Starting a Graphic Novel

Over the last couple of years I’ve been laying the foundations for a graphic novel called Synthetic.  For my records as well as yours, this is how it’s come about. 

It was the summer of 09/10 that I started Synthetic, a date that really indicates when I finally realised the previous story I’d been working on was beyond salvation. 

The previous tale did have some nice ideas.  It was about a couple of peeps who could use superpowers at the cost of disillusionment.

I dropped everything except the two characters and started a tale of synthetic humans discovering their origins. 

Actual writing is painful as hell, but composing is a delight.  Any day I had free I could be found meandering along the trails near my place, throwing some ideas around. 

I find being in motion is great for grabbing ideas out of the air.  It’s like the practical side of the brain is occupied with the movement and allows the other side to tangle itself up. 

The downside is that the freedom allows 99% of the time to be spent idly pondering pokemon.

Synthetic began in about fourteen different ways, had at least six middles and one good ending before being entirely reworked to begin in the middle, and end with the exact same scene as the beginning.  Swathes of characters were conjured up and cast aside. As soon as the blocks seemed to be falling into place I cut out everything I could possibly bear to part with, a process that is still continuing.   

When I think about a story I don’t see it as words or a comic, I only ever picture things in film.  Naturally I find that I fit out the story to the length of a movie, but unfortunately graphic novels take a whole heck of a lot of pages to get anything done, and even with a ruthlessly edited story I was still looking at about 400 comic pages.

In early 2011 I wrote out Synthetic’s first script.  I then did battle with a mighty illness for three months, but managed to claw my way back.  June 2011 I began The Draft; a sketched mock-up of all the pages.  The sketches were so quick and vague that it appears the entire thing could’ve been rustled up over a weekend, but every line that was drawn on paper had about a 50% chance of being erased.  1 in every 5 sheets of paper got to a point where it was easier to ditch it and start new than erase everything. 

It was at that malleable time for the story that it started to become fun.  The building blocks of the story were all cemented in, and it was time to flesh out the details.  For the first time I felt myself getting sucked into the world I was working on.  Like reading the kind of book that you want to crawl inside and never leave.  It was only a hint, but it’ll stick with me.

The draft was finished in Spring 2011, which is a fine season to be finishing anything.  I cajoled a few friends into reading it, and got some feedback. 

The next step was very important.  I put the story aside for five months. I’d like to tell you this was a difficult, but summer is a grand time to be doing nothing at all.  The reason that this is important is to get some distance, so you can come back with fresh eyes, and hopefully see your work the way other people do. 

When I got back in the saddle early 2012 I knew what was good and what had to go.  I compacted it down and threw in some new ideas.  Writing it up into the final script. 

I’ve heard that in science a good theory is designed to solve one problem, and accidentally finds itself tying up loose ends all over the place.  I think composing a tale works in a similar way, and it’s always an amazing feeling to throw an idea into the mix and suddenly see things knitting together. 

I wrote out a final script.  According to my documents folder it’s version 8, and that’s not counting the 6 versions back when I was calling it Africa.  It was now time to get serious about designing the art.

Graphic novels are not the easiest thing in the world to design.  At the end of a movie you'll see a bunch of names float over your screen.  In a graphic novel almost all of those jobs exist, you just have to do them yourself.  Just in terms of design you have the architecture, the landscapes, the settings, the characters, their clothes, their hair, their make-up, their possessions, their cars and roads and buildings and birds and clouds, the dialogue, the pace, the geography, photography, typography cartography, choreography, cryptography, lithography, pornography and cinematography.  

There comes a time when you realise that you know absolutely nothing about how a 50yr old, stylish and manipulative woman would do her hair.  Or what in the hell kind of shoes she’d be rocking.  Then you try to draw two people walking next to each other and you realise you’re not worthy to hold a pencil, and should be relegated to crayons.

Fortunately I’m not like you, and had no troubles of any kind.

I spent several months sweating out some passable designs, making many a mental note that it will look like this, only good.  Then I got to work on figuring out what kind of materials I would use, how big the page would be, what I would do on paper and what would be done digitally. 

I went through what feels like the most hack-ish part of the process, which was going to the art store and buying a pile of materials.  You’d think I’d like that place, but every time I’m in there I can’t help seeing myself the way I would view any other jerk who thought he was a comic artist.  

Real drawing is done with the chewed up nubs of discarded pencils on the beaten and hewed remains of paper hand-towels.  The bereted flourishers of pedigreed pens onto cold-pressed semolina papier, who sip flutes of vintage ink are the pretenders.  Myself included.

