Zathurustra
Wow, it's been a while since I updated.
This comic was written by Benzin Bullock and drawn by me for Make Whyalla Safe For The Disabled, Ben’s second exhibition of sequential art at the Exeter Hotel (246 Rundle St, Adelaide). All the pieces in the exhibition were written by Ben, and drawn by various Adelaide-based artists. The exhibition began on January 7, and will be on display until March 7. All the original art is for sale (hint, hint).
Here's a closeup of each panel.
Panel 1:
Panel 2:
Panel 3:
Panel 4:
Panel 5:
Panel 6:
Panel 7:
Panel 8:
Panel 9:
Here’s the script that I selected from the several Ben had available:
Zathurustra
By Ben Bullock
Panel 1
A kid is in his mother’s bedroom.
Kid - Zathurustra
Panel 2
The kid reaches for his mother’s perfume bottle.
Kid - Zathurustra
Panel 3
As the dumb kid open’s [sic] his mom’s perfume there are rays of light, like, bursting out of the bottle.
Panel 4
A picture of R’yleh. Which is a big stone blocky city. Like just stack [sic] of huge stone blocks as a city. Its [sic] fairly hard to explain. Um....It’s just a big fucked up blocky city. OK? Think weird angles, and maybe hieroglyphs carved into the rock.
Caption - R’yleh
Panel 5
A women [sic] lies in her hospital bed. Her legs and arms sprout horrible lovecraftian things. It’s a nightmare. Truly a nightmare.
Caption - Shabis Sinuata
Panel 6
Just spectrums of light. (sorry that’s kinda hard to draw, innit?)
Panel 7
An alien’s severed arm lies on the ground. There is a green ichor seeping from it. The arm look [sic] spongy like fungus.
Caption - Whisper in the Darkness
Panel 8
An old 1890’s farmhouse. There is a curious light surrounding the house. It kind of looks like fires [sic] flies. We can see a well somewhere about the place with a shovel leaning against it.
Caption - Colour Out of Space
Panel 9
The Kid’s freezed [sic] in the position of taking his mother’s perfume lid. There’s glowing fire flies crawling all up the kid’s arm. He look’s [sic] horrified. Horrified at the fireflies.
END
Useless trivia:
Ben had a few different scripts that he let some of the artists pick and choose from (the other artists had scripts specifically written for them). As soon as I read Zathurustra (I don’t know if Ben knows that it’s meant to be spelled "Zarathustra"), I staked my claim on it in no uncertain terms. I may have threatened the other artists with physical violence. I loved the imagery and the incongruity of the script, and when I read it my brain lit up with possibilities.
Capturing on paper the potential I saw within my head, however, was hard. I struggled immensely just with the panel layout. Once I blocked out what I wanted, though, it then just became a matter of filling in the panels, and it became easier (although still very time consuming). The dynamic panel layout and having elements in certain panels breaking through the borders were all choices to break out of my comfort zone and have the finished product live up to Ben’s script.
I was planning to do this piece in a looser style than usual, maybe using brushes, but that didn’t end up happening. I did draw the kid’s face differently than I normally would, though. I also planned to have this be the last piece of art that I completed in 2006, but that didn’t happen either: it took the first few days of 2007 as well.
Panel 1:
Many of the elements in this panel were chosen in an attempt to disguise the crease that I somehow managed to put in the art board I was working on (after many of the other panels had already been drawn and it was too late to use a new piece). The idea of the tail of the kid’s speech bubble going right into his throat is taken from Jeff Smith’s Bone; I borrowed it to emphasise the creepy atmosphere of the script.
Panel 2:
One of my housemates lent me a bottle of perfume as visual reference for this panel. It smelled like marshmallow.
Panel 4:
The description in Benzin’s script of R’yleh immediately made me think of the city of Plain Awful from Carl Barks’ classic Donald Duck comics story, Lost In The Andes, and I initially planned to copy Barks’ splash panel in here as a tribute. But eventually I decided to have this be a completely original piece, in case the homage distracted from the rest of the work I had put in. Also, it was way too hard to copy. I never could have drawn this panel without the book Perspective! For Comic Book Artists (any flaws are my own fault for skim reading it).
Panel 5:
This panel gets the most comments.
Panel 6:
Ben noted in his script that spectrums of light would be hard to draw, but I straight away envisioned how it could be done. But that didn’t look right on paper, so it came out this way instead.
Panel 7:
I’m not really satisfied with that arm.
Panel 8:
For some reason, the ink bled a lot more on this panel than anywhere else, which was annoying because it messed up the fine details on the farmhouse.
Panel 9:
Photo reference for this panel was kindly taken by the same housemate who lent me her perfume bottle.
The original art measures 62 cm wide by 42 cm tall. It's available to buy (framed) for $250 o.n.o.
