Month: July 2010

One of the things about San Diego Comic-Con is how drained it can leave you when it’s finally over. It takes awhile to adjust back to reality and the idea that you need to go do that day job again that pays the bills. Sometimes this adjustment overlaps with you being at said day job, which leaves you going through the motions in a bit of a surreal, distracted manner.

Every year, a portion of me wants the convention to go on and on, and the other portion of me (I suspect the one in charge of feet and finances) is quite happy to stop once Sunday rolls around. After that, it’s a bit more time before I can really assess how things went… but blog time is upon me, and so I shall try.

This was our first SDCC that Dawn and I attended as “Industry Professionals”, which pretty much just means you stand in a different line to get your badge and that you get the badge for free. That’s nothing to sneeze at when a 4-day badge costs $100, but you don’t get any special privileges beyond that. Heck, the badge border wasn’t even a different color than the ones the Attendees get, and our names were printed so small you wouldn’t really see them without sticking your nose in our chests to read… an awkward social proposition at the best of times.

Everything went smoothly in terms of arrival, badge acquisition, and setting up Dawn’s work for the Art Show. A particularly wonderful change was that the pre-paid parking I bought for us was just as advertised, letting us park next to the Convention Center on Wednesday and find a space within a couple of minutes of entry to the structure, as opposed to previous years where I sometimes trawled the lot for upwards of an hour after being admitted. The downside was that anyone who hadn’t been paying attention to the Comic-Con announcements and didn’t pre-buy was locked out of those lots, but compared to the overstuffing that led to my frustrations of before, well… I’ve got to come down on the side of it being a good thing. A necessary thing. This was the easiest, least stressful arrival we’ve ever had at Comic-Con… which may not be saying much considering some of the hair-tearers of the past, but it was nice to start the visit in a relatively relaxed manner.

With that said, it’s too bad we weren’t allowed to put out our freebie fliers on Wednesday, since Thursday morning was more hectic. I think it’s the first time we’ve had to stand in line to be let in despite already having our badges, and also despite being told we could head up to the freebie area anytime after 8am (security hadn’t gotten that memo, apparently). We finally just joined the general line and got up there with the rest of the crowd, where we turned in our box and watched as the volunteers started putting out the purty Zombie Ranch cards. There wasn’t much else on the table yet, which might explain why we ran into a bit of a problem…

The fliers were all gone by 4pm the same day. I was half afraid we’d been disapproved for some reason, but the man in charge of the table assured us that wasn’t so. Still, I don’t know even now whether I should be elated or disappointed. We were told there was a limit of 2000 pieces for the entire show, and the staff would take care of distributing them. I thought this meant they would make sure to only put out a certain number per day, but apparently they just put out all 1000 we had on day 1, and poof, they were gone. So anyone waiting until Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to check the table, or only attending for one of those days, never saw any of them.

I honestly don’t know how 2000 is supposed to last the whole Con when 1000 goes that fast. Maybe I misunderstood and it’s a limit of 2000 pieces per day? I don’t know. If any freebie table vets happen to be reading this, feel free to enlighten me. I also now wish I’d cooked up some way to tell how many people might be finding us as a result of the flyers. I’m not seeing any big bump in numbers so far, so either those thousand or so people haven’t had a chance to go through their swag yet or it didn’t work out so well.

Ah well, it doesn’t in any way invalidate the fact that my main missions were accomplished. I got to talk to Scott McCloud! In fact, I even worked up the nerve to offer him a copy of Zombie Ranch #1, which he not only graciously accepted but asked if we would sign it for him (Dawn later accused me of badgering him to let us sign it… it’s not true! He asked!).

I have not been that giddy and nervous in a long, long time. It took all my power not to get hopelessly tongue-tied as Scott signed Making Comics for me, and Kurt Busiek signed my Astro City: Family Album. Dawn took a picture as proof, then it was time for Kurt’s “Spotlight on Kurt Busiek” panel, where he was presented with an Inkpot Award and talked about his works.

