Thumbnails #10

Introducing Graphic Novel Builder // An Inside Look // Cover Reveal // Some Nice Things

June 18, 2024

One of the strange things about being a writer or comic artist is the way your life swings between periods of creation and periods of promotion. For months at a time you fully goblinize yourself, hiding away in your studio to work on your latest book. And then, when it’s done and out in the world, you’re suddenly thrust into the sunlight, asked to act like not-a-goblin-actually, a real human being with smart things to say about what you create. Just try your best not to snarl and nibble on a rat carcass.

Isometric drawing of a goblin's bedroom. We see a shelf with a collection of rat skulls, a bed/nest made of straw with green blankets. There are books and green cans of 'Orc Cola' scattered across the muddy floor. In the corner grow mushrooms. On the wall are posters of the creature's favourite Goblin bands, with a heavy metal aesthetic. Propped against a chest-of-drawers is a training battle axe and a helmet.

Good thing then that there’s a period between creation and release where writers and comic artists can ease themselves back into the real world. That’s where I’m at right now, blinking at the sunlight, a bit dazed, but ready to come out of hiding.

Let me go back a bit…

The Project

Back in September I heard from a commissioning editor at Collins, interested in working with me on a graphic novel aimed at teenagers on how to make your own comics and graphic novels. I was a little apprehensive at first… it sounded like a great idea, but imposter syndrome was right there on my shoulder telling me I wasn’t the person for the task. My previous books have been aimed at an older audience, and I felt like the idea of picking up my ‘Filmish’ persona to lecture teenagers about how to make comics would be a quick way to crash and burn.

But I did like the idea. I just needed to find my way in - to connect with the material in a way that made me confident and inspired. After meeting with Beth and some of the team at Collins, I started to visualise a group of teenagers setting out to make their own comics, teaching each other as they went along…

A lineup of teenage characters from Graphic Novel Builder: Rayah, a muslim girl wearing a pink headscarf, round glasses and a jean jacket over red dungarees. Jay a tall boy with curly hair and dark skin, wearing sporty clothes and a green puff jacket. Sam a boy with blonde quiff and lighter skin, wearing a big red shirt. Ash a girl with green hair, and medium-dark skin, wearing punk leather jacket and ripped jeans. Finn a non-binary teen with short hair, wearing a yellow beanie, t-shirt and purple hoody, and leaning on a walking stick.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It conjured up memories of my own teenage years, hanging out with friends, making things together, and learning new creative ideas from each other. And along with this, I decided I wanted to fill the book with some of that same creative energy. Not a ‘how-to’ exactly, but a book full of inspiring ideas and enthusiasm for creativity, whatever form that takes.

Production

One thing about this project was that we were working on a very tight deadline to get it out in 2024. After some planning and structural work in late 2023, I wasn’t able to get down to work on it properly until January, leaving me just four months to write, draw and colour the whole thing before deadline. I’m still not sure how I did it, though I was given really amazing support by the team at Collins, who made sure to help out wherever I needed it, including assistance on some of the graphic design, as well as speech bubble placement and lettering.

As usual I went through the process of writing, thumbnailing, illustrating and colouring the book. I’ve recenly been working to improve the speed of my work by cutting out the pencilling phase and jumping straight from thumbnails to inks.

Thumbnails…

Extremely rough pencil drawings of a page spread layout for a comic. We see an external view of a high school. Then a pile of books dumped on a table, and following a conversation between different characters.
Very rough pencil sketches of a page spread layout of a comic. We see further characters talking. The drawings are rough but there is a lot of expressiveness in the poses and features.

Inks…

Inked version of the first page above. We can see that the compositions and poses are very similar but now much more slick.
An inked version of the second pencilled page above. The compositions are very similar but now refined. There are some very exuberant expressions and a looseness to the linework.

It’s required a lot more concentration during the thumbnailing phase, making sure to really nail the layouts and compositions, but the result has been a much looser and more exuberant inking phase for the most part. I’ve said before that often the thumbnails capture an essence that often gets lost in translation during the pencilling and inking phases.

