Job Dunn: Rode

Some more Job Dunn work going on. Some process on display here.

I thought I'd try a different approach to the way I work and use a more involved process to see what happened. Since I've also decided to take a different approach to the final product I don't know how much I'll learn about how this process will affect my normal work. The difference in the final product is that I'm fulling painting this comic, which isn't something I've done in about 20 years. When I did my first comics at school Simon Bisley was god and painting comics was the only way to go. I soon found out that this was impossible for me and I reverted to plain old ink.

As for the process, I've spent more time on getting the thumbs right (perspective, proportion, etc) so that I could scale them up and trace them. More drawing was necessary but not much. Getting everything right on a small scale was fairly quick and then tracing just made getting all those great proprotions that you get in the thumbs could easily be replicated.

The thumbs are on an A5 sheet with some plain printing paper for all my perspective workings - horizons, right and left VPs, etc

 The traced and elaborated pencils underneath.

A third of the way through the painted page. As can be seen more detail and a few changes here and there.

Normally I would have gone to ink but I went to paint (gouache) so I reckon I'll have to give this process another go (with ink) to see if I really like it. I'm not a fan of too much preparation - I like to get stuck right into the page - but maybe it's what I'm lacking.

Script Editing

Being a creator I'm at liberty, at anytime, to change the script. Which is good in my case as I never start drawing with a complete and concrete script. My process is one that goes back and forth. I have all the dialogue and action down but I don't have the pacing. I work out the pacing as I thumbnail. I have rough page breaks but with all the mucking around I do I can go from 40 pages to 48 or to 36. I constantly edit and revise the action. I hope I get a better product because of this.

Here is an example of some pages of script that I mucked about with.

The above sequence was edited down into the page below and then changed some more. More changes are likely to occur as I draw these pages. What works in a thumbnail doesn't always transfer to the page. Also as I write for myself and I know what's going on, to save time I write the barest directions.

Hellboy OZComic Sequential Challenge

Just finished this page last night for the Oz Comics sequential fortnightly challenge.

This was a real sod of a page - libraries, skeletons, 10 panels. Actually 10 panels isn't a problem with a well written script and this one was (I've of course deleted all my files and can't find the writer's name. Anthony someone?). It ended up taking much more time than I wanted, working 2 hours a night over 5 days or so.

I didn't think I'd do a post about this one so I didn't do any production scans but my method is pretty much the same for every page I do. Check out this post for more on my methods.

Here are my thumbnails though.

Not very clear but I did change the angle on a couple of panels. Not sure why but there's always a bit of difference between the thumbs and the final page. Especially as I never do the thumbs to scale. these were done on a loose bit of A4 printing paper. You can also see some calculations for splitting the page into 3 panels width ways.

Here my most used tools (minus a Staedtler Mars rubber). So from left to right I have a Hunt 107 (I think) - a nice hard stainless steel nib which does fine lines and can, with pressure, do quite fat lines, a fairly common nib this one but too blackened for me to find out what it is now but it does fatter lines, a pentel water colour brush pen filled with Pebeo ink, trusty, trusty white out and a line tool - this one can adjust its width for very fine to very fat lines, just be sure your straight edge is raised off the page otherwise ink will seep under and make a ink go all over the place.

On this page though, I only used the brush for filling in blacks and a few fine lines.