And Then Canada Exploded

Just came back from watching some Canada Day celebrations, and doing a little celebrating of my own. Four years ago exactly I packed everything in a U-Haul and moved to Halifax. Still here, still want to be here. It's nice.

Spent a few hours hiking around the downtown taking reference photos for my next graphic novel. I'm still not sure exactly how much of Halifax (or what areas) I'm planning to use, so I just took a ton of photos to sort through later. The old graveyard behind the Public Gardens (Joseph Howe is buried there) is pretty perfect, though; it'll be popping up in the book. Always feel a bit like an idiot trundling around Halifax with a camera, as I curse the people who get in my way to do that. Dirty dirty tourists, get your fanny packed butts out of my way. Maybe I should wear a sign that says "I live here, not a dirty tourist." Still have a bunch more areas I want to photograph, so hopefully I'll be able to get that done this week.

Then I stalked some girl because I fell in love with her skirt (not for me, for a character), and took her picture without her knowing, which made me feel guilty. I always see people in the downtown that I desperately want to photograph because they're just perfect for drawing, but I'm too shy to approach them and ask their permission to take a photo, and it doesn't feel right to take one without permission. I don't know, how would you feel if some girl came up to you and asked to take a photo of you for possible reference in a graphic novel? I'd feel weird.

Also walked by Lovely Local Comic Shop Strange Adventures and took photos of it without going in so muahahahah WILLPOWER!!!! Can't make me buy your comics when I don't go inside!! ... ps. I love you.

Ice is updated with five new pages in which Hunter wakes up someplace strange and Sex Pistol lyrics cameo. Five new pages seem like a lot, but I haven't had time to work on the comic since, oh, April. So yeah, enjoy. I've pencilled out a handful more pages, and I'd really like to try and get as many done as possible before plunging back into fulltime deadtree comic making, but we'll see ... But I hope you like the pages that I've done. I always love comments, y'know... :D

I finished drawing The Fielding Course last Friday, and handed it in to First Second on Monday. Yay! Now I'm taking a week off to catch up on all the sleep I missed before diving back into revisions and other comic-related stuff. So with TFC done, that makes three graphic novels I've drawn in three years, in increasingly smaller time frames and fewer distractions from a day job. When I was working on Zombies Calling (2007), I drew 100 pages in nine months, while working a (more than) fulltime job in animation. I drew 150 pages of The War at Ellsmere (2008) over ten months, with a fulltime job that stopped and started, before completely evaporating midway through the book. And now I'm finished 150 pages of The Fielding Course, drawn in five and a half months (started fulltime in January, finished this past Friday), with no day job at all. So, very slowly and cautiously easing into the land of fulltime comic drawing, while furiously cutting back on my budget and trying to reduce my food intake. Whatever. I love it.

Hey, let's do some comic math!
Demonology 101 (& side comics): approx 800 pages (I don't know this for sure. I know the main comic was longer than 700 pages, and there were those side comics)
Ice: approx 200 pages
Zombies Calling: 100 pages
The War at Ellsmere: 150 pages
The Fielding Course: 150 pages
& all those miscellaneous comics I've done in the past; who knows how many pages those add up to.
= approx 1400 pages!!!!!!!??? Dear lord. Somebody stop me. Especially as I JUST started getting paid for my comics. Yeah.

And what's next? Oooh, exciting things! More comics! ... but those things merit their very own blog post, and I'm blowing this popsicle stand to go sketching with friends, so that's for another day. Oh, and tomorrow is URASAWA DAY! and volume 3 of 20th Century Boys is out. I plan to hike downtown to pick it up tomorrow rather than waiting till the weekend, because it's my week off and I can do things like that. Y'know, as wonderful as it is to have more of Naoki Urasawa to get my paws on, committing to buying 22 volumes of 20th Century Boys and another eight or nine of Pluto pretty much takes up all of my comic spending budget for the next two years, so I have to depend mightily on the library (which is awesome and buys pretty much everything I need) or the kindness of strangers (and comic book store owners) to read anything not Urasawa. In short, long live the library. But I still wish I had a bigger comic buying budget. Don't we all?