Now, that panel was on Thursday morning, but it was still the best panel I attended all convention long. Why? Because Kurt talked about his creative process, especially in regards to Astro City, and it was quite enlightening. Actually… and I know this is going to sound weird… it was comforting. You see, I don’t have every last detail of the Zombie Ranch world mapped out, and sometimes I feel like that makes me a bad writer. So when I hear a very established, critically-acclaimed writer like Mr. Busiek saying that he still to this day is developing the environs and denizens of Astro City, after over 10 years since he started scripting it? Well, that’s a beautiful breath of fresh air for my soul, because I respect his work a lot (and so do the people that have awarded him multiple Eisners!). I’m not winning any Eisners anytime soon, but it does give me faith that a more freewheeling style can still produce powerful and memorable narratives.

Kurt’s description of his process with Astro City was not freewheeling so much as he called it “fractal”, I presume with everything that term implies. For my interpretation, it means that there’s a pattern, but it’s always unfolding, always changing, always expanding. This is something that makes total sense to me, or at least it describes the way I feel most comfortable working. Not complete order, but not complete chaos, either. So sue me if I imagined a bit of connection there… then again, maybe it’s just because Kurt had impeccable dress sense that day with his jeans and floral print shirt.

Also, Kurt at one point not only expressed that Hawkeye is his favorite superhero, but elucidated his take on what makes Hawkeye tick, and it’s an interesting analysis I’ve never heard from anyone else. He could really make something interesting out of the purple archer if he was allowed, but he said he probably never will be, so most likely will have to apply the theories to his Astro City character of Quarrel.

There was a lot more, but the upshot of it is that Scott McCloud and Kurt Busiek are both very gracious, smart, and thoughtful men, and I was rapt with attention for that whole hour listening to them talk (Scott was moderating the panel). Brent Anderson, Astro City’s artist, was also in attendance and chiming in with that side of the perspective, much to Dawn’s occasional amusement. But basically, that day I felt I had chosen my heroes well.

Oh, and Astro City is apparently going to be developed as a movie! We heard it there first. Kurt is writing a draft and seems to have a good rapport with the production company as to what Astro City is all about, which in very simple terms is that it’s a study of people who just happen to be superheroes or affected by them. Characters first, SFX second.

So, where was I? Oh yes, Comic-Con. Honestly, I think Kurt’s panel was the high point for me, although that doesn’t mean the rest was bad. We connected with a lot of friends, both those who were exhibiting and those who weren’t, saw sneak previews, got lots of swag and good deals. Since we didn’t have an exhibit space this year I decided to do a “portable booth” and carried several copies of Zombie Ranch #1 in my backpack, along with a handful of fliers and pens… really a just-in-case deal, but we actually had several people purchase or barter for copies! In particular it was fun to be able to provide copies to some of the friends we’ve met at previous Cons that have given us advice and support, such as Cari Corene of Toilet Genie or Rebecca Hicks of Little Vampires. Both of them seemed certain that we could get into the Small Press Pavilion next year if we tried for it. Mind you, longtime readers will know we did try (and fail) to get in for this year, but then again all we had for that deadline was the mini-comic. Will having a full comic be the magic entry key? I don’t know, we turned in our application while still at the con and it was stamped ‘WAIT LIST’. So I’m not holding my breath.

Anyhow, I think that’s enough rambling for this week. Perhaps I’ll have some more Comic-Con thoughts and remembrances later once my brain has more time to percolate. For now, I hope you enjoy the reintroduction of our mystery motorcycle lady, and we’ll see you next week!

So, curious ones, you return. Or perhaps you’re just joining us, if you picked up one of our Comic-Con fliers or otherwise are dropping in for the first time. In any case, welcome to the third and final installment of my blogs regarding my Zombie Ranch scripting method! You can check out the previous ones here and here, should you wish.

