Earthling! around the Earth!

The Czech version of Earthling! is out, or almost out. Or will soon be out. Below is the cover and a page from the book – POZEMSTAN!

My grandfather was born in Prague, so maybe this translation is part of the circle of life. But not the part where lions eat gophers.

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A short Earthling! holiday play

Morning. A crowded city bus.

Albert
I sure wish I knew what to buy that special 8 year-old in my life for the Holidays.

Fay
I hear ya! I don’t know what to buy my nephew who is 9.

Fish Monger
Me neither. What can I possibly buy for my 10 year old niece this Christmas?

Bob
I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. I have a 7 year old and an 11 year old to buy for and I have to get them 8 gifts for Hanukkah!

Albert
I’d like to buy them somethings more than a video game or just another toy.

Fay
Me to. Like a book.

Bus Driver
You could buy them a copy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid!

All
They already have it.

Bus Driver
Oh.

Suddenly the bus begins to rock back-and-forth. People fall asunder. A glowing figure steps aboard. It’s hard to clearly see this mysterious figure amongst the bright lights and fog though they are wearing a gold lamé jumpsuit and stand at least 8 feet tall.

Mysterious Figure
You should buy them a copy of the graphic novel – Earthling!.

Fish Monger
You means that graphic novel about a school bus from outer space?

Mysterious Figure
Exactly.

Bob
But that’s all science-fictiony and stuff. I don’t know if kids like that.

Mysterious Figure
You mean the way kids don’t like Star Wars and Transformers and such? Not to say Earthling! is exactly like Star Wars or Transformers but they share a genre…

Fay
I am researching it using my iPhone and gosh, the reviews sound great! Except for this one, man they really had it out for the guy. Anyway, that’s a great idea! I’ll order one right now from my iPhone!

Albert
It’s the perfect gift!

Fish Monger
Well that and a few pounds of fish!

All laugh. Fish monger has a coughing fit.

Bus Driver
(To mysterious stranger) Thanks for the book buying advice but you got a ticket?

Mysterious Stranger
I don’t know. Do you?

Curtain closes.

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Earthling! for TWO BUCKS!

Hurry, hurry, hurry, step right up! Get in line now for the digital deal of the winter solstice!

Amazon dot com has picked the ebook version of Earthling! to sell via their Kindle store for $1.99!

This is deal of a lifetime. Or should I say a ‘deal of a space-time’? What’s a Kindle? Why the Kindle is one of them tablet devices on which you can read books and look at the moving pictures and play games every waking hour!

Now Earthling!, being a snazzy 256 page graphic novel in full color, well, it will look best and work best on the Kindle Fire or Kindle HD. You know, something with color.

From now until December 22nd, I think, you can get the full graphic novel on the Kindle for a great price. I don’t know how many Kindle’s are out there, I don’t think Amazon tells us that. But If you have one, or know someone who does, why not pick up Earthling!? And I think…I’m not 100% sure, but I think you can buy it via the Kindle App on a Mac, transfer it to the Kindle reader on thei Pad and read it on an iPad as well.

So, Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah and Happy New Year! Get Earthling! for $1.99 on the Kindle. Or is that ‘for’ the Kindle?

The New York Times said of Earthling!, ” “Earthling!” is the debut graphic novel by Mark Fearing, an illustrator and animator, and it’s an exhilarating hoot.” and “What’s pleasing about “Earthling!,” and will be especially so to tween readers, is how adrenalized and fast paced it is: loads of Whoosh!, Scree! and Thunk! action in the service of suspenseful, inventive plotting.”

So get your digital copy now!

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Earthling! Reviews from the UK.

This is a toot-your-own-horn-while-you-still-can post. So toot-toot. Earthling! has received some nice reviews in the UK recently. The book was released in the UK in February, but it won’t be available in the US until July. Earthling! is a young reader graphic novel I have been working on since 1972. OK. That’s not true. But it did take a bit of time to get done!

