Then It Was Done, and Gone to Print

It took a week shy of three years, but Benthic is finally done.

So how did the last ten months of the project go? Well, around the time I stopped the blog I was no longer able to financially work on the book full time. I took two not-so-hot jobs and worked 70 hours a week for about three months to dig myself out of that particular hole, and during that time progress ground to a halt. Then, a few months ago, I started freelance studio managing and was able to get the ball rolling again. In December I set myself a tight production schedule, in order to have this to the printer in time to reapply for the Xeric. It's been nights of working until 3-4 AM, 4-5 nights a week, ever since.

I stuck with it.

I'll have the printer proofs back in early-to-mid March, and then the full run of books should here in late May or early June. Then? RELEASE PARTY. I'm also going to release the comic online as a webcomic, but that's still too early to say much more.

I feel awesome. Tonight, I will sleep the sleep of the righteous.

Reflections

Real stuff getting posted to the internet on April Fools Day. How strange.

These past few weeks, while I've been posting process stuff, I've also been preparing a proposal for the Xeric Grant. It shipped out on the deadline yesterday, and it was an enormous undertaking. The proposal itself was a joint effort between myself and my oldest friend, designer extraordinaire Michelle Sukle, and I feel we put together a very good proposal. We won't know until middle of June, but I'm proud of what we accomplished regardless of the outcome.

I think anyone who is doing their own graphic novel should put together everything the Xeric asks for, regardless of whether or not they feel like they have a real shot at it. It forces you to answer the questions you may have been putting off or working around, and to mentally get a complete handle on the project. Writing the Statement of Purpose alone was enormously helpful when making my first pass on the script, and needing printing quotes forced me to finalize a page count and decide which ideas I could keep and which ones needed to be edited out. A lot got edited out honestly...this book needs to get done. Not every good idea I have needs to happen right now.

Where do we go now?

When I started this project in earnest six months ago and when I wanted everything done by March 15th- I don't think the book is running late as much as I didn't really understand how much work was involved. The time that has been involved in writing a full draft of the script, thumbnailing through the end of the book, preparing a final page count was something I hilariously enough thought would be easy. Of course, a Xeric proposal also includes a lot of the business end of the business and a ton of research.

I'm happy with the process I outlined, as far as the pencil-ink-grayscale workflow goes. The writing method will get seriously revamped for a future project. I haven't penciled and inked in the last two weeks, but mentally the project is much farther now. I'm exploring my options on lettering for this project, and I'll have to have that resolved before I know a new completion date. Progress is good though.

98 Pages but a Bitch Aint One

I'm wrapping up inking on Chapter 5 today with a large establishing shot of the underside of the floating city, and I'm meeting with a friend and client about an illustration gig that should pay for the supplies I need to finish the book.

I'm a fan of this short section on Page 97 here in pencil and wanted to post it. This two panel scene is inked now - I'm extremely happy with the bottom panel inks and not happy at all with the inks at top. I'm thinking it comes together with a little digital paint and grayscale though.

I keep giving Hinei more space in the book , and on the blog, as time goes on cause he's my favorite character. My brother used to talk about how stoners were the best at FPS games cause they stayed so calm when people were shooting at them, and I decided a stoner pilot would have the same advantage. I also had never seen what a stoner-samurai would look like and started drawing - and here we are.

Functional Computer Appreciation

I enjoy this "Whoa" panel.

I've been having major computer problems for the better part of a month now, which sadly has limited my recent blogging activities. After exhausting all my options, it seems the monitor on my laptop really is dead and now I have to rethink how I should best arrange a new computer setup. Unfortunately I have plenty of time for that one.

After years of drawing with a 2H pencil, I ran out of lead about a week ago and have been using HB instead. And the madness has to stop. I feel like I'm drawing with a charcoal briquette.

All my brushes have been thrashed for awhile and I've been in denial about it, but my inability to get a decent thin line out of them pushed me back into doing more pen work and I've rediscovered my love for the 108 crowquil nib.

A Learning Experience

I've been working on Benthic is some form since high school, but in the context and confines of how the story is now- I've been working on it in earnest for about two years. The outline I've been working off of this entire time is probably a year and a half old, which has given me lots of time to have at least a vague idea of every scene in the back of my head.

A lot of those scenes were also extrapolated from old versions. There has been some kind of space-suit Tsaigen jailbreak scene for a decade.

Most of my focus had been on the first half, since it was in the foreseeable future, and upon completing Issue 3/Chapter 4 (pg 55-76) I realized there were some problems, thematically speaking, with the second half of the book. The continent-creation plot is what gives Karda's story context, but ultimately this is Karda's story. However, this had taken too large a back seat to a lot of the other things I had kept in the story.