First Second told me it was okay for me to post a few panels from the book I'm drawing, to show the world what has been occupying my time since January ... and by "occupying" I mean, I went outdoors today and screamed "what the hell is that???" at the ball of fire in the sky. Oh right, it's called the sun.
Anyway. I'm EIGHT PAGES from the end of this book, which'll be somewhere around 150 pages when complete. It's been a really different experience drawing someone else's script rather than my own, and I found it really challenging psychologically. It was difficult to trust my art skills completely throughout this thing, mostly because I've never had to before. I've always relied on some other cleverness to distract readers from what I think is the weakest point of my comic-making: my artwork. And I couldn't do that here. I had to sit down and provide the best possible artwork I could, and most of the time, the best I could produce wasn't to my liking. So I spent a lot of this book banging my head against the nearest wall, angsting about what I was producing, forcing myself to look at what I didn't like about my work, and improve it or die. It was really rough. But I honestly think I reached a turning point and I'm starting to see new influences in my work (Urasawa mostly; I think he's been good for me), and I think it's really improved. I'm happy with what I've done in this comic. But God, what a struggle.

Anyway, enough art blather. Here's some panels from The Fielding Course, written by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan. It'll be out from First Second Books sometime in late 2010, and will be coloured, though not by me. The story's about two misfit kids who're dragged off to a ominous summer camp, where there's some really creepy goings on. And then crazy stuff happens. I probably shouldn't say any more. One thing that kind of amuses me, though, is that the kids do a lot of maturing over the course of the summer, and I feel that's sort of accidentally what happened with my artwork as well. So the art grows up along with the kids. Aw.


I enjoyed drawing all the forests. My next comic will be completely set in a forest. At night.

The two main characters meet each other. Aw, they look so young here. Also, the boy's hair gets gigantic over the course of the book. Guess he started using volumizing shampoo or something.

What camp story isn't complete without gross food? Sidebar: my first non-White lead!

Um, I kinda based him off Kurt Russell... :D

YAY FORESTS! Hey, make up your own dialogue and you get a prize.

That hair is totally going to stomp on Tokyo.

Oh yeah, and since the kids were growing up over the course of the book, the guy got quite a bit hotter (imho), while the girl remained kinda nerdy looking. SUBTEXT. :D

If you don't et your meat you can't have any pudding!

I don't know why, but I love this panel. That is some awesome hair.

So yep, that's a little peek at what's been destroying my right wrist since Christmas. It's been fantastic, really. The schedule was a bit crazy, but I'm really thrilled I've gotten the chance to take a break from the animation studio life and do comics full time. It reaffirms it's what I want to do, and I hope I'll be able to keep doing it.

And now, what's up next for me? Well, that's a whole 'nother blog post. But yes, I do have another graphic novel lined up already ... which I'll tell you about later. ;)

I was thinking recently about that panel I was on at TCAF, which was about cartoonists who worked in both animation and comics. One of the questions that came up was how did animation/work/training in animation help your comic book work. Most of us said something like how animation trained you to do strong posing, but more natural posing than was typical of ... well, not to pick on superhero comics, but sometimes I don't quite know why so many characters in that genre have conversations with their chests thrust out at unnatural angles. Anyway, one thing nobody mentioned and I just thought of is that probably the greatest thing the animation industry teaches you is how to work. I know that sounds obvious and simplistic, but animation is incredibly deadline focussed, and many of those deadlines are effing insane. So you learn very early on that if you're going to survive in that industry, you need to haul ass at all times. There's no sitting around waiting for artistic inspiration or for the right mood to strike, those backgrounds are bloody due tomorrow, so you get 'em done, or you get fired. And I think that's a really important lesson to learn and apply to making comics. I remember last year at San Diego I had a delicious breakfest meeting (one of the two meals I managed to scrounge over a four day period) with First Second's Mark Siegel (my current publisher, I love them), and he asked what I did for a day job. I told him I worked at an animation studio, and he kind of grinned in that nice way of his, and said "oh, I like animators. They know how to work." And then I went home and drew a 150 page graphic novel in about five months (well, 20 pages to go but the end is in sight!!!!), and made my deadline because that's what I do, dangnabit. Other things, maybe I'm not so good at, but I can make a deadline. *knock on wood*

I'm sure people who're better versed in the tao of YouTube already know about this, but I was very enamoured with this untranslated interview/profile piece of Naoki Urasawa I found via CB Celuski's twitter (that's a completely different interview link, which is translated. I suggest watching both, they're quite awesome) last night. Mostly because once you get past the part with him singing in a band and sitting on couches, there's a long section set in his studio where you can watch him and his assistants working away. I love watching other artists work, and it was really interesting seeing the mechanics of his comic book making. And it shows that dude knows how to work.

