Day One: Hard Work

Another decision we had come to - slightly acrimoniously - was that we were attempting to do 5 pages in this 'three day challenge'.  I say acrimoniously, but that's probably unfair.  I think Chris was disappointed that we weren't trying to do a whole 21 page comic, but I was certain that was way too much.  5 pages seems more realistic and suggests an episode in 2000AD or Deadline or another multi-story comic.

So last night I re-read the first 5 pages of Watchmen.  That sets the bar pretty high; not sure if it was more inspirational or intimidating.

So today I was aware that we really needed to be a good way into inking the first page by the end of the day - assuming we would speed up over the next two days.  But we haven't even started inking that first page.  It was pretty much completely laid out and pencilled, until we changed our mind about it at the end of the day...

It started okay, and although it was a bit of a slow start working out the golden section layout, I was pretty pleased with the first rough draft.  Then when it came to doing the 'proper' page, I found the drawing was much less relaxed, the lines kind of uptight.  I liked it much less than the rough layout - a familiar feeling, the 'good' version having less life than the original sketch.

The gap between your ambition and your talent.  At one point I did think: I can't do this.  I was trying to draw Ulam's hands typing on the keyboard - and they were awful.  I just had to keep erasing them (so I found out why Bristol board is so important - it's lovely to draw on, and it erases beautifully, repeatedly).  I gave up and decided to come back to them after the rest of the page.  Then I realised that I had drawn the afternoon-sun shadows in completely the wrong place in panel two, because they would mean that the sun was directly on his laptop screen, so I re-did them, worked out panel three and then decided that I really didn't like the first panel at all.  And Chris agreed.  That first panel is actually a pretty big area to fill; I usually draw quite small - or rather, if I'm drawing in a bigger area, I'm usually using a thicker mark-making instrument like a marker pen or charcoal stick.  It's the ratio of the drawing area to line thickness that is important here (at least for me).  So, we're flipping the layout, starting with smaller frame, because we don't need to see the whole laptop - just the words 'Einstein was wrong'.  And I don't have to draw his hands.

During all this we found out from one of our visitors that a page a day is usual for professional comics artists (which makes sense given that monthly comics are usually 21/22 pages long) - so I feel slightly less slow and ponderous.  But more concerned about how much we can achieve.

Anyhow, first thing tomorrow, we'll see how my inking is...