Comic Series

The Long Con

Posted on 16th November 2019 by pj

I’ve not done many cons this past couple of years, but I feel like next year I aught to up my con game.

Cons used to serve a very particular function for me, once upon a time, they were generally the place you’d go to meet editors and fellow creatives. I’d never bother with tables (because frankly I had no idea what I’d do at one). Eventually all the editors stopped attending and it was just about other pros, they’d become ‘jollies’.

My first comic con was around ’98 – ’99. I went over under the wing of Stewart Crofts-Perkins (aka WR Logan – one of the most well known 2000ad fans, credited for a number of story ideas by John Wagner, and is the fan for whom Chief Judge Logan is named – Wagner used to take great delight in telling Stu how he was about to mangle Judge Logan in the latest episode of Dredd, Stu sadly passed in 2016)

Pretty safe to say I’d’ve never ventured off to a con without Stewarts guidance (I was coming over from Belfast, had no friends locally doing conventions, though there were people – I just didn’t know them)

It was all UKCAC and Bristol cons in those days.

But they eventually died out, for a while leaving nothing but a couple of token comic cons and some of the massive film and memorabilia cons (which by then had been touched by the Big Bang Theory and were calling themselves Comic Cons, much to many comic creators chagrin).

Even cosplaying was a new endeavour in those halcyon days. (Memorably at an early con one guy dressed as Judge Dredd [and as a mark of the accuracy of his scratch built outfit he was also sporting a goatie beard] wearing a helmet that restricted his hearing, he was jokingly asked to come up to collect the award on behalf of the best character “Judge Dredd” – having misheard the announcer he went up to collect thinking it was best cosplay outfit (this, before those awards even existed), there was a very awkward moment as the 2000ad crew rescued their award from him, but not before he’d made a speech thanking his mate for holding his coat at the back and being amazed at the support… oops)

Anyway, cons now fall into, roughly, three categories for a creator, each of them have different needs and advantages…

Networking – if you’re only one of a couple of creators at a con it’s not much use for networking. Cons with editors, publishers, writers are all good for artists for networking. Bring portfolio, bring free stuff, circulate, mingle, eat drink and make merry.

Money making – You need a table to do this, along with something to sell. Prints, original art, comics, whatevers, or, possibly sketching on the day. Good footfall is needed or, at the very least, a targeted market (if you’re a Dredd artist, most decent sized British cons are good for this)

Something new – look, not all cons will have massive footfall, be super targeted to what you do, or be great for networking, but sometimes they’re just something that looks fun or amazing – do those if you can! Just make sure you don’t go broke doing them. They won’t advance your career, but they will (usually) be a lot of fun.

Anyway, that out of the way, I’m looking to get to some cons next year, and really they’ll need to hit two of three of those things for me. Cons are expensive, I work from home, so a two day weekend at a comic con can cost me four days of work – two days at the actual con, and two days of travel around the con.

(I once did a con so far from home it was two wasted days getting there and two back, mind you I also once did a con that in Athens that I went because I’d never been, got no work done, cost me a fortune but fell in love with Athens and returned two weeks later with my wife for a holiday).

Of course, on top of the work time lost, there’s the cost of travel and hotel on top of that (though in the days of yore, I’d compare travel notes with my english collegues often discovering the flight from Belfast was a half or a third the price of their train tickets)

When I began doing cons, comics where my secondary income – I had a proper day job. When I went to comics full time, cons became something of an expensive luxury (even if I was fortunate to have expenses paid to some).

And I’m not unusual in that, that’s most people’s experience.

So, anyway, if you’re a con I’ve not been to and would like me as a guest, just ask! If I can I’d love to attend.

Provisionally I’m planning to get to thoughtbubble in 2020 – I’ve missed every single one for various reasons, largely around timing.

And, because I can, here’s some photos from Ghosts of Conventions past, specifically Bristol Con 2004 (15 years ago!) – which I decided to document from my flight on (like a lunatic).