This one is from Christopher King. Check it out here.

Here’s an excerpt:

‘…What follows is a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging graphic novel for children, with a commendable plot based around themes of science and the needless misunderstanding and paranoia of unfamiliar cultures.’

Here’s one from Win Wiacek. You can read it here, and by the magic that is clicking be taken to the review. I love clicking.

Here’s an excerpt:

‘Funny, thrilling, wildly imaginative and utterly engrossing, Earthling! blends elements of Tom Brown’s Schooldays with Joe Dante’s Explorers and Harry Potter’s best bits with the anarchic wit of Rocko’s Modern Life or Camp Lazlo to produce a delightfully compelling adventure yarn with endearing characters and a big, big payoff. This is a book any sharp, fun-loving kid can – and should – read… and so should the rest of you…’

And here’s another review here on Readaraptor.

And an excerpt:

‘I really would recommend this graphic novel to all kids in the 8-12 range, especially if they have a thing for aliens and space. Bud and the friends he makes have to fight the baddies and get Bud back to earth without his identity being uncovered and it makes for a great adventure. If you kids like comics and great illustrations they will probably love this one too, it was a great read and I’ll be passing it on to my stepson to see what he thinks of it too!’

And one more. This from the blog, We Love This Book.

And an excerpt:

‘This is a very good example of one-shot graphic novels for the under-twelves. The page layouts are easily readible; the characters and the author’s own inking are boldly and simply defined while never being over the top….The plot is great fun, covering as it does the propaganda against Earth on board the school, the sport, the escape plans – and Bud’s new-found life with his new alien friends. It’s a very successful debut piece from this creator – it ticks all the boxes and shows great promise for future works.’

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250 pages of graphic novel later…

Earthling! (my graphic novel, being released by Chronicle Books in July of this year) is now a few months behind me.

It was a very rewarding experience and if you like world building, there is nothing comparable, if you happen to have the 4 years to work on it.

Enough time has passed since I finished Earthling! that new graphic novel ideas are starting to take shape. It’s like any difficult task you face, the further you are from it, the more willing you are to tackle it again (For those who have children, you will immediately get this point!). You learn from every project you complete and that creates a desire to try it again. To make it better next time. Or at least not worse.

I recently read some GN’s I have sitting in my shelf. What I found odd was that the books that stuck with me, are not the ones most (critics, reviewers…) would consider the best written or the best illustrated.

The ones that stuck with me are the ones that created the strongest reality distortion field. The ones that I enjoyed the most had an internal coherence that I find difficult to describe. The combination of words and pictures can create a very persuasive alternate reality. I suppose this isn’t that different from some critics saying Stephen King isn’t a great writer from a technical perspective. But to most readers who pick up a novel by him, the characters and story force you to keep turning the pages. Whether he is an accomplished writer from a technical perspective or not, the greatest hurdle a writer faces is creating a story that makes people want to turn the page.

Many of the graphic novels I loved are not technically perfect, but they left me with such a strong lasting impression they became my favorites.

Some of the best written and drawn GNs (like Ordinary Victories by Manu Larcenet ) made my favorites list but others stay with me because the whole is greater than the sum of their individual elements. There is something unique about the depth of the world created in a graphic novel that becomes the most important aspect.

It just makes it that much harder for me to define exactly why I love the ones I do. Nothing can draw you in and surround you quite the way a good graphic novel can. They allow the total immersion you get in a novel but also speak to the brain with images like film does.

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Can graphic Novels make you smarter? Read on…

Above page from Earthling!. A graphic novel due out in July of 2012 from Chronicle Books.

There’s no doubt that picture books, graphic novels and comics offer a rich combination of words and pictures that create something greater than the two base elements. And this immersion attracts interest in them from people of all ages. I often get emails asking about how to make a graphic novel. And I have some posts on this blog about how I do it. But I think a more important question to ask is, why do you want to do a graphic novel?

