It Is A Circle Blog

This week I pounced on Lord Shaper for an interview. He very obligingly agreed to being grilled a bit.

 

Bryn: Sooo, when did you first get into comics?

 

Lord Shaper: I remember my parents buying me comics back when I was a kid in the 80’s but I’ve been “into” them since ‘91. Btw I do 2 podcasts as well heh.

 

Bryn: Ooh, what sorts of things happen in the podcasts?

 

Lord Shaper: www.lordshaper.com/kryptographik is a Comic based podcast which doesn’t deal with main stream comics but looks at the Horror, Scifi and Dark Fantasy genres. Welcome to Heavenside http://heavenside.lordshaper.com is a podcast talking about Doktor Sleepless which is a comic from Avatar Press written by Warren Ellis. Which I need to get back to heh.

 

Bryn: Ok, I have to ask… why did you pick Lord Shaper as an alias?

 

Lord Shaper: Going back about 10 years ago I was using Dark Howler which I was influenced by a picture I had hanging above my desk and when I started playing Quake and Unreal Tournament online I adopted the name Lord Shaper which was from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic which was another name for Dream in it. About 2 years later I dropped the Dark Howler name as I was wanting to consolidate my “personas” and stuck with Lord Shaper.

That’s probably more than you needed there!

 

Bryn: I had wondered if that was it! I will confess that it was part of the reson why I started following you on twitter. Do tell us more about www.lordshaper.com and what you do over there.

 

Lord Shaper:  www.lordshaper.com originally was a gaming website for the first 5 years of it’s existence and after the boom it had devolved into a forum that didn’t have anyone going to it so I decided it was time for a change and now it has evolved into a blog of sorts with reviews, news and anything else I can think of to put on there.

Also I have been joined by Jason Tudor (www.jasontudor.com) and Amber Love (www.twitter.com/elizabethamber) who are also putting up their reviews and articles and Amber puts up her youtube reviews as well once a week.

Personally I try to update once or twice a day which doesn’t happen at a particular time due to the fact I work shifts at the moment and have to find time to post.

Other than that I also crosspost any podcasts that I I’m on as well so if you were so inclined to see what I’ve been on you can find it there.

 

Bryn: Cool. What qualities do you go for in a comic?

 

Lord Shaper: I’ve always been a story based person. Which is the main thing I look for in comics. Mainly these days I read more independent comics which are non superhero books along the lines of what is coming out of Avatar Press (www.avatarpress.net) and Archaia Comics (www.archaiasp.com) which are in the sci-fi/horror realms. I’ve always been attracted to the vertigo style of comics, hence my love of The Sandman, The Invisibles, Preacher and Hellblazer.

 

Bryn: Arachia… I interviewed Nick Tapalansky a bit back – have you read Awakening?

 

Lord Shaper: Haven’t read it yet. It’s one that is on my list to pick up which unfortunately is getting longer and longer at the moment.

I’ve also been able to email and twitter back and forth with Nick and hopefully one day I’ll get the chance to meet him.

On a side note speaking of Archaia I actually have a 6-7 page story coming out through them in the Titanium Rain Hard Cover which is in previews this month.

 

Bryn: That’s rather exciting – is that story as in comics, or prose?

 

Lord Shaper: It’s a prose story of sorts. There is to be a lot of design within it as it is a series of emails between a couple of people in the form of an intelligence report for MI5.

Kat Rocha and Josh Finney where great to work with as well getting it all connected to the world they have created.

I’m still waiting on seeing the final pages but even though it is prose it is to have a real sequential feel!

 

Bryn: I love things that poke at the perceived edges of form and genre! Sounds great.

 

More links below…

www.titaniumrain.net

http://www.twitter.com/LordShaper

 

Nick Tapalansky is the author of ‘Awakening’ – a fabulous and dark comic, decidedly creepy. (Do I sound like a fan? There are reasons…)

 

Bryn: Do you ever frighten yourself?

 

Nick: Only first thing in the morning. I kid, I kid.

Honestly, yeah, sometimes. I always try to see scenarios, real and created, to their natural conclusions in my head and those endings aren’t always the nicest. I think every writer has that
 going on though. It’s a hazard of the trade, no matter what genre(s) you work in.