Although the other side of me glows with pride at my German-made pencil sharpener that I had shipped from Canada because several professionals regard it as the best in the world.  Myself included.  (If you think there’s just the one blade involved, then I’m afraid you’re embarrassing yourself.)

 A few of the design sketches for Aunika, done over a year or so:

And David:

 A page to practice using ink:

While working on this stuff I've generally been at uni full time and working around four days a week.  I don't work very hard on this stuff.  I get a handful of hours a week done on one day of the weekend, a day that I've even started to look forward to.  

I wake up at the crack of dawn, and then realise I don't have to go to the office and immediately go back to sleep.  By about 11am I get up and make a cup of tea, take one sip of it and burn my mouth.  Then I draw circles for about 30 minutes, look over previous work and decide on a particular project, like a practice page, or some change to the materials.  Then I'll work for four or five hours before taking a second sip of now stone-cold tea which I throw away.

The next stage in the grand scheme is to start making the final-copy artwork.  In my timeline I've given myself three years to complete this step.  It's difficult to sit down one day and decide that you're now good enough to begin.  

Last week I made a practice page using watercolour, instead of ink, for the shading.  After looking over it, I've decided for better or worse, it's time.

If in three years you see a pale, gollum-like creature scrambling around town, give me a wave.

The Do-it Code

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I’ve recently been reading a book called “The Talent Code”.

The first amusing thing is that the author makes no reference to a ‘talent code’ and it’s obvious that the publisher tacked on the title so as to get a slice of the DaVinci Code readership action.  Furthermore the author seems to be just the kind of person who would despise the Da Vinci Code.

The book uses research in psychology and neurology to argue that talent is not something you’re born with, but is grown through determination and practice.

I’ve always felt that this was the case.  Throughout my life, the kindness of others combined with my own arrogance has caused me to believe that I could achieve anything I set my mind to.  Excepting a major physiological impossibility, anything that you want to do, you can do, and the only price is effort.

It got me thinking about what advice I would like to give to myself about how to hone talents, and achieve achievements, and I came up with a few things.

1.  The only way to do something well is to do it badly.

The most useful practice is where you’re on the very edge of your ability.  When you’re constantly making mistakes and correcting them you learn much more quickly than when you repeat something you can already do. 

The first hurdle that stops people from becoming really good at something is when they become disheartened by their mistakes.  But if you’re doing something badly, and you can see that it’s bad, you can be sure that you’re developing much faster than someone who is not making mistakes.

So do things badly, and not only that…

2.  Do the things that you’re bad at.

Whatever your field, there will be things that you like doing and things that you hate doing.  If you hate something it’s probably your weak area, so really focus on it.  It sounds simple, but acknowledging your weaknesses is an incredibly difficult and rewarding thing. 

I’m bad at drawing circles.  I can draw a line so straight that a Queensland priest would personally provide it with a marriage license, but I suck at circles. 

So for the last twelve months or so I’ve been regularly drawing circles of about 2-3cm diameter, over and over. 

This kind of thing:

For the first 50,000 or so, I couldn’t really see any quality difference. Even now there’s only the vaguest hint of progress.

But the funny thing is that over the last twelve months every other area of my drawing seems to have gotten better due to practicing circles.  It’s a wonderful thing to spend a while fighting the hopeless fight against your weaknesses, only to come back and realize that your entire game has lifted in ways you didn’t even think were possible.

So do things you're bad at.

3.  (The most important) Just do it.

As far as I’m concerned there is nothing else to talent.  You put in the hours and you will progress, you won’t even have a choice.  Putting in regular time is best, but it doesn’t really matter, as long as you spend the time. 

It’s a good analogy to think of talent as a muscle. Physiologically they are actually very similar.  Exercising is the only way to become stronger.

This might sound a bit odd, but I have a gridded exercise book in which I cross off a square for every hour of creative work that I do.  Over the years the amount of time that I would have put in with the sole purpose of finishing out the half hour is probably a ludicrously large amount.

If you don’t (apparently) have a secret accounting fetish, get creative in other ways.  If you’re working on drawing, writing, or generally being great, then you could spend some of your working time studying Calvin and Hobbes.  If you’re a musician, listen to something you would normally hate, and find something good about it.  If you play an instrument try singing a melody before you play it.  If you play a sport, get a skipping rope and skip the shit out of it.  Focus on perfecting one tiny nuance, or go the other way and ponder the meaning of your practice’s existence. 

The key is to keep mixing it up, keep it interesting and keep surprising yourself.