That’s a serious question. Because a graphic novel is like writing an entire novel and then adding drawings to it. A lot of drawings. What I am saying is, it’s as much work as writing a novel, and that is a demanding task, and THEN drawing a hundred or two hundred or more pages. Are you still sure you want to do one?

Now, the art in a graphic novel usually carries some of the story load. Some creators tell 70% of the story in the art, some not even 20%. It’s up to the creator to decide that ratio. And I don’t think a successful graphic novel is simply one where art carries more of the narrative. It’s more complicated than that.

But the the drawings offer a rich opportunity to visually communicate elements of your story. They could demonstrate beats of the plot (e.g. the small boy faces a massive monster with no dialogue or voice over needed to explain the situation), they could add depth to characters by contradicting what a character is saying (e.g. the character says “I’m fine. Never been better.” while you draw them crying.). Most importantly they can create depth of experience in a story when you don’t have prose to rely on. (e.g. Instead of writing “It was a dark and stormy night”, you can show it.) Think of it this way, does ‘rock-n-roll’ music always have to have drums? Can you have a rock song without a lead signer? Does it have to have a bass or can it just have lead guitar? Obviously the definition is greater than its parts. The same for a graphic novel.

Now my take on this is different then some of the authoritative texts about graphic novels, of which there are new ones every 14 days.

I believe there are countless ways to combine words and pictures and end up with tasty and fullfilling graphic novels. It helps to have a handle on the rules of visual story telling, but I have some indy books that are not the creations of highly trained artists and they tell much better stories than the stuff that’s overly developed and ‘properly drawn’ by an artist that has mastered the various rules of creating addictive, visual imagery.

I’m not going to put up a ‘how to’ because for the most part there is no ‘right’ way to do a graphic novel. There are some tools that you can learn to make it easier, or look more professional, but again, those are technical questions and very learnable. The way I did Earthling! is just one path. There are a lot of sites and people out there who are willing, for a few dollars, to walk you through the technical process. But that isn’t as important as understanding why the story you want to tell is the best fit for a graphic novel. And that’s a more complicated issue to teach. I feel uncomfortable offering too much general info about this. I’m better with the discussion when I can sit down and listen to you describe your project or look at samples of what you are doing. But I can say that if you want to do a graphic novel the idea should facilitate interesting imagery. BUT ‘interesting imagery’ is subjective.

See what we come back to? You do a graphic novel because it works for you as an artist/writer. You create a graphic novel because you don’t want to tell your story just in prose, or write a play or a screenplay. You create a graphic novel because in your minds eye, you see the story unfolding on pages with drawings. Because those drawings let you present more issues than just the words on the page would allow. The images are an opportunity to fill out the world of your story in an immediate and powerful way. It goes straight to the cerebral cortex in a way just words can’t. (interestingly enough, 3D films require the brain to do much more work processing the imagery and therefore your pre-frontal cortex, which handles impulse control and future thinking, is inactivated to a great extent, which might help explain the deeper immersion we feel in a 3D film.)

But I have often wondered if the combination of reading and looking at pictures doesn’t have a similar effect. It makes the brain focus more sharply on the experience and you get more involved. I think this may be true in younger readers especially. Processing the words and the images may set two slightly disparate processes of the brain to work together and search for the combined meaning. I’m just staying…maybe comics and picture books make you smarter. Anyway…

Most often my favorite graphic novels are the creations of a single person who is a writer/artist. This isn’t always true…there are exceptions. But if you are a writer who has some graphic abilities or an artist that can write a decent story, the combination can be really engaging.

That, and you have a lot of time on your hands.

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Another Graphic Novel I Enjoyed

I ran across The Storm In The Barn at my local library and fell in love with it. It’s not easy to categorize and it’s not a typical young-reader GN. But it is a wonderful fairytale/folktale mixture that is built upon solid Americana. It takes wonderful advantage of the pages, pouring out gestural, sketch style images that haunt the frames. The artist is Matt Phelan who was inspired by the black and white photos’ from the dustbowl years. Those are amazingly strong, emotive images and his being inspired to tell this tale by them makes perfect sense.