 

Bryn: Seeing scenarios… do you have a clear sense of how it all looks, or do you leave that more to your artist?

 

Nick: Alex can attest that my scripts tend to be super anal, both because I’ve got a clear visual of the scenes and because I want to give the artists that I work with as much ammunition as possible. That said, comics are, and should be, about collaboration and if the artist I’m working with has a different sense of how to attack the page I’m always open to it.

 

Bryn: How did you acquire Alex?

 

Nick: Haha! Sounds like I’m in a video game – “You acquire: amazing artist. +5 attack, +2 luck.”

We always wish there was a more exciting story behind this but, truth be told, we met thanks to the power of Google and the existence of an art dump thread on a message board. He’d never worked in
 sequential art before and was just posting some of his straight illustration work but as soon as I saw it I knew he was the one for me (awwwwww).  Seriously, it was like a switch got flipped – the second I saw those pieces I knew that if I could convince him to try sequential art that the book I  saw in my head would be real. He was nervous at first, understandably, since sequential art is massively time consuming and a daunting prospect, but he hooked into the concept enough that he was willing to give it a try. Now we’re the best of pals and have a full plate of projects ahead of us.

 

Bryn: Having seen the cover – your luring Alex into sequential art was clearly a very good plan. Has he influenced how you work, at all?

 

Nick: Absolutely. I don’t think it’s a successful collaboration in the world that doesn’t benefit from learning and growing together on a project. I know when I write a page or sequence that’s going to drive Alex insane just as well as I know when I write something he’ll love. I try to lean more toward the latter but the former crops up often enough. Aside from likes and dislikes, I’m sure I’ve picked up some of his storytelling sensibilities and he mine. It’s a hazard of getting into someone’s head to the degree that a collaborative work, like comics, involves and it’s also one of the most exciting parts of the craft – learning and growing as a result of each others’ talents.

 

Bryn: I’ll admit I take a certain delight in writing things that will give Tom a hard time on the art front – he does seem to thrive on challenges, and I have a sadistic streak… So much of what you’ve said about the collaborative process sounds entirely familiar though. Aside from having the right person to work with, is there anything else that you find necessary or essential for comics creation?

 

Nick: Beyond having the right partner(s) I’d say the next most necessary component is patience. When you’re just getting started, like Alex and I are, the fame and fortune aren’t going to instantly materialize in front of you. You have to truly love what you’re doing and be enthusiastic about every word you write or line you draw. You have to be willing to put the time in after 8+ hours at a day job, work your ass off promoting yourself, and scrounge up money to get to those cons. Most of all, you have to still want to do all that, even if it never becomes a full-time job – fortune seekers, ye be warned.

Sorry if that was a bit rambly… Hopefully that answers the question. Unless you meant what *I* find necessary to personally work on scripting and creating books. That’s a whole OTHER list.

 

Bryn: Ooh, let’s have that whole other list too then! Pretty please.

 

Nick: For me personally, I like to have some space where I can close a door. It doesn’t need to be a big space but the door is mandatory. I like to have music going but it tends to be instrumental stuff – when I’ve got lyrics I start listening to them and get distracted. Usually, for Awakening, I’ll be listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, DJ Shadow, or occasionally Explosions in the Sky.

All that said, I’ve been in situations where none of that was available and somehow found the strength to soldier on. I guess the above is really the ideal for me, but I once powered through a script in a matter of hours while displaced and staying on a friends couch. The TV was on, conversations flying about, games being played, but I zeroed in and got the job done. Not something I’d recommend, but when it’s crunch time…

 

Bryn: Any plans for the future that you’re able to share?

 

Nick: Absolutely! Alex and I have a number of short-stories that’ll be seeing the light of day in late 2009 and early 2010, including a two-part backup story for Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau’s Perhapanauts which was tons of fun to work on. We’ve got another short, based on a world Alex created in a short-story he wrote (that’s right kids, he’s a double threat) in college a few years ago. That’ll be showing up in some volume or another of Image’s Popgun anthology, though I’m not sure which yet. Beyond that he and I have at least two or three other books in us, off the top of my head, beyond Awakening Volume Two.

