Super-Old Character Sketches
This week my dad is visiting me here in Portland, OR. Even though we’re having a blast, hanging out with him is definitely slowing down the process of preparing the book for print. However, his visit is not all bad news for SNitLoE fans: in the dark recesses of my old bedroom back in New Orleans, my parents uncovered an ancient dusty sketchbook which contains the earliest known sketches of the Savage Nobles. Check out this ancient history:
The one of Kafir, I think, is the oldest. “A lot of surly teenagers think of themselves as being imprisoned by their parents,” I thought. “But what if a guy’s actual parents were his actual jailers.” Then I drew this image and it was the springboard for creating the entire character. I kinda wish I’d kept the earring!
The early Tonya and the early Theo were both modeled on baristas that I knew. There is one even older drawing of Theo somewhere, which I can no longer locate.
The less said about my drawings skills in the spring of 2009, the better.
Deciding on a Cover
SNitLoE was always meant for print, even before I started posting it online, and now that I’m done drawing the story I’m wasting no time turning this ungainly webcomic into a beautiful paperback book. One important part of this will be designing the cover. I’ve always imagined a cover similar to the image currently on the facebook page, which I also use on promotional cards. It’s the band standing in the desert with their instruments, Tonya’s fist in the air. I drew that picture almost a year ago, so obviously I’d redraw it nicely for the book cover.
This afternoon I messed around with a couple other designs. Please vote! Bare in mind that these are very loose sketches – the exact layout and colors will probably be different, so just vote based on the general idea of the cover.
1.) Original 2.) Blue New Mexico
3.) Abbey Road 4.) Face Window
5.) Thirsty and Miserable 6.) Upturned Van
[poll id=”2″]
There is something about designing covers that draws artists towards symmetry. Do a Google Image Search for the phrase “graphic novel cover” and see how many of them display strong bilateral symmetry. While the interior of a comic may be full of dramatic dynamism and daring diagonals, covers are often comparitavly static images. I think this is because, while comics are supposed to convey the passage of time, covers often show a frozen moment, or a representation of a state of being rather than a narrative event. Look at the amazing similarity between these covers by two of my favorite young comics artists in Portland, Sarah Oleksyk and Dylan Meconis. It’s pretty remarkable.
Remarkable!
Kafir Tahrir
Today I posted the last page of the comic! This page is respectfully dedicated to the Uni-Ball™ “Vision” Fine-Width Pen which died heroically in its creation.
When I wrote the first draft of SNitLoE in the spring of 2009, the enormous march on Washington described in the final scene was just wishful thinking on my part. I was irritated that all of my generation’s righteous outrage during the Bush years had ultimately proven so impotent, and that when we finally did mobilize for a cause, the cause was getting a Democrat elected president instead. The DC protest I marched in during the Troop Surge of ’07 was well attended, but shamed by the epic crowds at the Obama inauguration. A nasty spiritual concoction, equal parts naive triumphalism and cynical despondence, utopian escapism and hoarse-voiced fury, seemed to soak us children of the 80s, and I feared we would soon sell out just like the Boomers. So I made a comic about it. (Sorry, Boomers – you know I love you!)
How could I have guessed that two springs later young people all around the world would rise up and fulfill my leftist fantasy? The crowds I’ve drawn on the Washington Mall don’t seem so unbelievable after Syntagma, Madison, and Puerta del Sol. Maybe I should have named Kafir “Tahrir” instead!
VJ Day in Times Square… With Dinosaurs!
My friends and teachers over at Periscope Studio have a weird and wonderful weekly sketch challenge. This week’s theme is “World War II and Dinosaurs.” After seeing Ben Dewey’s pitch-perfect propaganda piece and the extremely creepy entry by Cat Farris, I knew I had to jump on the bandwagon. WWII-Dinosaurs are surely destined to succeed ninjas, pirates and zombies as the omnipresent emblem of the ironic pop-cultural zeitgeist, and let no one say I wasn’t into them before they were cool.
By the way, this really is just a sketch, not like like the gorgeously rendered and researched finished pieces that often pass for “sketches” at Periscope. Way to set the bar impossibly high, guys.
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Boy oh boy did it feel good to draw something other than Savage Nobles in the Land of Enchantment, I can’t even begin to tell ya. This comic is for the “Summer” issue of Stumptown Underground and draws heavily on my own personal experience living in Brooklyn 4th-floor walk-up apartment during the summer of 2007.
Following the lead of Benjamin Dewey, here are my thumbnails (more like toenails!) for those of you interested in my, ahem, process. A big, special thanks to everyone at Barry Deutch‘s Graphic Writers’ Workgroup for looking these over. They gave me the idea to add the scent-lines on page one, and the idea to make the protagonist black. Guys, if you read this and notice I didn’t take your other suggestions, it’s not because they were bad! It’s because I’m stubborn!
Aside from personal experience, my main inspiration for this comic was Will Eisner, the man who evoked New York City, in all its glitz and gristle, better than any cartoonist ever has or ever will. Eisner’s short-story anthology, “New York: The Big City” undoubtedly did more to get me into comics than any other book. Will Eisner also drew the world’s most beautiful picture of a pile of uncollected garbage. Look at this:
Without any irony, I can call that beautiful. I can only dream of one day handling graywash the way Eisner did.
To close things out, here’s my number one summer jam. There are a lot of songs that remind me of summer in New York City (i.e. pretty much any track on Sublime’s self-titled album, a perennial campus favorite on the first warm day of the year), but this song by is actually about summer in New York City! Read my comic again while listening to this!
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