... oh yeah, and I got my paws on Volume 3 of Pluto yesterday and aaaaaaahhhhgh, so gooooood. My friends are all sick of me babbling about how awesome these books are, so I think I need to form some sort of club where we can discuss him without bothering the muggles ... any takers?

(And I'm working on new Ice pages as well! ... so basically all I do is work. :D)

So last weekend was the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and I was there. I tend to make myself pretty sick at conventions, either through not eating or not sleeping or whatever, so I was all impressed with myself that I managed to make it through this convention realitively unscathed ... until I had an allergic reaction to something on Sunday morning, and by late Monday my left eye had swelled up to enormous proportions. GROSS! Wanna see? Fortunately some drugs have helped things, but I've never had that happen before, so it was freaky. Hopefully I'm not allergic to the convention.

It was my first time to the show, and my first time as an exhibitor with actual books to sell (I shared a table with Eric Kim, who was lovely), so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I mean, I always find conventions to be kind of this roller-coaster of emotions, being surrounded by artists who are for the most part better than you, so I spend most of my time wondering if anyone will talk to me, and then if someone does talk to me, wondering WHY they're talking to me when oh my god, the Immonens have a table right next door!!!!!11 Yes, I would like them to adopt me. I'd mentioned in my National Post Q&A (all the artists at TCAF got one), that Stuart Immonen was one of the people I really wanted to meet at TCAF (the other being Paul Pope, but he scares me, so it was okay I didin't meet him), and I even brought along a copy of Nextwave Vol 2 that I'd hoped he would sign (actually, I also brought it because I find it's easier to approach artists when you have their book in hand), and then it turned out their table was right next too mine and it was total flop sweat time. But they were lovely and sweet and Kathryn Immonen reassured me on Sunday that I wasn't too much of a dork, so that was very very cool. I bought their book Never As Bad As You Think, which is AWESOME, and Stuart drew an adorable The Captain in my Nextwave book.

The crowds ... My god the crowds. What a crush of people! Saturday I didn't get a chance to budge from my chair as flocks and flocks of people came by me. Quite a few said that they'd liked my work in the past, or brought their own copies of Zombies Calling or The War at Ellsmere for me to sign, but it seemed that even more just walked by my table, glanced through a copy of either book and bought it. People were there to SPEND. Honestly, I think the event being free encouraged people to spend. I know my thought process is "well, I haven't had to spend $20 to get into this convention, so I have an extra $20 to spend." By the end of the day Sunday I had only two copies of Zombies Calling and three copies of Ellsmere left, so I'd sold over 70 books. I was really thrilled. Y'know, going in, not knowing if anyone would even talk to me, and then nearly selling out, it was really wonderful. My lovely boyfriend Tim was especially helpful during the whole thing, and gave away a ton of preview freebies for his webcomic. It was his very first convention.

On Sunday I got to be on a panel about comic book artists who also worked in animation with Graham Annable, Brian Envinou, Troy Little, and Paul Rivoche, moderated by Jim Zub. I was the only one of the group who was doing comics fulltime, and not currently working in animation, but that's more of a "I'm willing to live in poverty for a bit if I can have the chance to do comics fulltime" thing than me actually making REAL MONEY from comics.

Nice folks I met:
Jim Rugg! Aw, I LOVE his work, and he was so nice! I got to chat with him for a good couple of minutes at his table, just seeing what he was doing and getting his opinions on comics. I tried to by a copy of Street Angel off him, but they were gone or something, so that made me sad. But he swapped me a lovely print for a copy of Ellsmere, so I can't wait to hang that on my wall.

