When Sammy Harkham first talked to me about doing a Simpson's Treehouse of Horror story for this year's issue, he mentioned something about the idea of taking one character and really turning them inside out, really getting inside their head. Something like that, he worded it better than I am here. Anyway, instantly I thought of Milhouse and the film Bad Ronald. There were lots of parallels to draw on - Milhouse and Ronald were both nerdy outcasts with glasses, living with single, bitter divorced parents, and capable of unintentionally disastrous bumbling often combined with poor decision making. I plotted out the eight page story and sent thumbnail layouts to Sammy, who said he couldn't understand any of it. Above is the thumbnail for page 1.
My apologies for the early posting on the progress of the page, I should be able to repost about process after the story comes out. In the meantime, check out today's (June 24) Diamond Previews and have your local comic shop reserve your copy of this year's Treehouse of horror comic.
Something about crayons and a birthday party?
ReplyDeleteThat is an awesomely oblique thumbnail page.
ReplyDeleteWere they miffed at the pre-posting?
ReplyDeleteThey just wanted me to not give away so much so early, and didn't mind me posting so much as how much I was posting, especially since the story still has to go through all the editors and proofreaders and everything.
ReplyDeleteTotally my fault for not thinking, I'm just really excited about the project. I'll repost about process later on, right now I'm finishing up the text for the story. Can't wait to see everyone else's story too, it's a great lineup of artists...
even if the story gets "reworked", it's a good thing to see this kind of process, of personnal "recipe"... the doubting and its solutions...
ReplyDeleteThanks... normally I don't rework so much, especially for the autobiographical comics, I usually like to have a sense of things being unplanned and letting accidents happen on the page, but especially working with someone else's characters, it's usually a little harder to be true to their sensibility while also maintaining my own take on it...
ReplyDeleteyes, i guess it comes easier when B/W & personnal, but the coloring process with inking and direct color conflicts, it's a good thing to see how one solves them.
ReplyDeleteplus i like your comics, and i like the simpsons (not for the same reason anyway...)
Yeah the very few times I do colour I have scads of test pages.
ReplyDeletegah, i saw this too late. damn jungle satellite-internet.
ReplyDeleteThe July issue of Hive is looking really good. We made all the hand pressed linocut covers last night.
ReplyDeleteHey Jeff! Cool blog.
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