The story starts simply enough following a young boy’s life during the Dust Bowl years in Oklahoma. The first 20 pages feel like like they could be from a storyboard for the John Ford adaptation of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. But as the story developes it hs a fantastical edge, a sense of an American Magical Realism. Similar in tone to a Mark Twain book as retold by John Houston at the height of his directing and screenwriting skills.

It develops a skewed look at the difficult world that surrounds these characters. It’s a setting we all think we know something about, but do we really? A dust storm isn’t just a dust storm in this book. A bit of Stephen King flutters across the pages. He discovers the unsettling in the mundane. It’s exciting when an artist sculpts ‘average’ moments and locations into unsettling realities. Honestly, most of the time, nothing is as it really seems. Heck, just read up on quantum mechanics and see if your desk looks the same to you.

The overriding issue in the story is the death of the land these people live on. The lack of rain. The dwindling sense of hope. When will the rain return? Why did it go away? What exactly IS locked in that abandoned barn?

A really great book that deserves a read. I’m inspired that it was published because it seems to me it’s a story, a vision, that a lot of editors would turn down in this day and age. So often publishers are being asked to deliver not a good book, but a broad entertainment. Not that a piece of broad entertainment can’t be good. Or that a good book can’t be broad in it’s audience reach. But quite often that’s not the case. The appeal for a lot of fine work will be less than Shrek-like in it’s proportions. And therefore it will be passed over by prospective publishers.

I’m happy Candlewick Press published this book.

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How I make a graphic novel

I mentioned I am working on a graphic novel for Chronicle Books called Earthling!. It’s been created as a kids graphic novel, but I hope adults will find it entertaining to read as well. It’s due out, well, soonish. As in the sooner I get it all done the sooner it will be out. I will post a bit about the graphic novel (GN) from time to time, and more often as we get near a release. I’ve been asked by quite a few people to talk about how I developed this and what my process is. And here it is.

BELOW – development art – Earthling!

Earthling! is a sci-fi story (surprise, surprise) and I don’t want to give too much of the story away – yet. It’s a long story. About 230 pages or so. It’s a big story and the epic nature means a lot of locations, characters and action.

It’s based on an idea I had for an animated short while I was in the UCLA graduate animation program. But my friend Tim Rummel, who also produced my first animated short called The Thing with No Head, felt it had the seeds of a much bigger story in it. He talked me into writing and rewriting it and developing it as a graphic novel. Tim and I work really well together and have similar takes on issues of story and character and he helped me keep it moving before an agent decided to pick it up and get behind it. Denis Kitchen and John Lind believed in it enough to get it in front of a wonderful editor who was interested in graphic novels. And she bought it, after a few discussions and a revision to the synopsis/outline.

My production process has five phases -

1. write the entire story in comic/screenplay format so it is easy to review and revise
2. revise manuscript with editor until it is considered in final form
3. draw page roughs (revise script to meet the needs of the final format if needed)
4. place roughs into Adobe Illustrator to place text (review by editor)
5. final line art and painting (Photoshop)

By writing the entire story out first in script format, we are able to make sure the story works. That the big issues resonate and the characters are as rich as possible. And it makes it easy for editors and others not accustomed to GN’s and comics to review it. But editors need to understand that the script MAY change when I start drawing. That the script has to be in service to the final illustrated format.

BELOW – page roughs

Now The Details -
Working with my editor at Chronicle Books, I wrote the entire story out in screenplay format. Well, a sort of comic-screenplay hi-brid format. The point being anyone could pick it up and read the STORY and PLOT and understand it. They didn’t need to know about comics, or graphic novels or panels on a page. They could read and comment on the STORY. That’s the important part isn’t it? No matter what format the material is in.