This final example image comes from a much more recent sample of writing. Once again, you may click on the image below to see a larger version.

Now sad to say, yes, I still hadn’t updated the header when I printed this out. I’m a terrible person, I know. This is not a 12 page script. In fact, this is also a whole new MS Word file I started as an “Issue 2” since I felt it a bit unwieldy to keep going with the original. Perhaps one day I will find out it was a mistake to keep the webcomic numbered in pure sequence while I started the script page counts over… but then again, once we get enough of an archive I may want to reorganize things, regardless.

All of that’s pretty much a long-winded way of saying this is the script for the ninth page of the second “issue”, which is story comic #32. You can check out the final version here: LINK

You’ll notice there’s been a bit of photoshopping done, mostly because I already know the character’s name and use it in my scripts, but you lot haven’t been formally introduced to her yet. Her name has been floating around in a couple places, but for those of you still scrupulously waiting to be surprised, I figured I would do you the favor of not shoving the spoiler in your faces. You’re welcome (and here’s hoping I didn’t overlook anything!).

Moving on, this page shows a feature I took way too long to actually start adding to the script, which is a title for that week’s comic! Prior to this, Dawn would be asking me as deadlines approached what the post title should be, and sometimes I’d find to my horror I either hadn’t thought it through, or might have thought it up earlier but had since forgotten. The practice of having a title for every comic page is something fairly unique to webcomics, I think. Some just use plain numbers or dates, but I’d already dug the hole of trying to be clever with it, and if I left it up to Dawn madness would follow.

Anyhow, the simple solution (which, again, I took a stupidly long time implementing) was to start including a title with each page. Of course, I ended up changing the title for this one prior to publication, but at least there was something there, right? “Everyone Wins”.

Look, Dawn always prints the script page out before she starts drawing, sometimes days in advance, so, you know… rewrites happen. Ever seen one of the online drafts of a screenplay for a well-known movie?  The shooting script for Airplane is almost unrecognizable from what made it to the screen. Here, we’re just changing a few words around and configuring panels.

In the upper right you’ll see two panel layouts I sketched as suggestions, neither of which Dawn ended up using in favor of her own idea. This happens a lot, and for the most part I let it happen, since effective visuals are more in her area of expertise. On the flip side of that, you’ll notice I’ve gotten much more detailed in my descriptions, for instance the word balloon placement in panel 1. Dawn had a better idea for how the sound effects should go, but otherwise she followed what I wanted and I think it turned out effectively. I truly believe that sequential art is a medium where even the placement of a speech bubble can change the feeling and “timing” of a panel.

More specifics (and some research blurbs) crop up in the following panels. It’s entirely possible Dawn’s artist eyes may have started glazing over with all the words, so in the third panel I made sure to unleash the secret weapon of the Internet age: I went out, found reference pictures, scaled them down and pasted them right into the document. Boom. This is really easy to do, and can be very helpful if you want to make sure you and your artist are thinking of the same things. That said, I still also ended up drawing a quick sketch of how I imagined everything fitting together, framed in the binoculars. Collaboration can be a messy and redundant business.

And that brings me to the last part of the discussion/lecture/whatnot. Redundancy is a good thing when communicating with your artist. Redundancy is not a good thing in the actual comic. This is what I call my “Stan Lee Test” when writing. Much respect for Stan the Man and his contributions to comicsdom, but as a writer he did have certain faults, and one of those was an alarming tendency to unnecessarily restate whatever was going on visually in a panel. So, for example: the art would show the supervillain firing a laser blast from his eyes that was cutting right through our hero’s armor like it was paper. Then the hero would inevitably think (or say!) something like:

“Good lord! Laser blasts… from his eyes! Cutting through my armor like it was paper!”

