June 4, 2010
June 1, 2010
May 20, 2010
orange revision
I changed the background of the first image to make the figure pop out more.
July 4, 2009
Book 2 of Carnivale now available
Book 2 of Carnivale is completed. Click on “books” above or at the right to get more information. Click “ordering” to order the book. It’s $2 (U.S.) plus $1 for shipping. If you’re going to be at the APE in November, you can also pick it up there. If I’m really good, book three will also be available by then.
I will continue the one page a week updates here, but I’m done with the revision of the early pages (though I may tweak a panel here and there). So I’m going to go back to where I left off and start moving the story ahead again. This revision of the early pages took a long time, but it has made the story much more focused and consistent. But I need to get better at doing my thumbnails before I begin the final art. I tend to get excited and start a story before the thumbnails are done. But, obviously, that can lead to a lot of wasted ink and time. A story is an act of discovery. I’ve heard other artists say this, most recently David Cronenberg, but I never understood it until now. It’s funny that I’ve been doing comics since 1996 (well, before that, but I’ve been doing minis since 1996), but I never really understood the process. I think this means that I’m drawing from other places when I develop a story. I think this is a positive step forward. But I still don’t really know what the hell I’m doing. Some day I’m going to write an essay comparing art with Aikido (the martial art I do). In both, you have to embrace the process of learning and trust that you’ll get somewhere. But the further you go, the broader your horizon gets, so you can often feel as if you’re going nowhere. You have to embrace your ignorance and just keep moving ahead.
July 17, 2008
Carnivale new page 14
This is the end of the new intro. I think it fits a lot better than the old one. It at least fits with the story I have in my head better. Here you can see more of the conflicts in Kit’s life. The other part, about the guy wearing wings and jumping off the bridge, will be clearer later on. But this sets up a major plot point and conflict as well.
I once heard David Cronenburg once say that he works on movies to discover what interested him in making that movie in the first place. It’s a process of finding the emotional resonance you had with the idea of the story. When I first heard that I was shocked. It seemed too haphazard a way of creating something. But it’s true of me with Carnivale. It took me 40 pages to really understand what the story is about. Though, as Kerry points out in his comment for the last post, in some ways every Kit Kaleidoscope story has helped me to understand what it is that interests me about the character. Or, more likely, she’s malleable enough to change according to whatever my obsession is at the time.
Anyway, I think that I’m going to keep going and put the actual carnivale after this scene.
July 15, 2008
June 20, 2008
Carnivale new page 8
I’m still working on the new beginning to Carnivale. Actually, I’m focusing more on the revision than where the story has stopped. The more I work, the more I realize a lot of the old pages are going to get scrapped or redrawn in some way.
You can see the whole new beginning through my comix page.
April 5, 2008
March 3, 2008
Carnivale page 40.2 and new page 1
Back to Carnivale…
I’ve also decided to redo the beginning of the story. I’m getting rid of the prostitute scene entirely and I’m going to move around or delete other pages. The big change is that I’m going to add the actual carnivale near the beginning, before the events already depicted in the pages I’ve done so far. All this will eventually be available in a new book 1 of Carnivale (the first one sold out at last year’s APE).
Here’s the new opening page:
February 27, 2008
“My Grandmother’s Funeral” new page 21
Finally…
View the whole thing here.
