Page 47 and a lot of Drawing

What a page!  I decided to try and put this entire scene on a single page (aside from the misdirecting phone ringing panel on the prior page).  Why?  Because it seemed a bit short for two pages and I thought it would work.  Also, at the time of laying it out the next scene was not written yet.  And I don’t like having scenes start and end in the middle of a page unless there is a reason.

Remember when I said I was working on my scene transitions?  I thought Eric saying he had to call Bennett switching to Bennett calling Kurt was rather clever.  Eh?

Talking about cramming a lot of drawing on a page, I’ve been reading a lot of Watchmen lately.  Damn they were able to get a ton of stuff on every page.  Small panels with full vivid scenes (and worlds) in virtually each one.  Just amazing.  And the “camera” movements and transitions!  So I don’t feel quite so proud when I look at this.

It’s probably not a good idea to compare yourself to the masters though, because you’re always going to look like trash.  As far as trash goes though, I think this is pretty good!

This was a fun scene featuring a chance interaction between two unlikely characters.  And it’s a bit of a battle between them.  Makes for interesting dialogue.

I’ve talked about drawing phone conversations in the past (on I’m Famous!) and how much I enjoy comparing locations.  I find them pretty fascinating really, because you can do a lot with them.  Here we’ve got the dank squalor of Black Snow’s living-room versus the bright sanitary office of Marie.  These people come from different worlds, and it is another chance to emphasize just how lowly Black Snow is at this point.

We get to see a bit more of the apartment, and it is quite the dump (though I been to many real life apartments like this or worse).  Alex didn’t really describe it, so I got to make some fun decisions.  The most significant of which is probably the inclusion of a bong on the table.  I vaguely remember talking with Alex years ago about if Black Snow was also a drug addict, and I think we both agreed that was a bit darker than we wanted to go.

Well, pot is so common and seems like such a lesser drug that I didn’t it was a huge deal to include it here.  Between the people who live in this apartment I find the notion of at least one of them smoking weed to be very believable.  Is Black Snow high here?  That’s for the reader to decide.

I thought I did a pretty good job of giving us some different angles in the Kurt shots, while I purposely wanted Black Snow to seem more stationary, basically another way of comparing the two characters and their worlds.

I drew all the Black Snow stuff first and totally completed those panels before even starting on the Kurt stuff beyond very rough sketches.  You may notice I tried the classic word balloon (and font) approach to make it obvious when the dialogue is coming from the phone or the person in the panel.  I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out and hopefully it is obvious to the reader.

That overhead from behind shot of Kurt was fairly ambitious, and I did a pretty good job with it.  I think I really nailed that bottom left panel of Black Snow snuffing out his cigarette.  I’ve been wanted to do a panel like that for a long time now, and it was the first thing I drew here.  As you can see I put a lot of time and effort into giving it a more realistic detailed look.  That’s a nice showcase panel.  Why did I do it?  I thought it gave the dialogue a nice “fed up” feeling, and add some more variety to the page.

While I’m talking about it, sometimes I really take some liberties with the writing with my interpretation of Alex’s work.  Alex has never complained about it, and sometimes it is simply because by the time I draw a panel I don’t remember exactly what he wrote, but I have an idea in my head.  Good thing I’m not working with Alan Moore!  I appreciate the freedom that Alex affords me as it lets me try new things and play to my “strengths,” if I do indeed have any.  Also, I think he often forgets what he wrote by the time I draw it.

Anyway, a nice tight little one page scene there that we can all be proud of.