Hindsight

Here’s the final segment of my video series, in which I show how to use clipping paths to make speech balloons go behind characters’ heads. Enjoy!

This one’s probably a bit simple, really. It just shows how I draw the panel borders.

Okay, here is video #4: drawing vector balloons in InDesign. 2 more installments to come (panel borders and clipping paths). Enjoy!

Process video #4 turns out to be too long, and I need to split it into two, maybe three segments. I almost got that done before the wedding took over everything, but not quite. I’ll be finishing them up this week, though, so stay tuned!

Here’s the third video in my Odyssey process demo series. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, it’s all about coloring with watercolor.

Here’s the second installment in my Odyssey video series. This video shows the transition from my digital layout to a traditional finish drawn in pencil. I hope you find my lowbrow video production techniques charming. Maybe I can get sponsored for my next book. (Adobe, Canon, Wacom, Cretacolor, Alvin, Holbein, Winsor & Newton, Fabriano, and Listening Library, I’m talking to you — give me a call!)

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!

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*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.

As I finally wrap up this monster of a book, I’m struck by the quantities of materials consumed in the process of making it, including physical stuff like pencils and tape, and also the numerous audio books I listened to while drawing & painting in the studio for 9+ months. For the interested, here’s a (fairly comprehensive) list what I consumed in the course of creating the art for The Odyssey:

40 Cretacolor Nero pencils (#3 medium – make a blacker line than graphite)

5 Plastic erasers

4 rolls artists’ tape

4 75-sheet pads of 12×16″ Fabriano 90lb. cold-press watercolor paper (each pad is about 1″ thick)

Upwards of 120 bags of chips (corn, potato, pita, root veggie, etc.)

3+ reams of printer paper

At least 22 inkjet cartridges and 1 laserjet cartridge

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The following audiobooks, listed by author (good unless otherwise stated):

Louisa May Alcott – Little Women

Anonymous – Gawain and the Green Knight

Bill Bryson – A Short History of Nearly Everything

Cervantes – Don Quixote (switch to an abridged version after seeing how funny but long-winded it is {which makes it good fodder for adaptation})

Eoin Colfer – Airman (didn’t like)

Daniel Coyle – The Talent Code (simplistic premise, but some very valuable insights about learning and teaching)

Joseph Delaney – The Last Apprentice

Corey Doctorow – Little Brother

Arther Conan Doyle, Sir – The entire Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, for the umpteenth time.

Kathleen Duey – Skin Hunger (lamest “ending” ever)

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

John Flanagan – The Ranger’s Apprentic, books 1-4 (fun but highly predictable)

Jostein Gardner – Sophie’s World

Hermann Hesse – Siddhartha

Laura Hillenbrand – Seabiscuit (fabulous)

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird (excellent, of course)

Geraldine McCaughrean – The White Darkness (excellent)

Frank McCourt – Angela’s Ashes (great, depressing), ‘Tis

LA Meyer – Bloody Jack, books 1-4 (great reader, gets better as it goes)

Kenneth Oppel – Airborn

Ovid – The Metamorphoses

Alan Paton – Cry the Beloved Country

Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar (enjoyed way more than expected)

Terry Pratchett – Nation (awesome!), Wee Free Men

JK Rowling – The entire Harry Potter series (great on audio)

Louis Sachar – Holes

Mary Shelly – Frankenstein

Jill Bolte Taylor – My Stroke of Insight (recommended, but not on audio, as the author is a terrible reader)

Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

John Updike – Rabbit, Run (didn’t like)

Virgil – The Aeneid (didn’t like)

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five (great), Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle (awesomely weird)

Jeanette Wall – The Glass Castle (great)

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 just returned from a fantastic week of vacation in San Franisco. Lots of cable cars, parks, gorgeous weather, and expeditions down to Santa Cruz and Monterey, plus visits to many good friends we hadn’t seen in quite a while. Here’s the trip according to my sketchbook (which seems to favor mainly animals).

The plane:

The Japanese Tea Garden and Golden Gate Park:

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