Now, to be fair, Stan was not the only writer who operated like this. The Silver Age was rife with the practice, but he’s just the biggest name that occurs to me when I think of cluttering a comic with words that serve no function except to narrate something we as readers can already see happening. That’s one of the whole points of having the pictures, right? It’s probably one of the greatest pitfalls of a purely text-based writer trying to move into comics writing, since they’re used to carrying the entire narrative burden by themselves. I suppose I’m lucky there since I majored in Theater in college, so I’m used to writing more like a playwright where a lot of the details are going to ultimately be conveyed in a visual manner.

Still, I do like my words, and it’s a constant struggle to make sure they serve a purpose and aren’t crowding out or being redundant to the images. One of the reasons I’m happy to have Zombie Ranch as a  project is because the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to big narrative captions or interior monologues where I’d be tempted to ramble on and on and on, in love with my own verbiage and thinking I’m providing some deep perspective on life, the universe, and everything. I mean, that’s what this blog is for, right?

But seriously, there’s a prime example in the script image above where I had to apply the Stan Lee Test to myself, and it’s another reason I chose this particular page. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d printed out the page and was explaining/sketching out to Dawn how a zombie ranch is identified to passerby, i.e. the biohazard warnings tacked onto the ranch sign. I suddenly realized that if this is supposed to be such a universal symbol in this world, then the lady looking through the binoculars didn’t really need to narrate what she was seeing. Also, you the readers already had all the information, since you knew by now what the Z Ranch is. I came to the conclusion that it was unnecessary text, so I lined it out and reduced it to a simple utterance of “HMM”, trusting instead  to the art and context to get the idea across.

Was it the right decision? I like to think so. It just seems like a waste of space to repeat the same idea in both text and pictures, unless maybe you’re making an instruction manual.  Scott McCloud calls it a “Duo-Specific” combo and is glad it has fallen out of use with most modern comics (except Silver Age homages/parodies and other specific exemptions), and I agree.  After all, when I consider what our hero should really be saying or thinking when a laser blast is cutting through his armor, I can only come up with “Oh crap!” — or perhaps just, “Argh!”

Ahh, Scott McCloud. Gonna stalk that guy at Comic-Con and make him sign my copy of his Making Comics book. So much good stuff in there, for writers and artists both. Ideally I’m going to corner him at the panel he’s hosting for his old friend Kurt Busiek, so I can also get Kurt Busiek to sign my copy of Astro City.

Hopefully that goes better than my abortive attempt at getting Jim Steranko’s autograph earlier this year. Maybe I can even ask Kurt Busiek about his scripting methods. He’s been at this a hell of a lot longer than I have, and even though this is the last in my series for the time being, you better believe I’m still looking for ways to improve my own process and my communication with Ye Artist.

For now, off to San Diego we go! See you next week!

So as promised (or threatened, depending on your point of view), I’m going to continue talking about the evolution of my scripting process this week. With that in mind, let’s look at example #2, taken from a later draft of Zombie Ranch. Go ahead and click on the image below for a larger view.

All set? Let’s talk shop, then. The first thing you may notice is that the page counts in the header still hadn’t been revised. This is not due to any grand plan on my part, it’s just something I didn’t bother mucking with at the time, since all of two people were going to be looking at it. The more important number was the big PAGE ELEVEN, which I put in manually at the top of each new script segment. This is important because, although I try my best to keep to a system of one script page per posted comic, there are times where I’ve had to break that rule. For instance, I had a lot of panel description on the fourth story page of the second arc (#27 in the archives), which meant that “page” was actually two pages in the script. That throws off any automatic numbering, so I prefer to just do it manually.

Incidentally, you may notice a great deal of white space present in the bottom portion of the page. That’s not actually there so I can doodle and make notes (although in this case, I did) — it’s there because this particular comic posting ends after panel 4, and I make a hard page break whenever that happens. It helps to keep the “beats” organized in my head (and Dawn’s, as well), and though it may seem wasteful at times, I think it’s indispensable when you’re working with someone else who can’t read your mind on where things are supposed to start and stop. You want to eliminate confusion as much as possible.