I in no way have room in the schedule for simply adding major sections, so I had to make some additions and then restructure the page count. This took most of the Christmas to New Years stretch where snow had me stranded in Connecticut anyway, so I came back after the New Year and thought I would plow right through.

The major issue was that unlike everything before it, I had only really been thinking about pages 77-92, in any respect for about a week. Versus two years! Also, the setting of this issue is incredibly background heavy- possibly more than any other section of the book. I have done more fucking erasing in the past three weeks than I have in two months before it. I was mad about it at first. And at second.

However, its really changed my approach to new projects and has thus been a great learning experience. Unfortunately, inking on this issue will probably push into Feb., which leaves me 54 pages to do in 4-6 weeks. Is that realistic? 6 weeks is really pushing it, but I'm not the giving up type.

My Iguana Life, Part 2

I've gotten pretty well acclimated to the work-from-home, always here thing. The Iguana Lifestyle.

I thought it was past time to share some bits of this life with the world. I also made a new banner for the blog, cause it was time.

- Winter is awesome when you don't have to go anywhere. Cause WOW it looks cold out there.

- No really, it's like I get to skip Winter. I just plan my shopping trips roughly based on The Weather Channel now. I might be inside for days, where it's stupidly warm. This radiator could heat my entire apartment on its own and I sit next to it, in one of those awesome Uniqlo smooth dry V-neck undershirts. I love these shirts so much. I would do a commercial for free. But I should not be hot anywhere on the northern hemisphere in January wearing this damn thing.

- The long war between my internal schedule, which I can now base a career on at whim, and the schedule of the world takes on an ugly new chapter. I know, for a fact now, that I work best going to bed around 5-6 AM and getting up at 1:00 PM. It's great for a few days, and then I go see the woman in my life (a half-day since I got up at 1:00) and she's ready for bed around 1:00 AM. Well, I'm warn out from working for days straight so I actually fall asleep. Then I get up at 8:00 AM when shes getting ready for work. This day is now fucked. The following day I'm kinda back on it, and by the time I really get it back, it gets busted again. I also tried going on a regular schedule, getting up at 9:30 and working somewhat regular hours, and it really wasn't productive at all. I'm trying to figure out a hybrid right now, and I'm hoping that my working life and my, you know, life start to sync better.

- I never know when to eat. Going to the kitchen is a super easy form of procrastination that I caught onto fairly early. I drink water as a nervous habit so I'm constantly back and forth, and every time I was in there I was looking around the kitchen wanting to eat. So I really control when I actually eat now, and sometimes this leads to eating waaaaaaaay too much at once. I'll think I'm saving myself having to break to eat later, but I think it's making me sluggish and kinda fat. I need to lose a few pounds now. I knew all those cookies would catch up with me sooner or later.

- Speaking of fat, I got completely addicted to those stupid CVS cookies for awhile. I would go over there, buy a box, bring it home and immediately eat the entire thing. Oh cookies, I can't have just one or five or more. I have to have them ALL. I kicked the cookies. I'm smoking more now but this is better.


Meanwhile, on the front lines; I'm so busy doing this. Holy shit. I think right now I can comfortably pencil, ink and grayscale 25 pages a month. But I wasn't that fast when I started this, at all, and I need to do quite a bit more than that now. That number needs to be at least 35, which is removing the "comfortably" portion of the description completely. I think a completion date sometime in March is still on the table but I'm not sure I can bring it in by the 15th. We're in for an interesting couple of months.

Back in the Saddle

I finished up the grayscale for the most recent issue (55-76) today and decided I needed to come up for air. I've been bad at blogging lately. I'm pushing ahead hard now, as one of the main reasons I'm doing this project under these circumstances is to get faster. I'm easily twice as fast as I was six months ago, maybe even twice as fast as when I started. That may speak more to how slow I used to be, but I can say I penciled and inked 22 pages in three weeks, which should be more or less even with the industry standard.

My thoughts are I need to be faster than the industry standard.

I'm very happy with how this most recent issue is looking, and I'm very excited for the new one. I think I may start thumb nailing that now.

Fixed Links and Writing Difficulties

Grayscale is finished on Issue 2. I also realized that my link in the original post on this blog only went to the first 16 pages and not the actual 32 page first issue, so that is now fixed. If you'd like to read the first 32 pages, please do. (I also uploaded the finished pencils of the first five pages of Issue 2 as well).