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Folklore Thursday: Whispers

Posted on 14th November 2019 by pj

The below was published in our Patreon (which you can subscribe to and get the comic as soon as I draw it, which is usually a day or two early!)

“Does this work” has become something of a mantra between John and I, he’ll send me something and a “does this work” (and it always does) and sometimes I’ll try something different and email it to John with a “Does this work”

So, anyway – does this work?

Bar a couple of bits all the ghosts are photos of me, my wife and my kids. (The couple at the door is from our wedding photo).

I’ll admit this may be gimmicy, but it’s one of the pleasures of this format is trying something once and moving on to something else.

I think if I could, I’d do something better with the fairies, the playground stuff (overlaying a photo of something…?) and the circus poster – dig in and find something that’s a real circus clown poster (and out of copyright).

Anyway, on to the next one!

22,000 panels that always work

Posted on 27th October 2019 by pj

Yes, it’s a four blog post kind of day.

I love twitter, but stuff gets buried, and it’s harder to do long form thinking on it.

Anyway, was thinking today (after stumbling across this procedurally generated maps of cities for dungeons and dragons) that it would be cool to do something similiar for comics. Something that could give you a whole bunch of panel layouts generated from a bare minimum of input. You put in the number of panels and it gives you a dozen layouts. You could select one panel and make it an exterior, or another and make it inset, and click you’d get another dozen layouts all keeping that in mind.

I’ve always been fascinated by the grammar of panel layouts. Let’s take the simplest count of panels: 2.

Here’s a bunch of options:

And that’s before you get into bleeding images off the page, circular panels, batman shaped panels or what’s even in the panels.

And some of these I think work better as first pages, and some work better as last pages (notably, the second panel being smaller, or inset below the midline of the page feels like a full stop on a page).

Three panel layouts explode your options, and it just gets wilder and wilder.

And I like nice readable panel layouts, so there’s some rules I’m a real stickler for, I love stacked panels, but stacking order is important:

Stacking on the right of a large panel is perfectly readable, stacking on the right can be illegible (though clever tricks with lettering/art can make it more readable, but really do yourself a favour and don’t do it!)

And here, dear reader is some examples of five panel layouts:

I keep meaning to (though never seem to have the time to) go through some of the great works (Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, er.. probably others) and draw out their panel layouts. I find them fascinating.

(Of course, Hass, of “Strip Panel Naked” has gone in to depth about panel grid layouts and I recommend you go and join his patreon/watch his youtube!)

8 Hour Comic Day

Posted on 27th October 2019 by pj

Is that a thing? Not sure if that’s a thing. Anyway. Saturday, Andy Luke (long time Norn Iron comic book chum) ran – with Farset labs – an 8hour comic day. Thomas loves things like this, so we went, he’s been busy writing and drawing a Why Not!? Halloween special, and I thought I should do something too.

Before that though, I took the kids to get their hair cut, and spent an hour in the hairdressers with nothing to do, luckily had the ipad, so I ended up doing a colour drawing that inspired the 8 page strip below. (After Tom suggested a title so simple and ingenious it was hard to ignore…)

Hopefully it’s readable (though it is badly drawn, I think you can see me fighting with myself later on where I’m going “it. doesn’t. have. to. be. good. just. draw. NO! MUST. REDRAW.” – not that I could have made it amazing, but it’s still hard to just sketch and show people something rubbish without burying it in caveats, so caveat: this is just me goofing off)

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Folklore Thursday: Chronos

Posted on 10th October 2019 by pj

Chronos was the Ancient Greek word for time, Cronos their sickle carrying God of Agriculture. Romans related Cronos to their own Saturn, and made him an old man. His sickle became a scythe, and Cronos became Old Father Time who, in turn, became The Grim Reaper. #FolkloreThursday

John Reppion

As befitting a strip about time, my time has not been my own the past few weeks, so the resulting strip isn’t quite what I wanted, but it’s good enough for government work (as they say)

One thing I like doing is a little bit of research, and panel one, the first sentence was an opportunity to ask yourself some questions – like “wait, what DOES and ancient greek time keeping device look like”. So I googled it and got this odd looking sundial. Now I have a new friend on twitter, Dr Rena, an archeologist and expert in this time period and she pointed out that this isn’t wrong, BUT more common would’ve been a water timer – but I’d already drawn the damn thing, and that at least looked like a thing I’d recognise as a time keeping device, whereas the water timer just looked like two pots.