I’ve also got a few other things I’m putting together but it might be a bit soon to talk about those I’m afraid. Try me on that score in about a year when, hopefully, those plans will be much closer to reality!

 

Bryn: And where can people find you online?

 

Nick: Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qJQB68NkP0

 

Amazon purchase link – http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-One-Archaia-Nick-Tapalansky/dp/1932386483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1250528037&sr=8-1

My Website – http://www.NickTapalansky.com

My deviantArt – http://thehumungusstudio.deviantart.com

Alex’s Website – http://www.AlexEckmanLawn.com

Alex’s deviantArt – http://theabones.deviantart.com

Creator of The Desert Peach webcomic Donna Barr spent a while swapping emails with me over the weekend. The results of which are below…

 

Bryn: I’m fascinated by the idea of The Desert Peach – what led you to come up with that?

 

Donna: It’s a terrible pun. I was working in the files at the University of Washington, 2 February, 1978. The file room was being painted an odd, pale, terra-cotta sort of color. The file crew stood around wondering what color it was.
“Peach?”
“Desert tan?”
“Desert peach?”
Poof.  The Desert Fox’s brother sashayed into my life. The whole file room did Peach skits for a week. The first drawing of him was on the back of a card, the other side of which listed the codes I used as holds officer to describe student financial status. The codes were acronyms based on abbreviations of 16th-century Italianate German banking terms. The only other copy was in the hands of a 50-year-old Philippine woman I’d been unfairly promoted ahead of for racial reasons (but not because I was white; another race). She still had it after I left — suddenly, with my card, in the middle of spring registration –  and the university gave her the job. They kind of had to. No bomb like a paper bomb; they take longer to build but they close down everything. The original drawing is now in the San Diego State University special collection. Hm. I guess you could say they have a little terrorist machine.

 

Bryn: That’s quite some backstory! Which came first for you, the writing or the drawing? Or have you always done both?

 

Donna: I began drawing in 1954, and really writing in 1962.

 

Bryn: What made you decide to do comics?

 

Donna: Because I can write and I can draw. (Sorry this is kind of simple; that’s all it was). I never read them as a kid. Edd Vick, one of my first publishers, said it was as though I’d invented the form all by myself, independently of where it was going at the time. More notes for the original style here:  http://www.moderntales.com/comics/midnightlibrary.php

 

Bryn: I can’t help but feel it’s perceived as being more of a boys thing – that comics are assumed to be written for blokes, by blokes. I read a bit in my youth but most of it (aside from the Neil Gaiman’s stuff) I didn’t identify with much. I’m wondering if to be female in this industry is to inevitably be (re)inventing the form.

 

Donna: Guys have a tendency to herd and copy — team sports, armies, corporations. Females often form their own underground, sometimes of one, and most of these undergrounds are in contact with one another. The world is a war-zone for women, and to survive we always need a quiet insurgency, to get around the dead zones. We always need to watch our backs, especially when alone. Any female in the industry can tell you about all kinds of guys — in surprisingly mature ages and roles — who have cornered and hit on them at comiccons. The first thing the male screams if accused or backed off is “lawsuit!” like the bad son in “Pudd’nhead Wilson.”

Sometimes female groups are as cliquish as the males, or do copy art — but that’s a sign nobody in their group is a grown-up yet.

 

Bryn: I’m entirely new to this, and a comic-con virgin…. but am both tall and scary! This may be as well. It’s crazy that we still have such things going on. It also makes me fume on behalf of the decent blokes out there, the honourable ones who get tarred with the same brush. Power is not healthy for people, I think. Subversion is good…. the concept of The Desert Peach seems so beautifully subversive to me.

 

Donna: Well, it’s the job of the decent blokes to protect us females because it’s THEIR side causing the trouble. That includes any warrior (tribal) or soldier (salaried): it’s guys making war, so please back the other guys off — or take it outside the village so we can get the hides processed, if guys insist on doing that stuff (tho’ American tribal people stopped wars if it began to rain: it took a woman 2 snows to make a beautiful war costume and just think what would happen if Black Lighting came back home with the war costume all muddy. He’d be re-named All-His-Stuff-Dropped-In-Front-of-His-Mother’s-Tipi in 30 seconds).