Achieving something hinges only on your desire for it.  If you can acknowledge it, want it, and most importantly, suck at it, then it will happen.

School Days

"There are no heroes in the story of artschool, only various levels of shame."

-Me.

When I applied for artschool, back in the summer of 2007, I had myself a few misconceptions.

I’d imagined some kind of art academy where crack troops of artists drew perfect circles while bench-pressing lithograph stones, and spent sixteen hour stretches down in the lab, creating shades of blue so pale they would make a blind man weep.

As it turns out this is not the case.

As far as I can tell, getting into artschool requires either; art ability and a keen mind, OR the desire to hang out at artschool.  While I lacked the second, fortunately I had the first and was successfully admitted.

Perhaps I’m not being fair, but it really bothers my brain that there could be some people who fail to get into artschool.  If you have within yourself the ability to apply paint to your face and face-but a piece of paper, I’m fairly sure you have what it takes.

First year was probably my most misguided.  For some reason I thought I could get ahead by working extremely hard and completing all my work to a ridiculously high standard.  One of our assignments was to create a series of 9 small artworks the size of trading cards.  Most people found a drawing they’d done years ago and cut it into nine pieces.  I handed in twenty seven individual artworks; a number whittled down from many more.

Here are a couple of examples of my cards.

In the end, I got a high mark, but not higher than most people.  Nothing singled me out. 

 

Artschool runs a drawing prize each year.  In first year I entered with this drawing.

Which is something of an assault upon the eyes, but still an interesting sketch.

While it did get hung, I suddenly realized that it was the only figurative drawing in the entire exhibition.  By which I mean it was the only drawing of something.  Every other drawing was about the act of making marks on something.  The prize that year was won by a girl who’d glued a small pile of dried paint to the wall. 

I did not enter the drawing prize again.

In fact it was at about this point that I realised my own values, and the values of artschool, were hopelessly misaligned.  I thought about dropping out, but I couldn’t think of anywhere that I’d be better off.  So I soldiered into second year.

Let me just say right now that some of the students of artschool were the nicest people you could ever hope to meet in your life, and their enlightened and enthusiastic appreciation of all kinds of art was a true inspiration.  Unfortunately, in my case, their opinions often diametrically opposed the views of the school.

The next project I remember was an open-ended drawing project where we were supposed to try something new and interesting.  I decided to hand-draw a tiny animation loop of a girl reading a book.  If you like you can watch the film here https://vimeo.com/17718992

For reference, this is one of the frames:

Most people in the class didn’t go to quite that much effort.  One girl stuck foil patty-pans to a sheet of paper and dripped some white paint onto them.  And I think the guy who topped the class took a long-exposure photo of himself riding around in circles with LEDs on his bike.

I got 69% for that project. 

Towards the end of second year I was really suffering.  I just couldn’t make any sense of artschool, and I was concerned that there was nothing about art that I still liked.  The only art that I really adored was the films of Hayao Miyazaki.

I decided to throw down my own gauntlet and go all or nothing.

I told my tutor that I would spend third year making an animation with paint.  He looked at me and said “Why don’t you move to a different course? I guess you’d still have the same problem, though.”

After answering his own question he walked away.

Fortunately, by this time, I had become quite adept at channelling my frustrations into a tumour.

I immediately began work on a short film about a dystopia set to a track by Bach.  By the end of semester one I had completed all 260 drawings and had set them to the music, with only the painting to go. 

My tutor had to give me a mark for the semester’s work.  I presented the film to which she had two comments.  Two pearls of wisdom, which I may learn from and grow.

She said, “I don’t like the last frame.”

And, (my favourite) “Why don’t you get rid of the music?”

For the semester I received my lowest mark ever.  Not just at artschool, the lowest mark I’ve ever got for anything in my life; 55%.

By this stage I was getting better at pretending I wasn’t bothered by the old School of A, so I powered ahead with painting the frames.  I had to work my job most weekdays so I painted on weekends, clocking more than 11 hours on some days.

I finished just in time, and presented the film to a panel of various heads of schools. 

They reached a consensus; they loved it, and gave me 90%.

If you have a hankering to check the film it is here https://vimeo.com/16489006

Perhaps artschool made me strong, perhaps it taught me about the cold and erratic nature of reality. 

That’s too easy. 

Its job was to foster passion for art and to provide sound (or at least mutually consistent) direction.

It doesn’t really matter.  If you’re a drawer you draw.  Or alternately you’re a box-shaped container that fits into a piece of furniture in such a way that it can be drawn out horizontally to access its contents.