Saw Ross Campbell for about 2.5 seconds and bought the last copy of his Mountain Girl comic, which I've not yet read but I'm sure will be full of the bizzarro world of Ross. He was very nice, and already had a copy of Ellsmere, which kind of threw me for a loop ... always surprised when people actually buy my book. X) Anyway, his original comic pages are tiny and perfect and I am jealous of that. I covet tiny perfect original comic book pages.

Douglas Wolk gave me a mix CD, which I was appreciative of, as I know little about music and am always happy when someone takes the time to educate me. He asked me twice who I'd recommend checking out at the show, but both times it was before I'd had the chance to go look around, so sadly I was not in the know.

Lovely British duo Marc Ellerby and Anna (didn't get the last name), looking incredibly gorgeous with their accents, stylish hair and British accents. Did I mention the accents? They were British. I would like to draw them. *_* They stopped by to buy some comics & commission a Delirium drawing, and we all got to talk about how great Andi Watson is. I saw an original Delirium drawing by him as well, so that was just aces.

Got the chance to meet up with a handful of First Second creators at a nice breakfast on Sunday, so I sort of tried to be a little quieter and get their opinions on comics. Nate Powell was lovely, and I'd just read his book (Swallow Me Whole), so got to ask him about that bizarre ending. I didn't introduce myself to Scott McCloud at the breakfast because I am dumb, so he came by my table later to say "you had longer hair when I met you" and I said "in that picture I took at San Diego we kind of look alike and I've decided you may be my long lost uncle" (okay, I didn't say that but I almost did) and then I gave him a copy of Ellsmere. Hope he likes it! I got to say super quick hellos to Ray Fawks, Jim Zub, Diana Tamblyn, and Steve Rolston (loved your little sketchbook, Steve!), but the sheer busyness of the show kind of prevented me from talking to as many people as I wanted to. Next time I will have to budget my time much better ... and spend more! I only bought a couple things, and regret it. Wish I'd bought more stuff.

But I had such a nice time, and thank you to the lovely volunteers and showrunners and The Beguiling lovelies who put on such an amazing show. It was a great way to start out convention going as a professional, and as much as I stressed about "WHERE IS MY PLACE IN COMICS??" and "WHERE DO I BELONG AMONG ALL THESE AMAZING CREATORS???" I truly had a fantastic time.

And now, PICTURES! Taken by either Tim or my Mom. Who apparently kind of freaked out when I was late to the show on Sunday ... Chris Butcher found me later and asked "Did your Mom find you? Because she thought you were dead." lolmom. She worries about me.

( TEEKAF PICTURES )
Whew, that was long. Time to get changed and then head out to watch the season finale of LOST. Woo!

Just a note to say that if you didn't already know, I'll have half a table at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend (May 9-10), so if you're in the Toronto area that time, come by and see the show. It's free, which is incredible for the kind of cartoonists you'll find there, so you don't have any excuse not to come! I'll have copies of Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere for sale, and you can look through some original pages and a few colour originals if you're so inclined, and if you want an original drawing, I'm sure I can arrange that too [insert some blather about how nervous I am about the whole thing here].

In the meantime, you can see the comic I did for Free Comic Book Day here, and I have to get back to cleaning the apartment as I'm flying out early tomorrow morning. Yaaayyy 20,000 feet in the aaaaiiirrr. Yikes.

Um, anyway, please come talk to me at the Festival? I would like that.

Edited to add: I will be on a panel on Sunday, called Cartoonists and Cartoons: Comics Artists Who Animate! (With other folk who've worked in animation and comics.) It's Sunday at 2:30-3:00 pm, in the Learning Centre 1. See you there!

I had an amazing time at Strange Adventures' annual Free Comic Book Day. Cal (the owner of the store) and his crew have been doing it for nigh-on eight years, and every year it seems to get a little bigger and a little better. There're even more plans for next year, involving diagrams and world domination and such. Shh, you didn't hear it from me. I was on hand with a bunch of other artist folk, to do drawings for kids and sign books and just be a part of trying to spread the word about the fantastic art form known as comics. However, the requests I got for sketches this year were a little different than last year:

YES. OH MY GOD, THEY WERE OUT TO GET ME THIS YEAR. For some reason, maybe because I was the only girl drawing last year, I got fairly "girly" requests. Mostly for drawings of superheroines or Death from Sandman. This year, I DREW PREDATOR. Yes, from the Ahnold movie.

