Category Archive for ‘artwork’

From Script to Coloured Page 4

May 19th, 2013 • 1 Comment

Andie Tong’s finished inks are coloured by Pete Pantazis and end up like this:

I guess before starting on this project I was vaguely aware that you usually had a guy who drew the pages and a guy who coloured them, but if I’d thought about it at all I’d supposed that colouring was a pretty mechanical process, yeah, you decide a jacket’s red and you make it red, APPLY. Seeing what Pete does with Andie’s pages has been quite a revelation. He gives every scene a very different treatment, he thinks a hell of a lot about the lighting, the weather, the time of day, the mood. He gets great variety into each issue that sets a tone for each character. The atmosphere he creates is astounding, and actually the much greater clarity he gives the action too. So the time of day wasn’t entirely clear before, but here we have a fire lit, shadowy night. The officers are ruddy in the glow of welcoming lamplight from inside the inn. The Practicals are sinister in the long shadows. Details like the candle glow around the doorframe in the first panel, or shining down the steps and across the cobbles, there are even stars in the night sky in the third panel, all add a sense of realism and atmosphere.

I’ll check over the coloured pages, usually in scene batches. The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that on this first run, West’s hair is the wrong colour in panels three and four. Lettering is usually done on the black and white pages first by unsung hero of the whole process Bill Tortolini, checked by me, amended, then married up with the coloured pages for a final result. The final result for this page, you’ll be able to see at www.firslawcomic.com tomorrow (Monday 20th), with further pages posted free every monday, wednesday and friday. Should you wish to get ahead, and read whole issues at a time, you can pay us actual cash money for the privilege over at ComiXology, for which you also receive guided view and some of the inks and pencils. You can download their software for nothing and it’s a cool way to view this and a vast amount of other material (a fair bit of that free). I recommend it…

From Script to Coloured Page 3

May 18th, 2013 • 2 Comments

And now Page 5 inks:

With the ink (digital ink, I would assume) comes texture, shadow, detail, realism and weight. I usually don’t see the pencils, just comment on the inked pages, and more often than not I’ve got very little to say. They then go straight on to Pete Pantazis for colouring…

From Script to Coloured Page 2

May 17th, 2013 • 3 Comments

And now the pencilled page 5:

When I think about the amount of work that goes into each page, I get a bit scared. There’s the design of the costumes, the characters, the architecture, a huge task which is akin to asking the artist to act as costume designer, set designer, and casting agent on a film rolled into one. Then he or she has to turn director and decide exactly how to organise the panels specified in the script – here Andie’s chosen to make them a little jagged and off-kilter, suggesting Jezal’s drunkeness and the sudden explosion of action, the graphic novel equivalent of wobbly handheld camera work, maybe. Then there’s choosing the exact angle to take on each panel, the positioning of the characters to most effectively communicate the action. And that’s before he or she takes on the responsibility of all the actors and starts getting the expressions right, individuality into the faces, a sense of movement and emotion.

Those among you with some artistic talent are probably breaking it down into steps and thinking how you’d go about it. To me it seems like magic.

Incidentally, the page previous to this is up at www.firstlawcomic.com right now. Tomorrow, we’ll be talking inks…

From Script to Coloured Page 1

May 16th, 2013 • 3 Comments

Now that The First Law Graphic Novel is chugging away, I thought I might share some of the process, looking at the script, pencils, inks, and colours on a few pages from issue two I particularly like. First up is the forthcoming page 5, which will be going up on the site this coming monday. We start, of course, with script. I’ve done a rough breakdown of the first book into 16 issue sized chunks, which ends up being around 20-35 pages of mass market book to each 22 page issue, which makes it a pretty comprehensive adaptation and means it hasn’t been necessary to cut whole threads or characters, or even individual scenes very often. Veteran comics writer Chuck Dixon has then been adapting the text more or less as he sees fit, reducing the dialogue to the essentials, rendering the action into visual form, deciding what panels, what angles, what visual methods are going to best get across a sense of the text. He comes up instantly with ways to organise a page that would never occur to me, and it’s amazing how much you can achieve in a single carefully constructed panel. I’ve then been tinkering with his scripts where it seems necessary to retain a certain line, or emphasise something that will become important in the story, or add some context, or occasionally to remove something that didn’t seem needful and could allow the pictures to breathe a little more. The whole thing’s been quite a fascinating process for me, actually, and certainly a steep learning curve…

Anyway, amended script for page 5 – in which the Union’s brave officers tumble drunk from an inn to find Practicals Frost and Severard in the midst of abducting Sepp dan Teufel – looks a little something like this, and I think is pretty much exactly what Chuck first came up with:

PANEL ONE

Jezal exits the tavern into the street. He’s stumbling. West and Jalenhorm exit behind him. It’s night. They are in a bar of light from the open door illuminating the dark street.

JEZAL: I NEED AIR!

JALENHORM: YOU NEED DRINK, JEZAL!

PANEL TWO

In the foreground we see Practicals Frost and Severard struggling to bind Sepp dan Teufel while slipping sack over his head. Both Practicals are masked. We see Jezal and his two pals turning to regard this scene from the front of the tavern in the background.

JEZAL: WHAT’S THIS?

TEUFEL: HELP—gih!

WEST: YOU THERE!

PANEL THREE

The three soldiers confront the Practicals. Jalenhorm and West have hands on the hilts of their swords. Frost struggles with dan Teufel while Severard holds up a hand to the soldiers.