Quantum Fun-Times are Very Small

It always seemed a strange idea to go and buy a non-fiction book, particularly if it doesn't contribute to your resume.  If you want to know something you can look it up on the internet.

Then one day I bought a non-fiction book and now I have to remind myself to read other things, like fiction.  Perhaps not everyone has a depraved obsession for facts, but I actually find them calming.  There's something about a stockpile of potentially worthless knowledge that makes me want to burrow inside and hide in... like an igloo.

Every now and then I read something interesting, and I thought it might be fun to pass the knowledge around.  Like an even more fun version of chlamydia.

This is a paragraph from a book called "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, which is a layman's guide to cosmology, quantum physics and string theory.  Somehow it's an absolute joy to read; there's even a couple of quotes from The Simpsons in there :D

"Averages are useful for many purposes but, by design, they do not provide a sharp picture of underlying details.  Although the average family in the U.S. has 2.2 children, you'd be in a bind were I to ask you to visit such a family...  So, too, familiar spacetime, itself the result of an averaging process, may not describe the details of something we'd like to call fundamental.  Space and time may only be approximate, collective conceptions, extremely useful in analysing the universe on all but ultramicroscopic scales, yet as illusory as a family with 2.2 children."

It's fascinating to think how easily an averaging process can throw off our perception of fundamental reality.


I was going to end the post here, but then I realised I had not yet included a rip on God, or a fart joke, so here is a section of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" that rectifies the situation.

The chapter is running through a series of historical arguments by Thomas Aquinas for God's existence, and showing how they can be refuted.

"4.  The argument from degree.
We notice that things in the world differ.  There are degrees of, say, goodness or perfection.  But we judge these degrees only by comparison with a maximum.  Humans can be both good and bad, so the maximum goodness cannot rest in us.  Therefore there must be some other maximum to set the standard for perfection, and we call the maximum God.

That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness.  Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God.  Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion."

The Sex Issue

Prostitution is often referred to as the oldest profession. 

That seems like propaganda to me.  If you’re exchanging sex for currency, surely the manufacture of currency would predate the service industry, unless the first client promised to invent money the next day.

In any case, the sex industry has been going strong since the start of civilisation. 

Now, a lot of cultures throughout history have held that prostitution is a debasement of morals, and have decreed it to be illegal.  However, making it illegal has never caused it to stop.

Prostitution exists in all human cultures; it is inextricably tied to civilisation. 

Making it illegal means that less people will participate in it, but it also means that it is not regulated.  Sex slavery, child prostitution and violence are among the most crushingly terrible things on earth, and are all more common where prostitution is illegal, and not regulated to meet industry standards.  By legalising prostitution, the state can be charged to ensure the safety of the workers.

Prostitutes exist in this world.  Legalising their profession gives them human rights.

Not to mention, tax!  When I exchange money for a potato I pay tax on that.  I give the government some money to keep society running smoothly.  There is a truckload of money flying around in the sex industry; (I can't find the actual data, but I did read that the porn industry alone makes more than Google, Apple and Microsoft combined) if it’s legal it can be taxed, and the commonwealth gets a slice of the action.

In fact, as a member of society, I believe it is your right to demand that no (non charitable) industry should be exempt from being taxed.

I hope that these points can provide some perspective that even if you disagree with the solicitation of prostitution on moral grounds, there are still a lot of good moral reasons to support the industry’s legal acknowledgment. 

But the plot thickens!

When society makes prostitution illegal, it knows that it exists and that it will continue to exist, it just doesn’t want to publicly acknowledge its existence.  Interestingly, this exact same process happens to most people as individuals.

Almost everyone has sexual desires that they don’t want to acknowledge openly to themselves.  Many people are disgusted by their own desire to do things like masturbate, and would prefer to pretend that the desire doesn’t exist. 

I believe that the legalisation of prostitution creates a healthier industry that protects the safety of the workers.  In exactly the same way, when people acknowledge their own sexual desires as normal, and potentially enjoyable aspects of being a human, the result is less embarrassment, less self-loathing, less depression; less mental health problems in general.  In other words;

By legalising your own brain’s sex industry, you will protect the safety of its workers.

There is an argument that it is the ‘naughty’ aspect of sex that makes it so appealing, and a frank acknowledgment of all aspects of sexuality will take the fun out of it.

I thought this for a time, but I realise now that firstly, it would be radically difficult to take the fun out of something as enjoyable as sex/masturbation.  And secondly, that our imaginations are incredibly durable, even in the face of pure reason.

