jasonfranks

 
I reached a bit of a problem in the Script Frenzy.

I've finished all of the Sixsmiths script I have due and I have a first draft of issue #2 of Cerberus, and that didn't quite bring me to 60 pages. I'm supposed to churn 100 pages befoe the end of the month. 

I've been working hard on a lot of other writing, and that 60 pages was already rough going. I want to finish the Frenzy, but I needed to make it something a bit easier if I'm gonna make it as well as allo my other deadlines. So, I decided, I'd start up on the sequel to McBLACK, my impending gonzo SF noir graphic novel. 

I feel a bit foolish starting this before the first book is finished... although it is _really_ close... but I'm treating it as a bit of light fun. Doesn't have to be polished to count for the frenzy pagecount, after all.

It;s coming nicely; much easier to write than ... well, almost any of my other current projects; I guess because it has a linear mystery plot and only one POV character. There's really not much point in me talking about what the sequel is about at this point. I don't know when it'll be done or who will draw it (maybe me, maybe next time I'll find a real artist).  I will, however, lay the title on you:

Thank you, good night.

-- JF

 
Last night a friend asked me what the main project I was working on was, and I didn't have an answer--it varies from week to week. In the process of explaining this I became a bit startled by how buried I am in writing projects. Here's a quick rundown:

Prose:
Just submitted the reformatted Bloody BLOODY WATERS, with newly streamlined chapter 13. It's looking nice and svelte at 100,000 words.

FAERIE APOCALYPSE: Back onto that next month. The last chapter needs a new draft to bring it in line with the current state of affairs and then probably one more quick proofing before it's ready to submit.

Gotta knock out a new story, about 7000 words, for BADASS FAERIES 3. Not sure if Stevo is coing to cowrite or not this time. I've got the concept and the direction nailed down and I'll probably start next month.

Another novella I'll  be starting soon as I get details from the editor. 

XDA ZAI is backburnered until all fo the above are out of the way, although I did produce a short story for an anthology submission that will probably become a chapter last month. Can't wait to get back onto ithis.

Comics:
KAGEMONO is coming along nicely; I have about 60 pages in hand. Three more stories are in progress and the book will go to print once I have them.

MCBLACK: Dave is inking. All of the drawing is done on my end, I'm just doing final cleanup on the last 12 pages... fixing backgrounds or small details. 

THE SIXSMITHS: Cooking along. Look for the site to launch on the 30th, right about when we expect to brace the publisher. I'll be at Kinokuniya bookstore in Sydney on Free Comicbook Day (May 2nd) promoting the project.

DEUCE: is currently in Nic's hands. Don't have a deadline as yet, but I'm hoping I'll have some pages to show around at Supanova in June.

CERBERUS: Project with Tom Bonin that I've been keeping close to my chest. I just finished the first draft of #2. Tom will start drawing some sample pages soon as he gets caught up with his other obligations.

UNGENRED: Status unchanged. I will probably write one more short for this, but the material I already have is, I think, sufficient to complete the book. 

-- JF

Been a while since I posted anything  related to my graphic novel MCBLACK. I'm still working up some fixes in the closing sequences while I wait for Dave to catch up to me on the inks. Here's a new panel: the bottom tier of page 60.

I've been fairly quiet on LJ lately, but there's a lot going on. Here's a bit of an update on the main stuff that's underway:

KAGEMONO 
The 2009 book is logistically the biggest project I've worked on and it needs constant tending, but it's coming along well. Most of the artists are producing pages and I even have the cover underway before the last minute, for the first time in history.  This is also logistically the biggest project I have put together. Don't have a final pagecount yet, but it's going to be in the 70-90 page range. I'm not sure what to call this one, since it combines what was going to be the #3 and #4 issues (and then some) and I'm changing the format. Perhaps it will get a subtitle instead of a number. Not sure if this is it for Kagemono or not, but if it does continue it will be come an annual book. 

DEUCE
Should ramp this up in a month or so, once Nic finishes his obligations for Kagemono.

MCBLACK
I'm going through the last issue fixing problems in the pencils. At this point I've rethought and redrawn two entire pages and there's probably one more that needs similar treatment. I'm still way ahead of the inker, so I don't feel like I'm farting around too much. After 3 years I am quite keen to get the bloody thing out.

UNGENRED
Pencils for my story are finished, Cory Laub will do the inks. Renan just needs to put the greywashes on his triptych story.  That leaves one last story outstanding, which  J. Marc will be drawing.

THE SIXSMITHS
Marc is also working away drawing THE SIXSMITHS. It's coming along nicely and we'll be pitching it soon. I hope to launch the website simultaneously; more details ont he project when that occurs.

FAERIE APOCALYPSE
Making progress, but it's painful and slow. Final polishing is never fun, and this project in particular requires every bit of attention I can throw at it. I'm still in the third chapter, which has always been the longest and most complex part of the book.

And... some more stuff, some of which it's too early to talk about and some of which it's too late. But I think that's enough for thispresent moment.

I hope that's not too many plates int he air, but any way you spin it, it looks like I'll have a pretty big output this year.

-- JF

I just drew the last page of pencils for my graphic novel MCBLACK.

It's fur years since I started writing it, three since I started the artwork.

While I haven't been working on it constantly or exclusively through that time, it has been hanging over my head for a long fucking time and it has certainly required more labor than any other comics project I've worked on.

