destroyerzooey

Second week of shooting! They're "making their days" (this means they're on schedule).

Amount of work I've gotten done in the past week: not much

HOWEVER! I'm going to the gym and getting my ass in shape. I'm also sitting on that ass and playing a lot of Far Cry 2. Plus I bought some comics: the marvelous second (final) volume of All-Star Superman, the new issue of Seaguy, and the first vols of Viz's translated 20th Century Boys and Pluto. This rocks because comics rock! Viz's editions of the Urasawa books are friggin' beautiful! I am very happy about this! Exclamation point!

In conclusion, we have a giant tub of salad in our fridge right now. Salad from a restaurant. It was catered to a thing and nobody ate it and a friend took it and left it at our house. I like the giant tub of salad. The end.

I'm having a cranky-ass day, but here's a panel I scanned recently and saved for just such an occasion.

When you draw a comic you're not just adorning text. Comics are text themselves; it's a language, and telling stories in that language demands a skilled practitioner. Or two.

Mariko & Jillian Tamaki (they're cousins) are friends of mine and Hope's. We spent an evening at SPX in their hotel room, eating dessert and watching Adult Swim. Mariko is a great writer and Jillian is a great drawer, and together they created an excellent graphic novel called Skim. I think it was one of the best comics of the year, and if you haven't picked it up, you definitely should.

ANYWAY, Skim was recently nominated for a (Canadian) Governor General's Literary Award - but only for Mariko. Jillian's been demoted to "illustrator".

In light of this, famous Canadians Seth and Chester Brown have written an open letter to the Governor General's Literary Awards. I'll reproduce it here.

(Note: Seth wrote me the other day and asked if I'd co-sign; I said yes. I didn't just brazenly add my name to the list here.)

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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDS

November 12, 2008

As individuals involved in the art form of comics and graphic novels, we are glad to see that a graphic novel has made the short-list for this year's Governor General's Literary Awards. SKIM (by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki) is a wonderful book and deserves the attention. But we're troubled by the fact that only one of its co-creators is receiving credit for the creation of the book's text. We understand that an award-category exists for illustration, but to have nominated Jillian in that category would not have rectified the problem. Indeed, that would have highlighted how our medium is misunderstood.

We're guessing that the jury who read SKIM saw it as an illustrated novel. It's not; it's a graphic novel. In illustrated novels, the words carry the burden of telling the story, and the illustrations serve as a form of visual reinforcement. But in graphic novels, the words and pictures BOTH tell the story, and there are often sequences (sometimes whole graphic novels) where the images alone convey the narrative. The text of a graphic novel cannot be separated from its illustrations because the words and the pictures together ARE the text. Try to imagine evaluating SKIM if you couldn't see the drawings. Jillian's contribution to the book goes beyond mere illustration: she was as responsible for telling the story as Mariko was.

In an October 21st article for the CBC website, one of your jurors, Teresa Toten, was interviewed: "Toten praised SKIM for using the graphic novel format to tell a sophisticated story about what life is like for teenaged girls. The work is remarkable in part because of how the words and pictures both contribute to the literary quality, she said." And that is the point of this letter. "[T]he words and pictures both contribute to [SKIM's] literary quality".

A new category does not need to be created to properly address the graphic novel. In fact, it is best to see graphic novels appear in literary awards only when they deserve to compete equally against prose on their literary merit alone.

In writing this letter, we don't mean to slight Mariko. One of the reasons this collaboration works so well is because she understood how to write for this medium. But we feel that as things now stand, Jillian is being slighted. We want both of the enormously talented creators of this book to be honoured together for their achievement.

Yours,

Chester Brown (Author of Louis Riel)
Seth (Author of It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken)


NAMES IN SUPPORT OF THIS LETTER
Lynda Barry (Author of What It Is)
Peter Birkemoe (Owner of The Beguiling)
Dan Clowes (Author of Ghost World)
David Collier (Author of The Frank Ritza Papers)
Julie Doucet (Author of 365 Days)
Chris Oliveros (Publisher of Drawn and Quarterly)
Joe Ollmann (Author of This Will All End in Tears)
Bryan Lee O'Malley (author of Scott Pilgrim)
Michel Rabagliati (Author of Paul Moves Out)
Art Spiegelman (Pulitzer Prize winning author of Maus)
Adrian Tomine (Author of Shortcomings)
Chris Ware (Author of Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth)

Randomly colored at the end of my working week. For you.

This book won't come out for a few more months, but, spoiler: it contains Halloween. So here's a panel.

We had a little Rock Band party the other night. It definitely sustained a solid interest level for the whole evening - I think excitement even rose as the night went on. Firstly because we were all getting kinda sloshed, and secondly because John and Shige brought Rock Band 2, so we had a whole 'nother set of cheesy songs to play (including crowd-pleasers "Livin' On A Prayer" and "Lump").