This comic was written by Benzin Bullock and drawn by me for Make Whyalla Safe For The Disabled, Ben’s second exhibition of sequential art at the Exeter Hotel (246 Rundle St, Adelaide). All the pieces in the exhibition were written by Ben, and drawn by various Adelaide-based artists. The exhibition began on January 7, and will be on display until March 7. All the original art is for sale (hint, hint).
Here's a closeup of each panel.
Panel 1:
Panel 2:
Panel 3:
Panel 4:
Panel 5:
Panel 6:
Panel 7:
Panel 8:
Panel 9:
Here’s the script that I selected from the several Ben had available:
Zathurustra
By Ben Bullock
Panel 1
A kid is in his mother’s bedroom.
Kid - Zathurustra
Panel 2
The kid reaches for his mother’s perfume bottle.
Kid - Zathurustra
Panel 3
As the dumb kid open’s [sic] his mom’s perfume there are rays of light, like, bursting out of the bottle.
Panel 4
A picture of R’yleh. Which is a big stone blocky city. Like just stack [sic] of huge stone blocks as a city. Its [sic] fairly hard to explain. Um....It’s just a big fucked up blocky city. OK? Think weird angles, and maybe hieroglyphs carved into the rock.
Caption - R’yleh
Panel 5
A women [sic] lies in her hospital bed. Her legs and arms sprout horrible lovecraftian things. It’s a nightmare. Truly a nightmare.
Caption - Shabis Sinuata
Panel 6
Just spectrums of light. (sorry that’s kinda hard to draw, innit?)
Panel 7
An alien’s severed arm lies on the ground. There is a green ichor seeping from it. The arm look [sic] spongy like fungus.
Caption - Whisper in the Darkness
Panel 8
An old 1890’s farmhouse. There is a curious light surrounding the house. It kind of looks like fires [sic] flies. We can see a well somewhere about the place with a shovel leaning against it.
Caption - Colour Out of Space
Panel 9
The Kid’s freezed [sic] in the position of taking his mother’s perfume lid. There’s glowing fire flies crawling all up the kid’s arm. He look’s [sic] horrified. Horrified at the fireflies.
END
Useless trivia:
Ben had a few different scripts that he let some of the artists pick and choose from (the other artists had scripts specifically written for them). As soon as I read Zathurustra (I don’t know if Ben knows that it’s meant to be spelled "Zarathustra"), I staked my claim on it in no uncertain terms. I may have threatened the other artists with physical violence. I loved the imagery and the incongruity of the script, and when I read it my brain lit up with possibilities.
Capturing on paper the potential I saw within my head, however, was hard. I struggled immensely just with the panel layout. Once I blocked out what I wanted, though, it then just became a matter of filling in the panels, and it became easier (although still very time consuming). The dynamic panel layout and having elements in certain panels breaking through the borders were all choices to break out of my comfort zone and have the finished product live up to Ben’s script.
I was planning to do this piece in a looser style than usual, maybe using brushes, but that didn’t end up happening. I did draw the kid’s face differently than I normally would, though. I also planned to have this be the last piece of art that I completed in 2006, but that didn’t happen either: it took the first few days of 2007 as well.
Panel 1:
Many of the elements in this panel were chosen in an attempt to disguise the crease that I somehow managed to put in the art board I was working on (after many of the other panels had already been drawn and it was too late to use a new piece). The idea of the tail of the kid’s speech bubble going right into his throat is taken from Jeff Smith’s Bone; I borrowed it to emphasise the creepy atmosphere of the script.
Panel 2:
One of my housemates lent me a bottle of perfume as visual reference for this panel. It smelled like marshmallow.
Panel 4:
The description in Benzin’s script of R’yleh immediately made me think of the city of Plain Awful from Carl Barks’ classic Donald Duck comics story, Lost In The Andes, and I initially planned to copy Barks’ splash panel in here as a tribute. But eventually I decided to have this be a completely original piece, in case the homage distracted from the rest of the work I had put in. Also, it was way too hard to copy. I never could have drawn this panel without the book Perspective! For Comic Book Artists (any flaws are my own fault for skim reading it).
Panel 5:
This panel gets the most comments.
Panel 6:
Ben noted in his script that spectrums of light would be hard to draw, but I straight away envisioned how it could be done. But that didn’t look right on paper, so it came out this way instead.
Panel 7:
I’m not really satisfied with that arm.
Panel 8:
For some reason, the ink bled a lot more on this panel than anywhere else, which was annoying because it messed up the fine details on the farmhouse.
Panel 9:
Photo reference for this panel was kindly taken by the same housemate who lent me her perfume bottle.
The original art measures 62 cm wide by 42 cm tall. It's available to buy (framed) for $250 o.n.o.