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10 Things BEFORE You Start a Comic or Graphic Novel

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.

To start this off, I'd like to say that I'm not trying to promote outsourcing. I'm sure someone will read this and be upset with me for showing a clear cut way to outsource your comic pages causing the American economy to collapse…again.  All I'm trying to do here is get my stupid graphic novel finished before I'm to old to draw.  Plus I'd rather spend time with my wife and son then flatting a page on the weekends.  After all, this isn't my job, it's my personal project/hobby.

Surviving the effects of globalization for an online freelancer?

Now that I've captivated you with that last link, I'll plow forward.  The whole idea of outsourcing arose after reading the book The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. This book, in itself, is a controversy. I think Tim is a bit of a salesman myself but I did pick up some interesting things from his ramblings.

Outsourcing was one of them. Outsourcing boring, time consuming, or monotonous things that don't need your special attention so you can focus on things you want to do. 

The book suggests a few websites that specialize in aggregating freelancers from around the globe.  Here are a few of them:

• elance.com (what I used)
• guru.com

I suggest Elance over Guru. Guru is slow and it's hard to find anyone for a good price.  Why would I want to pay someone $75 an hour to flat out my pages.  Elance, on the other hand is a pretty fast site to look through and you can find people around the world but it does take some getting use to.

I ended up using a small company of five from India called Dream Computers.  They have a few comic coloring samples in their portfolio.  Their hourly rate said $15 but after I paid them for my test pages they emailed me back, dropping their page rate to $15 a page for finished coloring. Just so you know, I never used what they colored because it wasn't what I was looking for but I'm thinking about emailing my contact at Dream Computers to show them a flatting tutorial and negotiate a new price.  After all I don't want to pay them the same price for flatting a page as I would for finished coloring.  My only problem with this method is it seems like you have to spend time and money to get the right freelancer and maybe even teach them what you want them to do.

Even though I can see how this might work out well with the exchange rates, I'm still curious about hiring someone who already knows how to do flats.  I mean how much more could it cost to have a professional flatter?  But where do I find one?

[Edit] Click here to find out – Outsourcing Comic Flatting – part 2 

P.S. I just got reamed the other day about my lousy lettering job in these pages.  I promise I will make it all better once I learn to do it right and I'll post what I learn. 

[Edit] What I learned – Lettering and Making your own fonts

Here is Spread 5 by the way.

I'm thinking of adding part of a row boat in the bottom left panel foreground. I already redrew Sonja twice and finally asked my wife to pose for me so I could get it right. I worry it looks more realistic then the rest of her frames.  And talk about negative space!

In my last post I brought up Elance or Guru for outsourcing.  This has been useful to know but I almost hate the process of finding the right person, spending money to test them, possibly train them and the whole time wondering if I could just find a more direct route to a professional flatter in the comics industry for a good price.

Enter GutterZombie.

This is an awesome forum started by Dave McCaig, pretty much dedicated to the comic coloring world. These guys really know their stuff and when I asked about flatting they laughed and directed me to a "work for hire section" that is full of Flatters just waiting to get work.  It looks like the going rate is about $10 a page. That's not bad in my opinion.  I can see paying ten dollars instead of using 3 hours of my free time and I don't have to teach them about Flatting.

Here is a link to the work for hire section: Flatters!

There are several people offering their service as flatters but it looks like posting a thread about your project is the best approach.  It seems like everyone finds someone when they post a thread.

I dug through some of the posts and found a few professional looking websites of flatters.  Here are the first five I found but there's plenty more:

Aaron Daly

Alex Petretich

David Burns

Fred Fries

Ruth Lim

I talked to Aaron Daly by email and he offered to flat a page for free to show me how it might work if I hire him for more.  He finished the page I sent him in a flash and it looked amazing!  We talked about a page rate and I must say that it is much better then I expected (sorry I don't want to say his price because he's doing me a favor since I'm paying for this out of my own pocket.) I'll share what he is doing for me in a future post but feel free to check out his samples here.

In conclusion, I'm pretty convinced that finding a flatter through GutterZombie.com is the best approach when looking to outsource. I know I've found my guy and it was pretty easy.

