Whatever Happened To Grandma?
This is a one-page comic written by Ben Bullock and drawn by me for Ben’s “More Secret Pictures Of You” exhibition of nine-panel 'graphic collaborations' that was displayed at the Exeter Hotel for 6 weeks from May 7, 2006. All the original art in the exhibition was sold to raise money for charity. I submitted the comic to the Fist Full Of Comics zine and it was printed in issue #4 (June, 2006). It was also printed in the catalogue-thing that Ben made showing all the pieces that were in the exhibit. Come to think of it, Ben didn’t give me a copy of that catalogue, so I don’t have any details about it. But then again, I didn’t ask him before submitting it to Fist Full Of Comics, so I guess we’re even.
Fist Full Of Comics #4 is available from Pulp Fiction Comics (34A King William St, Adelaide, South Australia) or from fistfullofcomics @ gmail.com.
Useless Trivia:
This issue of FFOC was meant to be running short on content, so I wrote a really verbose text piece explaining the comic’s background to accompany it. In the end, though, there wasn’t room to print the article after all. Here it is:
The Making Of “Whatever Happened To Grandma?”
Okay kids, today I’m feeling in a particularly narcissistic mood, so you’re going to be blessed with a step-by-step run through of the creation of the comic “Whatever Happened To Grandma?”.
One evening in mid-March this year I was lured to the Exeter, where Ben Bullock caught me unawares and roped me into being one of the artists involved in his planned exhibition of comic art. The idea was that all the artists would select a script written by Ben, interpret it in their own way, and then the final pieces would be displayed and hopefully sold to raise money for the Animal Welfare League.
I was interested in the idea but not sure my existing projects would allow me time to do it, so I looked through the handful of available scripts looking for something that would be relatively easy to draw. There was one that was basically nine repeated panels of Tom Cruise standing around, which seemed easy, except that my likenesses of real people suck. Also it was possibly the least funny script. So instead I ended up choosing this one:
=================================================
What ever happened to Grandma?
ONE
Distance shot of a lone desert army base. There are a few military types swanning about. A sign in the foreground says “PINE GAP”
TWO
In the courtyard there are three or four scientists milling about amongst some more military types. A test is being performed and everyone is doing something. There’s an old woman too.
THREE
Close in on a scientist leading a man in a nice suit around for a tour of test ground.
Scientist
...with your continued support we’ll finally know the effects of high velocity newborns on the elderly. I trust you can imagine the corporate applications of this knowledge.
Suit
So let’s see it.
FOUR
The scientist turns to one of the soldiers.
Scientist
Of course. Corporal Millerton?
FIVE
Millerton raises a newborn above his head, about to throw. The old woman stands about five meters (sic) away facing Millerton.
SIX
He heaves it overhead like a medicine ball at the old woman. It strikes her in the stomach and obviously winds her.
SEVEN
Scientists hover about the old woman, recording the results.
Suit
Well that wasn’t high velocity at all.
EIGHT
The scientist addresses the suited man while pointing behind him.
Scientist
Oh no, this is just the control. The second test is with that.
NINE
Were (sic) looking at a medieval catapult.
FIN
=================================================
I began by working out a layout for the comic on my computer, where I can preview page compositions relatively quickly and easily. I initially thought about doing a striking, dynamic panel layout ala Paul Grist or Mike Mignola, but given my time restrictions I quickly decided that a nine panel grid was the easiest way to go. Plus, the rigid grid can be very effective - see Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, for example.
Looking at the script, some panels were overloaded with dialogue while others had none, so I tampered with the script a bit to make some panels less text-heavy.
I decided to do my original art at A3 size, because I wanted to produce something substantial that would look good on a wall, but which could also be reduced and printed legibly.
I ruled up a sheet of pasteboard and lettered all the panels first. It was only after I’d done this that I started doing some thumbnails and realised that nearly every panel was best suited to a landscape composition, whereas I had ruled and lettered the page in traditional portrait-style orientation. Rather than start again, I decided to work with what I had, which affected several decisions about what to include in each panel.
Normally I would pencil the whole page first and then ink it, but for this project I decided to pencil and ink each panel completely before going to the next one. I chose to work this way because I figured it would be less daunting and make it feel like I had accomplished more. I did one complete panel each evening that I worked on it (not consecutive evenings), but I didn’t do the panels in order.
