The Sleuth Exhibition – process diary #2 – late May

See process diary #1

So things appear to be cracking along … well slowly.

I have two major projects on the go with lots of other things slowly coming to boil that I have to check on every now and then.

Sleuth is starting to take shape in sort of the manner that I had anticipated – each of the stories that I had plotted out I strategically left as vague as possible so that when I came to each one I could take it and mould it to the space that I had available on the wall. Of course this is sort of much the same as making a story that fits 28 pages or so and then plotting it out etc. I have already made one story that is far too long and my only solution is to reduce the size of the images so that it fits into something across the wall that works amongst the others. The risk with having some stories that take too long to read is that the viewers won’t want to read too many before they move on … this may be an unrealistic fear, it is difficult to capture people’s attention for too long in galleries … but of course comics may be somewhat different in this respect, I don’t know what other comicers’ experience is with respect to this. Perhaps people do hang around for longer.

I have managed about 6 comics so far. As I have been completing each of the comics I have been sticking them up on the walls of my study so that I get a sense of the way they might be read across the walls. There are already a few different sizes of panels and some without panels at all. I have also decided to have what I call a BANG panel – that is a very large panel at the beginning which sets the scene by way of introduction or by having a huge image to start with then having the following panels much smaller attached to the image, hopefully drawing the viewers into each of the stories. I haven’t got digital versions of these examples yet to give you a sense but perhaps later.

I told you about my intention to write really quick comics and to draw them in such a way that they don’t take too long so as to produce more comics. So far I’ve managed to stick to that concept, I have found it to be a very interesting way to write comics. I have insisted on keeping the process very improvised, even the scripts are somewhat dictated by the images, characters’ body language have changed the script in numerous places (because I wrote the words after having drawn the images, in one example I have drawn the entire comic before I knew what words would accompany it). There’s something extraordinarily satisfying in drawing comics quickly, especially after doing such a long-winded and hand-chiselled comic like the Long Weekend. It feels more organic, more exciting and more in-keeping with the way in which I make music.

Enjoying it so far, November here I come.

Tags: Australian comics, Inflight ARI, mythology, Neil Haddon, Psychology, Santospirito, Tasmanian