Here is spread 6 along with the pencil lines.  Sorry I'm starting to impose my name and the date of conception on my work.  I've noticed some sites are posting my images which is very exciting but also makes me kinda worried if I don't watermark it from now on. I hope it's not to intrusive into the art.

Here are the final pencil lines of spread 6.

And here is the final colors (I think).  Notice almost a year passed between the pencils and colors.  I'm sure you're also noticing that I'm milking the splash page spreads here.  Don't worry, the whole book isn't going to be like this, although it will have splash spreads throughout. I just wanted the first chapter to be a slower pace to force the mood and feel of the world onto the reader before I jumped into heavy story.

(All this information about outsourcing is my unprofessional opinion only. Please contact your CPA for any tax related questions about outsourcing.)

• Batman
• Superman
• Spider-Man
• X-Men
• Spawn!

JASON BRUBAKER – Hey Ian.  Thanks for taking the time for this interview. 

To start things out, How did you become a comic colorist?

IAN HANNIN - No problem, Jason. I'm a fan of your work- especially, the colors!

Let's go back to 1995. Wow. I was a comic book fan, and a Photoshop enthusiast working at Kinko's in downtown Orlando, FL. On one of my weekly scheduled trips to the comic book store, I found myself with the latest issue of Wildstorm Production's, WildC.A.T.s, drawn by my favorite, the legendary Jim Lee. And to my astonishment, there was an page in the back devoted to their talent search! They were looking for writers, pencilers, inkers and colorists. I figured I'd give it a go since I'd had some traditional painting experience, and was fresh out of Ringling School of Art and Design of Sarasota, having learned Photoshop 2.0! I crafted a resume, collected some of my photoshop work, and dropped it all in the mail to La Jolla, CA. A few days later, I received a call from Wildstorm- a truly life-changing day. I will always be indebted to Alex Sinclair- pioneer in the biz, and Jim Lee colorist to this day, for giving me the opportunity. Within a few short weeks, I had moved to La Jolla, settled into a small studio apt, and begun coloring Jim Lee's comics- with the man himself just down the hall. And by the way, he's still my hero, and a great guy.

JASON BRUBAKER – What a great story.  I remember picking up that same issue of WildC.A.T.S. and spending the next 2 weeks perfecting 4 penciled pages for a submission.  They told me I wasn't chosen but I was second on the list.  Oh well.  So since my blog is about making comics and graphic novels I'll try to get really specific now of your process.

When you color, do you use any photo reference or do you just pull it all out of your head?

IAN HANNIN - If I need photo reference, it's usually for background elements. With deadlines looming, sometimes I'll search online for photos of things I'd have a tough time starting from scratch. A cloudy sky or some ripples in the surface of a pool. Maybe a nice moon with craters and gashes across the surface. In any case, I tweak it heavily- adding contrast, blurring, smudging, adding my own details, and of course changing the hues. By the time I'm done with the reference, it's no more a photo than a Monet is.

JASON BRUBAKER – It seems like that is a pretty common practice now days.  About half the artist I work with manipulate photos for their visual development paintings.  They also make a lot of custom brushes in Photoshop.  Is this something you do as well?

IAN HANNIN - I do have some custom brushes, but I use them sparingly. I'm a big believer of less-is-more. I try to keep the colors simple and clean. Too much rendering is too much to look at. I mean, come on, the reader is READING. If I need some blood splatter, or some rust, then I'll go for the custom brushes. But I don't care for coloring with textures everywhere. Just because you can make blue jeans look real in Photoshop, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Ninety-Nine percent of the time, I'm using the lasso tool and the airbrush to render the lighting set up by the inker. That's it.

JASON BRUBAKER – I see.  Do you have someone flat out your pages before you start?

IAN HANNIN – To paraphrase one of my heroes, there is no "try". You are DOING it. You're making your graphic novel. To those reading this who's work I haven't had the good fortune to see, I would say only this: Make it your own and do it in a way we've never seen before.

JASON BRUBAKER – Very good advice. And now for the most important question…If you were a color which one would it be?

IAN HANNIN – That would change from day to day, but sitting here right now I'd have to say C 65, M 85, Y 0, K 30.