On the other hand, a colleague just emailed me this appropriate comment:

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.

Hafez – Iranian Poet

In other words, if you save a female, she’s not obligated to breed with you. She will probably just get the hell out of there with a whole skin. Younger guys also need to be told that just because you bought her a corn-dog and a movie does not mean you get to have her risk 20 years of raising your genes.

 

Bryn: Much there to agree with. Thank you. Where can you be found online?

 

Donna: 

 

blog http://www.donnabarr.com

Desert Peach webcomic http://www.desert-peach.com (Desert Peach webcomic)

Little store: http://donnabarr.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-emergency-website.html

AFTERDEAD http://www.webcomicsnation.com/dbarr/afterdead/series.php

Lulu site:  http://www.lulu.com/desertpeach

Gallery:  http://www.rummelhart.deviantart.com/  (Latest journal about NOT getting too close to artists or at least not linking their personal lives and their art).

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Barr

Another very interesting comics person I’ve met through Tom. This time the interviewing process got a bit more complicated (yay!) as its not just me asking questions.

 

Bryn: What are the Vortex Machines?

Jimmy: The Vortex Machines are a concept that I came up with when I was trying to think up a name for my website’s URL. I didn’t want to name my website after any particular project of mine, so I needed a blanket term to try and encapsulate what my site’s current content is, and what it will contain in the future. So “thevortexmachines.com” seemed to fit quite well, as its a bit mysterious, a little ominous sounding and not specifically related to any one thing on the site.

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a short series of illustrations of various types of vortex machines, i.e. machines that create interdimensional vortices for various purposes, which so far is just at the initial design stages, but hopefully I can put a few of these pictures up on the site in the not too distant future.

 

Bryn: What sort of stories do you like telling?

 

Jimmy I enjoy telling many different kinds of stories, but I’ve noticed there are certain reoccurring themes to the things I write, such as interdimensional travel, the paranormal and things to do with technologies that aren’t possible in our world, plus more humanistic subjects such as the ephemerality of individual physical existence, and the relationship dynamics between individuals.
There generally tends to be a mixture of the cosmic and the intimate in the stories I come up with.

 

Tom: Looking at your work one of the first things I notice (aside from the overall kick***) is that your art style is utterly your own. Still assume though, that there must have been influences from other visual artists, (and other sources). Would you be so kind as to list a few? (or more) Maybe early and current influences?

 

Jimmy: Well, I have influences from all over the place which have been absorbed and processed through the Jaimzgrinder over the years. I could easily fill up ten minutes worth of reading time talking about my influences, so for brevity’s sake I’ll just go over some of the main ones.

In my formative years my drawing was influenced by three main things. Murray Ball’s daily newspaper strip Footrot Flats was the first comic I really fell in love with, around the age of five. I’d spend many hours as a child lying on my parents’ living room floor trying to draw the characters from that strip.

Another big influence from that time period was the Beano, a British comic book for kids, which featured various comic strips written and drawn by different people. So when I started reading the Beano I was exposed to a great deal of different art styles, as I was a couple of years later when I started reading Mad magazine. Mad Magazine artists like Mort Drucker, Angelo Torres and Jack Davis were and are a huge influence on me, though I can’t draw nearly as well as those guys.

And as far as comics were concerned, that was it for quite awhile. My interest in drawing waned for pretty much the entirety of my teenage years, and it wasn’t until my early twenties that I started getting back into it. Around that time I started getting into more “underground” comics, stuff by Jhonen Vasquez, the Gloomcookie series, Jim Mahfood, Andi Watson and Chynna Clugston.
Then a little later people like Jamie Smart, Aaron A, Tommy Kovac, Scott Roberts, Sam Kieth, Trudy Cooper and FSc (one of my all time favourite artists ever). And other artists such as Mark Ryden, Junko Mizuno, Naoto Hattori and many others.

Anime and manga have also had a big influence on me, as well as animation directors such as Genndy Tartakovsky, Rob Renzetti, Maxwell Atoms and the guys from Mukpuddy Animation.

There are also my friends in the Below The Fold Collective (links to their sites can be found to the left of my website’s home page), all very unique creative individuals whose influence can’t help but rub off on me. Especially as I am collaborating with a couple of them on an upcoming comic or two.

