No pin-up pose for me!
Fast sketches inspired by a traitorous back ache. Ouch.
Tagged art, back ache, humor, Pencilling comics, Sketches
Here is another page that gave me a lot of work in all the stages! Drawing cluttered interiors is the bane of my art!
This page was finished in greytones with Gimp 2.6 and my trusty Wacom Intuos tablet. The perfectionnist, I even put in a late perspective correction in the last panel!
Read the rest of this installment in Destination Nexuz3!
Posted in Art, Comics, humor, Science-fiction
Tagged Adalou, Comics, Gimp software, greytones, Intuos graphic tablet, manga, Michele Laframboise, Science-fiction, work-in-progress
Here is page 15 of my ongoing project, sketched on a comic format art board.
For years, I have been watching the stores, lost in a sea of cheap A4 size scanners… I am now testing my new Brother MFC-J6510 inkjet. What a pleasure to be able to scan my work, currently draft in A3 (11 × 17 inches) format! With our old Scanjet doing only legal size, I had to scan separately sections of my work, then rebuild the page, a hassle.
The colors are slightly accentuated, because in real life, these very faint pencil traces will disappear under the ink stroke. I do like using the little blue and green crayons .*
I scanned this pencilled page at 200 dpi because it takes a lot of memory! However, I can keep a memory of my drafts. All artists know that sometimes, an unfortunate stroke can mar the picture. Or, in my case, an accidental penstroke during a public event … Fortunately, the computer correction comes in handy!
Below is the first draft, drawn with GIMP 2.6 with my Intuos 4 tablet. With dialogues added in a separate layer. It may be noted that I have made changes in the two boxes in the center, which became two elongated cells, suggesting the passage of time.
Some dialogues have been modified. I am a perfectionnist, but I do follow my instinct, and I felt that my backgrounds were not enough visible. And the inside floor plans of this house had not even been planned before I drew the exterior!
The house of page 5:
Which was done between the first and second draft.
It would be an interesting issue to discuss, as how we are influenced in our creation by the material available . As the autobiographical strip at the end of this post illustrates…
I remember the bad ball pens and cheap white sheets I used for my first comics in 1975. Looking at this disaster of coagulated ink blotches, Jacques Hurtubise suggested to me to use India ink on larger sheets.**
A advice that I have carefully followed thereafter, leading to a series of unfortunate events with a variety of technical pens, and jars of ink. I have experimented doing comics on a variety of medias, and I’m now addicted to mechanical pencils… and my graphic tablet!
* I use 0.7 mm leads, because I was always breaking the non photo blue 0.5 mm leads. Those color are fragile! However, the pencils sold with the colored mines were poorly designed and the mines broke in several parts inside. So I used an run-of-the-mill 0.7mm Steadler, that preserves the leads inside.
** I met Jacque Hurtubise at a Comic festival at the University of Montréal in 1975.
I finally took the step and register in Webcomic Nation for The Jules-Verne Saga
Here is the banner, a composite from two different pictures, one being the header of this blog! Eventually I will put on a fresher picture.
Enrolling herself as a navigator on the Jules-Verne Alliance Space Ship, young Armelle, a shy brittle-boned Martian Belle, discovers life onboard the Jules-Verne, an old cruiser, its irascible and alcoholic commander , and its colored (and quite pissed off) crew mates. Then, there is this mission…
The graphic style will be slightly less realistic than the image suggests, a bit more on the manga style.
Posted in Comics, humor, Science-fiction
Tagged Comics, graphic novel, Jules-Verne saga, Michele Laframboise, Science-fiction
Summer is here, and blooming! Here are a few smiles from my garden. You may use the pics at your convenience!
Perfectly ripe! Nature is as generous as last year, and we have to invite neighbors to gather the fruits!
Ze mighty raspberry patch!
(Yes you may have some, provided you come here!)
An unexpected guest! Last year and the year before, I thought those sticks sprouting from my peonies were weeds (and you know how I deal with weeds...)
The wisteria is no more, but we have some unusual four-legged visitors!!
Never letting his or her guard down. Always on the ready. Cottontails lead difficult lives in this urban environment, what with the cars (Mississauga is the dream city for car dealers) and the wide streets and arteries. They come out veeery early in the morning.
This one was spotted on another street, during my 5h00 early-morning run. Note that the winter spotted fur is shedding, revealing the lighter brown fur. Fortunately, our two huntresses are safely inside the house.