I wanted, in the strip, to get across how simple and obvious the transition from Cronos, to Saturn to Old Father Time and then the Grim Reaper. I think I did that, but it’s clumsy and not at all subtle, but I am pretty happy with how that last grim reaper panel turned out.

I’m always making decisions about the rhythm of the strip, and these one pagers are interesting exercises in that. The tweet informs the panel layouts, but the panel layouts also inform how I’ll handle the tweet’s breakdown – in a neat little feedback loop.

I’ve always been interested in panel layouts, I used to keep a notebook that had a bunch of interesting panel arrangements, I’ve always preferred simple, straightforward reading experiences, but even with that limit (a zig zag panel layout) there’s a billion ways to slice it. But some panel layouts work great at the start of a book and some work better at the end. Middle is more open, unless there’s a scene transition in there.

It’s a fascinating exercise to open up a favourite book and just draw out the panel layouts. (For a certain level of fascinating, that is…)

Anyway, that’s your lot. Tempus fugit!

Schedule

Posted on 28th September 2019 by pj

“How long does it take you to do a page?”

Every comic artist has had to answer that one at some point (and more often than not, they have to answer that one over and over again, both to fans at conventions, to family and friends who’ve no idea and to other working professionals, and finally, most hauntingly, to editors…)

For me, the answer is and will always be: a page a day. (it’s also reassuringly definite)

I mean, it’s a lie. Sometimes I can do two (sometimes three!) pages per day (3-4 hours of solid work can get a page done depending on what’s on it) and sometimes a page refuses to cooperate and can take a week or more (I mean, only when the deadline has the slack built in, otherwise you’re shooting yourself in the head doing that).

There’s a good blog post here about schedules and working within deadlines. They talk a lot about 200 page graphic novels (longest I’ve ever done is 174 pages, and it took a year – longer than I’d anticipated owing to family illnesses)

To help me work through deadlines and jobs, I sometimes use my “comics calendar” – it has 25 boxes – representing 25 pages for each month.

If I can get through each month and tick each of those 25 pages then I know I’m on schedule.

Sometimes I’ll adjust that up or down, for me 25 pages is doable (I’ve done 50 page months before… they were pretty good pages, but it is hard work)

I’ll combine this comics calendar with a proper big wall chart calendar, so I can keep track of when I’m doing work and how much. Subscribing to the Seinfeld joke writing method – essentially put an X on every day that you draw a page, and keey going til all the Xs join up.

And if you work full time and a page a day is just an absolute impossibility (and I sympathise, I worked part time for the first decade of my professional comic drawing career)-then divide the page down into chunks you know you can do – half a page, a quarter of a page, the pencils – single panels, then everytime you do a chunk put and X and move on to the next. Even if you imagine you can do a quarter of a page everyday with a full time job, and you do that every day, that’s still 90 full pages of comics per year…

Here’s my comic progress chart – I mark each project with a different highlighter colour and mark it off through the month – if I only do pencils, then I’ll mark half the box in that colour, and then fill the box when the page is completed.

Comic ScheduleDownload

Oh, and one last thing, I’ve blogged about it and talked about it before, but the pomodoro method is an incredible useful tool to get stuff done. It breaks work into 25 minute highly focused chunks with a 5 minute break with every fourth 25 minute break followed by a 25 minute break. Even if you can only get two of those 25 minute chunk in a day and you do it every day (al Seinfeld method) then you’ll be amazed at how much work you can get done.

There’s apps to make it easier, but you can do the same with a kitchen timer – the app I use is called focus keeper and it’s on the iphone or ipad.

Anyway, all said and down the big, horribly obvious advice is, knuckle down, do the work, don’t get distracted by writing a massive blog post, like I just did. Keep drawing!

-pj