And it goes on and on. But as far as how I approach sequential art, by far the biggest overall influence is the medium of film, as I am a film junkie. The way I tend to frame and light panels comes from film much more than it does from other comics.  And music is extremely important to have playing whilst I work, as it has such a visceral effect on me, and really helps me get into the right mindset for whatever I happen to be working on at any given moment.

 

Bryn: Below the Fold… can you say a bit more about that – what it is, and how you got involved?

 

Jimmy: The Below The Fold Collective is a group of six writer/artists, myself included, which formed a few months ago. It was founded by me I guess, I had the idea to get together a bunch of creative folks whose work I admired and make a little group of us, and everyone I asked were gracious enough to join. I figure it’s easier having the six of us out there promoting each other’s work, rather than each of us as an individual battling along on their own.
Plus it’s a good environment for creative collaborating and idea bouncing. We have a member in New Zealand, one in Australia, two in the USA, one in the UK and one in Ireland.
BTFC member Tom Szwec came up with the name.
So we are all able to be there to support each other and help promote each other’s stuff in different lands. And every vernal equinox we all get together and have cage fights, Thunderdome style. It’s glorious.

 

Here are my pertinent links:http://www.thevortexmachines.com/

website

deviantart
http://jimmymisanthrope.deviantart.com/

twitter
http://twitter.com/JimmyMiz

I first encountered Oghme through Twitter – which is a great place to make random connections and encounter new and interesting stuff. Being partial to Irish mythology myself, I was intrigued by Oghme. The art is striking, the writing engaging. So, I pounced on Cathbad and Mirlikovir for an interview.

 

Bryn: I see that both you and Mirlikovir are French, so I was wondering what drew you to working with figures from Irish mythology?

 

Oghme: Well, we’re from Bretagne, the Celtic part of France, facing Wales. It’s an ancient Celtic country, with a language of its own (Breton), and  has been part of France since the end of the middle ages. But the Breton language persisted till our days and our culture is closely related to that of other Celtic countries, aka Wales, Man, Ireland, Galice…  We’ve been fond of the Cuchulainn epic for a long time, and Mirlikovir (illustrator at Oghme Comics), who has specialized in working with  museums and archaeologists, is as close a specialist of the Celtic Iron Age cultures as can be. Working together on an adaptation of the Cuchulainn epic to Comics has been on our mind for a long time. And as Cathbad (scriptwriter) is fluent in English, we made the choice very
early on to release our comics both in English and French.

 

Bryn: Of all the characters you are working with, who is your favourite?

 

Oghme: This one is easy. Setanta !! Setanta is Cuchulainn’s childhood name. And  it’s funny as at the beginning of our projects, we were focused on the telling of the Cuchulainn epic. Not the “Setanta epic”. The main source for this series of tales (also called the Red Branch epic) is a text known under the name of  “Cattle Raid of Cooley”, in which Cuchulainn plays a central part. In this story, Cuchulainn is already a grown up (at least as grown up as can be at age 16) and defeats the armies of four of the provinces of Ireland, united against the northern province of Ulster. We very soon figured that we were more interested in telling how Cuchulainn would become what he was, a very complex and violent character from the Iron Age, than we were in retelling the war which follows the Cattle Raid. So we went for his childhood instead. And even if  some medieval sources mention Cuchulainn’s youth and early adolescence, there’s almost nothing concerning his early childhood. We liked the challenge of trying to figure it out in our own way. Setanta is our hero, our main character, our favorite, no questioning that. But Fergus, Cuchulainn’s stepfather, Amergin the bard & warrior,  Conchobar (Connor Mac Nesssa) the king of Ulster, Dechtire (Cuchulainn’s  Mother), Ferdiad (Cuchulainn’s “brother in arms”) are very interesting characters too. The Gods Oghme and Morrigan play a huge part in our telling of this epic, and we’ve become quite fond of them. And there’s little Bairrfhionn, a made up character acting as Setanta’s young pal. We’ve learned to love the young brat.

 

Bryn: How did you come to be working together?