SEVERARD: GENTLEMEN, PLEASE, WE ARE ON THE KING’S BUSINESS.

JALENHORM: THE KING CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS IN THE DAY-TIME.

SEVERARD: THAT’S WHY HE NEEDS US FOR THE NIGHT-TIME STUFF, EH, FRIEND?

PANEL FOUR

West whips out his sword and Frost roars and flexes his muscles as he throws dan Teufel to the cobbles.

WEST: WHO IS THIS MAN?

TEUFEL: (MUFFLED) I AM SEPP DAN—oof!

FROST: THAAAAAAH!

Tomorrow, you can see script make the leap to pencils…

Major West Needs YOU!

May 8th, 2013 • 18 Comments

As of today, the whole 24 page first issue of The First Law Graphic Novel is up at www.firstlawcomic.com. You can go check it out, entirely free of charge. It is our GIFT to you ungrateful lot, and new pages will carry on being posted every monday, wednesday, and friday.

For those who’d rather not wait, though, all 22 pages of Issue 2 are also available as of now on ComiXology, and it’s a humdinger, with the appearance of the Union’s most self-obsessed young officer, Jezal dan Luthar, not to mention his reluctant fencing partner Collem West and the latter’s unconventional sister Ardee. Meanwhile Logen wanders into the sort of trouble you can only get out of with a blade, and Inquisitor Glokta shows the results that can be achieved with a cleaver, a set of fingers, and the will. The art and colours I feel just keep getting better. Both I and Collem West urge you to contribute to this righteous cause.

Go on, he could do with cheering up, he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders. As well as cinematic-style guided view, ComiXology will also provide you with a bonus package of inks and pencils. Incidentally, it looks as if a physical collection of the first four issues should be available around end of August, but more on that as I have it. I’ll also be looking at the development of some of the pages from script, to pencils, to inks, to colours, over here as we go.

In the meantime, a few interviews about how this project came to be, how it’s got where it is, and where we hope it’s going:

With veteran comics writer Chuck Dixon, who’s adapting the books, plus a comment or two from me, over at Comic Book Resources. You’ll also see a few panels from the second issue in that one.

With me at Graphic Novel Reporter.

With me and Rich Young, the editor and co-ordinator of the project, over at Pipedream Comics.

Then there’s a piece with the artist, Andie Tong, over here.

A quickie at Sword and Laser.

The First Law Graphic Novel

April 10th, 2013 • 111 Comments

It is with the greatest pleasure of which my withered prune of a heart is capable that I announce the release of a project that has been a long time in the pipeline, which is, as many of you may already have guessed, a full colour, comprehensive Graphic Novel adaptation of that pillar of 21st century fantasy fiction: The First Law Trilogy.

It’s been put together by Rich Young of Blind Ferret, adapted by Chuck Dixon, with art by Andie Tong, colours by Pete Pantazis, lettering and design from Bill Tortolini, all done under the horrifying gaze of my single flaming unblinking eye. I am hugely pleased with the results, which, no lie, have exceeded every expectation.

But the thing that’s of particular interest to me about this project, and probably will be of some interest to you as well, is the method of distribution. Mainly – that we’re giving it away to anyone with an internet connection.

Yes, you heard me right. We’re serialising it, free, at www.firstlawcomic.com.

The first twelve pages are up there now. You can go look at them. For nothing. And there’ll be new pages added every monday, wednesday, and friday, if things go according to plan, for years to come. And you’ll be able to look at those too. For nothing. The hope is, that when we’ve finally completed this project, there’ll be well over a thousand pages of high quality First Law graphic novel up online. For nothing.

But, eager to give the hungry public as many bites of the cherry as they can stomach, and aware that some might not be satisfied by a page here and a page there, you can also get hold of it in advance, issue by issue, via the world’s biggest digital comic distributor, Comixology. The entire 24 page first issue is available there now, for 99 cents. Further issues will be available there for $2.99 when we start to serialise them for free at firstlawcomic.com. So the day the first page of an issue comes out for nothing, you can pay for all 22 pages, and enjoy the envy of your friends, acquaintances and colleagues for seven weeks. What could be sweeter? Plus via Comixology you get, as a bonus, guided view (which, for those unfamiliar, takes you through panel by panel in a cinematic styley), and a package of pencils, inks, and character designs with every issue.

Finally, for those who want something to grace their coffee table, we’ll be collecting every four issues into a hardcopy collection, with further bonus material. Availability and price of that to be confirmed.

When you work with an artist, my feeling is you’ve got to give them the leeway to draw it as they see it. I’ve had an awful lot of input at every stage. Full editorial control, indeed, though I’ve generally gone for a fearsomely firm yet lovingly gentle touch. But, in a sense, this is Andie Tong’s vision of the material, given extra verve and variety by Pete’s colours. It’s one possible interpretation. One that’s evolved as we’ve worked on it, and no doubt will continue to evolve. But it’s one that I fully endorse, and am very proud of. So some of you might not like everything about it. One option would be for you to close your eyes really tight and stick your fingers in your ears and shout, ‘blah lee lah lee lah, I’m not listening, I’m not listening!’ whenever I talk about it. That, believe me, will be no skin off my sizeable nose at all. I suspect, though, if you give it a chance, most will find a great deal to like. Not least among those things? It won’t cost you a dime.

You can see the first few pages right now. Tell me what you think. Moan about how this or that doesn’t look the way it did inside your head. Maybe even enjoy it.

Go on. I dare you.

For Nothing.