I can categorically state that playing the Fake Bass on Rock Band is somewhat similar to playing an actual bass guitar, if it only had five notes and one string.

Also, apparently, playing the Fake Drums on Expert is exactly like playing the Real Drums. If you're an Expert at Rock Band, try sitting down at a real kit sometime.

I think Hope is already about as good at the (real) drums as I've ever been.

In other news, I kinda suck at Grand Theft Auto 4, but it's still fun. It took me like ten tries to beat this one motorcycle mission. I blame the nonsensical, half-assed control scheme.

Comics: are proceeding apace.

If you live in the vicinity of Nottingham, UK, I hooked the comic shop PAGE 45 up with a box of SCOTT PILGRIM COLOUR SPECIAL comics. They're selling for £2-99.

I also sent a box to GOSH! in London; not sure if they've been received yet or how they'll be priced.

Each store got 75 copies, so act quickly.

The Movie: is exciting. I'm pretty excited. The whole cast is being locked in. Music is being made. I'll never talk.

This was my third time at SPX, the Small Press Expo.

The first time (2004) I was just a guy with a book few people had ever heard of. The second time (2005) was Hope's debut with Salamander Dream. Then we took a few years off for various reasons. Then we came back.

This year we were some of the "bigger names" at the show, but you know what? It's not about that. I think Hope and I felt a little jaded going in to SPX this year, but after a couple hours on the floor, the energy there made us remember why we started doing these things in the first place.

There are tons of interesting people doing interesting work. We filled multiple boxes with books and minicomics that we seriously can't wait to read. We got to spend time with old established friends and with hugely talented up-and-comers.

People come from far and wide to completely take over one hotel for a couple of days. You can't walk ten feet without meeting someone you know, or someone who knows you, or someone whose name and work it's clear you're going to know in a year's time.

Anyway, we had a good time, we remembered the true meaning of comics, and our hearts swelled.

THE END

I don't have much or any comics insider spew on this subject, but it kind of sucks and it's kind of totally unsurprising.

Tom Spurgeon has a good article about it, and Hope Larson has some thoughts.

I'm really sorry to any of my friends whose work is getting scuttled or otherwise screwed over by this turn of events (especially to Ross C., who is apparently going to get this kind of treatment all the time).

M.K. Reed and Matt Bernier did the Comic Tool blog in 2006-2007 and I've used my contribution as a quick link when people ask how I do what I do. I realize that after two years my methods have evolved or solidified to some degree, so I'm writing an update. I encourage other artists to do the same, whether you did the original comic tool survey or not. IT'S... FUN!


Bryan Lee O'Malley
Comics: "Scott Pilgrim" series, etc
Website: www.radiomaru.com
Making comics since year of: 2001 (professionally)
Art education/schools attended: No art school, and I gave up on university (was taking Film Theory)

Pencils: Sanford Col-Erase in various colours. These days I draw pages with light blue most of the time, with green and orange for borders or additions/corrections sometimes. I've been using red for thumbnails and I still use other dark colours for sketchbook. I use those foam pencil pillow things to help my grip. I never liked mechanical pencils much because I like a softer lead, but I recently got one for traveling and convention purposes (sharpening is hard on the road). The Col-Erase pencils are nice because they're soft, but they don't smudge, plus, if you use a light enough colour, you don't have to erase before you scan.

Inks: I am back to using the Koh-i-noor drawing ink with the yellow label. I keep trying others, but nothing works quite as well for me.

Brushes: These are always a problem. Lately I'm using the Rosemary & Co sable brush, #3. Her brushes are a little smaller, shorter-haired, and have less of a belly, and their tips are almost wedge-like, which I'm really into. It lets me do really fat lines. But generally, talking about all brands of brushes now - only one in three is a keeper, and you can experience sudden brush death at any time. They're good when they're good, but when you have brush trouble it's an endless nightmare.

Pens: I still use cheap Pilot tech pens to ink my letter balloons and small details. I've also started using a B-nib (round tip) for illustrations and sound effects lettering, and an A-nib (square tip) for some effects lettering as well. I use the Pigma Graphic pen size 1 (and sometimes 2) for panel borders and for most book signings and a lot of sketchbook work, and the Faber Castell Pitt pens (size S, and the brush pen) for miscellaneous stuff.

Paper: Just the usual Strathmore bristol in the yellow pads, smooth. They also have the "wind-powered" eco-friendly version now, which I get when I can.

I'm drawing at 9.5 x 14 right now. The first three volumes were drawn at 7 x 11, mainly to fit into a normal-sized scanner, but now we have a big scanner, so through Vol 4 I transitioned to the large size. Now it's hard to imagine going back down.