 

Cathbad : I first met with Mirlikovir’s brother, Erwan, who is an amazing artist and old friend of mine (and whose black and white drawings are totally amazing). Mirlikovir has been working for 15 years now as an illustrator for history books and museums, focusing on three periods : Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Napoleonic wars era. But whenever he has time, he focuses on the Iron Age period, and the Epic of Cuchulainn has always been his favourite source of inspiration. He would come to my place at weekends with gorgeous illustrations of Celtic heroes, gods, places… hundreds of them. And one day, he brought with him a series of illustrations representing a young kid playing with a hurling stick and a ball. This was totally new. This Cuchulainn as a kid, Setanta, was a genuine Comic Books character. I slept on the idea, contacted Mirlikovir the next morning to ask him if he would like to try and tell the Cuchulainn’s epic from a child’s point of view, in a comic series format. Mirlikovir was in instantly, this was four years ago. Since then we’ve been dedicating all of our spare time to bringing Setanta to life.

 

You can read more here –

 

CucuC – Little Brute from the Iron Age (http://cucuc.oghme.com)
Cuchulainn – The Hound of Ulster (http://cuchulainn.oghme.com)

How long has your webcomic, Alone In A Crowd been running?

 

Alone in a Crowd’s first comic hit the web on January 28, 2008. I had been developing the strip since 2006 – forming characters, writing scripts, doing practice strips – but just around the beginning of 2008 was when I decided it was time to make things public. However, that’s just when I started posting the official comics to aiacrowd.com. At the time I still really didn’t know what I was doing, and each comic was taking a long time to produce, so my update schedule changed a few times. A few times it wasn’t met at all, and I simply posted fanart or a sketch. I knew I was lacking in ability, a complete website, and time management, so I never promoted AIAC outside of a forum or two I visited and friends of mine. I was allowed to learn and go through the bumps in the road because not too many people were reading it. Around Mid-July, I knew that Alone in a Crowd needed to have a better website, a solid update schedule, and more of a buffer if I was going to take it further. So from July 16, 2008 until September 17, 2008, no new comics were posted so that my web designer Dyana and I could build the website I use now. I also used the time to build up a buffer and get a bit quicker at drawing the strip so I COULD keep to a promised update schedule. So, in a roundabout way, I look at September 17, 2008, as the real start of AIAC, because that’s when I went at it with a more professional attitude and really began to push it with advertising and such to build an audience. Things have been growing quite steadily since then. I haven’t missed an update and only twice did I put up strips that weren’t “real” AIAC strips (unless you count the two for April Fool’s Week too).

 

What led you to doing comics?

 

Well, like all cartoonists, I was a prolific doodler as a kid. So when I first discovered comics like Garfield, Peanuts, and The Far Side, I absolutely fell in love with them. I really liked creating even back then – whether through drawing, writing, or (to be honest) LEGOS – so the idea of using sequential art to tell stories felt like a natural fit for me. For many years, I drew my own crude comics in various notebooks with a friend of mine. We were notorious in middle school for being “the comic guys.” Of course I dreamed of being a cartoonist when I grew up, but one day I learned about how people got into the cartooning industry (as it was at the time). Seeing how difficult it was to find your way in and even then stay there really discouraged me. Sadly I put my dreams aside and took the advice that I needed to focus on preparing for a “real” future. In many ways that was a good thing because it let me focus on building some skills to fall back on. However, I wish I had kept drawing comics as a hobby on the side, since obviously I would be much more skilled at this point than I am. I guess I just lost the love and found new things. That, and the comics I was aware of began to grow pretty stale. It wasn’t until my early college years when I discovered webcomics that my interest in the field took shape again. Webcomics seemed so fresh and different to me. Around the same time I also discovered independent comic books, which was where I found the comic that changed my life: Serenity Rose. I was so taken in by the unique approach to the story and art; it was like nothing I’d never seen before! I always say Serenity Rose was the biggest inspiration that made me finally say “Oh my gosh, THIS is what I want to do! Maybe I CAN do this! It is possible now!” (as cheesy as that sounds, but its true). The web just seemed to open up the door for so many possibilities, as a well as an air of freedom for creativity that I never knew existed in comics. When you grow up thinking all that’s out there is simple newspaper gag-a-day strips and superhero books, discovering this other side of the field really is quite the eye-opener. All of this revived my own will to draw comics again, but not just any comic. I wanted to create something new and different like these ones I had been exposed to. So I set out to do so …almost four years later, but I did. I’m also proud to say I don’t have any plans on stopping anytime soon.