By cutting out one of those phases, I believe I’ve found a way to help maintain some of that essential cartooning spirit! I think this new approach is working for me - my drawing hasn’t been this loose and playful in years, and I’m finding a lot of the joy of it again.

(Of course, this has only been possible because I draw digitally, which allows me to draw and correct on the fly. Maybe more accurate to call it an amalgamated pencils/inks stage. I also use character turnarounds to get a consistent image each time I draw my recurring characters.)

A full-colour version of the above first page, showing an exterior shot of a school, followed by kids chatting inside.

This project was also a huge colouring undertaking, but I think I’m developing a much stronger grasp of how to quickly and effectively get good colours down on the page. The backbone of all this was a set of character palettes that played well both on its own and as part of the team. Then, harnessing some colour theory basics that I’d long known but never quite understood to fairly efficiently structure a page’s colours around. It was a great and timely learning experience, since the book required me to give some helpful advice to readers about levelling up their own colour game. The result is some of my favourite colouring I’ve ever done.

Some colours from the book: A girl and her dog walk through a green and brown post apocalyptic landscape. A girl sits on a lush green hillside under blue sky. A boy stands in fantasy landscape of pink and purple.

And so, after a lot of hard work, I managed to get the project in on time. I’d rather not work on quite such a tight deadline again, but I’m proud that I managed to bring my vision to the page without much compromise. I think it’s going to be a really great read, and I hope that it comes in useful to a new generation of young comic artists just setting out on their journey into comic creation!

Cover Reveal!

Ok, so now that you’ve sat through me rambling about the creation, I’m super excited to reveal the cover for this thing!

Cover to Graphic Novel Builder: The Illsutrated Guide to Making Your Own Comics. We see a bunch of teenagers around a huge sketchbook. Sam pours a bucket of colour into the pages, Finn paints doodles on the cover, Jay and the dog Peanut write on a laptop, and Rayah and Ash assemble a quirky robot bird character. Around them are strange and wonderful comic creatures and characters - a crab, an adventuring fox, a dinosaur being abducted by UFOs, a robot, and tentacles!

I’m so happy with how this turned out. It’s based on an initial concept by me, but really elevated by feedback from Collins, and the amazing typography work of James Hunter. What’s extra cool here, at least to a nerd like me, is that we got to use an extra pantone colour for the yellow-ish cover text and doodles. The idea was that taking a colour not easy to produce with CMYK would add a special little pop to the cover design, and I think it really works!

And the cherry on top, if you didn’t spot it already, is that the wonderful Alice Oseman, author of the Heartstopper series, has written a fantastic introduction to the book. I couldn’t be more pleased!

The Big Wait…

Graphic Novel Builder will be out on 10th October! I’m so excited to show you all my book!

Over the coming months, I’ll be getting ready for the release, and I’ll send out further newsletters once I have some details on any launch events and appearances. I’m also going to make a big push on preorders, since these days those are really important in getting your book seen and into the public consciousness.

So, if you want to support me in this new release, hang on for now. But in a few months I’ll let people know where to preorder from. I’m hoping to have some exclusive bookplates with different shops, so keep your eyes peeled! And when the book is out, a review on Goodreads or Amazon will be a huge help! Thank you!

Some Nice Things…

Siren: Survive the Island is downright bananas. A sort of Hunger Games / Lord of the Flies real-world game where different groups of Korean professionals (Cops, Firefighters, athletes, stunt people…) face off in physical tasks and then battle each other for control of their bases. It’s a wild ride, a perfect amalgamation of physical endurance, tactics and intrigue. Recommended if you’re on a real-world games kick like I have been since discovering Jet Lag: The Game last year.

Contrapoints: Twilight. The latest video essay from Natalie Wynn is and isn’t about Twilight, but definitely is about gender, relationships, lust and longing. A really thought provoking watch that my brain wasn’t quite able to fully process and will need watched again.

Lacuna. A sweet, meditative board game about collecting flowers from a pond at night. It’s simple yet rich, tactile and visually splendid.

A promotional shot of Lacuna. A black tablecloth/board sits on a table, with colourful illustrated flowers around the edges. On the board sit gold and silver metalic pieces, and small wooden flower counters.