Comic Book Resources

COMIC BLOG TATTOO - EPISODE 2 Shining on the Frontier - Ivan Brandon & Calum Watt on PIRATES

CBT EDITOR’s NOTE:  My deepest apologies for the delay in this installment of Comic BLOG Tattoo.  I was defeated by technology.  Well, it may have won the battle, but I won the WAR…  As a reminder, the CBT crew, including Tori will be appearing at the San Diego Con next week (www.imagecomics.com or www.toriamos.com for more details)  A group of us will also be signing at the Golden Apple in Los Angeles on August 1st, starting at 6pm, so please come by and say hello.

So then.  Next up are writer Ivan Brandon (NYC Mech/Cross Bronx/24-7) and Calum Watt (24-7 and a host of concept art).  For Comic Book Tattoo, they decided to take on Tori’s song PIRATES from her first album in her Y Kant Tori Read incarnation.  I was a little shocked and surprised at the choice, but once I saw what they were doing with it, I knew it was the right choice.  Let’s let THEM tell you about it, shall we?

CALUM: When Rantz contacted me regarding the CBT I was immediately interested, when I found out Ivan was writing Pirates I knew straight away which strip I wanted to draw!

IVAN: Let’s be honest. I also begged.

CALUM: Ivan and I had worked before on 24Seven 2: Ivan writing and myself drawing directly from a regular, page by page, panel by panel script. This time we worked slightly differently.

IVAN: The thing that had attracted me to Cal’s work in the first place was the raw creativity. So where before I’d worked full-script style and spelled a lot out in terms of characters and beats and overall structure, what I really wanted to do here was just inspire Cal to cut loose and own each page.

CALUM: Ivan outlined a breakdown of the three pages, giving an overall story arc and highlighting the key areas to focus on. This allowed me much more freedom for the pacing and sequential layout.

IVAN: I wrote down the roughest ideas possible. No dialogue. Just the goal of the crew and a hint at the vantage from the room we were in, and suggestions of a handful of other worlds that crossed that point and that purpose. I made it clear to Cal that to me, nothing I’d written on the page was sacred beyond the FEEL of what we were going for. I left him completely free to transpose and reinterpret on pretty much every level.

CALUM: The trick came with balancing the more complex themes Ivan was hinting at with the bigger more immediate action of the piece whilst fitting the whole thing into three pages. The idea that the tunnel was a diverging road of times and dimensions… yeah, I kinda didn’t focus on that….

IVAN: I just sat back and winced, thinking we were trying to send the Titanic into a tiny glass bottle without slowing down.

CALUM: Well, with three pages it was going to be tight. At this stage, I wanted to concentrate on the breakdowns and solidifying the plot into panels. I tend to start of all my personal work on a square, and so at this stage I decided that each panel should reflect the format of the book.

CALUM: Once all the panels were sketched out individually (In Sketchbook Pro) I dropped them all into the page template (in Photoshop) and there adjusted size and layout. While a story has it’s own pace, I feel pages themselves add pauses, so for me it’s crucial to get the timing of the panels and pages to work together.

   

The original breakdown

CALUM: With the layout ready, I could spend some time on the character work. These were initial thoughts to allow Rantz and Ivan know which way we could go. The Pirate Captain became a female, and I nearly went with Tori’s look from the cover of the track’s album (Y Can’t Tori Read), but not being sure how well this would be received, I went with your regular old spandex wearing, shaved headed sci-fi look (obviously).

The original Pirate Captain

Initial character designs for the other crews

CALUM: Rantz and Ivan were both happy, so I was left to complete the task.

IVAN: I was ecstatic. Even at this stage Cal had created work that transcended anything I could have imagined. It was more than I could ever have asked for, but for him it wasn’t enough.

CALUM: That’s right, maybe I had too much time to think about it, but somewhere along the way something wasn’t right for me. Ivan’s story was great, but I didn’t feel I’d done the piece justice. It may be only three pages, but for a project such as the CBT it needed to be more of an EVENT!

 

Colour versions of the Pirate Captain with the lofty ambition of a fully painted strip

CALUM: With time in hand I decided to rethink my approach. The panel breakdown needed to stay the same, but I knew I had freedom with the treatment and design. Two elements came together resulting in the final approach. The track mentions Morocco, and Ivan and I had already discussed including this somehow. Secondly, the main moon panel got me looking at star charts. Together these lead me to Illuminated manuscripts: Arabic, Moorish, Celtic, Far Eastern… and I knew I could tie all these elements together to really make our pages work.

CALUM: I set about designing the ‘illuminated’ elements, creating the background and generating the panel borders in Illustrator using Arabic geometric design as a guide. The new approach required a rethink of some of the panel contents, particularly the ‘effigy’ shot of the Pirate Queen, which essentially existed in its own space.

The redesigned Pirate Queen ‘Effigy’. Colour Inspiration from The Book of Kells

IVAN: The new pages started coming in and I was floored. I’d been terrified to lose what had already been done, but what came back was a whole different animal… Cal had gone beyond the illustrative conceits and had essentially rebuilt the entire world from scratch… he’d started to speak an entirely different storytelling language I’d never seen before.

CALUM: I had to make some changes due to the new format, and I was conscious that the reader might have to work with us on the new sequences. Other changes were slightly more prosaic: I changed the last panel for a variety of reasons, not least being lack of time: downsizing from a centurion of Roman soldiers to focusing on a lone knight and his mage. I also felt the pair would be more recognisable as seekers of the impossible…

Original final panel in new layout, with the final sketch below.

CALUM: Once I’d rethought the panels, it became a regular comic job, sketching, inking and colouring pretty much as I would any job. This is all done digitally, and proved slightly tricky at the 600 dpi we were using, some of the final Photoshop pages hitting the 2 gig mark.

CALUM: Ivan then checked over the pages and returned the dialogue, this I slotted in with Illustrator, and finally, we got them off to Rantz.

IVAN: Part of me wanted the whole thing to be silent at that point. I realized what I wanted to do more than anything was to figure out how to use my words like a rhythm guitar rather than vocals. The story was there, all I wanted to do was help control the route the reader took to get from start to end.

CALUM: While the original draft certainly had the pace and action a comic book requires, perhaps the final lacks the usual conventions, but for me, has the sense of occasion I wanted, I hope both Rantz and Ivan (and maybe Tori) agree.

IVAN: This was the most unique collaboration I’ve ever experienced. I’m off to figure out where Cal and I are off to next!

CALUM: Well, we shot for the moon… who knows. I want to thank Rantz for giving me the opportunity and Ivan for bearing with my changes, and of course Tori for our inspiration.

C. July 2008

-i. July 2008