To start things off I want to apologize for using the Comic Sans font in my pages as seen above.  I just learned a bunch of stuff lately about my lack of skill and understanding of lettering and now I'm kinda embarrassed with what I've posted.  I will be updating the lettering fonts really soon so worry not!  Because of this eye opening experience I have decided to do some posts specifically about this subject.

First of all I'd like to thank Jim Campbell for being the first person to point this out to me.  He re-lettered some of my pages to show me how much better it could look if executed correctly and helped me see many things I was overlooking. 

To list a few things that I was doing wrong:

• Using Comic Sans font. Apparently it's an incomplete font and very hated by letterers.
• Using an I with the cross bars in the middle of a word. (BIG NO NO)
• Words completely unvaried. Not showing any emphasis on key words.
• Not even thinking that anyone really cared about lettering.

First, here is a link that breaks down all the basics of comic lettering. It's very helpful just to understand strange symbols and to know what people are accustomed to.

Comic Book Lettering Grammar and Tradition – Nate Piekos

Second, here are two sites that sell comic lettering fonts and some are even free.

Blambot Fonts (comic lettering fonts and some free fonts)
Comicraft Fonts (these are really professional looking but cost money)

(Thanks to Ryan Christopher Lord for giving me these links.)

Third, here are some tutorials on Lettering:

Comicraft lettering tips and tricks
Jim Campbell's lettering guide using Illustrator (download link)

So now that I have discovered the basics of graphic novel lettering, I need to update my pages to cool the burning hatred fueled from frivolous overuse of Comic Sans.

I downloaded the template and filled it in on my computer using a Wacom Cintiq.  It only took 10 minutes or so just like they said.  Once I uploaded my completed template it took about 40 seconds to create the font ready to be downloaded.  I was really blown away with how easy it was.  My only problem is not being able to control the kerning of the letters but you can do that in Photoshop or Illustrator.  They suggest using FontCreator to get more technical.  But as far as a font made out of your own hand writing, I’m impressed.

Better yet, I happened to stumble across the site when they had a free promotion code so I made a bunch just for fun.  Here they are:

Anyway, I still need to master my word balloons and sound effects.  I’ll save that for another time.  Plus, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve learned this week.

So I’ve started spending time in art forums these last few months. One of the forum rules is “No Trolling”. I have no idea what this means and when I asked an artist friend he told me it was to sit under a bridge and grant wishes. I looked it up in the dictionary and found that it was either loud singing or a method of fishing. I’m still confused but apparently I haven’t broken this rule yet because I’m still allowed to post.

I’ve never used a forum before a few months ago. To tell you the truth, I am pleasantly surprised with them, for the most part. Growing up, the only way to share my art with others or get critiques was to join a drawing group at the local comic shop (which I did) but joining the local comic shop drawing club had it limits. There were only a handful of us and all our styles were polar opposites. Showing art to the world was just impossible at the local shop too.

These forums, on the other hand, are great for getting critiques from as many people as you can handle as well as helping someone else see something they are missing. Not only that but you can show off your art to the whole world. Since I’ve started trolling I’ve had almost 5000 views of my thread in ConceptArt.org as well as some really great advice on how to make my cover better at PencilJack.com. ConceptArt brought over 200 unique viewers to my blog and PencilJack pulled in over 100. Aside from the numbers I’m totally inspired by some of the amazing artists who post regularly. Some people will start posting as beginner artists and 2 years later their progress blows my mind. It’s been so inspiring to see how people have learned their anatomy through their sketchbook threads at ConceptArt and it makes me want to start doing the same.

This whole idea came about after talking to an amazing illustrator, Ronald Kurniawan, about how to get my artwork noticed. He suggested spending an hour a day in forums both posting work and commenting on others work. He said if you can do that for a month then you will have mad traffic. I started about two months ago and I have…some traffic. But I have to admit that Ron’s work is VERY impressive and I can’t expect to see the same success as he has. None the less, I’ve started getting a small steady flow if traffic to my site which is much better then before when I just had my family visiting once a month.

Now even though I started attending forums to get traffic to my site I have become quite addicted and enjoy it too much to stop now. I can seriously see myself doing this for a long time.

I’ll talk about specific forums next week. If someone knows what a Forum Troll is then please shed some light on the subject.

[Edit] Forum Trolls explained. Thanks everyone!

Artist, Illustrator and Comic Forums