Another (mini-) milestone passed!

I finished scripting Bolt: 6:59 last night. What that means, basically, is I wrote down all the dialogue—which wouldn’t fit in the thumbnails—in a separate text document. When I did that, I realized I only had 47 pages of material, not 48. Woops! I took that as an opportunity to flesh out a scene that needed a little more space. So I’m back up to 48 pages.

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You may have noticed a little button at the top of the page that says “Pachekipedia.” Now I’ll be honest: up until this morning I didn’t really know what that page was going to look like. I had a vague idea for a mock-Wikipedia page full of stuff I made up. Just words I made up, or a fictional country, stuff like that. Or a wiki of my characters—you know, in the style of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. But this morning it hit me. I decided—well, why don’t you see for yourself.

I have to say the weekend was very fruitful. I finished thumbnailing Bolt: 6:59 on Saturday morning (yes, all 48 pages of it—my longest project to date). (I also added some new info to the website’s sidebar (a new bio, for example)). I’m considering this the completion of the first draft of the story. I do have to go back and re-draw a few pages of thumbnails so that the right panels are on the right pages, and then type out a script in a separate text document. (I did the thumbnails in what I’m calling “Lutes style,” which means the thumbnails have numerals inside the word balloons rather than words, and the words are enumerated on a separate sheet.) This shouldn’t take long.

The next step will be to show it to some cartoonists who understand good story structure and know how to talk about comics for a nice, substantive critique. I’ve got some in mind, and I’ll let you know once they’re officially on board.

Next step after that is to read it over and over and over again for flow, pacing, and clarity—with an eye toward improving characterization, if necessary. In other words, the next step is to write a second draft. I’m trying to look at it this way: “look how much I’ve done!” rather than the more discouraging “look how much I have yet to do!”

Someone asked me if I was going to post another set of thumbnails. I said I wasn’t sure, because I don’t really know how people feel about them. What do you think, dear Reader? Would you like to see more thumbnails? Are they too hard to read? Too hard to decipher?

Here’s a quick list of past posts with thumbnails in them, for ease of reading:

• Bolt: 6:59, Pages 1–8
• Bolt: 6:59, Pages 9–12

Let me know what you think.

More thumbnaily goodness:

Sorry I’ve been a bit AWOL for a while. For your patience, I’m gonna paste up a messload of Bolt pinups from my sketchbook.

These are some cover ideas I’m working on. I wanted a kinetic image that would say “speed” without saying “running.” How’d I do?

I’ve been busily plotting out my new comics project (which, you may recall, I wrote about here previously): a story called Bolt: 6:59. It’s about a girl who discovers she has super speed.

The first draft was 16 pages long (4 panels per page), and I was more or less happy with it. I say “more or less” because, as good as the first half was, the second half just wasn’t working. It was falling flat.

I ended up storyboarding the whole thing, mocking up each panel to a 4 x 6 index card so I could recognize any drawing, pacing, or dialogue problems. After a couple of read-throughs I decided to completely jettison the second half. So out it went.

I came up with a new story, and it’s juicy enough to justify expanding the comic to a full 24 pages, or possibly 28, or possibly even more. The first half, the half that was working, remains relatively unchanged. The second half goes off in a completely different, and I think much more satisfying direction.

Since the second half relies on dialogue more than the first, which was very visual (nearly wordless), I decided to sit down at my trusty netbook and type it out screenplay style, which was actually very exciting. Like putting on a pair of shoes you haven’t worn since high school and discovering they still fit. Yes, I think I will rock these blue suede Pumas, thank you very much.

Just to vary things, I took a break from writing yesterday and sketched out a quick costume design, which incorporates elements from some previous designs, while streamlining and updating it. It still needs work, of course, and will probably continue to evolve right up until the final pencils stage. (The shoes and gloves especially, I think.) But I wanted to test out a color scheme I had in my mind’s eye to see if it holds up.

I sketched it out in red pencil, then scanned the image without bothering to ink it, bumped up the pencils, and quickly Photoshop-colored it. Here it is:

Sadly, I won’t be able to make it down to the Small Press Expo this year. Next week, Robyn will have to trek down to SPX without me. To treat my obstructive sleep apnea I had my tonsils out 2 weeks ago, rather suddenly (no emergency—the surgeon had a sudden cancellation, and the date was just 3 days after the diagnosis, so I had to jump on it or wait another 3 months). The doctor said I needed to take at least a week off work, so my boss was loath to let me take another 2 days off in the same month. So it goes. I’ll be there in spirit. And my books will be there, in spirit and in actual, you know, physical book form.

I’m going to start posting my thumbnails, more or less as I finish them, for the book I’m working on, currently titled 6:59. As you may recall, I started this comic during the CCS Cartooning Studio workshop last week, and it’s about a girl who discovers she has the power of super-speed.

I’m doing the thumbnails Jason Lutes-style, so there’s no dialogue—just numbers indicating where in the panel the dialogue will fall. Also, this way I don’t feel like I’m giving anything away.

I’m going to be posting throughout all the phases of the project, from thumbnails to sketchbook roughs, costume designs, final pencils, inks, and (eventually) the finished book. So stay tuned!