The Un-Glamorous Way Things Begin

I have been aching to just get this properly started.
I have precious little I want to show just yet, but I figured we'd start out slow and I could tease some of the preliminary work. So here are the thumbnails of some of the first pages I used to pitch my story 'The Hollow Men' to the guys at Flight.

In 4 days' time it will be published alongside the much-better stories of more seasoned comickers in Flight Volume 8. I couldn't be more honored and terrified. :)

I am hard-pressed to find a time in my life when I have felt more impatient. But soon enough it will be out there to read and I can relax and get on with the business of loathing it like any proper artist loathes all his old art.

So, admittedly, these are rough. And even the basic building blocks that you see here shifted around a bit before settling on the final design. But as sketchy and crude as these are, this is where the real work happens.

My greatest teacher taught me this about comics (admittedly plagiarized, if I remember correctly, from someone who'd told him): "The final work is the shit of your thumbnails."

And it's true. These aren't even really my crudest thumbnails, if I'm honest. I'll go and dig up the story pages I did for myself before I decided on this direction...they get smaller and cruder. If you can believe it, these were actually made to show people :p

In reality, what you're looking at is at least step 4 of the process.

After all the scribbling down written notes, gathering plot ideas and casting them off...I even wrote an actual script and then barely looked at it. Then I sketched characters, moved into a little moleskine which I covered with sticky notes, rearranging panels and deciding on dialogue. Panicking, making a mess. In fact, these are the result of a LOT more work than it looks like. As far as I'm concerned, these are the comic...the rest is just polish.

You know what? As I think about it, I think those first, sketchiest, illegible scribbles (before these) were the high point...the most honest version of the comic. Even these represent the beginning of a rollercoastering downhill trend.

Everything after the initial ecstasy of the first idea seems like a paler and paler attempt to recapture that seminal spark; to pin it down and show it to people.

It's a struggle, and a fascinating one, to try as hard as you can to preserve the life of the story through all the phases of creation. Over the duration of this project I felt like I found it, lost it, and found it again.

I'll need some distance from this to know whether I succeeded at all in the end. But this is the sloppy start.

And you get to read it without the dialogue, lucky you!

I really hope you guys stick around and check out the final product when it hits shelves. Not just my story, but the whole book. SOOOooOooon. 4 days. Just 4. I can wait 4 days. I mean, how many 4 day chunks have I lived through so far? A lot. It was easier then. I can do it again!

Yeah.

...

yeah.

...

-n

Jellybots: Duncan

Everyone knows that the best possible way to procrastinate and run from your feelings is to bury yourself in work! right? right...

I do tend to make more work when I'm feeling introspective. I was up late last night putting the finishing touches on this guy. I think he's my favorite. Not sure, though.

This is one 'bot that's been waiting to happen since I had the idea.

Guys, meet Duncan. (based again on another friend. Of the same name) He's the older-kid and a bit of a mystery. I think he might serve as sort-0f an instructor to the younger kids. He's, like, the Jelly RA. :p

Generally, teens as old as Duncan can no longer interface with the Jelly. But as one of the Candyman's first pupils, he's been able to grow and change with his suit. He's aloof and a little sarcastic. He designed the sphere floating alongside him in the suit himself; is that it's kind of his 'tell'. He's able to punctuate his expressions with an emoticon of his choosing. I'm hoping to get some fun juxtapositions out of the idea.

I just love the idea of him frowning sarcastically and the sphere being all ":p" I'll have to draw it and show you guys.

I had a completely different color scheme in mind, initially. It was going to be amber-colored and purple...or maybe even brown and green. But as I was drawing him and honing in on his character, I realized I wanted to make a darker, twilight-colored bot. What resulted (and if you've ever lived in/been to Providence you'll know what I'm talking about) is kind of the Jellybot personification of Waterfire. Go figure, right?

Hope you like it. I am literally counting down days until Flight is released and then until San Diego Comic Con. SO EXCITED. How to pass the time until thennnnn!? More Jellybots!

Much love,

-n

Jellybots: Biin

"woogly woogly woogly," it seemed to say.

I got my Jelly back! :D

This is Biin (pronounced like 'bean'). Another based-on-a-friend character from the Jellyverse. Expressions on the right, a few alternate forms on the left.

She's one of the Candyman's first experiments in alternative-intelligence (they get upset when you call them artificial). She's the only AI in The Soup that isn't a proxy (controlled by a grown-up operator).

Biin doesn't exactly follow orders; In order for The Soup to accept an inhuman intelligence, she had to be programmed with a significant amount of childlike anti-reason. Like all of the suits, hers is malleable and adaptive...incorporating new information into her physical form as fresh matter is introduced to the Jelly.

She just learned 'hands'. She's pretty excited about them :)

She took me longer than I'd like to admit. The thing I've been challenged by (and excited about) with Jellybots, is that I spend a lot more time coming up with the concept than I do with rendering it out. The simplicity can be deceiving...she went through a number of weirder, wilder iterations before I settled on the above design as her default-state. The idea is that she'd be able to change pretty wildly according to the situation. I'm not saying I'm 100% on this design...but I think it has the spirit I was trying to capture :)

Hope you like her! Name, details, and design are all up for change...so let me know if you have feedback!

