sheets I think, "These black and white drawings are weak; exquisite penciling, inking, and coloring will beef up the drawings."

On and on the chase goes. I aspire to exquisite-ness (new word) yet exquisite-ness eludes me at every turn. It's like jacking up a car four corners at a time; I'm running around shoring up sagging aspects of this work in progress in a semi-hallucinatory frenzy. It's not one big project, it's ten million little projects. The exquisite product "in my head" is light years beyond what is actually being produced which is decidedly un-exquisite (another new word). And yet I keep hoping all the pieces will coalesce, fall together, merge seemlessly into one glorious finale (when mixed metaphors flow like Niagara I'm in a creative rant mode).

Here's the first un-exquisite glimpse of who we're dealing with in Ecclesiastes University in order of appearance. I apologize for the poor scanning job; eagerness to post before leaving for work necessitated haste/waste. CS Lewis said, "Half a loaf is better than no bread." I say, "A hasty scan is better than no scan."

One further observation: the alien son looks nothing like his alien father. How do I explain this?  Choose one:

A. The son is adopted.

B.  In their alien universe achieving enlightenment (as the alien dad has done) results in an evolutionary casting off of vestigial mechanical accouterments: hoses, wheels, goggles, etc.

C. There's a dad lookalike inside all those mechanical accouterments. The son is just decked out in the youthful fashions of on his planet.

D. I am lazy and don't want to draw two Steam Punk aliens inside the space ship. 

E. The world views of both aliens is so different I didn't want to confuse readers by drawing them similarly. Their disparate appearances is symbolic of their disparate means to galactic unity: technology vs. metaphysics. 

And a final question: what's up with Karenoia's lack of chin? She's an adaptation of this old caricature:

New Stage = New Location

I'm in the character design stage. No more tweaking dialog, no more stage setting, no more shaping plot. This is the "what do these talking heads look like?" stage. The challenge is to make them visually appealing so readers identify with, like, and closely track with their philosophical musings for 200+ pages.

Consequently, I'm no longer spending hours in our living room couch with lap top computer and lap top drawing board. I'm now hunkered down here, a place as close to heaven on earth as I can imagine.