sequential daze

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Totally baffled

I really love me some Perry Bible Fellowship, really I do. But I've got no idea whatsover what this particular strip is about! My friend Miguel who likewise loves PBF, probably even more than me, has no idea what it's about. Do you?

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Is it the subject matter or the medium itself?

A friend of mine is a fairly big geek - she's certainly into things like Lord of the Rings, Buffy/Angel, Serenity, Dr Who and James Bond in a big but not overly obsessive way. She's not a huge geek, certainly a lot less so than myself or her partner, but she is pretty geeky, right?

Anyway, I was telling her about Buffy Season 8 - the Dark Horse comic series that's just started up. She was mildly interested and I offered to loan her the issues but she declined, citing as her reason that she wasn't really into comics. Now if this was Identity Crisis or Infinite Crisis or 52 I was trying to push onto her I could easily understand her lack of interest, she's totally not into superheroes - but she's into both Buffy and Joss Whedon (who is writing the first story), so I find her response odd. It seems it's not the subject matter (likes Buffy, check) but the medium of comics itself that is disinclining her towards reading it. Maybe if it was a book she might read it, I don't know. I certainly haven't read any Buffy books myself but that's not because I don't like books. I guess if someone was trying to push a Buffy PC game on me I'd say no thanks, because I'm not into gaming... but is that the same thing?

A few years ago a similar thing happened when I found out an arty upstairs neighbour was a huge Buffy fan. I showed her some copies of the comic series that were out at the time and she was spectacularly disinterested.

I'm raising this point because it's frequently said that more people generally (and more women specifically) would read comics if they weren't just about superheroes. Of course, increasingly comics aren't just about superheroes, and a lot more people are getting into them, especially online. And yet it seems some people still won't read comics, even comics about something they have a fair degree of passion for, just for the reason they are comics. Did they have a horrible, scarring experience with comics as a child? Who can say?

All the same I'll see if I can't interest my friend once the whole series has played out and the trades are available. I seem to remember she stubbornly resisted my enthusiasm for the TV series of Buffy before giving in and totally loving it and buying all seven seasons worth on DVD!

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Monday, March 26, 2007

Dead cat

I doubt I could make this stuff up if I tried - but that's a real quote by a real person on the train this morning. She also said, during the course of the half hour that I had to endure the conversation between her and some guy, presumably her boyfriend, that she had a fight with her mother last night. When the b/f enquired why they fought so much the response was: "Because my mum's a bitch and I'm stubborn." Riiiight...

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Deleted scene

This isn't so much a deleted scene as one that didn't really get off the drawing board beyond a few sketches - but I thought I'd share!

The Process
When I'm writing I sometimes write out a full script for the scene or sometimes I sketch it out as draft page or two. Usually when there's a lot of dialogue I prefer to script but when there's a lot of action I'll draft/sketch instead... it's generally easier that way. At any rate I'll always draft a page from a script before going to final art - just to ensure I get figures positioned properly and the right expresions and postures. Sometimes when the story changes gears, as has just happened after the "Karmaya gets caught" scene, I can find it a bit hard figuring out how to pick up the new thread and get it moving. Which is what happened here!

The Scene
Very originally I imagined that Kaycee would be sitting on the beach being a bit emo when suddenly Bill and/or Nadine would drop/zip in. The more I thought about it though the more I wondered whether that was rushing it and perhaps it needed a scene back at the robo-mat where Spence berates the cadets before letting them go. In part I was thinking I needed to address an issue about the cadets not training in armour (I found that comment in a reader's blog entry). The problem was that it was too expositionary and added nothing to the story... and the scene itself was just going to kill any momentum up to that point. I hadn't done much work on it by the time I decided to just go straight to the beach. I think I did the right thing but there were a couple of sketches I wanted to show... This one's pretty self-explanatory...



Spence enquires into Kaycee's whereabouts and Bill lies. As you'd know, Bill tells Kaycee he's done this in the beach scene and that's good enough for me. Besides I much prefer Kaycee's reaction "never asked you to lie for me". I did like the facial expressions in the draft though. In this one Nadine is pointing out something on her comm... the 'what' that might be will be obvious next week...

Nadine can be a hard character to draw and get right... that hair of hers can be a real pain (one day I'm going to shave it all off, that'll show her!!) I find I often have much better luck with drafts of her than I do the final art, which is annoying and I have no idea why it happens. Anyway, I really liked the simple way I captured her face (and hair!) in this sketch.

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