Also, if you're confused about all of the things I mentioned earlier in this post: good. I haven't been very forthcoming with details about the Jellybots story, because it's still totally up in the air! So you haven't missed anything. I'm trying to confuse you with sudden detail on purpose :p

Hooray for summer!

Much love,

-n

PS. The design. process. is. complex. :p

Ninnerview!

I got interviewed by this neat site called Something We Like.

If you 're interested in hearing me talk about me even more than I already do here, you can read my interview. Otherwise...um...hi? I'll make more art, I promise!

-n

Vince Napolo

Sometimes you need to let your angst out.

It would have been really hard to express this feeling in Jellybots. It needed a new fiction.

The thing about personal work is not having structure or deadlines. So my mind's been wandering a little bit left of the Jellyverse and I decided to doodle this. It's a really quick character study for a story that's been refusing to go away.

The name "Wanderhome." is a working title. In truth I'm not sure what this project really wants to be yet. Hell: he may not even be a dog in the end.

But for whatever reason, despite trying, I can't get away from this character. Vince Napolo is the chain-smoking proprietor of a ramshackle vegetable stand by the river. He may or may not be a dog. May or may not be a wizard. Time will tell.

Summer is coming. You can smell it.

Yesterday, you couldn't distinguish the sky from the sea. It was incredible.

Jellydoodles

I've promised myself that I'll post in-process work here as it's coming together, and so I shall!

It might actually help motivate me to keep sketching to figure this piece out and eventually finish it- I've been itching to take some of the Jellybots characters and put them in a full illustration...set the tone for the style of the world and not just the characters' heads-and-shoulders :)

...and after that very chatty post, I figure I owe you all some pictures. So here you go! These are just early sketches...and only a few that I liked, at that. I've still not solved the composition and concept...but it's nice to get something down. More soooon!

love love!

-n

A New Look, Springtime, and Thoughts On Coming Back 'Home'

Guys! It's Spring! It's almost Summer!

There are leaves on trees, and the smell of flowers on the wind.

And, resultantly, the blog needed a new look: Creamscicle. I've always wanted stripes...I just never got the time to sit down and customize. And I wanted to simplify the header so it would be something that could age a little more gracefully.

I'll probably be tweaking it as I get accustomed...and the palette will likely shift with my mood, but this is what's up for now :)

In other news, I have relocated (along with 38 Studios) to Providence Rhode Island. Back to where I graduated from school just 2 years ago.

I keep telling people it feels "weird" just to avoid explaining it. But I've been feeling the need to talk about it, so I'm going to indulge myself and do that here.

I've spent most of my life moving from place to place; my mother recently shocked me by calculating that this will have been my 19th move. In so many ways, the shifting of scenery has been the constant backdrop of my life. It has sculpted me in ways I can't even begin to understand. And throughout God has been so good to me; truly the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. This move is no exception; all of the facts are incredibly positive: For our company this has been an immense improvement on all fronts. For my roommate and I, we have a beautiful apartment in a great area of town with tons more space than our previous place. The greater availability of excellent food, alone is reason to celebrate!

But I can't help feeling, as this new season of life begins, a little melancholy. For all the places I've moved in the past, I've never 'gone back' anywhere. And right off the bat it's stricken me: you really can't ever truly 'go back'.

I think I loved RISD more than I've ever loved any place in my life. And since graduating in 2009, I've missed being here (in Providence) on a fairly consistent basis. Which is nothing unusual; in my experience the grass is always greener in hindsight.

But now being back, being so close to where I belonged for so long, it feels like standing in your old house with all the furniture taken out. And every time you close your eyes you can just see it...the couch was there, and there was the tv...the armchair...

But it's irrevocably different. Undeniably still the same place.

The strangest feeling has been when suddenly it doesn't seem like anything has changed at all. Suddenly I'll be in a dorm hall watching a movie among friends, huddled on that same old modular furniture. Every smell is just the same. And every bit of it is still alive with all those same memories. The only thing that doesn't seem to fit is me.

I've changed along with the circumstances of my life. But the circumstances of my life have brought me back to this same place. And now I have to face that change.

So this is not the Triumphant Return per-se. No trumpeter on the rampart has taken up the cry that the "Lords of Gondor Have Returned!" This is the slow, familiar witnessing as the old ebbs away and is replaced with something new and untested. I am back, to watch as every last friend graduates and departs, and to gather whatever new friends present themselves. Just like the changing of the season: Winter has passed and these will not be the same flowers.

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. For my part, I am glad for this gift; to be back in Providence. I am very interested to see what he intends by it. I trust that it will be marvelous.

So "Hello" again, Providence. "Hello" again, all those friends still here. I missed the hell out of you.

Much Too Much - James Hersey

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Be blessed!

-n