I'm not quite at the finish line yet. I need to go through the last third and make some fixes and tweaks, I need to upload the files and send them off for inking, I need to letter them, I need a logo for the excellent cover that Ron Salas did for me. But the heavy lifting is behind me now, and with it the stress of the never-ending story.

Now I'm going for a run. I could use a bit of sunlight.

-- JF
 

It's like living inside a goddamn oven suddenly.

I don't remember the last time I was this sunburned. A wedding and funeral on successive days, out in the sun for longer than I planned, and even an olive-skinned bastard like me is starting to look a bit more like a radish.

I hate radish.

Last week knocked me around some; didn't manage to write much of anything. I did, however, get quite a bit of drawing done. I have page 67 of MCBLACK on the drawing board right now. If I had stuck to my original plan I would have drawn the last page yesterday, but I'm glad I didn't--the extra space has given me room for some good new material.

"Yeah, I've been beyond the Veil, too.
"I mean, come on. I know I'm weird, but you don't think I was born this way, do you?
"I've the Pearly Gates and the Big Rock Candy Mountains and  the halls of Valhalla and the end of the rainbow; the angels and the karma police and the elves and those skinny grey UFO-living motherfuckers..
"Far as I'm concerned, the only good part of the sweet hereafter is that you don't ever run out of ammunition."

Six more pages and it's all over.

-- The Radish King

He's sort of pest control when your chateau is infested with mutant cyborg bikers.


McBlack page 63 (above) is pretty much done. This puts the number of pages I still have to pencil in the single digits, which means I'm back on schedule for my late January finish.

Seamus is not in the script, which for this page reads something like: "Mick fighters their way up the stairs to the biker-exec with melee weapons."  Seamus earned himself a name and prominent feature on this page because I enjoyed drawing him. He doesn't have any lines.

I love henchman characters even better than your proper villains. Odd Job from GOLDFINGER, Mad Dog from HARD BOILED, Renfield in DRACULA:  characters that get their hands dirty on behalf of other people for money or out of some misguided loyalty. Seamus is the second henchman I've promoted from random drawing into an actual character. Neither of them get to speak any lines, but they do get to kick more arse than almost anybody else.

-- JF

Cleaning up issue #2 before the inker gets onto it continues to be my priority, and man, it's been a lot of work. I completely redrew page 29. Why? I'm not sure, the old page (which I finished 14 months ago) was quite clear despite having been jigsawed together from scraps and offcuts and redrawings. I really didn't change the storytelling very much at all. But the page looks much better and I'm pleased that I did it... I just hope that I don't have get the same bug up my ass for the other pages in the issue.  I was gratified that it didn't require any wacom magic to fix it... unlike pages 47 & 48.

47 was an easy fix; just a proportion issue in a panel that I had reused four times. I fixed it once and then rubberstamped it 3 more times; easy as pie. Thank christ I had archived the layered image.

There were four more problems pages. Two of them I fixed digitally--one of them with some quite extensive work in photoshop. It's a half page splash plus three panels. I cut panel 2 and extended panel 3 up into its space, which let me fix a perspective problem without redrawing anything. Then in the splash, I cut off the BG altogether and rearranged the foreground and the middleground to fix the perspective problems. I filled in the backgrounds with smoke. There's not as much information on the page as previously, but it looks much, much better. I did add a lot of hatching and texture, which looks quite good to my eye... but I'm positive Dave will throw it away and replace it with something that looks much better. Which is okay. The elements I know he'll keep look correct, at least, and the page makes more sense than the old version did because you don't have to fight with the screwed up perspective to work it out.

I was going to post the befores and afters, but I've realized that it will just make me look even less competent than usual. So here, below the cut, is the new half-splash for page 47. As you can see, despite all my effort, Dave still has a bit of work to do on this one.  I have no idea what the underside of an exploded monster truck looks likeand I'm clearly faking it, but you should have seen the expressionist mess I left on the original artboard.



I now have two pages left to fix. Page 38 requires a new panel, which will go in an empty space in the bottom right where I Was originally going to just have a black rectangle. Should be an easy one, it's a single figure.Otherwise it's a good looking page, I think. Page 42 is more difficult; I'm not sure what I'm going to do to fix the problem there. It's a 'breakthrough' page and the pictures look good, but the main gag just doesn't work they way I've put it on the page. Maybe I'll cut it altogether.

Bloody hell, this art caper is a lot of work.

-- JF

I've not been posting much lately, and certainly not anything work-related... but I have been working, gentle readers. I've been trying to narrow my focus and put a lot of hours into fewer projects in an effort to get them from 98% to 100% complete and, while I'm still going, I've made some good progress. New ideas are always more exciting than old ones that you've almost finished with, but I gotta put the hard hours in while I can. Should have an announcement soon; stay tuned!

In the meantime, one of the things I've been working on is my graphic novel/minieseries, MCBLACK. I've been cagey talking about this because, although I wrote the script three years ago, but the actual book has been vapourware until fairly recently (a very small number of you saw the ashcan last year). I wrote it in 2004, then spent a year trying to find an artist, then gave up and drew a few pages myself... then spent 6 months looking for an inker (the phenomenal  Dave Gutierrez.) Well, I've been on a pencilling tear, and I'm getting faster and cleaner, I think. I can see the end of the first issue and I'm quite excited to have a comics story that's longer than 10 pages on the way.