Before Coffee 11/21: Somewhere between prayer and revolution…

Yesterday I hunkered down to get a bunch of work done during the day. Beyond my twitter, I kept radio silent and took care of email Merlin Mann style, which helped a bunch.

This week I had 5 pages to draw for one of Jorge Vega’s students in his comic book writing workshop. Yes, that’s right, my friend and fellow Comic Book Challenge winner has now become the Tony Robbins of comic book writing. I envision him running around a stage with a headset on, encouraging writers “You can do this!” – With all due respect to Jorge, it doesn’t seem like writer Jennie Wood needs much help. For one, she’s got an interesting concept right out of the bag (which I will not disclose publicly because I don’t know if she’s pitching it around), and two she’s got the writing down to a science. I don’t think I’ve ever really worked on a female lead, romantic type story before….. hmmm. It has a nice science fiction twist to boot. The project is called Flutter Girl and that’s all I’ll say further on that.

Anywho, I got the 5 pages done, which became sort of a test to myself to see if I could get that done in time this week among everything else I’m committed to behind the scenes right now. I’m relieved to know my old school discipline is still intact.

I’m growing much more comfortable with actual penciling on the Cintiq now too and approaching an entire page at once. I drew the first two pages of pencils on paper for Jennie’s story, but then I realized I was just wasting my time and could do this directly on the page. I think I’ve resisted this idea of full digital for a while, probably because my generation is the “in between” — Who’d of thought at the ripe young age of 32 that I’m actually old school, with a bunch of obsolete skills. I mean, skills like shooting art in a dark room and developing it, scaling images down by rotating a giant dial on a machine to zoom the lense out- masking lettering out with ruby red film… hand pasting word balloons on 11×17 board….  These were all skills born of necessity because technology didn’t exist to do it better or faster. That WAS the technology! I believe our graphics class had a small computer room with a tiny MAC, where typsetting business cards was just coming into play at Palm Springs High School. Our printing teacher, Mr. Andrade was old school all the way.

Yeah, I was an anti-digital snob at one point I guess. Maybe it’s no coincidence that at the time I was an anti-digital snob, it was because I couldn’t afford technology of any kind and I was making a living shooting pool like some sort of grifter and eating raman “Noodles By Night”. I had a friend who once he discovered Photoshop and scanning, he would only draw snippits in his sketchbook and then piece them together like a a bad collage and call it a comic page, while meanwhile I was doing things traditionally and inking with a crowquill and brush and ruling my own boards. Well, I was right though, his sequential work was pretty terrible (and it still is) – but I think if you come to the tools with an understanding of the fundamentals of the craft of sequential art, you just adapt them. So now, to me, a fast processor in your computer, Cintiq Screen and photoshop is just a sheer joy – It’s a magical drafting table. Once you practice long enough on it, you will see no difference in what you did on paper, except for the amount of time you just saved. In fact, you may see an improvement in your work.

Still though, there is something magical or “feel good” about inking on bristol, creating comics by hand. I often get warm fuzzies thinking about the hand stapling days of the Yirmumah mini comics which are long gone… About ruling out your own panels, roughing in a scene. I think I’m reserving that magic of sketching for my moleskines from now on. Just fun sketching is something I didn’t have much time to do befoe, but now thanks to technology, I do have the time.

My generation is in a good spot. It feels like an opportunity to be the ones to really usher in a new age for comics in general — I know older guys who would never touch photoshop and scoff at it. And i know younger guys that think drawing on bristol is lame and a waste of money! But then again, I know older guys who don’t have jobs in comics, or whose publishing companies are crashing and burning and they still haven’t figured out digital comics properly and they scoff at webcomics , and i know younger guys who are making a mint off their webcomics and skipping print all together for the most part. And I’m somewhere in between, where I have done and respect both things. And I’ve done them simultaneously. In a way, I am sort of worried about the younger generation growing up and not knowing how to rule out a comic book page or comic strip on paper properly— because what happens when the power goes out!? Hah! What happens when the GRID goes down!!!

I suspect I’ll be drawing somewhere in a cave.