Hindsight

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6715334.html?nid=4302&source=title&rid=17671396

Yesterday I finally delivered The Odyssey, in all it’s glory — the files fill 3 DVDs! (and the stack of artwork I already delivered was about 4 inches high). For those who are curious, it was basically on time. I actually had the discs burned on Friday, but Candlewick closes early on Fridays all summer (nice!), so they told me to bring them Monday. Anyway, the contract actually said Sunday (not sure whose idea that was), so Monday counts as on time. Not bad for a 16-month, 250-page project, if I do say so myself.

Here’s something I’ve been chipping away at during the process of The Odyssey, and the first installment is ready. This video shows my process for digital layout of the Odyssey pages. Each week I’ll put up another video. There are six in all, and they’ll show pencilling, painting, and digital word balloons & panel borders. This is my first effort at screencasting/podcasting, and it’s entirely homebrew, so I apologize if the production quality is a bit amateur; but I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the making of an epic graphic novel!

.

*A word of caution about this method: This is an unconventional way of using InDesign — a way for which it was not really intended. In the case of a long book (like, say, The Odyssey), filling up page after page with vector art can result in extremely large file sizes and degraded system performance. If you try this and your file starts getting above 500MB or your computer starts freaking out, try exporting to Interchange format (.inx) and then reimporting. Usually this makes the file smaller and happier. If it gets really broken, you can export the art to a static format such as TIF or JPG, delete the vector art and place the static art back in — but at that point you lose the ease of editing. As always, save often and keep multiple versions.

I recently gave a talk at the Aldrich library in Barre, VT (where, incidentally, I used to play D&D as a young nerdy child). This is more or less my standard presentation — although I made a few last-minute changes, so I was improvising a little. Here’s a 15-minute excerpt from the 1-hour presentation:

I recently mentioned the two interview segments which ran in the Harrisburg newspaper about Merchant and my author visit. The interviewer, Chris Mautner, has now uploaded the entire interview to his blog, including questions not included in either previous segment. And this was linked to yesterday by The Comics Journal, on their Journalista! blog.

The Merchant of Venice launch party went very well. A few of the cast failed to make it, but the overall turnout was quite good, and I gave a little presentation on the “making-of”, which was well-received. Now, back to work on The Odyssey!

(note Gayle/Portia and Edwin/Salanio in the front. Gayle has cut her hair even shorter than I drew it in the court scene.)

I got some really nice advance press for The Merchant of Venice (which comes out May 15th). First and most impressive, a starred review in Kirkus! This is basically the perfect review, as it starts out “Of late, there have been many unsuccessful attempts to adapt Shakespeare into the graphic-novel format; Hinds’s beautiful new offering now sets the standard that all others will strive to meet.” How about that???

I also got a more mixed, but still basically positive, review in Booklist; and I was interviewed in Ingram’s twice-yearly graphic novel supplement (Ingram is the largest book wholesaler in the US).

This bodes well 🙂

You may remember that Booklist gave me a starred review recently. Well, they just released their special graphic novel supplement, and in it is their “Top 10 Graphic Novels for Youth: 2008”, and King Lear is one of their picks!

This link will probably stop working at some point, but for now…

http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=show_product&pid=2616398

King Lear just got a starred review from Booklist! Right now it’s on the front page of Booklistonline! I can’t stop using exclamation points!

This is huge, because Booklist is a big deal in the book industry and especially the library market (it’s a publication of the American Library Association), and it’s very rare that they would review a self-published book like Lear. Plus, it is a totally awesome review.