 

Were there any particular sources of inspiration for the characters?

 

The three characters actually all came to me at the same time, believe it or not. What needs to be remembered before reading this story is that before this, I had been trying to come up with a workable idea for a webcomic for the longest time. I had such a desire to make my own, but I just couldn’t come up with anything I felt was worthy or that I could get behind.  Anyway, I had just moved to a new college campus and a dorm room after previously having commuted from my house for the first two years. It was kind of a rough transition for me, and being that it was an incredibly large school, I was feeling a bit lost in the shuffle. I don’t think at any other point in my life did I feel so (wait for it…..wait for it…..) alone in a crowd. I would be surrounded by all these people there for the same reason I was, but I felt pretty out of place. So one night, when I was lying awake in my dorm room having trouble falling asleep because of everything, these three characters just sort of came into my head. I swear, it wasn’t like I forced myself to construct them; all of a sudden they were just…there. I saw these two sisters, one who was older and basically acted as the younger one’s mother because their parents had passed away years ago. The younger sister was this quiet, dark haired girl who didn’t have any friends because she was born with cat ears. The other kids would always tease her because of them, so she didn’t have a lot of confidence. Then there was this bright and cheery girl that the two of them took into their care who, who was the first friend the younger sister ever made. I felt compelled by their individual personalities, to the point that I was thinking of all these funny, cute, or sad stories involving the random things that happens in their lives. In retrospect, I look at it as coming from the “Seinfeld” approach to writing: engrossing characters with no overarching story. The plot didn’t dictate who the characters were, but the characters themselves would dictate what various plots there would be.

 

I think that was my problem in the past year or more of trying to come up with a webcomic idea. I kept trying to think of this overblown ideas and stories that I thought might stand out and grab people. However, everything just felt so hallow. The concept surrounding these three girls was MUCH much simpler, and they felt so alive to me. As I pondered over “my girls” (as I began to call them), I realized that if you put the three of them together, you would have me. I basically took all my fears, ambitions, talents, faults, etc. and split them into three parts. What connected them specifically was how each one felt alone in a crowd in their own particular ways. And there was the title: “Alone in a Crowd.” So if Hope, Faith, and Sara are inspired by anyone, it would first be myself. They are me in so many ways, whether who I am, was, or would like to be. That’s not to say I don’t draw inspiration for some of their traits from other places. For example, I have two friends who absolutely adore video games. I’d say they’re a BIG reason why Sara loves video games as much as she does (because I certainly don’t play them that much anymore). Little quirks like that can come from all sorts of different places (and usually do).

 

Who do you like to read?

 

Oh there’s so many cartoonists I adore and follow. Sometimes I can’t keep up with all of them at once because time and what-not, but I’ll always be sure to get back to them at some point. At the top of the list is Aaron Alexovich with “Serentiy Rose” (heartshapedskull.com), who I already gushed about above. Another cartoonist who was a huge inspiration to me is D.C. Simpson of “Ozy and Millie” (ozyandmillie.org) and “Raine Dog” (rainedog.com). I would still call “Ozy and Millie” my favorite webcomics of all time. I also should make special note of “Count Your Sheep” by Adrian Ramos (countyoursheep.keenspot.com/), who inspired me a great deal as well. There’s just so much to love in that strip, and I think some of its cuteness rubbed off on AIAC. More recently though I’ve become a huge fan of “Girls with Slingshots” by Danielle Corsetto (daniellecorsetto.com/gws.html). I’m not sure there’s a better strip out there right now than GWS. Plus I got to meet Danielle at the New England Webcomics Weekend, and she is as nice as nice can be. Of course, I adore the works of my fellow Below the Fold partners in crime Jimmy Misanthrope, Tom Brown, KayLoveMeow, ZombieHamster, and naniibim (links provided on aiacrowd.com’s front page). They all rock hard in their own special ways. Other artists I enjoy include Jay Naylor, Christopher J Paulsen, Kiyohiko Azuma, Eric W. Schwartz, David Willis, Kōsuke Fujishima, Dave Kellet, Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, Dan Hess, Ken Akamatsu, and, of course, many more.