Our two fierce huntresses, Maggie and Minnie, taking a break. (Picture taken on another day.)
And, last but not least, the ultimate proof that summer in upon us… a fiery day-lily (hemerocalle)!
Yes you can!
(…use it as a background picture.)
Tagged cats, Cottontail rabbit, flowers, Garden, pictures, raspberries
The Harper time machine will send you sixty years into the past!
Don’t miss your chance to live in Conservatopia, a perfectly ordered society where scientific evidence is scorned in favor of “gut-feelings” and astrologists. Oh, is it “ideologists”?
On a score of subjects, like gun control, census and sensibilities, environmental protection, women’s rights, gay rights, crime and punishment, our thinking will be modeled by ideologists, printed and repeated by the monopolistic mediasphere.
By the same token, the no-longer-protected workers-on-call will learn to admire without reserve the knights of the industrial table. This table will be well-laden, since bail-outs and hefty subsidizing will be granted to banks and oil industries. What will be left of the governing body will heed their sunny voices.
Soon, the only remnant of the social net will be gushing charity balls held by big fortunes while putting some dough in fiscal paradises. And, of course, the “economy” will make sure that there will be an endless supply of poor in need of generous donators. As for those pesky artists, only the popular ones will rise to the top, and to hell with the others “elites” who will have to scratch a living in restaurants or call centers! (But the financial elites are OK, since they can silence their opposition with lawsuits).
Criminals will be seen as annoying weeds, always growing in underprivileged neighborhoods for no understandable cause. First Nations will not see many differences between now and the 1950s. They will continue to be left dependent and despondent, deprived of their pride and clean water, their shattered communities serving as moral ground for our own prosperity.
In Conservatopia, you will see the women’s back to their right place, embracing the family values of the fifties!
Their rights will never be directly attacked, of course: only slowly, very slowly eroded, any attempt to take their life into their own hands subtly discouraged, their associations deprived of subsidized resources, any girl pressured with beauty advices and strings ads, any job-family conciliation becoming a headache, until the only place left for them will be the relative safety of their homes and hearth (preferably with a loaded gun, beware of the criminals roaming free!)
As contraception fall out of favor in the religious abstinence virtue contest, more unwanted pregnancies will follow, where girls and women will have no choice but to endure their situation or flee or die (like in the Third-world countries.
With the power of monopolized media, citizens… no, tax-payers will learn to distrust their elected representatives (them lazy civil servants gobbling our hard-earned money!), unions and various social defense groups (them lazy artists!). Soon, the more gullible among us will clamor for a benevolent but firm dictator with a pretty haircut.
But no mustache.
Time travel towards the glorious privatized future!
When voting for the Time Machine, you will also have a peek to a glorious future! As the governing body dwindles and greater fortunes concentrates in fewer hands, the permeability between businesses and the benevolent dictator will increase. Delocalization of jobs will occur more and more. Educated homeless will become a frequent sight on our streets.
The fortunes will tighten their golden hold on the mediasphere, showcasing only the items that serve the business growth. All social and cultural needs will be provided by the private-for-profit sector. The population will also rely on them for their information sources (crime is rampant! be afraid, lock your door, grab your gun, and give to charities!) Other voices, deprived of money, will dwindle out and die. Citizens will have freedom of speech, but without power to change anything to their condition.
While this election is officially about economy, let me remind you that a certain amount of criminality is a good thing for the GNP (Gross National Product). Crime ensures an excellent living for greedy gang bosses, but also for their lawyers, clerks, justices, prison guards, police, journalists, all with our taxes. And some social workers would like to go to the roots of this useful evil?
Private prisons will grow like mushrooms over the country, and – low and behold! – get quickly filled. This same private sector will devise new ways of watching people. Big Brother not only will tap your computer (already does !) but He will make sure to present you with pre-approved choices. (You want your car red or black? No, we don’t carry electric cars, sorry Ma’am!)
As social groups, universities science faculties, unions, associations, artists will be left without subsidies or research grants, prejudice will reign unchallenged. Government will be redeemable only to the real powerful forces in the population: big companies. Only those have the resources to underwrite the scores of “Institutes” parroting their concerns.
You miss the Soviet era? The apparatchiks? The silencing of opposition voices?
Choose the Time Machine!
Welcome to Conservatopia !
Posted in humor, Science-fiction, Society
Tagged Canada, Conservatopia, Elections, Environment, mediasphere, privatized jails, Time machine, Women's rights
Has this situation happened to you?
