Troy Dennison's Blog, page 11

Tales From The Lounge #32

Mist-och-en Identity

Tales From The Lounge #31

A Little off the Top

Tales From The Lounge #30

Thick Skinned

Tales From The Lounge #29

Is There Anybody Out There?

Tales From The Lounge #28

Cultural Conundrum

Dragon Days – evolution of a comic

A lifetime ago…

A little over 20 years ago I had an idea for a comic. It was somewhere between Dungeons & Dragons, Conan and every fantasy novel I’d ever read. The inspiration actually came from the classic All Along the Watchtower. The line “There must be some kind of way out of here said the joker to the thief” was where I started. The Joker was Prince Bazar of E’Bi’Gum and the thief was Nico. Along with their friends; and Elf, a Dwarf, a Magician (you see where the D&D influence came in), a musician, a cleric and a crazy barbarian warrior they had some adventures.

The first story I wrote was rather rough to say the least. I photocopied it up and distributed it among my friends.

Original page

The Quest for Perfection used the framing device from Princess Bride – one of the most quotable movies ever. I liked it and loved the characters but I wasn’t happy with the end result. Roughly ten years later I re-visited the story and re-wrote and illustrated it from scratch. The framing device was dumped and it became a straightforward quest story with a bunch of adventurers and their encounters. Everything was done on A4 paper, even the letting and acrylic inks. My artwork had evolved and so had the characters. I was heavily influenced by Albert Uderzo’s work on Asterix and I adore his illustrations.

second time around

You can see the difference in the dynamics of the page and also the way the characters had evolved. The completed story ran to 86 pages – something I picked up from Asterix along with the change in layout. Originally I had emulated traditional comics but this time round it was closer to a newspaper comic.

I tried (in vain) to find an agent for my work and eventually I started to put it out as a webcomic. I never did finish the run though and the stories sat gathering dust for a long time.

Although the Quest for Perfection was the first story I wrote I produced a prequel showing how some of the characters met. That Was No Lady will begin serializing when Tales From the Lounge has run its course. Lady will be scanned from original coloured art, cleaned up digitally and then re-lettered. It will run 2013, and will be followed by Quest and then another half dozen stories.

Never being a happy bunny I’m in the middle of re-illustrating Quest. This time I’ve transferred to A3 for the pencils and inks. Colouring and lettering will then be done digitally using Gimp and possibly Corel Painter.

New version

You can see the difference in the artwork again and it’s interesting to compare all three pages. The characters have evolved over the last 20 years. The linework is cleaner and looks so much better as I’ve improved as an illustrator. I’m hoping that people enjoy reading these stories as much as I’ve enjoyed creating them. I’ve lived with these characters for the last 20 years – now it’s time to let other people meet them.

Troy.

Tales From The Lounge #27

In a Galapagos Minute

Making Movies: making the cut

One of the coolest things about indie film is how involved you can become in a production. You can go on board as one thing and find yourself doing half a dozen other jobs just to help out. Over the years I’ve been an actor and special effects make-up artist, but I’ve done sound and lighting, prop building, costume making, the list goes on.

This year I got the chance to write and direct the opening story of the anthology film Checking In. Once the filming was over it was time to sit down, sift through the footage and start turning it into something people could watch.

I already had an idea of how each scene would work from writing the screenplay, rehearsing the actors and directing the film.

The breakfast scene

Rehearsals gave me the opportunity to see what worked and what didn’t. It also gave me an idea of camera placement once we reached the location.

Breakfast on location

The trick would be in taking all the footage and turning it into an actual film. I’d never edited anything before, but I’ve watched a lot of films over the years. You can see what works and what doesn’t, how the rhythm of a scene is built up by the editing. The process is fascinating, scary and sometimes you feel like you want to tear out your hair because it isn’t working quite right.

My first step was to review the footage; 206 shots. I had to watch them all and start taking notes. Some were obviously no good and I eliminated them straight away. Then I broke the footage down into individual scenes and began to start assembling things.