To draw each panel, first I roughed in the layout with light blue pencil (which I’m used to using in my normal artwork because it doesn’t reproduce when scanned or photocopied and thus eliminates the need for erasing). Then I tightened up the artwork using a darker non-repro blue pencil, and touched up any details that I still wasn’t sure about using an HB lead pencil. Then I inked the art using a dip pen with a post office nib and Indian ink.
For the first panel I tracked down some shots of what Pine Gap actually looks like for extra authenticity. This sort of contradicts what was in the script, but I like to get things right. The giant round things are something to do with satellite interception technology, but are probably pretty confusing to anyone looking at the comic. Yeah, I value factual accuracy over intelligibility, Sue me.
You may notice that I tried to minimise the number of people I had to draw as much as I could while still conveying the essence of Ben’s script.
Panel three was actually the first panel I drew, because it was the easiest: a nice simple close up of two people talking. I was initially trying to go with a Bruce Timm/Michael Avon Oeming art style, with the idea that clean, simple linework would aid getting the page finished quickly, but it turns out that mastering a different art style is not really very quick after all and I fell back almost entirely into my normal approach (which is still pretty simplified).
Panels five and six are my favourites - the portrait orientation of the panels made it almost impossible to fit in the scene as Ben had laid it out in his script, so I took another liberty and spaced the action out over the two panels, showing both the before and after, with the panel border breaking the scene and enabling the two moments in the baby’s trajectory to be shown simultaneously on the page.
In panel nine, I considered changing the catapult to a giant cannon, with the idea that it would be easier to draw, but decided that that would be changing Ben’s script too much. The catapult did take more time than anything else to draw though. After it was finished, I added the scientists in the foreground to emphasise that it was large, and in the process turned it into the biggest catapult the world has ever seen.
I normally scan and clean up my artwork on my computer after I’ve finished it, so I don’t worry too much about stray lines, mistakes and smudges. However, I had to take more care with inking this piece, given that I was donating the original artwork to the exhibition. I still made a couple of screw-ups, and since I thought that using whiteout would only highlight these mistakes, I let them stand as they were. However, I have removed them from the version published here.
Once completed, I bought a frame for the finished piece and delivered it to Ben Bullock. On the way to meet him, the glass shattered into about a million pieces, despite being wrapped in bubble wrap. However, Ben was luckily able to source another frame for the exhibition, at which I’m pleased to announce the art was sold the day after opening night.
The End.
Fist Full Of Comics #4 is available from Pulp Fiction Comics (34A King William St, Adelaide, South Australia) or from fistfullofcomics @ gmail.com.
Useless Trivia:
This issue of FFOC was meant to be running short on content, so I wrote a really verbose text piece explaining the comic’s background to accompany it. In the end, though, there wasn’t room to print the article after all. Here it is:
The Making Of “Whatever Happened To Grandma?”
Okay kids, today I’m feeling in a particularly narcissistic mood, so you’re going to be blessed with a step-by-step run through of the creation of the comic “Whatever Happened To Grandma?”.
One evening in mid-March this year I was lured to the Exeter, where Ben Bullock caught me unawares and roped me into being one of the artists involved in his planned exhibition of comic art. The idea was that all the artists would select a script written by Ben, interpret it in their own way, and then the final pieces would be displayed and hopefully sold to raise money for the Animal Welfare League.
I was interested in the idea but not sure my existing projects would allow me time to do it, so I looked through the handful of available scripts looking for something that would be relatively easy to draw. There was one that was basically nine repeated panels of Tom Cruise standing around, which seemed easy, except that my likenesses of real people suck. Also it was possibly the least funny script. So instead I ended up choosing this one:
=================================================
What ever happened to Grandma?
ONE
Distance shot of a lone desert army base. There are a few military types swanning about. A sign in the foreground says “PINE GAP”
TWO
In the courtyard there are three or four scientists milling about amongst some more military types. A test is being performed and everyone is doing something. There’s an old woman too.
THREE
Close in on a scientist leading a man in a nice suit around for a tour of test ground.
Scientist
...with your continued support we’ll finally know the effects of high velocity newborns on the elderly. I trust you can imagine the corporate applications of this knowledge.
Suit
So let’s see it.
