Saturday 10 January 2009

Name that plane

So, here's the first page of pencil and inks for Night of the Big Heat:

Night of the Big Heat page 1



It will be coloured, but I thought I'd post it now as it looks to me to be a fairly perfect page of comic art. Obviously, I put this all down to the script :)

The plane is based on a real one (WW2 buffs might recognise the make and model? Let us know if you do) and I did specify it in the script. However what I did not do is look too closely into how the plane was laid out internally, I just made some assumptions based on how I expected it to be. Eg basically like a smaller Boeing 747.

Of course, as all graduate management trainees know only too well, to assume makes an ass out of u and me. So when Steve was researching it he noticed that some of my directions were slightly, not to put to fine a point on it, impossible. He's corrected them all and that's meant some changes to some of the panels, like frame 2 on this page for instance.

I bring this up because I think it's a great example of how story-telling responsibilities in comics are divided between writer and artist. Even in the British method, where each panel is specified by the writer, the artist should have the creative freedom to be fairly liberal about he interprets these. As a writer this has never worried me at all because you would expect the artist to have a better grasp of how things work visually.

5 comments:

paulhd said...

That's a bloomin' brilliant page!

Steve Denton said...

Thanks Paul I used my full bag of tricks on this one

Michael Martin said...

Beautiful Lancaster! You ought to see if Commando will have you. I've seen worse art in it!

Michael Martin said...

Also, i had some insane dreams about Hitler / WW2 the other night that just have to be turned into comics at some point. Any plans to take "Walking Wounded" (though they could only be shoe-horned into one of them, the other concentrates entirely on Hitler) fan-strips at any point in the future?

Emphasis on "the future", BTW. I have enough troible getting time to do my own stuff right now.

clergyman said...

Hi Mike!

Good spot on the Lancaster front! We're using the transport plane edition - the Avro York - in this story.

Fan strips are fine by us. Whilst on that subject, I did have a vague idea called Walking Wounded: Eastern Front which would be all strips not done but Steve and I but set in the same universe. Must mention that to Steve at some point...

Oh, and Hitler will be making an appearance in WW#3 ( the comic, not the war), wouldn't it be weird if that was an accurate depiction of your dream?