Fortunately, none of my old college friends are afflicted with such a materialistic mentality. This meeting did not happen in a book fair, but at a dinner for young professionals at the Ecole Polytechnique. I was so well dressed that newcomers automatically takes me for a successful businesswoman. I had this same air as this comic character…then, it is when they realize that I am a humble self-employed worker that potential contacts shy away.
For some media, the value of an artist or writer is primarily related to his or her financial success.
I do not scorn entrepreneurship itself, since I lead my own business. In a recent lecture given at a dinner of the AFAF, I mentioned that building a business, any kind of business, requires a good dose of creativity!
SF and fantasy author Dean Wesley Smith (a prolific author who gives advice to young writers, his site is worth a visit) takes writing as a serious business. According to him, if you do not make a living from your writing, it is because you do not write enough or want it, work hard enough. This appears like a disdainful view of people whose productivity do not match his own. But the reasoning works also to remind us that we often find excuses for… not writing.
Well, there is an area for nuance or discussion, and all our situations and writing goals are not the same. I like to dig a lot of infos for my SF novels… besides doing comics as well. DWS believes in writing a lot, and submitting a lot, and taking care of the business end. With a hundred novels published in twenty years or so, he is an Olympic writing athlete himself! (A page in 10 or 15 minutes… faster than me, even when I have the story clear in my head).
This year, he gave himself the challenge to write 100 short stories for 2011. Yes, a hundred! There is already eight published, between 2500 and 6000 words each. It is fortunate that he repeats that every writer is different! Nevertheless, his blog “Killing the sacred cows of publishing” offers great pointers and unorthodox advices.
DWS is very optimistic. In his opinion, publishers are always looking for new voices. And that too much rewriting “blunts” your creative voice, the personal, original part of the creation.
It happened to me for my first novel Ithuriel (16 agonizing rewrites!), so his message resonates strongly with me. Obviously, DWS revises to correct the “ortograf”, or flagrant errors or blunders. But after that he rewrites only if his editor asks him. And after the contract is signed…
It was a stimulating reading for me. Dean Wesley Smith’s advices have the effect of empowering a writer, reminding that he or she is not at the mercy of “the market” or agents. And to put the pleasure back in writing. Writers can achieve a good measure of “success” with effort and perseverance, without sacrificing their unique voice.
:^)
Posted in Comics, humor, Science-fiction
Tagged Business of writing, Comics, Dean Wesley Smith, humor, novel, Science-fiction, Signing table, Writing, Writing advice
There comes a point in writing where we feel that the story, the players and the universe that hold them have gained enough consistency to secure them in a tangible form. The ethereal cloud of infinite possibilities must now be condensed, into a brick (but not a too thick one!) Of course, there will always remain a small cloud of regret…
How to take this step without too much pain?
As I explained in another post, I do not have a rigid plan. I rather draw a grocery list. Here is one of the subplots in a novel work. (It does not give the big punches, and if you can’t read French, my secret is safe, bwa-haha!)
I draw clouds of relationships between characters, and do the research to comfortably establish my imaginary world.
An imaginary world well designed, whether in science fiction or in fantasy, do not only allows the author to return to it, but fans can also seize it (it happened with the universe Darkover by Marion Zimmer Bradley).
CAVEAT: Research is good, but … to some extent!
This is me writing a science fiction novel! Alas, too much “let’s google this, check up that” in the middle of writing the first draft of a manuscript will cut your swing, slow or even paralyze you. Oh, I wanted to read this post by Cory Doctorov sooner!
When you’ve worked and thought and lived with our stories behind the head, the characters grow and eventually become almost friends to the writer.
After the throes of planning is a very pleasant step in creating a novel. In my case, I enjoy doing lots of sketches that show a little life characters “outside” the scope of the novels. Here, I sketched a family scene from the world of Chaaas.
The downside is that it might push the story in all directions. And as it happens while I am writing, the manuscript gets longer! We must rein in those ideas, and jot down the wildest ones to recycle them for another story!
As the publishers have a specific format in mind for their books, there is usually a limit of pages to follow. We must strive to keep one or two main plot lines and give up many ideas and developments full of promises … with no guarantee that all the children of our imagination will emerge elsewhere!
Posted in humor, Science-fiction, Writing
Tagged ideas, Michele Laframboise, plot lines, Science-fiction, Secret well of ideas, Writing, Writing advice
Echoes of a Sunday artist 