We edited the manuscript/script many, many times. And for those who dislike the editing process, Earthling! got better each time. Tim and I would talk through notes and he would give me feedback as well.

The structure simplified over time and with my editor’s help I concentrated on the elements that didn’t make sense or support the story. During this time I did some rough character designs, and did lots of sketches of location and elements in the story that are important.The editorial folks got to see these.

A bit of a side note here – I wouldn’t rccmnd this method to GN projects where the author and artist are different. Because I am both drawing and writing it, and I have some experience with panel style stories, I tried to write it to take advantage of ‘the page’ so to speak. And I know my limits as an artist, what I do well (character acting, funny characters) and what I don’t do well (serious looking sci-fi technology). So I can write the story while seeing it on the page and knowing (hopefully) how I would be drawing the action.

So after many months of editing and revisions we arrived at a final manuscript. At least a manuscript that the editor felt made sense from a story and character perspective. Or she was tired of seeing my revisions!

At this point I started doing roughs. I draw roughs on 11 x 17 paper, with a full spread (two pages). The book is approx 6 x 8. So I can do these rough/thumbnails in the right dimension…or almost the right size.

I draw each page 2 or three times, usually. Sometimes I can nail a simple page in a single rough. But often I end up drawing several versions, redraw some panels, or change the composition of the page and redraw. Then in batches of 20 or 30 pages, I scan them in. Then I can pick and choose from the various roughs to create a ‘final’ rough page.

So any given page may be made up of roughs from three or four different pieces of paper. I get to pick what worked best and craft a page I like.

This ‘rough’ is now in high resolution and slightly larger than print size.

Then I create a print resolution (300 dpi) Photoshop file, and import that into an Adobe Illustrator file that is set up for print (proper bleeds, ETC) and add the balloons and type. Sometimes I find a problem where the art didn’t leave enough room for the type and I have to draw a new rough, and scan in, or make some changes in Photoshop and reimport the revised rough drawing into Adobe Illustrator. When all the type is in, this Adobe Illustrator file can be exported as a PDF for the publisher to review. So they have rough art AND final copy to review.

BELOW – page roughs and panel breakdowns

And upon final sign off, I will import the type layer back into the high res Photoshop file with the ‘original’ high resolution rough drawing and will draw and paint the final art on a new layer.

It’s important to note that in the drawing phase, the script will change again. This is what makes a graphic novel unique compared to a prose book. The manuscript you write still has to work on a drawn page. It’s similar to a film in that the final product is not the final script. It’s the film that comes from it.

BELOW – early character design

During the art phase, I’ve rearranged character’s dialogue, I cut one character entirely, I have cut scenes and written new dialogue to end a chapter or compliment a drawing that pushed the story in a slightly different way. Sometimes my writing just came up short when paired with the art and some dramatic scenes ended up needing far less dialogue once the art was there to carry meaning.

The script ultimately has to mesh with the drawings, composition and visual pace set on the page. I feel it is a back-n-forth process, not a writer writing a final script that can never be altered. Much easier to do when the writer is also the artist and creator.

BELOW – early character designs

And that’s where this story ends. I am a little over halfway done with the roughs. The editor and I will be talking about a few notes in the next week or so. I’ve drawn ‘final art’ on a few pages, just to make sure it’s all working (file size, resolution and how it visually reads when printed out at 100% size).

Earthling! is moving along. Just a few more months of sleepless nights and it will be nearing a point when I can say it’s almost done!

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From Nothing. To Chaos. To Something.

I’m always suspect of reading about writing. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think I have chronic mistrust of those who speak in authority and those who want to. Often I skip over good advice, not wanting to hear it for fear it will turn my process end-over-end, or even scarier, make me realize that I have no good process. That all my years of ‘experience’ haven’t actually produced anything worth charting, diagraming, putting into Power Points or enumerating. Often my system of creation is – There is nothing. Chaos. Something. Do it again.

