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Chapter Five pencills continue! And thoughts on pacing and interpretation.
🕑 Added 2024-09-26 18:41:17 +0000 UTCThis week I have pencils and — if you look carefully — spoilers for you, so consider yourself warned. Though every time I write out a "spoiler warning" I feel like a doofus, because 1) no one around here has ever complained about being spoiled and 2) I suspect you are like me and you just don't care.
I lie, though. Recently Instagram has been serving me ads for the movie THE SUBSTANCE, which looks great. It's not my usual cup of tea, but looks great nonetheless. I considered watching a trailer, then decided not to, wanting instead to go in blind. So maybe I care more about spoilers than I thought.
As a spoiler buffer, here are a few quick recommendations:
BBC Radio 3's THIS CLASSICAL LIFE - "the music show for people who like classical and other stuff too. Music, eclectic playlists and chat, with a new guest every week." I like hearing classical performers talk about music, even/especially if they're not talking about classical. And, at the risk of cheapening this recommendation, I also enjoy the host, Jess Gillam's, Lancastrian accent. See also: CBC Radio's THIS IS MY MUSIC.
Zaho de Sagazan's LA SYMPHONIES DES ÉCLAIRS (YouTube, Spotify) - the closing ceremony for the summer's Olympic games began with a performance from this artist, singing Sous le Ciel de Paris. I thought she sounded great, so I looked her up (difficult, since she's not a big name and internet search is garbage now). As far as I can tell, she has only the one album out right now, and it's very different from the chanteuse standard that sent me her way — more synths! — but I've had it on loop ever since. 🤷 I'm learning a lot of French. See also: Canadian gem Jill Barber's new album of French standards, ENCORE! (Bandcamp, Spotify — oooh you can get it on chartreuse vinyl).
Molly Muldoon's BOOK MAIL - have I recommended Molly's newsletter before? She and I have different tastes, but I like how her opinions are correct, so here we are.
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Hey, hey, it's drawings-day.
I wanted the pirates to remind everyone (all the refugees inside the town walls, as well as the readers) that the Flagbearer / Quartermaster is still suffering from his wound. Seemed like a good opportunity to reinforce the pirates' vaguely supernatural qualities, to have a swarm of ravens drop little missives at people's feet. I like it because it's not swirly-spells and sparkles magic, it's tangible and, ideally, unsettling.
This panel (above) was one of those where, when I got to the end, I put down the pencil and let out a great big sigh. It's got a crowd, it's difficult to keep all their sizes right in perspective and with the stairs, there are characters interlocked with each other (it's easy to draw one character the right size, but I find when there are multiples and they're in contact with each other, it gets much harder), and there's architecture. Plus, this was the third panel on the page with a crowd in it.
That's a tricky hand angle (above), and I feel like I nailed it, no ref, on the first try. Fist pump.
Last night I was preparing for today's pages and realized, "ahhh, I've got too many important beats smushed into too few pages." There's supposed to be a funny beat immediately followed by some serious business. When I thumbnailed it out, I chose to put this all into the space of two pages.
Well. Looking at that again, I thought, "that seems insane." So I took a few hours and re-did the sequence, adding two pages. Was this the right idea? It is so, so hard to tell.
I am loathe to add pages. Mostly, because it's more work. More work takes more time. It makes the book thicker, too, which increases printing costs and makes for a heavier object that's harder to ship and travel with. I also get nervous about adding panels that feel like they aren't working hard (which is what I would be doing here), panels which don't tell the reader more than one thing at a time. And I am deeply conscious of wanting to respect the reader's attention (while simultaneously having no idea whether this is what I am doing).
On the other hand, if these beats don't land well, what is even the point of all the surrounding pages? I've already spent all this time creating meaning and significance — what good is any of it if I wrap up with two rushed pages that feel like the equivalent of, "and anyway, that happened." No, I've got to conclude ideas in a satisfying way.
Plus, I had recently been chatting with Scott Chantler (who is on Patreon!) about the importance of slowing down in the story-telling process. He says he keeps a reminder next to his desk along those lines, which struck me as a good idea. I thought this would be a good chance to do right by him and by this idea.
I don't know what to do about the thickness of the book — that's just a cost I'll have to bear — but I do take comfort in reflecting that comics are an easily-digestible medium. Two additional pages will not greatly tax the reader, especially if they're straightforward pages that do not require much in the way of "deciphering." I am still paranoid about the reader thinking, "ughhh this just keeps going," though in my own reading of the story (so far), I have not felt this way, so I lean on that feeling. (This is not me fishing for reassurances, BTW.)
I think I would feel more confident making these choices if I were working on, say, a film. When my primary question is, "is this proceeding at the right pace?" and, "have I let this beat breathe appropriately?" that's a lot easier to answer in a time-based medium. I can show you exactly what I want you to see for exactly as long as I want you to see it. In comics, where the reader controls the pace and fills in so many gaps in their imagination, what structures do I need to include in the work to encourage the intended result? Is that possible? How possible? Do I just have to have faith in my reader's interpretation? Is it more powerful if I am straightforward and explicit, or if I elide details and encourage the reader to invest more imagination in the reading?
I just want to make you laugh and cry, I don't know why it has to be so difficult.
I wish I knew the answers. I suspect I will find some simply by finishing the pages and then, eight months later, reading them "fresh." And then I'll try again.
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Anyway, I'm off to try.
Chapter Five pencils might be finished in time for next week's update. After that, I think I will start thumbnails for Chapter Six. Then I'll be inking CH5 while CH6 thumbs "settle" and I acquire the distance necessary to notice things like "hey which dumbass put four pages worth of beats on two pages?" After that, I am considering maybe pencilling CH6, then colouring CH5 and CH6 at the same time in one great big push next year. Is that smart? I do not know! I am considering it, because switching "modes" is stressful.
Please enjoy "Spooky Season," or "October" as we used to call it! I look forward to trying to puzzle out who used to be who with all the "spooky" social media handles.
Until next week,
I remain,
a doofus,
TC
Comments
Tealin
I don't know if this holds true for you, but I found my working speed was far more contingent on the number of panels than the number of pages. So a page with eight panels would take me about as long as two pages with four. This leaves aside practical bookselling considerations, of course, but simply in terms of workflow it was an important discovery; it's made me more bold to lay out pages with the space and time I think they should have, rather than feel frugal about the number of pages. Of course, larger panels invite more noodling, which is its own pitfall, but that's another struggle ... And on the topic of the number of panels, I've been doing some studies of the Silas Corey books and really, really appreciating how clever Pierre Alary is about putting a lot of narrative information into one image – the sort of stuff one would think had to be broken up into sequential panels, but with the right details and composition, one can infer sequence from a single illustration. There will be a post about this!
Madi VanDoren
That crowd scene looks great! I love hearing you talk about stuff like story beats, timing, and such in comics. It helps me think about it in my own work :)