Editing breakfast

I started on one of the last scenes and began the painstaking task of sifting through the footage. The performances had to be right, the dialogue had to be right. If you look at the timeline on the photograph above you can see how it’s made up of lots of individual clips.

I started with a wide shot – both actors in the scene. I watched it over and over, looking for the beats and moments where I could cut to a different angle. Sometimes it was for an actor to say a line and sometimes it was for their reaction. The editing has its own rhythm and each scene moves at a different pace. You have to match things and make sure an action started in one shot is completed in another. I found out that it actually looked smoother if you shaved a few frames off between transitions – it looks more natural.

From start to finish I spent around 60 hours editing a 20 minute film. There’s some lovely acting in there though and the zip of dialogue is crisp and pitch perfect. I even chose to allow part of one scene to play out completely in a single shot. Ernest and Suzanne were in a corridor arguing and their performances in the cramped location were brilliant. It makes a lovely change of pace from what has gone before and it allows the scene to breath and come to life in a way that chopping it wouldn’t.

I found the process fascinating and I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed the hell out of it. It was a learning experience for me but I’m rather proud of the finished piece. It still needs work and the first cut can actually be trimmed by another 20 seconds. Yeah, 20 seconds! (I know!). But I’m very excited about what we’ve achieved and I’m looking forward to seeing a completed cut of the final film.

Troy.

 

Tales From The Lounge #26

Anaconda Antics

Tales From the Lounge: the Process

I’ve probably written about this somewhere else before – but for those interested here’s the way one of these comics comes to life…

I love telling stories. I love video games. So at some point it seemed obvious that the two should meet.

I also love Zoo Tycoon – the game is still fantastic after all these years. I got into it by accident and while I was hunting for downloadable content one day I stumbled on Zookeeper’s Lounge. I got heavily involved in the fan community and eventually found myself doing rotation fixing on user created objects for the game. There’s stuff out there on people’s computers that I helped to create. At some point I became a site Admin at ZKL and I still wander in from time to time to see how the old place is doing.

I decide one day that I wanted to do a comic based on stuff from the game. It was going to be a one (or two) shot deal. But once I started scribbling ideas I found myself producing a strip every week. The original series ran for a year before I stalled and felt I’d told all the stories I could. But the process of bringing a story to life was quite interesting.

The writing is done on any random bit of paper that’s nearby at the time. It’s usually one or two lines and I visualize the story as I go. I start with a ruler and pencil and lay out the panels on the page. Then I figure out where any captions or word balloons need to be included and allow for that as I start drawing.

The original illustration is on A4 cartridge paper using a Staedler Norris HB pencil – the classic yellow and black ones that you see in UK schools. Inks are with Edding profiliners (0.5, 0.3, 0.1) and erasing is done with an eraser (either a Staedler or a Banner). Then it gets scanned (Packard Bell Diamond 2000+) and flipped and straightened using a photo program.

This changed when my scanner died and I was forced to go completely digital for a while. I used Alias Sketchbook for the illustration – it gives the closest approximation to drawing on paper. Line shading is added to the cleaned up inks to give them more detail.

Pencils using Alias Sketchbook

The colour correction and colouring is done using a Trust graphics tablet (or a mouse!) and the latest version of Gimp (which I love). I build duplicate layers and colour between them in a similar way to which traditional animation is produced.

Coloured in Gimp

Originally all backgrounds were drawn on the paper but near the end I was producing them digitally and compositing them into the panels where they were needed.

Finally the page composition and lettering (Letraset One Stroke Script) are done in Serif Draw or Gimp (it depends what mood I’m in.

final composite

The logo’s are all created in a similar way and run horizontally or vertically depending on the layout of that particular strip. Then they’re uploaded to the trusty old internet for hosting.

The panel shown here is from Photogenic Frenzy – which will be appearing later this year. There are very few original pencils for the strip because I inked the original art. I still produce the occasional Lounge Tale when I get an idea and a few new ones will appear at the end of this run. It’s odd to think that the stories which originally appeared in 2005 are still being read today – I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed creating them.

Troy.