From Recession to Concession

The Original Artwork for my Seattle Weekly Comic.
You can see the completed story here.

I'm a big fan of the human eye.  I love how well-adapted our vision is in picking up subtleties and a lot of my decision-making in comics plays to this.  It's why I don't use panel borders on my pages, and why I very rarely outline anything in a scene.

Also, just this year I fell in love with white space.  I don't think I've ever used it as efficiently as I can.  As a woman who works exclusively in black and white, I've been neglecting half of my palette.

Today, I have a comic out in Seattle Weekly.  It's my second comic with them.  While it's my intention to do comics journalism about Seattle's music scene - like this one about The Crocodile - this week's comic is an autobiographical story about my decision to go back to school for web development.

The decision was driven by how expensive Seattle has become to live in, and is fueled by my disillusionment with the nonprofit sector.  There are several programs that the State of Washington offers that pay for job retraining, and I'm working with WorkSource to get my tuition paid.

I think the editor was excited about it because so many artists are having to make tough choices, now, in Seattle and a lot of them are choosing to leave.  I'm hoping it will resonate with people.

Finished panel, with text covering
up the signage.

What I am excited about with this comic is that it's the first time I didn't outline narrative boxes or word balloons.  I'm seeing how much I can pare away, visually, and still move the story.  I want people to feel totally and naturally immersed in the art.  It was a fun experiment, and Seattle Weekly didn't bat an eye at the missing outlines, so I'm assuming it worked ok.

I am pseudo-obsessed with making good-looking original art, and I draw entire panels even though I know I will be covering up a lot of the visual details with words, so I'm posting the orginal art here.  You can see the completed story at the Seattle Weekly's website, or pick up a physical copy from the stands before next Wednesday.

I do want to add that I totally riffed the art of John Criscitello and his Woo Girls in one panel.  Credit where credit is due! 

I'll be doing another comic for Seattle Weekly on the Macefield Festival in September.

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Though I Walk Through The Shadow of Uncanny Valley . . .

Mark Campos at Bistro Montage in Portland,
featured here with Moxie, My Sweet.

Living with a fellow cartoonist has its benefits, particularly when they are a long-standing feature in the minicomics world.  My housie Mark Campos wrote the anthology Moxie, My Sweet - illustrated by some of the finest cartoonists Seattle has to offer - and has drawn stories for anthologies like Not My Small Diary and Fantagraphics Treasury of Mini Comix.  Mark is not only experienced in the practical aspects of making comics, his head is full of cartooning history and theory.

I'm not like that.  My comics tool kit contains little more than combining a disparate background in fine arts and poetry as an approach to telling stories.  I have limited knowledge of the medium and it's context and having seasoned cartoonists to turn to while I attempt creating a graphic memoir is invaluable.

Uncanny, Isn't It?

Panel with self-portrait on a Chicago train platform.
What is wrong with this picture?

Creating Girl On The Road hasn't been precisely "Write script. Grab pen. GO!"  I've had to make decisions as simple as page size and as difficult as fictionalizing elements of an autobiographical story.  Somewhere in between, how to stylistically approach drawing people is one of the hardest things I've wrestled with.

The book is partially travelogue, so I want backgrounds that deliver a specific location in the story. But the core story is relational, so I want characters that are expressive.

My attempts at marrying photo-realism and expressiveness have not gotten me where I'm going yet.

Back to Mark Campos.  As I sit cursing at the kitchen table over the fact that an image I drew straight from photo reference looks like a mutant, he factually chimes in "It's 'Uncanny Valley'."  And DAMMIT if he's not right.  It is.

Things That Look Almost Human Creep Us Out

Screen grab from Manly Guys Doing Manly Things
by comics blogger Coelasquid.

Uncanny Valley is a term developed by people in robotics.  As certain corporations race to invent the humanoid robot that everyone will love, they keep running into the problem that robots that look like humans freak real humans out. 

There's a dry Wikipedia article about it, but I found an absolutely AWESOME blog about the Uncanny Valley effect as it relates to comics here.  Funny as hell.  References Soundgarden.  You should check out "Close But No Cigar" on Manly Guys Doing Manly Things and get a hard laugh out of it as well as some good information.

What I got out of it was reinforcement that I need to put my hands up and step away from the light table.  My just-slightly-off photo-realistic drawings of people are just-slightly-off-putting.  Even if I had an exact photo reference for every panel of the book, it wouldn't be enough to carry the characters.  But at least I have something of a measure to judge against when assessing my next crop of drawings.  It might keep my book from falling into the Uncanny Valley.

Thanks, Mark.

 Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

The Grants Game

Gone Girl Comics has been gone for too long.  There's actually some really legit reasons for dropping off the map, but that is a comic for an entirely different day.  TODAY I want to catch C-Log up to speed on artistic developments.

4Culture Art Project Recipient - 2015

 

I will be returning to a weekly blog, not only because I actually love it, but also because I'm now legally obligated to.  No, it's not part of a parole agreement.  I am blessed and lucky enough to have received a grant for 4Culture, the cultural services agency for King County, Washington.  It's in support of creating my first graphic novel, and blogging the process is part of fulfilling the grant.

I want to sincerely thank 4Culture for everything they do.   More about 4Culture, plus a full list of 2015 recipients here.

Danielle Davis of Ladykiller (left) and I and at the I Heart Comics Art Award
Ceremony.  Photo Credit Kristina Moravec.
 

I Heart Comic Art FTW

 

Notification of the 4Culture award came on the heels of Gone Girl Comics winning the I Heart Comics Art award at Emerald City Comicon.  The award is sponsored by female entrepreneur Danielle Davis' promotion firm, Ladykiller, who organizes the contest, raises money and prizes for the awards AND throws a blow-out party to give the awards away.

ALL of the finalists were fantastic.  Absolutely.  The best part about that is Ladykiller works with their finalists all year by curating shows and hosting us at their Emerald City Comicon Booth in 2016.  If you are a PNW cartoonist, I suggest you get involved with next year's contest.  It's been a great experience.

Graphic Novel, I'm Coming For Ya!

 

An idea is just an idea until you secure the resources to make it a reality.  I woke up this morning and realized that the graphic novel is now real.  It's been an idea for so long that having resources, a contract, defined deliverables and a timeline is almost frightening.  Almost.

Graphic novel project binder, with working title, now that
"Gone Girl," my original title for the work, is already in use.

Once I started thinking about a graphic novel in terms of fulfilling a grant contract, my project management brain kicked in.  It's a job now, and for some reason thinking about it that way gives me enough emotional distance to tackle it in pieces and parts.

Today, I created a project binder.  Now it's real, right?  And I wrote this blog.  Next week I'll get down to the nitty gritty of the story I'm about to tackle.

 

Take Away:  APPLY FOR THINGS

 

If you are a creator, research opportunities and apply for them.  Ask for money, for shows, for residencies.  Someone gets them, why not us?  Don't ask, don't get.  

If you are living in Seattle, there's a grant coming up from the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.  The deadline is July 22nd and you can find details on it here:  http://www.seattle.gov/arts/funding/individual.asp

I'll post deadlines as I hear of them.  Until next week!



C-log posts on comics, publication and community that publishes on Tuesdays.

Welcome to C-log!

Hello!

Welcome to C-log, the weekly Gone Girl Comics Blog by Noel Franklin.  I’ll be reporting from Seattle, WA every Tuesday about comics, art, the creative process, fellow cartoonists and the communities we weave.

June 25th marks the one-year anniversary of my first mini comic - Gone Girl Comics, Issue #1 - Some Seattle Stories.  While this was my first serious comics effort, I consider it a marriage of the years I spent jumping back and forth between visual and literary arts.  Bringing images and words together with the goal of making great comics felt RIGHT, and that's what I'll be doing from here on out.

By way of introduction, Gone Girl Comics is a self-published mini-comic that I plan to produce annually.  It contains comics short stories loosely based around a theme.  The first one, "Some Seattle Stories," was selected because of a drawing I created of the OK Hotel - a performance venue that featured prominently in my life in the mid-90s.  The initial drawing inspired me to complete a graphic history of the venue and also explore the incredible energy from that time in comics form.

I had only drawn less than 10 pages of comics prior to beginning Gone Girl Comics #1, so I stayed away from stories of substance - mostly.  I was afraid I wouldn't do them justice, as my skills aren't fully developed yet.  However, at the last minute, I created something of a tribute story for Joaquin Tavares, a Seattle musician who was murdered in 2006.  It's called "Seeing Stars," and you can view it here.


I've been busy since Gone Girl Comics' debut.  2014 will see my first print publications in newspapers, journals and anthologies.  The pending publications (which you can check out here on my website) are part of why I'm kicking off C-log.

I do plan on writing about much more than my own art and want to foster a creative dialogue, SO, feel free to post thoughts, questions and ideas in the comments section below. 

ALSO, hang in there with me as I learn the technology.  If there are glitches on the blog or on www.noelfranklin.com I will try to catch them and fix them as fast as I can.

See you next Tuesday!