FOUR
The scientist turns to one of the soldiers.
Scientist
Of course. Corporal Millerton?
FIVE
Millerton raises a newborn above his head, about to throw. The old woman stands about five meters (sic) away facing Millerton.
SIX
He heaves it overhead like a medicine ball at the old woman. It strikes her in the stomach and obviously winds her.
SEVEN
Scientists hover about the old woman, recording the results.
Suit
Well that wasn’t high velocity at all.
EIGHT
The scientist addresses the suited man while pointing behind him.
Scientist
Oh no, this is just the control. The second test is with that.
NINE
Were (sic) looking at a medieval catapult.
FIN
=================================================
I began by working out a layout for the comic on my computer, where I can preview page compositions relatively quickly and easily. I initially thought about doing a striking, dynamic panel layout ala Paul Grist or Mike Mignola, but given my time restrictions I quickly decided that a nine panel grid was the easiest way to go. Plus, the rigid grid can be very effective - see Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, for example.
Looking at the script, some panels were overloaded with dialogue while others had none, so I tampered with the script a bit to make some panels less text-heavy.
I decided to do my original art at A3 size, because I wanted to produce something substantial that would look good on a wall, but which could also be reduced and printed legibly.
I ruled up a sheet of pasteboard and lettered all the panels first. It was only after I’d done this that I started doing some thumbnails and realised that nearly every panel was best suited to a landscape composition, whereas I had ruled and lettered the page in traditional portrait-style orientation. Rather than start again, I decided to work with what I had, which affected several decisions about what to include in each panel.
Normally I would pencil the whole page first and then ink it, but for this project I decided to pencil and ink each panel completely before going to the next one. I chose to work this way because I figured it would be less daunting and make it feel like I had accomplished more. I did one complete panel each evening that I worked on it (not consecutive evenings), but I didn’t do the panels in order.
To draw each panel, first I roughed in the layout with light blue pencil (which I’m used to using in my normal artwork because it doesn’t reproduce when scanned or photocopied and thus eliminates the need for erasing). Then I tightened up the artwork using a darker non-repro blue pencil, and touched up any details that I still wasn’t sure about using an HB lead pencil. Then I inked the art using a dip pen with a post office nib and Indian ink.
For the first panel I tracked down some shots of what Pine Gap actually looks like for extra authenticity. This sort of contradicts what was in the script, but I like to get things right. The giant round things are something to do with satellite interception technology, but are probably pretty confusing to anyone looking at the comic. Yeah, I value factual accuracy over intelligibility, Sue me.
You may notice that I tried to minimise the number of people I had to draw as much as I could while still conveying the essence of Ben’s script.
Panel three was actually the first panel I drew, because it was the easiest: a nice simple close up of two people talking. I was initially trying to go with a Bruce Timm/Michael Avon Oeming art style, with the idea that clean, simple linework would aid getting the page finished quickly, but it turns out that mastering a different art style is not really very quick after all and I fell back almost entirely into my normal approach (which is still pretty simplified).
Panels five and six are my favourites - the portrait orientation of the panels made it almost impossible to fit in the scene as Ben had laid it out in his script, so I took another liberty and spaced the action out over the two panels, showing both the before and after, with the panel border breaking the scene and enabling the two moments in the baby’s trajectory to be shown simultaneously on the page.
In panel nine, I considered changing the catapult to a giant cannon, with the idea that it would be easier to draw, but decided that that would be changing Ben’s script too much. The catapult did take more time than anything else to draw though. After it was finished, I added the scientists in the foreground to emphasise that it was large, and in the process turned it into the biggest catapult the world has ever seen.
I normally scan and clean up my artwork on my computer after I’ve finished it, so I don’t worry too much about stray lines, mistakes and smudges. However, I had to take more care with inking this piece, given that I was donating the original artwork to the exhibition. I still made a couple of screw-ups, and since I thought that using whiteout would only highlight these mistakes, I let them stand as they were. However, I have removed them from the version published here.
Once completed, I bought a frame for the finished piece and delivered it to Ben Bullock. On the way to meet him, the glass shattered into about a million pieces, despite being wrapped in bubble wrap. However, Ben was luckily able to source another frame for the exhibition, at which I’m pleased to announce the art was sold the day after opening night.
The End.