This comic will be in the November exhibition Sleuth, at Inflight ARI in Hobart, and might end up being part of the book of The Long Weekend in Alice Springs itself come early next year.
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Paris
7 SepSo Nadine and I just got home from a smashing month in Europa – woohoo!! Nadine had some nice adventures at Boisbuchet as part of her Arts Tas grant with the Vitra Fellowship go and check out her stuff as she tells it at her blog Nadine did a lot of type hunting … a lot … and she came up with some nice little numbers (and letters).
I filled my entire sketchbook over the month with sketches and comics, which I’m going to turn into a mini travel-comics zine for a bit of fun. 
Pages 102-105
12 Augprevious pages 99-101
For the rest of the graphic novel go here
I’m quite fond of these pages … I’m a bit of a dag but I find them funny. I didn’t change much with the text in these sections. The cannibalism section is a little shocking in contrast to the rest of the comic which doesn’t have fantasy sections which are quite so full-on … but I think that’s a nice way to break the comic up a bit and refresh the reader throughout these long cadenzas of wordiness and concepts. I was worried that long periods of lecture-like talking might be a little grating so the jokes and munching were a necessity.
Pages 99-101
26 JulPrevious pages – go to this link
You can preorder a copy of the book (to be printed early 2013) in September! For more details – go to this facebook site or check back here form September to December.
On these pages here I broke from the panels completely – It was an exceptionally wordy part … but I kind of liked the conversation in the essay and didn’t want to scrap that chatting aspect to the writing. In fact – in my mind I had a second name for the third chapter – The Conversation. Most of what’s written here is probably known in Australia and isn’t really ground-breaking stuff – the bit that quite dig is the last bit on the last page which implies that what is happening to Indigenous people is a process that is affecting us all … which is something I feel keenly in this country – the trauma of colonisation is something felt by everyone, whether they are aware of it or not.
Next month I will commence a massive funding campaign to see if we can together organise enough pledges to get a good print-run off the ground!!
The Long Weekend Pages 96-98
4 Jul
Next pages in a few weeks – check back here.
So the first page here took me ages … as in, it didn’t take me long to do – I just procrastinated for ages on it … because I was sort of dreading the work that it would require in terms of research. It turned out quite nice I reckon. The themes are starting to get a little Chatwin-ish here with the Songlines criss-crossing the planet.
From September to December I’ll be starting a campaign to see if I can get this project funded for printing. I have asked the wonderful Nadine Kessler to assist by doing the book design. Pay attention to this FACEBOOK page for update … or if you’re not a facebooker then come back to this website during that time and you can find links to the campaign here – you’ll be able to make a pre-order on the book then!
Pages 92-95
28 MayPrevious pages – 89-91
This is the last chapter of the Long Weekend, a graphic rendering of an essay of a friend of mine.
The third page here is from a great film that my wife did whilst she was working for the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) in Alice Springs. She was on a trip with Sonia, who also worked there and three ladies who were from out East of the Plenty Highway (google-map it) towards the Queensland border … I think they went somewhere out past Bonya or something, not sure. But in the video they went lizard hunting. From the car Nadine filmed the ladies when they told them to stop the car, one of them had an iconically large bottom and watching the video I immediately thought of how great it might look as a comic when she bent down to pick up a stick and whacked the side of a tree, and magically this large Perentie lizard just flops off the tree … and fahnee!!!
The Tingari lines I used in this last page here flow onto the next few pages, Craig suggested that I look into them early on. The Geoffrey Bardon book from Papunya Tula is full of Tingari paintings from the Western Desert that I delved into, and have grown very fond of, despite feeling completely lost in their meanings. Back in the second chapter – Saturday – I have a page where I explain what each of the symbols represents and how they are functional elements in storytelling.
Rachel Napaltjarri Jurra is a real Walpiri woman, though I have drawn her differently to real life … but then I’ve done that for all the characters … including Craig (I forgot what he looked like for a while).
The Sleuth Exhibition – process diary #2 – late May
24 MaySee 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.
Early drafts of the Long Weekend
18 MayHere’s a pic of what is now page 7
… this was to plan out the wordier sections of the essay and see what works and what could be chopped by virtue of the fact that the images contain in the important part of the information. Page 7 is still one that I think needs to have some words chopped out … before the final draft I shall take an axe to some of the words there.
This was another page from the very beginning of the process, it is now pages 1 and 2, two of most powerful pages in the comic (my best efforts to date … 100 pages later and I haven’t topped them yet). This page was made well before I had decided on the 9panel format that came later … it was one of the first things that I showed Craig also. He said that he knew it must be good because his wife Jude was interested in reading it … which normally doesn’t happen with his writings.
Joshua Santospirito Art 