Creating a Graphic Novel : Art – Food – Photography

Pixar’s latest film Wall-E was released last Thursday here in Australia. I have always loved Pixar films and managed to get the oppurtunity over the weekend to check it out.

The film has outdone itself with the computer graphics and animation. The work is sublime! Extraordinary detail has been placed on the desolate earth scenes and the space scenes are captivating. This is the first Pixar where they have inserted “live actors” and it fits in surprisingly well.

At the heart of it all and where Pixar has always shined, is the ability to craft an engaging story which has broad appeal to kids, oldies and everyone in between. Wall-E is the last working robot on Earth and continues with his directive to slowly clean up the world. 700 years has passed and he has evolved sentience and emotion but is also very lonely. All this changes with the arrival of Eve, which leads Wall-E to adventures in space.

This may be a very simplistic plot outline but I really didn’t want to give anything away. I really felt young again watching this film. With very little dialogue it is almost reminiscent of those silent films where emotions had to be acted rather than said and a raised eyebrow and timing is more important than a monologue. Highly recommended film! Check it out.

[Wall-E (left) & Eve (right) – Copyright Pixar]

Was clearing up some files for my website and found the original preliminary sketches for two artists featured previously. Have a look at the updated posts complete with the preliminary sketches :

• DC Trinity by Luis XIII
• Spiderman by GW Fisher

Whew . . it’s been an interesting week and a bit but I’ve covered the entire design process for my Tango 8 submission from beginning to end. I’m pleased as a first attempt to get published! There’s another project (actually 2 other projects) but still very much in the scripting / design phase.

Anyway follow the links below to see the entire process :
Part 1 – Food & Love
Part 2 – Plot Ideas
Part 3 – Script
Part 4 – Sketches & Layout
Part 5 – Final

I’ve also updated my Projects page for future reference. The link is also located at the left column of this website.

This is where it all comes together. Inking and lettering were digitally done. Unfortunately the picture is a little distorted after shrinking to fit the site but the words are still “just” legible. Enjoy!

Some of my initial concept sketches for the piece. The top right showed the layout I envisioned for the page. My main aim was to get the woman’s body angle correct. I was lucky that the initial sketch kind of turned out the way I wanted it to.

Decided against using the full body in the final panel.  Originally I wanted her to have a mischievous smile but that detracted from the story. Especially when the focus should be on the instant mushroom sauce packet lying in the rubbish.

I had hoped to find a collaborator to do the artwork so I wrote a panel by panel breakdown. Unfortunately I couldn’t find someone to complete the works so I ended up with the pencils. I’ll show the artwork in an upcoming post.

What’s in a Sauce?
Panel 1 –
Long panel. Woman (short spiky hair) with her back facing the reader. Head turned with face looking at the reader. Bottle of red wine sitting on a counter.

Woman : Can’t wait to try the wine. So how was dinner?
Friend : Mmm . . Food was great. Especially the mushroom sauce. What’s the secret?

[Panel 2, 3 & 4 are a sequence of different shots of her head. She’s “explaining” the secret. Angles should change]

Panel 2 –
Angle of face (looking left)

Woman : It’s an old family recipe.

Panel 3 –
Angle of face (looking up)

Woman : Mushrooms, creams, onions . . .

Panel 4 –
Angle of face (looking right) – One eye winking

Woman : . . . and lots of LOVE for flavour.

Panel 5 –
Final long panel. Focus on rubbish bin with an opened package “Instant Mushroom Sauce“. The wine and the woman should be in the scene to anchor the story.

Woman : Grandma always said to think about the person you care about when making the sauce. That’s the SECRET to making it great.

The submission was only going to be 1 – 4 pages which meant the story had to be very quick and to the point. More like a comic strip rather than a standard 22 page story. Had a couple of ideas come up but I came down to below three to fit the theme of “Food and Love”.

Plot 1
Romeo & Juliet with apples and oranges.
To be honest I just wanted to use the line “It’s like comparing apples and oranges! We’re just too different to be together”.

Plot 2
The secret to a sauce is love.

Plot 3
Top class restaurant chef who still enjoys simple home cooking.

What am I working on?
I’ve completed a submission for a romance comic anthology called TANGO 8. It’s a one page story and I will be posting up the full design process over the next week (including sketches and script).

Information
The anthology is called TANGO and this particular issue is based around love and food. TANGO is compiled and published by Bernard Caleo who has been doing great work to promote Australian comics!

More information is available in the below link :
http://www.cardigancomics.com

OK . . this was a little guilty pleasure but picked up a Transcend 32Gb USB Stick. Mmm . . so much storage! There’s more space in there than on my laptop (albeit my laptop is 2 years old now). That should be more than enough room in the stick for a long time!

Tim Hilderbrandt (1939 – 2006) worked with his brother Greg on some of the most impressive artwork covering Star Wars to Lord of the Rings to comics to Magic the Gathering artwork. I was lucky enough a few years ago to purchase the original preliminary sketch of the MtG card Brain Freeze. I love the “feel” of the picture as the goblin is being blown away by an icy wind.

Preliminary Sketch

Final Artwork