Pilgrim's done, what now?

This post will be some sort of a summing up of the whole experience with Pilgrim. There might be some tooting in my own horn, but that's what blogging is all about, or is it? Well, you've been warned! In preparation for this post I've read the earlier posts, so I've taken a trip along memorey lane, you might say.

Pilgrim has been very educational to me. I can't say that I'm an expert cartoonist by now, but I can say that I can tell a story with comics.

This monday I had quite the experience. I had printed all the pages and the for- and afterword, put them all in a binder. Later in the evening I read the comic from cover to cover. I hadn't read it all for a year and a half. I've only read the chapter that I was working on. To my amazement it worked! Well, I have to say that I'm biased, or part in the crime, so to say. But it was quite the experience to read it all, and seeing that it was ok. I mean, how would it have felt if it didn't work, then I've put time and energy on something that didn't work, talk about anti-climax!

Also this week I've been thinking about if I did the right thing by doing the comic now. Since this has been such an important story, maybe I should have done some smaller things first and then returned to this project. But I think like this. The reason it has been made, is because of the importance of the story. If I only did some smaller things, to get to learn how to work with the medium, than I might have not come to get going on Pilgrim. So I think that I made the right decision to do Pilgrim now. The learning experience that it has been has been a bonus, that I'm thankful for!

Script
I put some time and energy on the script, to get the pacing of the story right. When I think about that process it went smoothly. I tried different types of structures to tell the story, before settling on the current one.

Drawing
I always enjoy the sketching of a project, the uphill climb here has clearly been the clean up. It feels like you are re-doing something that you've already done, and that's never fun. But sometimes I'm very cunning, so I could trick myself into doing the clean up, by using the colored pencil! Or as they say, every idea is good except the bad ones!

Inking
Inking has been the steepest learning curve on this project. But that has to do with my earlier attempts at inking, that wasn't that successful. Where the drawing was full of life, the inked drawing was stiff and lifeless. But all along this project I kind of took the inking to my heart. Given off course that I'm basically a tracer, but that has to do with the fact that I've colored the pages, if the comic would have been in black and white the inking would have been quite different.

Coloring
This work has also been smoothly, except for the first pages... When I was coloring the first chapter, I noticed that I hadn't "closed" all the lines, so when I had been sitting in front of the computer for maybe twelve hours I had only done 3 half pages... The coloring for the later chapters went much more smoothly.

Publishing
I've used blogger and I don't regret that at all, it's easy to use and as a comics publishing tool it works fine!

What's going to happen now, with Pilgrim?
I'm currently exploring if there could be an analogue version for the comic. Other then that I'm thinking of doing a cover and a back illustration. As I've written before there might be a translation into English, but I'm not there yet. So there are some things that's going to be done, but for now, its done!

So what's going to happen now?
Well I'm going to take a short break, I'm going to do some smaller things. But my pipeline is filled to the brim with cool stuff. Actually I've got these concepts that I'm going to work on, starting 2014.
1) An ensemble drama about some characters in a small town. It's about following your dreams... Script is done, the character design is next.
2) An action adventure set in the 1930s. The concept is done, the writing's next.
3) A horror/thriller story. The concept is done, the writing's next.

In preparation for these projects I have some inspiration material that I'm going to read/watch.

So that's it for now, Pilgrim's done and not just done, it's donelly-donelly-done! I'm really looking forward to the next projects. I think they are going to kick some serious derrières!

Take care!

Half way through!

I'm half way through the project, well almost! So far it's been fun and educational, and I learn stuff all along the way. It will be fun and exciting to see the end result.

I've always enjoyed the sketching part of a project, when you're searching for the right expression or pose. When it comes to clean up, I find that to be of a more up hill climb with more resistance. During chapter 3, I tried to work around this by doing more detailed sketches in blue. And to my amazement it worked, maybe this is a fluke, but the clean up process of this chapter went really smooth and was not that difficult as it can be.

One funny thing I've noticed is that I can sometimes feel a bit worried about some panels that contain a lot of information, or are complicated for some reason. When I've drawn them they almost always turn out to be the best panels!

I've come to terms with the fact that the process of it all will be quite visible through this project, just like the fact that I've in chapter 3 centered the text in the word balloons, which I haven't done earlier.

For you that are not fluent in the Swedish language I can comfort you that with about 94% certainty there will be a translation in English! When I'm done with the final chapter I will make a translation.

Very soon I'm going to begin the work on chapter 4... And as always I can't tell you when chapter 4 will be done. For a progress report you will have to come back here!

Take care!

The process of writing

I don't see myself as a writer (not yet anyway). But it's something that I enjoy doing. After a while I usually send the piece to some friends that I trust, and who knows what they're doing, and I ask them to give feedback on the piece. I do this to ensure quality in the project and to get some new pairs of eyes on it. Because I get a little bit blind on my own text, and the new eyes that read the text can tell me things that I can do to get a better result. We usually do this a couple of times, depending on the project. I write, they read, give input, I write, they read etc. My experience tells me that it's a good and easy way to get a better result. But even though I trust my very well chosen friends, I must feel free to sometimes follow their lead and to sometimes say no please, because it's my project, and I must be at the helm! 

Yesterday was a day when I met my friends that had read one of my scripts. Now I'm going to think on their input and see what I'm going to do with it. I also showed them the first pages of Pilgrim, the comics project I'm doing at the moment. I got some good input on that one as well. After yesterdays session I think I've gotten a little bit further on the road to being a writer, and why not, since I fill my sketch books with writing and not sketches... and from the input yesterday I got that the script could easily be transformed into a novella, and also that Hemingway was name dropped! ;-)

Take care!