The Clarion foundation helps budding writers of genre (SF, fantasy, fantastique, horror) to develop and mature their style. I had the joy of being invited by Lynda Williams (the author of the Okal Rel saga) to write a few posts from my own perspective of a SF writer with comic artist.
So my first post was about extending our writing roots to achieve a deeper connection with the reader. The illustrations are my own.
The last one is an account of my big, fat, first novel and its endless incarnations!
I am working on four more writing posts. Coming soon: The secret well of ideas, a another take at the well-known fan question: where do you get your ideas?
Posted in Science-fiction, Writing
Tagged budding writers, literature, lynda williams, novel, Science-fiction, Writing, Writing advice
This is a sketch that I did yesterday evening. It is a glimpse of my upcoming SF comic Wind Mistress, featuring a young girl named Adalou. The result may look a bit pale and dreamy, but I boosted the colors after scanning the original drawing !
Drawing a ponderous aquatic creature was a challenge. The oriented light rays help giving the image its depth and placing the volumes.
Posted in Art, Science-fiction
Tagged aquatic monster, Comics, drawing, Science-fiction, sketch, YA science-fiction, young girl
No pin-up pose for me!
Fast sketches inspired by a traitorous back ache. Ouch.
Tagged art, back ache, humor, Pencilling comics, Sketches
As a SF writer, research is an essential part of my work. But I sometimes do too much of it!
If the finished product is burdened with heavy lumps of exposition, those annoying scattered blocks will slow down the story – and the reader’s interest.
Many people saying “You know, I don’t like science-fiction” are often more afraid of those lumps, than they would be of a gripping story with warm-hearted characters affected by loyalty conflicts.
Even for fantasy world-builders, the internal logic of the magic-or-supernatural workings requires a fair amount of thinking. And, as magical as the world is, the story must be well grounded in reality. How many fantasy novels, for instance, demonstrate a total lack of knowledge about equine biology and maintenance? One of my friends, who raises horses and loves fantasy, is appalled by what she reads.
And some SF or fantasy authors, too proud of their word-building, dump large exposition blocks on the unsuspecting reader! “I suffered for my art, and so must you!”
Research is like an iceberg.
There is the emerged part, the novel that you enjoy. But whatever the number of pages, there is a larger, hidden part underwater.
Not enough research under it and your story collapses under the contradictions, impossibilities, logical errors and paper-thin characters.
But when the universes and societies are lovingly built, the strong foundation even allows other writers to participate in it! Two examples: The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley and the Honor Harrington series by David Weber have spawned many paper children.
According to the readers’ ages or familiarity with the concepts, the submerged part of the iceberg is around 90%. For a simpler story, you may choose to tone down the emerged part. A story aimed at children will be a smaller icebeerg. A vast work, like the Martian trilogy of Kim S. Robinson will be a huge iceberg!
Hal Clement, in my view, left more of his research over the waterline… But that was the good ol-days of science-fiction writing! I found Needle, aimed at young adults, captivating, even when the concept of “teen” and “young adult” did not exist at the time!
In my latest SF novel, La spirale de Lar Jubal, aimed at YA, I set aside about 99% of my painstaking research and physics calculations for the space station, to concentrate on the visual and dynamic aspects, and on the character’s conflicts.
Nevertheless, I put some visual information at the beginning of the novel.
In my upcoming SF novel, aimed at the “Oh, I don’t like science fiction” crowd, there are very few numbers, but more active descriptions of stunning settings and actions. The planet and science aspects are explained only by their impact on the characters’ lives.
And I must manage, of course, the sense of wonder…as this Winds of Tammerlan novel cover suggests.
Another time, I will explain why science-fiction is like chocolate…
Posted in Science-fiction, Writing
Tagged budding writers, expository lumps, Les vents de Tammerlan, Science-fiction, Writing, Writing advice
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.
Letter to my conservative members of Parliament,
You are all fathers and mothers.
You engrave your valuables and appreciate the ability to track your stolen jewels. You acknowledge the importance of driving lessons and of drunk driving control. When you renew your car plates licenses, you do not feel treated like a criminal.
When your personal physician warns you that you consume too much fat, you listen to his advice. You do not put his science(1) in question because you would rather eat a bag of chips. When a dangerous toy threatens the health of our children, you act upon it.
Unless the toy is a gun, from a simple rifle to semi-automatic assault sniper weapons. Then, you suddenly cross your arms.
Against all the facts and the experience of criminologists and police, you mention a “feeling of freedom,” or a “feeling of being treated like a criminal.” Just like the census long-form and the renforcement of imprisonment, against science, reason and verifiable facts, you oppose a “feeling”.
This “feeling” has been built from scratch by the propaganda of the arms dealers. Helped by powerful American associations, they aim to protect the billions of dollars in annual market sales of weapons, holsters, and ammunition in Canada. They use the same worn-out buzzwords, a mix of freedom and paranoia, hatred of others, by flattering the “vigilante” part of us.(2)
If at least your government proposed an alternative… but no. No limit to the number of weapons, as easy to get as chocolate tablet, acquired by an unchecked individual. Not even a mandatory engraving on guns. No GPS chips on them. Maybe you are expecting a superhero?
I do not write to make you change your mind, nor prevent you from making this act of autodafe by burning the registry.
It is clear that you have seen the Light and that reason alone will not make you, at the very least, keep semi-automatic assault weapons on the register . Weapons such as those used for the massacre at my engineering school carried on in December 1989. Several similar acts of revenge have been carried out by a few “law-abiding citizens” frustrated, depressed or confused…
Lost in its religious delirium of the battle of Good against Evil, your government will make life easier for the criminals stealing weapons from legitimate owners, or buying weapons and ammunition for resale into traffic. (Ooops! Excuse me, someone stole my gun!) In addition, it will force (I mean: compell) otherwise very nice people to arm themselves for defense … and some might shoot before asking questions.
Combined with your hardened prison sentences and your cuts of social support, destroying the registry will raise the criminal activity, small-time criminals against which you bring out the big cannons.
This “small-time” crime rise concerns discouraged indigent people, lacking a future. Their outbursts of violence or self-destruction will delight the fans of trivia, sustaining our expensive legal system. Weapons as easy to buy as a box of chocolates, overflowing prisons, busy hospitals treating the victims of trauma will complement this flourishing economy.
As for serious crime, the organized greed deeply embedded in our institutions and finance? Your silence speaks volumes.
So now, you have come full circle, erasing my hundreds of volunteer hours to limit the social damage (plus the work of thousands of law abiding citizens, all freedom lovers as you are) done since the December 6, 1989 rampage, my own September 11.
But maybe you crave, without acknowledging it, the excitement of a city rife with crime. As long as it stay away from you.
***
(1) it would be interesting to settle your science limit. Where do science stops and ideology begins?
(2) And they feed the confusion about interdiction and control. There are hunters in my family, and none feel threatened when they register either their gun or their car license.
Echoes of a Sunday artist 