Lettering: I stopped hand-lettering for the most part because it hurts my wrist, so now I just use Comicraft fonts or whatever. One day I'll get my own font made.

I do the computer lettering after resizing and touching up my pages, at print size, 600 dpi. I have years (and 800+ pages) of experience in this series, so I can eyeball it pretty accurately with just a few scribbles to space out my balloons.

Color: When sketching I often use Faber Castell Pitt brush pens to add colour. I also have become fond of watercolours (see: Bear Creek Apartments). Mostly I colour in Photoshop. I've had my 6x8 Intuous 2 tablet since 2001; it still works, more or less, and I use it almost every day. I've used Painter once or twice and always think I'd like to become great at it, but I don't know if I ever actually will.

Layout/ Composition: I do thumbnails just in pencil in my sketchbook. With Scott Pilgrim 5, I'm actually using a grade-school-style composition book (I think of it as a "cahier" because of my French Canadian upbringing). I used to print out sheets of proper-sized thumbnail templates, but I find it's faster to do it in the sketchbook now, and I can eyeball the page proportions well enough. If I switched to a radically different page format, I might print out some more templates. I do my thumbnails only about an inch and a half high, because I can't stand the idea of drawing them any bigger if I'm just going to redraw them later. I still find that my thumbnails have a disturbing resemblance to the final pages, even down to the scribbled facial expressions.

Also, on Scott 5 I started using a t-square and triangle to actually get square edges. I never thought I'd see the day. I'm also on a precariously-angled drafting table, for the first time in my professional career, and loving it.

Convention Sketches (when different from illustrations done in the studio): This has been evolving as shows get busier for me and as I have more books in print. But generally I still use the Pigma Graphic 1 pen to do a sketch and an inscription, sometimes adding tone with a Faber Castell Pitt colour brush pen. Sometimes I use the Pigma Graphic 2 to get a chunkier look - they get really appealingly fat and round after you work with them for ten or fifteen minutes. I've started using Copic brush markers for larger con sketches, which has worked well so far.

Tool timeline, starting from when you began drawing in any serious way until the present, and what spurred the changes: I think when I got serious I started using a brush, because I equated "brush" with "serious". I used really bad, cheap brushes for years, until I got a good one and realized that the bad brushes had been holding me back. I've also been using the Col-Erase pencils since before I got serious, so I guess I haven't really changed my tools all that much. (This post is an update from an earlier version from 2006.)

What tools you'd never use, and why: I don't really like Microns and that type of thing, but for no real reason. Just personal preference. I get mad at people for using them, though.

Hope scanned some pencils for her talk the other day, and I thought, man, I never scan pencils. So, since I'm just starting inks on chapter 27, I scanned a couple pages of pencils for posterity, and here's a little spoiler-free excerpt for you now.



I pencil pretty much exclusively with Light Blue Sanford Col-Erase pencils. I ink borders before penciling, and I ink letter balloons immediately after penciling. (I don't usually ink sound effects right away, but these were stupid-easy ones.)

Written by Hope Larson and drawn by myself. Read it here and tell us what you think.

EDIT: The art is done with pen, watercolor, crayon, and some CG elements (mostly lighting effects). The lettering was done with ComiCraft's "Monologous" font.

I'll be at San Diego Comic Con Int'l this coming Friday and Saturday (the 25th and 26th).

Here is the cover of the new color book that will hopefully be there and be nice. It contains both free comic book day stories, some other miscellaneous strips etc, and a gallery of pinups & watercolors.



My signing schedule (at the Oni Press booth) is as follows:

FRIDAY
10:30 - 11:50
3:00 - 4:20

SATURDAY
12:00 - 1:20
3:00 - 4:20

5:00 - 6:00 PM ONI PRESS PANEL (room 3?)

We will talk a little about the next Scott Pilgrim book on the panel, and show off the cover, I guess. Afterwards I will probably hang around that area for a bit and chat with people who attended the panel.

EDIT: Here are the specific contents of the colour book...

1. FREE SCOTT PILGRIM 17-page comic, now IN COLOUR (thanks to Dean Trippe)
2. WONDERFUL WORLD OF KIM PINE 4-page comic, still in colour
3. NOW MAGAZINE BEST OF TORONTO strip - one large strip across two pages - still in black and white
4. The "sushi" strip from COMICS FEST 07
5. A bunch of miscellaneous watercolours, pinups, advertisements
6. A special back-cover fanart pinup by Dean Trippe and Jemma Salume! (this is mega awesome)

Nothing totally new, and much of it is available online, but it's a good solid collection of stuff to have in one place at high resolution in full colour. Just a little fancy somethin' for those who trek out to San Diego.

WILL IT BE AVAILABLE TO OTHERS AFTERWARDS? Very likely, unless we sell out at the con. I'll keep you updated.

