While Frameshift is being handled by the guys at High Treason I began working on many stories to develop on my own as comic books. And while doing that, I was also socializing on penciljack.com (which is a fantastic site for artists and writers interested in comic books to mingle) and went through many artists own sites seeing who I'd like to work wit. It is here at Penciljack that I met John Huddy Jr., his alias is alexcat something something something, anyway, and I really liked his unique style. It was on the verge of anime but had this cartoonish look about it that just made it stand apart from being completely classifiable not to mention the art leaned more on the jovial side. This would be a great artist to work with on a story with humor so out of my hat of ideas I picked a little story called Brock and John got to work on character designs while I got to work on the script and to raise some money.
Things were looking great. I loved the style and the way the characters looked and after a couple months of character design I handed over the first draft of the script for him to start working. At this stage I was still learning and will admit that the script's format presented more problems and confusion than it probably should have. At the same time I went to the first place to ask for money to pay the artist and subsequent future costs, my parents. I pitched the idea to my dad and he was more than interested to help me complete something for myself. And so we began to make the comic.
As with all things you start at the beginning. These were some of the very first layouts made and a good indication of what to expect. At this point it was easier to make adjustments or recommendations. A fantastic learning experience because even though I had Frameshift I actually didn't have much say in the process. With Frameshift I handled writing the script in a presentable way for the artist and the guys at High Treason handled everything else including designing and making changes to layouts much like the one above, so this was really my first experience at being Captain of the ship, so-to-speak. John and I created a great working relationship, talking all the time via, IM on yahoo, throwing emails back and forth, updates on his end, updates on mine. It was really going well. And finally the layouts were done and we were ready to move on to the next stage. Pencils and Inks. While this is technically the wrong way to do things I wanted to do it this way as it was my first go. By wrong I mean, usually once one page of layouts are done the artist will then proceed with the pencils and then the inks. My method was different where we did the layouts for the entire issue and then went back to page 1 and started the pencils and then went back again and started the inks.
This can make the entire process of making a single issue a lot longer than it normally would, and it did but for what it needed to be, a learning experience, this process did everything right. It gave me the chance in a clam relaxing manner to look at the pencils, and make sure that there was nothing major that needed to be changed, it gave me a whole month of study and fine tuning and adjustment so that when we entered inks it would hopefully be set in stone and not need to be altered anymore, at least by the artist John Huddy. And while he was working on inking up the rest of the pages I went off, back to penciljack to recruit a colorist and a letterer. After scouring several pages of personal material and those promoting themselves in the bulletin boards I found Juan Romera (colorist) and Ed Brisson (letterer). The final pieces to my own personal puzzle.
Juan was a frequent attendee of penciljack and while he does draw his own stuff I immediately recognized that his colors would match harmoniously with John Huddy's slightly askew artwork. And it did. I take this moment to note how amazing and useful the internet is because before this technological era I could only imagine this kind of collaboration would be damn near impossible and probably increase costs exponentially. See, I live on the west coast, John lives on the east coast and Juan lives in South America. If this was just ten years ago I'd be forced to find whatever budding artists I could find locally and to save even more money drive to their homes just to save costs on mailing potential pages back and forth with edits. Now it's as simple as an email and a scanner. It is a wonderful modern age we live in and I thank the techno-gods for giving me the internet. And the colored pages were all the more glorious when I finally got them.
Those three colored pages are the same pages from the layouts above. In just this one page the transformation might seem effortless but believe me this was months and months of work from all parties included. But when I reached the next stage I learned a very valuable lesson that could have, and should have, cost me a lot in time and money. Now on the project is Ed Brisson, veteran letterer on several works including comics that have been published by big companies like IMAGE (a favorite of all budding indie comic creators). He leant his hand and added the finishing touches to the comic but also added the much needed expertise I was desperately missing and not aware of requiring, and that is someone who really understands the post production of the comic world.
It turned out that many of my pages were formatted incorrectly. Mostly size was the issue. Some pages were 7x10 which is the norm but others were too small or too large which would make printing a disaster and quite possibly completely ruined. Luckily though most of the errors were fixable. Adding some more art here and there, replacing panels with new ones and eventually got everything looking great and printable. Ed was a major asset to this project and I am lucky to have had him on board. Not only to he help me in this manner but because of this trial and error I now realize the importance of having someone like an editor or formatting specialist to go over the story from the very beginning starting with the script and the layouts. Making sure that the pages will look right, the panels will flow properly and the whole package will look pitch perfect. Because that is what it comes down to. The pitch. Something I am working on now that everything is done.
Look out for Brock:The First Chef; here and maybe one day at your local comic book shop.
