This is also limiting the formats in which I can publish this. If I publish it as a softbound book then you won't be able to open the pages wide enough to see all the details close to the fold. Hardbound seems like the only way I can go about it, but that's exactly the feel I wanted with this book so I'm not to worried. It does, however, mean expensive printing costs so I've been looking into printing presses in China. The two that I've heard about and briefly talked to are:

• Crossblue
• Regent Publishing

I've gone to the Crossblue office in LA about two years ago and I was very happy with what I saw and the quotes they gave me.  I heard about Regent from a friend who published through them but it took about a month and a half just to get some paper samples as well as waiting weeks to hear back from emails.  But the quality of their books are very nice.  I still need to get a quote so we will see how they stack up to Crossblue.

Does anyone have any other suggestions of good printers that do high quality books at a good price?

- Jason

Publish a graphic novel?

Most people look at me cross-eyed when I tell them my dream to publish my graphic novel. Most of the time I have to explain what a graphic novel is before I can continue describing my fantasy.  Then there are those who think I’m just a dreamer who’s never going to finish because I’ve been working on this crazy side project ever since they can remember.

On the right side is my ode to Christian Schellewald I guess. You see, I bought his book, LA/SF, at the San Diego Comic Con in 2006 after looking through the entire convention. It was one of the only books that really stood out to me, besides Joshua Middleton’s Sky Between Branches. Schellewald’s book is filled with amazing little guasch paintings and sketches of completely normal things. Mostly streets, airplanes, and palm trees, but with every sketch is an amazing composition and what amazed me most was his use of negative space. Almost an entire panel would be painted white and then the lower third would be a cool tree or something. This really opened my eyes to a few things. One, negative space is a really good thing. And two, the whole guash painting approach is a good thing too. I know what you are thinking right now. This guy can’t write to save his life. I know, I know, I may not be J.K. Rowling when it comes to sharing my thoughts but I sure know when I love an artistic style.
Schellewald’s and Middleton’s books are some of the biggest influences on this graphic novel. Middleton’s sketches on his blog just make my head spin. You might have to dig a little for them but it’s worth it.

Anyway, I loved the negative space idea and as you can see, I wholeheartedly applied it to the right side of this page.

Below are a few of the steps that I had to take to get this finished spread.

A step is missing here where I blew up this thumbnail and printed it on 8.5 x 11 paper and traced over it using tracing paper and a bald point pen.
This is the final line work after blowing it up again and printing it on two sheets of legal paper (8.5 x 14) taped together.  I used a light table, bristol board and a mechanical pencil. Scanned to Photoshop, adjusted the contrast and presto.

For about 3 years now, I’ve been slaving away at my coloring process about as slow as possible. I would spend hours and hours filling between the lines all while throwing textures over everything to see how it might look. I would work on a page for half a day and then just leave it alone for a while. Perhaps I might dream of a better color pallet that night. Or maybe I’ll be able to see something better if I open it up in a week or a month.

[EDIT: 8-25-2011] I finished reading it finally and I have to admit that there is some great information in there especially with the technical stuff towards the end. The information on distribution, ISBN’s, barcodes and all that fun (non artistic) stuff was the most helpful but there was a lot that I felt didn’t apply to me because I wasn’t trying to make a normal comic. Most of the artistic advice was good for complete beginners  (or complete idiot’s as the title says) and maybe people who want to publish traditional American style comics but I don’t feel like it applies to graphic novels as much. So, buy it if you are looking for some good technical information but I’d still suggest getting Making Comics by Scott McCloud over this any day.

The only thing that really bothered me about it was the constant joke telling. About 50% of the text was a joke. I felt like I had to speed read it to get the good information which became increasingly frustrating as I was trying to figure out when to take it seriously and when it was comedy filler. I admit that it was good humor but, for me, a how-to book needs to have solid information so I can reference it later when needed.

So my final decision is to get it in addition to other How-to books on the subject but not as a stand alone.

________________

Now back to my graphic novel…

The pages below are finally starting to get into the story of reMIND.  The first batch of pages were all designed to give a mood and feeling associated with this story as well as introduce things.  To be a Hayao Miyazaki intro so to speak.  Miyazaki has been a huge influence in my vision for the last 10 years or so.  I am not saying that I understand what he does or that I’m even close but if I can achieve just a fraction of his mood setting genius then I will be satisfied.