Can’t sell a million artist self-help books with advice like that.

But there are a lot of good ideas that have been expounded on by writers, people who teach writers, artists ETC. I’ve been thinking about them lately as I am currently revising a large graphic novel and the process was once again filled with surprises. Left turns on red lights, short cuts that aren’t REALLY short cuts and full stops on an empty road, in the middle of nowhere, when I am going 110 miles per hour and have no idea where I was headed.

A graphic novel is a daunting task. Writing a story and investing another year (at least) drawing 150 maybe 200 pages is best described as ‘a long slog’. Don’t get me wrong. I love doing it. I can’t imagine a better challenge or more interesting job. But if you are going to climb Everest you have to admit it’s one big mountain. And so it is.

Creating a graphic novel is more closely related to writing a film than writing a novel. Because the script is just the starting point. The words on paper have to be good (hope they are good) but there’s a lot of work ahead. Pencils and inking then post – coloring and setting the type, printing. You spend months penciling, inking and coloring. If you decide to alter a chapter or drop a scene or change a setting, you won’t just be editing copy. You’ll be drawing, inking and coloring all over as well.

When I work on graphic novels or comics there’s always some change in the dialog and settings when I get to drawing them. This is a process where the material gets more interesting and dynamic. You find a visual joke in the written material. Or a visual way to communicate something that was in dialog or description before. But, I always want a solid story in place before I draw dozens of pages. I usually write and draw my own material so when I write the script I can use the visuals in my head to pre-visualize what will happen in art. This is different than if I was handing my script off to another artist.

I mentioned in a previous post a book that I think does a very good job of introducing graphic novels but I wanted to mention another site I turn to for some great advice about writing. The site is often focused on screenplay writing and technique but just as often goes into subjects that are helpful for anyone writing fiction.

Most graphic novel scripts are not that different from a TV or film script. (Unless you want to use only third person narration in a graphic novel.) Much of the thought process behind writing for the screen can help you write a better graphic novel. I’m not talking about structure (3 Act ETC). I’m looking at effective methods to communicate ideas as efficiently as possible. Using dialog effectively and focused on character action. How to cut to the core of what is most important, usually in the present tense and understanding that a visual element will play a huge role in how the final work is consumed, understood and appreciated. The words on the page are not the final product.

If you don’t already read John August.com, check it out. It’s a site I visit often when I struggle with taking the Nothing into Chaos and beating that Chaos into Something.

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Graphic Novel!

The contract is finally done and I can talk about a project I am really excited about. I will be doing a graphic novel with Chronicle Books! Don’t hold your breath…it’s due out is 2011. So I have some time to get it done. I’ll be drawing and writing this one, so my spell check better be turned on as well.

It’s a sci-fi epic for kids of any age, but I would guess marketing folks would like to say ages 8 and up. Is that right? I’m not sure now. But many people who know me have mentioned that perhaps I am stuck at age 8…

The book is called Earthling! (exclamation point included, just like JEOPARDY! the game show) It’s a project that I have lived with for about 5 years. The idea started out as an animated short while I was in the UCLA animation program. My friend Tim Rummel, who produced my animated short called The Thing with No Head, kept after me to expand the story beyond a 5 minute animated short. He kept after me enough, to actually make me do it and  went on to help me develop the idea. So Tim is credited as a co-creator of the project. He calls often to make sure I’m working fast enough. Yes Tim, I will get back to work as soon as I finish this blog update…

Below is some development art from the project. I have posted a few pieces from it already, though I most likely did not identify the project. I’m very, very excited. Chronicle is a great publisher, and I am working with a fantastic editor who is really into the project and the odd little world I have created.

This project was represented by the Kitchen, Lind Agency and I really appreciate their efforts on behalf of it. They saw something in it and kept it moving forward.

I hope this is the first post of many. When I have time and stuff I can show, I will.

Now it’s back to work!

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