Take, for example, going to the movies:

We are all well aware that we’re not watching a window.  It’s a screen. We know this.  We know that the people on the screen aren’t regular people, going about their lives, unaware that they’re being watched by a bunch of bug-eyed strangers, grazing on popcorn.  It’s acting.  We know this.  Yet we still manage to engage with the film.  There is a side of us that we allow to believe that not only is the fantasy world real, but at some level we are the people in the film.

This is my favourite thing about being alive. 

And if the open acknowledgement that films have scripts and actors doesn’t take away the magic, then there is no chance in hell that accepting the reality and legitimacy of your own sexual desires is going to make sex mundane.

Some people feel that sex is inherently immoral, except between a man and a woman who are married to each other, and that things like masturbation are a sin.

Even people who aren’t practicing Christians often feel that masturbation is a character flaw; that it is a shameful weakness that must be kept a secret.  But why?  It’s a purely personal transaction that doesn’t involve anyone else.  How is it any different from playing a good game of pinball?

Some claim that masturbation is wrong because it is based on objectifying the sexual aspects of people, rather than being attracted to the qualities of their character.

It seems to me that society is founded on the principals of valuing selected aspects of different people.  I value police for their strength, I value primary school teachers for their patience, I value mathematicians for their calculations, parents for their compassion and writers for their insight.  Why shouldn’t I value models for their attractiveness?  Why should the system become invalid because sexiness is involved?

Porn addiction can be a problem when it negatively impacts your life, but that doesn’t mean that the existence of porn is the problem.

If someone wants to lose weight they might decide to eat nothing but lettuce.  While this diet will lose weight, it won’t make them healthy.  Your body requires small amounts of certain fats and sugars, if you completely cut out something you need, you will start to crave it.  The lettuce eater is setting themselves up to fail.  They will break their diet, and then they’ll binge because they’re unhappy and they’ll be unhappy because they binge. 

It’s the same with porn.  If you tell yourself that porn is immoral, but still desire it, then it’s likely that you’ll fall into the same shame-spiral where you will use porn because you feel bad and you feel bad because you use porn.  This causes the allure of porn to become its depravity, which naturally leads the consumer towards wanting things that also horrify them.

Dieticians recommend taking steps towards a healthy diet by acknowledging that high-fat foods are fine in moderation.

Porn is the same, moderation is the key, and the best way to achieve it is to stop beating ourselves up, for beating ourselves off.

In the spirit of acknowledgment I think it’s high time I acknowledged that when it comes to writing a new moral code based on rational values, my efforts are going to be eclipsed by the eloquence and wisdom of Stephen Fry.  This is from his autobiography Moab is My Washpot:

It is a little theory of mine that has much exercised my mind lately, that most of the problems of this silly and delightful world derive from our apologising for those things which we ought not to apologise for, and failing to apologise for those things for which apology is necessary.

For example, none of the following is shameful or deserves apology, in spite of our suicidal attempts to convince ourselves otherwise:

·         To possess a rectum, a urethra and a bladder and all that pertain thereto.

·         To cry.

·         To find anything or anyone of any gender, age or species sexually attractive.

·         To find anything or anyone of any gender, age or species sexually unattractive.

·         To insert things in one’s mouth, anus or vagina for the purpose of pleasure.

·         To masturbate as often as one wishes. Or not.

·         To swear.

·         To be filled with sexual desires that involve objects, articles or parts of the body irrelevant to procreation.

·         To fart.

·         To be sexually unattractive.

·         To love.

·         To ingest legal or illegal drugs.

·         To smell of oneself and one’s juices.

·         To pick one’s nose.

I spend a lot of time tying knots in my handkerchief reminding myself that those are things not to be ashamed of, so long as they are not performed in sight or sound of those who would be pained – which also hold true of Morris dancing, talking about Terry Pratchett and wearing velour and many other harmless human activities. Politeness is all.

But I fear I spend far too little time apologising for or feeling ashamed about things which really do merit sincere apology and outright contrition.

·         Failing to imagine what it is like to be someone else.

·         Pissing my life away.

·         Dishonesty with self and others.

·         Neglecting to pick up the phone or write letters.

·         Not connecting made or processed objects with their provenance.

·         Judging without facts.

·         Using influence over others for my own ends.

·         Causing pain.

I will apologise for faithlessness, neglect, deceit, cruelty, unkindness, vanity and meanness, but I will not apologise for the urgings of my genitals nor, most certainly, will I ever apologise for the urgings of my heart.