Work in progress on Ch. 26 (lousy photograph).

Spoilers: Ramona takes a bath!!

I'm not sure what to say about San Diego Comic Con. It's a week away, but some aspects of it are still up in the air. Rest assured that if you find me there I will have an awesome, new, fancy, exclusive, full-colour comic booklet for sale, plus the new button set, plus the old stuff - stickers, postcards, original art, books, etc.

The new thingy is being shipped directly to the show, and I just hope it shows up in time and doesn't have problems or anything. I hesitate to show a picture of it until I've seen it in real life, you understand. (No, you probably don't. Well, maybe I'll show a tentative cover for it tomorrow or next week.)

Also, I'm told the Oni Press panel is at 5 PM on Saturday in Room 3. On this panel, someone will tell someone the name and release date for a certain book, whilst unveiling the brand-new cover of this book on a big screen of some sort. Be there!

I haven't done this kind of thing in a while. Spotted on Brian Evinou's journal. Survey questions by Jake Hopper. The image is another panel from the next Scott Pilgrim.

PART ONE: COMICS PERSONALITY TYPE

Name: Bryan Lee O'Malley

Age: Twenty-Nine

Sign: PISCES

Introverted or extroverted?
Mostly introverted, but gradually learning how to deal with people.

What are your top 5 procrastination tools?
Internet, internet, internet, cats, eating.

What gets your juices flowing?
I don't know. My juices are fickle. I like to be in a nice even temper. That seems to work. If I'm feeling too emotional in any way, I can't function. I guess I'm a robot.

( More... )

I am aggressively inking the first chapter of SCOTT PILGRIM VOL 5 (full title to be announced later this month).

UPDATE:
This is a picture of Ramona. it's not supposed to be a secret or mystery of any kind. It's Ramona.

My old friend Brandon Graham's livejournal is always a good time, but today he posted something important: the first chapter of KING CITY 2.

KING CITY was my favourite graphic novel of 2007. Tokyopop put it out. You may have heard that they are having some troubles lately. They were kind of shitty about KING CITY in the first place - they almost didn't release it, thought about sticking it online-only, then changed their minds. It's since been nominated for an Eisner award.

Tokyopop is NOT publishing the second volume, but they still hold the rights and won't allow Brandon to take it to another publisher.

Anyway, he decided to put the first chapter online, kind of in a self-scanlated form. Check it out - even if you haven't read the first one. Nothing spoilery so far. And if you like it, try and grab a copy of KING CITY 1 before they're all gone. Hell, write to Tokyopop and tell them you like it and that they should print the second volume, or at least let Brandon take it elsewhere.

Every aspiring cartoonist or wannabe comics-writer who's reading this should immediately pick up DRAWING WORDS AND WRITING PICTURES, the new comics textbook by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. They've done a really great thing, compiling all sorts of arcane knowledge that's previously been passed down by oral tradition, or learned from scratch in the school of hard knocks.

It'll teach you practical stuff about drawing tools, and all this ethereal stuff about page layouts and panel choices. There's even a great chapter on the foundations of storytelling - stuff that I've gleaned bits of over years from bloated, confusing screenwriting books, and the magic of Todd Alcott. Jessica Abel breaks it down for us in this book, and she learned it the hard way too.

If I'd had this book (and MAKING COMICS) when I was in high school, I'd probably be a better cartoonist today.

Hell, after reading it, I plan to be a better cartoonist starting tomorrow. I'm just sad that you guys will get a head start on me.

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Pictured: A Chi's Sweet Home sticker on my ipod. I just ordered a bunch of Japanese stuff this past week, thank you James. We just found out there's a Chi anime (it's mine and Hope's favourite untranslated manga - imagine if Yotsuba was an adorable kitten!), which I am downloading right now. So stoked.

I am opposed to the publisher Tokyopop.

They have this new Manga Pilot program. It's a thing where you come up with a great idea, you toil over it and create a 24-36 page comic, they put it online with a bunch of other submissions, and "the people" decide who wins. Or, y'know, whatever.

The contract for this fun deal is horrible, draconian, ridiculous. It's like Satan wrote it. I can't believe Tokyopop is getting away with this in broad daylight.

If you want to create comics or manga or whatever you call them, please read this. I know it's a long post, but I feel strongly about it.

( Read more... )

Listen to me: there are so many ways of getting your comics read by people. You can print them up on a photocopier, sell them at your local comic shop / record shop / independent bookstore. You can put them on the Internet - I believe you're all familiar with this invention. It costs very little and takes away none of your rights. Many of my good friends make their living entirely from having comics on the web. You don't need this.

Just because they publish Beck doesn't mean they're cool.

I don't normally get into these discussions, but I am really sick of this twisted, evil corporate garbage.