In that same vein, by this draft I had begun the time honored practice of consecutively numbering every line of dialog (and sound effect) that’s supposed to appear. Notice how the numbering carries through to the end of the page, instead of starting over with each panel. This is very, very important because both you and the artist have to be thinking about the composition of the page, and if there are words to be said, the words and images have to find room to effectively co-exist. If I start getting into dialog line #13 or #14, I know I’m in dangerous territory, which is a good warning system to have since I think it’s very easy for a writer to overdo it in a comics medium. More on that later.

The numbering helps mostly, again, in letting your artist keep track of the various elements. When Dawn sketches up a quick storyboard for me, she can also sketch in word balloons and label them ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’ to show which lines of the script they correspond to, and there’s much less chance of accidentally skipping something. For this same reason, I put the names of characters appearing in a given panel in ALL CAPS in the visual instructions, so they’re not overlooked.

My visual instructions on this page are relatively sparse, which is perhaps a shortcoming. There are times I’ve leaned heavily on Dawn to help provide the visual flair. Sometimes a lack of detail is liberating to an artist, but don’t be surprised if what they come up with might stray from what you intended.  That said, it was Dawn who came up with the elaborate final composition of Panel 4, including the idea of Suzie casually lighting up a cigarette. That image is still one of my favorites from the entire run of the comic, which is probably why it’s on the back of both our postcard fliers and our print issue.

And just to go back to the dialog numbering for a bit, you may notice Suzie’s words in Panel 4 are split into two separate lines, even though it’s only her talking. I actually do this a lot… there’s only so much text that can be crammed into a single word balloon, so an artist will often have to split things up. When those splits need to happen, I’d prefer they happen my way, at my pace and flow, so I arrange it up front so that Dawn knows where she should make the breaks.

There are further differences between this page and the final that make it obvious there was more revision, such as my adding of an entire extra line to Panel 1, and Dawn winning out with her argument that ‘SPACK’ was a stupid sound effect. Oh, and if you haven’t guessed by now, ‘LGZ’ was my abbreviation for ‘LITTLE GIRL ZOMBIE’. I wrote it out on a previous script page and felt like using the shortened version from then on.

The scrawls at the bottom of this script page don’t refer to page eleven at all, but the page after. I was reworking the dialog, and also did a simple little attempt at storyboarding since I was having trouble describing to Dawn what I had envisioned. I think we may have been having a bit of an argument over how to present things. Some married couples have fights over Junior getting an earring, or why Mr. Smith once again came home drunk and smelling of perfume… we have fights over the sequential art of a webcomic.

This is hardly unusual, though, even for writer/artist pairings that aren’t living together. Arguments and misunderstandings will occur despite your best efforts to minimize them, but in a lot of cases the end result may turn out better for having two separate viewpoints, even if it’s wildly different from the original script.

Anyhow, Comic-Con is coming up next week and we’re trying to get everything together for that, so on the comic front we’ll probably be leaving you folks with this week’s minor cliffhanger and then resuming the story on the 28th. I do have one more post I wanted to make about the scripting, though, so I’m going to try to get that written up for my blog for the 21st. Stop by then and I’ll tell you about my “Stan Lee Rule”.

Oh, and on the advice of one of our peers, we’ve put together a Support page, listing various suggestions on how those of you who are fans of Zombie Ranch can show your love (in ways that won’t get you arrested, I mean). A lot of it is stuff that we’ve mentioned at various times before, like our Facebook group, but now it’s all gathered into one convenient place. Check it out! LINK

A question I get asked a lot, even from other webcomickers (perhaps especially from other webcomickers), is how Zombie Ranch goes from thoughts in my brain to a finished page for consumption. Mmm… brains… consumption… wait, where were we?

