I've been working on my current project Fibromyalgia for Beginners longer than I expected. That's not because of unforeseen obstacles in my path but because I did not plan it out, instead preferring to wing it.
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| Fibromyalgia for Beginners |
I suspect that, after reading Harvey Pekar's comic, The Beats: A Graphic History , winging it -- in 'stream of consciousness' mode (like The Beats did) -- may be comically kosher. Of course you write scripts for comics -- even different people often write the words and story from them that illustrates -- but when you do both I value the improvisational excitement and creativity you get by making it up as you go.
More so now that I'm deploying so much montage.
But I do work from notes and a sort of mind map of the overall. You see I'm seeking a discursive result. The discipline is the form itself -- the number of panels in a page, the necessity to relate pages to each other, panels to each other... and the cut and paste medium.
It's the episodic nature too that formats the way it all comes together. It lends itself to instalments.
It's the episodic nature too that formats the way it all comes together. It lends itself to instalments.
A review I did of Bruce Mutard's wonderful Australian graphic novel, The Sacrifice has been published in the latest edition of Green Left Weekly -- Graphic novel brings old war times to life -- and I have submitted some other comic reviews for publication. So I guess I may be doing more of that sort of writing with a GLW audience in mind.
Bruce sent me a nice note about my assessment outlining his plans for the trilogy of which The Sacrifice was the first part.
Hearing how it is done from a master makes my exertions shallow indeed, almost fickle. These things take years to create and I'm expecting to finish my latest project in under two months. Of course I'm not drawing a single line so I'm doing it easy.
But while I do this I pine for my chit chats with Mr Punch so every now and then I have to go talk to the puppet who has en route, developed facial expressions.
Even puppets are not immune to the laws of Evolutionary Biology.
To that end I suspect I may have to take drawing just a teensy wee bit.
