Saturday 13 September 2008

Dinlos are GO!!!

Our time traveling hero flees his emotionally disturbed step-dad 

Some Romany jib from Grandad

Pearl, her mum and Roy from the grocers.

Well, not quite "GO!!!", but at least there's some panels from Dinlos and Skilldos on here now. I'm so busy with Murderous Maths and Horrible Histories that I haven't got time for my delinquent characters. So until I get time to finish a few pages I'm putting up these title panels. 

I've procrastinated to such a degree over this project it's miracle these pictures haven't had all the life sucked out of them. The original plan for this was fairly simple: I wanted to write about childhood in a medium that was capable of doing it believably without turning it into a collection of wise author's memories, either the fondly remembered or haunting nightmarish variety, and neither did I want to go down the Blue Remembered Hills or Paddy Clark Ha Ha road of mimicking childhood for effect. To me the solution was to write a novel inside a Whizzer and Chips Annual!

Hey! I happen to think it's a good idea! Obviously, the only way I can demonstrate it's good idea is to actually do it - I've written some fantastic novels, screenplays and comics that have never made it further than the triangular fossas of my beer-addled chums. Of course drawing and writing 144 pages is a big ask and finding the money to publish a hardback of such a book is highly unlikely. So the plan is to self publish it in six issues and see if I can get it put together in a book some point in the future. Two of my addled chums, Nod and Beth, have offered to put up some money and all I need now is the time and application to get it done.

Back to these title panels - they look a bit scruffy. That's partly intentional, I want this to feel grubby, and also it's because I'm not Roger Langridge or Chris Ware, and I can't do that brilliantly integrated period typography thing that they do. I've kept as much of the spring-loaded Whizzer and Chips feel as I could (after all that's why I'm doing it in this format and style) but I've recently added a half tone element to give it extra atmosphere. I wanted to steer away from horrible painterly modeling or too much digital whizz-kiddery, so I've scanned some of my 4 year old daughter's paintings and been using them like a kind of letratone. 

I won't go into the stories themselves yet because I'm a firm believer that the more you talk about an idea before it's done the more you suck the life out of it. Hence most of my ideas are like dried fruit.

3 comments:

I. N. J. Culbard said...

The more you talk about an idea the more you tell the story and if you do that before you sit down to draw it then the story is told and you don't feel like you're working on anything original even though you came up with the idea in the first place!

At least that's what I always feel.

Roy of the Grocers! Excellent work. Certainly get that Whizzer and Chips vibe. You know these print on demand companies are reasonably good. Do you have much information on those?

Rob Davis said...

Cheers Ian

My only concern about print on demand is controlling the quality. Are there any companies you've used and would recommend?

As for talking about ideas too much, it's a curse on me because I can't stop telling stories. I think the only solution is to make time for your own projects in your schedule. And hopefully one day your projects will pay the bills and fill your schedule.

Rob

I. N. J. Culbard said...

http://www.lulu.com/uk/ is one potential outlet that I've heard good things about. I believe, although its worth checking, they send out proofs.

There are a number of places online that review such services. None that spring to mind immediately but if you run a search using those terms you should find a few. Also it may have been on Drawn or Boing Boing but there was an recent article about reproduction using these companies and how good they were and I think Lulu fared very well.

 
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