But I had so much fun doing it! I got to draw things that I don't normally draw, and that's can either be really fun or really frustrating. Fortunately there must've been something in the water, because I was actually able to churn out some decent sketches. I took phone-photos of all of them, so they're behind the cut:
( I drew Predator! Superman! Batman! Gally from Battlechasers! )
The day passed by so quickly, and just as I was preparing to take a lunch break, Cal's wife Sandy came by and told us that the free comics (20,000 comics!) were very nearly gone. It was insane, just mobs of people. I kept drawing for a bit, finally winding down around 3pm or so. The last group of people waiting for sketches were really sweet, which I appreciated. A girl whose name I've forgotten even came by and gave me a pack of light blue col-erase pencils, the very pencils I draw my comics with (and are sometimes very hard to find in Halifax). After wrapping everything up, Cal treated the volunteers and artists to a dinner at a local pub, and told us that we'd be having our own Free Comic Book Day there, which I thought was great, as I hadn't had much time to browse the free comics before sitting down to draw. OUR Free Comic Book Day turned out to be something very different than what I was expecting, and I got to take home a Local (Brian Wood/Ryan Kelly) hardback, a signed Darwyn Cooke artbook, the Dark Tower (Peter David/Jae Lee) hardback collection and a Claire Wendling sketchbook as a thank you. I was really just happy to take part in FCBD, and having a nice meal at the end of the day was payment enough, so I was really blown away by Strange Adventures' generosity. They are completely lovely.

Anyway, I had a blast, and I hope everyone else did too. I'll probably post my contribution to Comic Festival!'s FCBD anthology fairly soon, so those who didn't get a chance to get their paws on that awesome free comic will be able to see it.

Hey, you know what next Saturday is? It's Free Comic Book Day! You don't know what Free Comic Book Day is? Why, it's the most wonderful day of all! It's a day when across the world the comic book community, in the form of artists, comic book stores and small groups of fairies and/or elves join forces to give free comic books to people who might not normally read them! It's a way of bringing the comic book world out into the Real World, and showing parents with children who might be interested in comics, or the parents themselves, or the jaded hipsters or older former readers of comics that comic books are still an amazing and vital artform, and should be consumed by all! Oh joy, oh happy day that it is, God bless us everyone!

Anyway. The general point of that was that Free Comic Book Day is awesome, and my lovely local comic store in Halifax, Strange Adventures, is going to put on their annual hoopla to celebrate it. Here's some info about the event, including where and when it is (not in the actual Strange Adventures store, because that would be disastrous and would result in many people being trampled). I'll be there sketching for small children, and hopefully eating lunch at one point so we don't get a repeat of last year in which I was stupid and didn't go find food. I still had a fantastic time, and I'm sure this year will be just as great.

... one thing that is DEFINITELY GREAT is that my one page comic is in the Comic Festival FCBD offering, which I got to read in its entirety and it is awesome. Everyone should try really really hard to pick up a copy, because it's just that nifty. And all ages, so you can give it to anyone, your grumpy older relatives or small adorable younger ones. Srsly, it rules, and I'm really proud to be a part of it.

So yeah. Free Comic Book Day. Be there or be ... somewhere else, I guess.

Sometimes drawing comics is hilarious. Here I am crammed in my room (normally I draw in the living room, but I like to listen to things while I work, and don't have a laptop, so if I'm out of DVDs to work to, I have to be within earshot of my desktop computer), balancing a plate of spaghetti on my knees and trying to calculate how much caffeine I can consume before it'll affect my ability to sleep. My cat is also sneakily dipping her paws in my margarine cup of inking water, which she always does when my back is turned. And then she likes to throw up. It's awesome.

The other day my Mom asked me what stage I was in with this comic and I said definitely the RAR GODZILLA stage. With a plate of spaghetti.