1. Thumbnails

I’ve plotted out the entire story for Nathan Sorry and know pretty much every detail of what will happen in the graphic novel, but I only actually script and thumbnail out the action a page or two in advance. This keeps things fresh and spontaneous for myself and keeps me from getting bogged down in too much planning which I’ve found actually kills my progress.

You’ll see below that I also don’t get very detailed at all with my thumbnails. They are like shorthand or chicken-scratch in drawing form. I know exactly what it’s telling me but it probably doesn’t look like much to anyone else. I don’t even use pencil here. Just a pilot fineliner to get it down, quick and dirty. Again, if I get too detailed with my thumbnails the final drawings end up losing their spontaneity so I try not to waste too much time here. What I’m interested in accomplishing at this point is overall page layout and plotting out what needs to be said and what needs to be shown. On the left side is my script. The specifics of the dialogue often change during the lettering stage after I’ve read it over a few times to myself but what I need to figure out here is what needs to be said and how much room I need to leave in the drawing for it.  This is actually something I struggle with but am slowly improving on. I often don’t end up leaving enough room for the words (or maybe the problem is my comic is just too wordy).

Sometimes I have to do a couple of attempts at getting the thumbnails right and often that makes for a better page as I usually come up with better ideas the second time around. On this particular page, I wound up changing a couple of specifics in the panels but I knew I wanted this particular page layout so there was no need to do it twice.

In part 2, I’ll show my finished pencils for this page.

I really liked the sketch of the girl in the center I did at The Philosopher’s Stone before the condensation from my water glass dripped all over it. Luckily the girl on the far right was saved because she is by far the highlight of this page I think.

I’ve been on a bit of a roll with my online graphic novel, Nathan Sorry. About a month or so ago, Warren Ellis mentioned it on his blog which brought me not only a lot of new readers but a real incentive to kick it into gear and get on a weekly (or semi-weekly) schedule on it. Another thing that helped with that was the dawning realization that if I kept at a 3 week per page schedule it would be at least 5 years until I finished the story.

Anyway, I posted page 20 today, the first page of Chapter 3. Please check it out. Feel free to go to the Email sign up page to get updates whenever new pages are posted because I can’t really guarantee an exact day when they go up.

Also, North Carolina fans take note. Most of the story takes place in a kind of fictionalized version of nearby Stallings, NC.

I recently started a Tumblr blog for posting wordless, art only excerpts (like the one above) from my comic, Nathan Sorry, as a way of promoting it to a new audience. For those of you unfamiliar, Tumblr is a microblog service. Kind of a cross between WordPress and Twitter. You are encouraged to make short and sweet entries (a photo, a quote, a video, etc.) and, like Twitter, you can follow other users and vice versa. It’s pretty fantastic for artists. If you tag your blog “art” or “artists” then people looking for that sort of thing will probably find you.

I’m also really enjoying it as a source of inspiration. There are a ton of people on there posting cool photos, art, and design-related stuff. Also, one of the more popular Tumblr blogs is EatSleepDraw.com, which is a blog that allows you to submit drawings to be posted (if they accept it) onto the site. I’ve had two posted on there in the past couple of weeks and it’s gotten me some new followers and some new fans of Nathan Sorry.

Tumblr is free and easy to set up. So check out my blog and then explore for yourself.

By the way, a couple of new Nathan Sorry pages have gone up since last I posted about it here. Since I don’t want to deluge this site with entries for each page you should go to NathanSorry.com and subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up for email alerts when new pages go up.

So, with my newfound motivation to crank out pages on my book I have found that a pretty good formula for succeeding at this is to give myself at least a half hour a day towards working on it. This has allowed me to actually finish a new page in about 3 weeks time which (while still pathetic) is a new record for me.

Anyway, page 14 is up at richbarrett.com/nathansorry

It occurred to me that I’ve never officially linked to my ongoing webcomic, Nathan Sorry, here at Sketch Charlotte. Part of that is because it takes me so long to get the time to do one page that I don’t go out of my way promoting it for fear of people losing interest. It’s a story that’s meant to be read in one chunk rather than doled out a page at a time but maybe the pressure of people knowing it’s out there will force me to get moving on it.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the story:

A missed flight on the morning of 9/11 leaves Nathan Sorry with $3 million and the chance to be someone else. Two months later a stranger named James Goode shows up in a small town in North Carolina and changes the lives of a handful of residents.

I’ve got 13 pages done so far. Check it out and please give me some feedback on it.

This is a painting I just finished as a gift for my friend’s 3 year old to put up in his room. I’ve been doing a bunch of these kid room paintings now and might have some more in my future. Wish I wasn’t so rusty with the acrylic. When you’re used to coloring in Photoshop, using actual paint seems to take an enormous amout of time to get it done.

This is a little illustration I did for my daughter’s first birthday party invite. It’s the first real drawing I’ve ever done of her.