Well, first off, I’m only a portion of the process. According to our latest poll, the overwhelming majority of you who cared to see ‘behind the scenes’ are interested in everything, but I will let Dawn talk of her end of things when and if she chooses to. Actually, if you haven’t yet, I encourage you to click on over to some of the videos that were done last year, where you can see her drawing and coloring. In one of them you can hear me yammering on as well, should the sound of my voice be a curiosity of yours.

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/extras/dawn-tv/

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/extras/podcast/

So that’s a taste of her side of the equation. On my side, there’s mainly the script. Yes, Zombie Ranch does indeed have a script, and it can get pretty complicated at times as I try to communicate what I want to the woman sitting five feet away from me. That’s not as easy as you might imagine, which believe you me has given me new respect for the writer/artist teams who aren’t even working in the same state (or even country!).

But I’m guessing one of the first questions any aspiring comics writer asks is, “What’s the format for this?” If they also happen to be the artist, the answer is most likely “Not much”, since they have the most minimal communication barrier possible. For the rest of us, we grasp about asking people and looking at various sample scripts, and eventually come to the perhaps disquieting realization that there’s no universal format. I mean, if you’re working for a certain publisher such as Marvel, I would guess they have a “house style” for scripts in the same fashion they do for artists… but I swear to you, I’ve seen a lot of samples from professional comics writers whose scripts have marked differences in presentation. Sometimes they look no different from screenplays, including all the dialog being centered and instructions like EXT. STREET – DAY. Sometimes they marshal the power of the computer age to include reference screenshots for the panels and characters. There are so many different ways that successful, critically acclaimed comics writers have brought their ideas forth, how can you possibly choose?

Well, keep in mind that I haven’t been doing this for very long, but I went through that period where I was fretting about how to write the script, which as you might imagine can really get in the way of actually getting a script written. So anytime anyone asks me the question of how I set up my script, I will gladly share what I came up with. As far as self-publishing such as webcomics goes, I think the question of comic scripting boils down to two rules:

1: Is this format comfortable for you?

2: Are you communicating effectively with your creative partner(s)?

It’s really as simple as that, in my opinion. My scripting style uses a lot of discrete elements to try to make it as easy as possible for Dawn to pick out the details she needs to. Often the dialog for a certain page starts with the horribly last century method of just writing lines in a notebook, so that I’m not thinking of too many things at once. Then in the next pass, I move things electronic, but I still use nothing fancier than plain old Microsoft Word for my drafts.

Speaking of drafts, if you click the image below you can see a scan of one of the printed out pages when I was revising my first draft of Zombie Ranch several months ago, complete with my horrible handwriting as I pondered changes and expansions.

Not especially pretty, as you can see, but the basic script format I still use is present in this example. I was in the process of expanding the original, very condensed 12 pages into something not quite as hurried, which explains why the printer stamped this as ’16’ and why the bolded “PAGE” entry at the top doesn’t have a number following it. This is about as rough as it gets without me subjecting you to my mad, cramped notebook scribblings.

If you compare this page to the final product visible in story pages 16-19, you’ll see how differently things can turn out. I’m often revising, sometimes until the last minute, based on feedback from Dawn or just my own sensibilities as I try to find the precise “rhythm” for that week’s installment. Obviously some elements are easier to revise than others… once Dawn has a panel inked, there’s no going back, but the word balloons are all added electronically, making them comparatively easy to alter or reposition.

But anyhow, there it is. I have several pre-programmed Styles in MS Word that are a click away as I write. “COMIC PAGE NUMBER” is big and bold, “Comic Book Panel” is underlined, “Comic Book Visuals“, italicized, and “COMIC BOOK BODY” (for the dialog) is all caps.

This honestly isn’t even the best example for scripting since it doesn’t include later improvements I made such as numbering every dialog element, or including the title for posting the page along with the page number. Actually, that sounds like a good topic for next week! Stay tuned!

P.S. Big thanks to Michael Hamersky, who read and reviewed the full print version of Zombie Ranch #1 this week on his blog. If you’re interested to see what he thought, click here: ComicBookCollectorsBlog.Com