 

Do you plan ahead or make it up as you go along?

 

Kind of a little of both. Before I launched “Alone in a Crowd” online, I spent quite a while writing scripts. I felt like I wanted to plan things out and have a clear idea of where I wanted things to go until I got to a certain point in the story, at which things would loosen up a bit more and I could do less linear stories. Even after I started posting the comic online, I was still writing much further ahead than I was drawing, mostly because I had a part-time job that allowed me to do so when there weren’t any customers or calls coming through. Sure, technically my boss of that old job would have been upset to hear I was doing that, but…I didn’t like that job, so tough nuts. Since getting my current, full-time job, I haven’t had as much time to plot things out like I used to. Where as in the past I had practically every strip planned out exactly, now I take more time to write strip ideas and maybe one or two strips that go with it. More like capturing detailed concepts as opposed to fleshed out stories. I collect them all and when its time to start a new story, I’ll reference the notes and write the rest of the story around that. I find that’s the best way to deal with the whole “oh, I have a great idea for a story…but I can’t use it YET” syndrome.  It’s nice to have these notes in some kind of a database because then when I get a new addition to the idea (whether it be a story point or a whole fleshed out script), I can pull up said idea section and add to it. I’ve found the Things app on the iPhone to be especially helpful for when ideas strike in random places on the go.

 

Even when I plan ahead, it’s not like I’m not still writing for the strips I’m currently working on. There are quite a few strips in the AIAC archive that were added as I was working through the original scripts and thought “oh, there should be a comic about this…” Instances like that helped me to not blow through my backlog of scripts as quickly as I would have otherwise. The big problem I had with all the planning ahead was that I ended up not liking an original plot point at all. Originally, Hope’s parents were supposed to be stars of Archeological TV show that were in a plane crash and presumed missing.  Even though there was more too it than that, the whole concept felt way too over the top to me as I was getting closer to actually drawing the strips. So I ended up changing the story so that Hope’s parents were wealthy snobs who were never there for their child by their own selfish choice. It allowed me to still have Hope come from a rich upbringing, while at the same time giving more of an emotional weight to her detachment. Consequently, I had to rewrite all the comics that came after that to reflect the new plot point. In many ways, it changed some strips quite a bit. So I’ve found that while it is helpful to plan ahead so you have a clear idea of where the characters are now and where they’re going, it can also come back and bite you on the butt. That’s why I tend to be a lot looser in how I plan ahead and don’t flesh out complete strips until I’m closer to actually drawing them.

 

I essentially put it like this: I know exactly how “Alone in a Crowd” begins, and I know exactly how “Alone in a Crowd” ends. Everything in between is where I get to have my fun.

 

 

I can’t tell these things, not being an arty type…. do you do it all on the computer, or do you use paper at all?

 

While I use more paper than computer, “Alone in a Crowd” is a combination of the two. Once I have the script all tightened up, I proceed to sketch out the strip on Srathmore Bristol board with a non-photo blue pencil. After everything looks how I want it to, I ink the line work with some various art pens I’ve collected (but mostly Micron’s). Now I take the inked strip and scan it in at a high resolution dpi and save it as a .tif file. The non-photo blue pencils come in handy here because they wont show up on the scanned image. Not only does this save time of having to erase the pencil underneath the ink, but it also keeps the ink work very crisp. In the past I would use graphite pencils and after erasing the lines, the ink would lose some of its boldness and quality. Anyway, once the comic is scanned in, I use photoshop to add sport blacks and clean up any smudges or things of that nature. I also take this opportunity to use my Wacom tablet to fix anything that I feel like I didn’t draw right (or just plain messed up) during the inking stage. Sometimes I’ll erase lines and re-draw them digitally. I guess the question most people would ask is why I just don’t ink the entirely strip with the Wacom tablet. Frankly, I don’t feel like I’m good enough with the tablet yet to do this. Not only that, but I like having a piece of original art that can be sold later. I haven’t started offering them for sale yet, but it’s something I’d like to do someday I think.

 

 

Thanks for these, it was fun!

–
Thomas D. Szewc
www.aiacrowd.com