If you haven’t seen any of Miyazaki’s films then for the love of everything holy, please do.  My favorite so far is Spirited Away. Here is a link of you want to buy any of them from Amazon.
Miyazaki Films on Amazon.

Sonja (the girl) has always been a huge struggle for me because I never really made a model sheet for her and never really knew what I wanted her to look like.  In fact she was a guy at one point.  Some shots my wife had to pose and some (like these) I was able to pull it out of my head.  I always worry that the continuity will be off but at the same time I love animations and graphic novels/comics that don’t care to much about it so I guess I should stop freaking out.  It is what it is.

Anyway, Here is a progression from my newest page of reMIND.

Line art then a gray tone pass attempted when I thought reMIND was just going to be black and white.  Haha, the days of simplicity are long gone. Then the finished painted art.

On Mondays I will post my pages from reMIND and on Thursdays I will post information about making graphic novels. 

This way when I have another interview with a graphic novel artist it won't interfere with posting my progress on Mondays.

With all that said, here is spread 8.  Another slow paced establishing shot before things get out of control. I'm not sure if I should have the time narration box or not.  I just want to make sure that everyone understands that it's in the middle of the night but I assume this is obvious because the picture in the dark.  Hmm. I'll let my writer buddy figure this one out.  Who knows.  Maybe there will be narration box in every frame like Watchmen.  I hope not. Otherwise I'd never finish reading my own book.

I read someplace that you should make rules for yourself when working on your own project like a graphic novel. One of my rules is to have a maximum of 4 panels per page unless it's the same camera angle repeated over and over. This repeated frame technique is pretty much inspired completely from working in the world of animation and storyboards for the last decade. Sometimes it's fun to explore a locked down sequence of frames to show the movements and visually explain how things happen over a period of time.

I guess my decisions here are mainly to show Victuals struggle to leave the comfort of the lighthouse to get back to the water. I'm hoping that my audience will wonder why he left the lighthouse as well as notice the first words coming from his mouth. Cat's talk?

Oh yeah, and I'm not using Comic Sans anymore.

Another thing I have been toying with is the idea of switching from Google's blogging service to WordPress.org.  A few things have come up swaying me to go this route.

Here is a list of my reasons, so far, for switching from Blogger to WordPress.
 

• WordPress looks much more professional.
• Since it's open-source it has more options for how to set it up. 
• Once it's set up right, it's amazing what you can do with it and it's easy.
• reMINDblog.com will be an actual domain instead of a forwarded domain name.
• All the content will be on my server and controlled by me.
• I can use ComicPress to easily display my pages in an orderly fashion.
• I can have a menu at the top with About, Contact, Links, Tutorials, Etc.

Click image to enlarge.

I have to say that this is almost my favorite finished spread. I just love how the lighting turned out with the warm sun blasting everything in the bedroom and kitchen. This was also around the time I started running out of large Bristol board sheets in which to put a full spread.  I wanted to finish another page that Saturday and I had a bunch of animation paper laying around so I decided to draw individual frames on it instead. What I discovered changed my whole process and I've never looked back.  

You see, back in the day it was ingrained into my mind that I needed to layout a comic page on Blue Line Pro.  When shrunk down 65% it fits exactly to a standard comic size page. Everything had to be perfected on that Blue Line Pro because there was no Photoshop at my fingertips to edit any mistakes. Until recently I always felt like I needed to draw all the panels together, after all, how would I sell the originals if it wasn't nicely arranged exactly as it is in the comic.

Well, I'm here to tell you when I tried to sell original art at the Ape Con a few years ago along other graphic novel publishers, I had more luck selling small originals then selling large ones. In fact I sold about 20 small originals that were 4" x 4" and three that were 4" x 8". Nothing larger then that sold. Hmmm. Maybe my large artwork sucks but that's not the point.

To this day I draw all the frames separately except for sometimes with a few small ones. I like the idea of arranging it all in Photoshop however I want. I still stick very closely to my original thumbnail and sketches which are all still drawn as a whole. The only things I'm still unhappy with, on this page, are the ugly blue sound effects.  I really need to draw something better to replace them.

Here is the thumbnail.

And here are the finished frames.