I went back and re-read the first 32 pages to try and get myself back into the right voice to letter the new issue, and that was an eye opening experience. I knew the dialogue was the weakest link, but I think it needs more help than I initially thought. Right now I'm honestly not real sure how I want to handle this. Half of me wants to go ahead and draw the whole book, and then sit down and just tackle that entire aspect of it last. Write-write the whole book at once and have it come together as cohesive. Half of me thinks it would be a terrible idea to try and tackle writing and lettering 152 pages in one shot and I would suffer a terrible burnout. Either way, I need to approach the writing differently. There are a lot of good ideas and good characters in Benthic and as of right now I'm not conveying those ideas as well as I'd like to be. It's very possible that the now fixed link is indeed a draft of a later, better written comic.

People with editors are luckier than they might think.

In any case, I think uploading the grayscale without the text would just be out-of-context spoiler city, so until I fix the writing problem I'm going to hold off on uploading the new issue. I'm actually pretty happy with how it's looking and the direction the book is going. I'm penciling and inking the first 11 pages of Issue 3 right now and should be on the second half of the book first thing next week.

SHLPTE - A Brief History

I finished inking Issue 2 last week! Everything is scanned in and laid out in InDesign, I'm doing grayscale now (as well as penciling Issue 3). I should finish up lettering this weekend, and I'll post a link to a .pdf of the new issue next week.

My home and studio is in Astoria, NY in a fantastic apartment I share with great friends. My room has peach walls with a turquoise radiator, making the room look like a Mexican restaurant. My landlord, who picked these colors out, then purchased drapes for the apartment (which is entirely peach or that blue-purple Gamecube color) that are a beige/brown floral pattern with...wait for it...gold tassel fringe. I considered including photos, but someone might be eating. The woman in my life suggested they looked something out of Saddam Hussein's love palaces.

Thus, my room and studio is "Saddam Hussein's Love Palace and Taco Emporium." I just call it SHLPTE (pronouced 'shlup-tay'). I believe I am the mayor here on Foursquare. I do love the way it looks with a full wall of inked work on the magnetic boards.

Introduction

"The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip."

I've been working on the story and characters that evolved into Benthic for nearly 11 years. In early 2009 I began penciling what is now the first chapter (I originally wrote the first 16 pages of the book as a one-shot) and over 19 months completed the script, the pitch, and the 32 page first issue. Meanwhile I had also been working full time, for much of it 50-60 hours a week, as well as other various projects and freelance illustrations. Benthic was moving slowly.

Honestly? The frustration was mounting. On one hand, I had a pretty good career coming together in the custom furniture industry. I'd been a cabinetmaker on the shop floor, I'd been in administrative roles, I had sales experience. Recently I had moved into a key production role in one of the top custom furniture companies in New York. On the other hand...yelling at material vendors on the phone is, believe it or not, not why I had put myself through art school. My life was unfortunately moving in the wrong direction faster than it was moving in the right direction.

Everything changed three weeks ago.

I'll save everyone the gory details. The transition was far from smooth, but a situation emerged where I could draw full time for a finite but considerable amount of time. This is the chance I've been waiting for. I hit the ground running on Benthic, which brings us here.


About the Blog-

How do you make a graphic novel...and what happens to you when you do?

Benthic - Below the Surface is a dual purpose blog. Like the other "making of a graphic novel" blogs out there, it will document the process (and progress) of making and publishing a graphic novel, as both a writer and as an artist. I'll be reviewing all my methods, what has and hasn't worked for me in the past, and reflecting as those methods naturally evolve.

However, I will also be documenting myself as the subject of a social case study. What happens when someone who has worked full time for five years, in both a blue collar and white collar setting, suddenly and unexpectedly finds themselves drawing comics full time? What actually happens when your chance comes to make the dream come true? One month ago I was working 60 hours a week in Manhattan, had some level of disposable income, and hated my job. Today I work from home, I'm broke, and am completely self-employed. The first three weeks alone have turned my world upside down. How will I adjust to this massive lifestyle change? We'll find out.

I'll be updating twice per week!

About the Comic-

Benthic is a science fiction story about a submarine captain on a misguided revenge quest. It is 152 pages total, black and white, and the 32 page first issue is online and available to read. The project also breaks into six comic issues; the first and last issue being 32 pages, and the four issues in between being 22 pages each. I am currently looking for a publisher, but I fully intend to self publish if needed.

The projected completion date is March 1st, 2011, with a drop-dead date of March 15th, 2011.

As you can see, the first 32 pages are complete. Beyond that; as of today I am doing final touch-ups on the pencils for the 22 page second issue (pgs. 33-54), which I expect to begin inking Friday or Monday. If you're not familiar with comics or my work, "final touch-ups," translates directly into "hands and mouths I didn't finish drawing earlier cause they were a pain in the ass." Issue 3 is being thumbnailed.

I'm extremely excited about the project, and equally excited to share this journey. Stay tuned!