House of Odd Art

Posted onJuly 21, 2011September 30, 20133 Comments

The last part of Odd Thomas 3 has finally been approved, and I can now work towards finishing the book! 40 pages left to ink before the end!

I realise I haven’t posted some art up for a while, so this week I’m posting up page 24 of “House of Odd”, the third Odd Thomas book. To give people an idea of how the art is adapted from the script, and the progression of the art from pencils to the final pages, I’ve put it here in stages.

The first stage is ofcourse the script, which in this case is written by someone else (with me acting as the illustrator only). This may be a good example of how to write a script.

PAGE 24

PANEL 1: Having turned away, Nedra walks into the house. Odd and Stormy follow behind her

STORMY: So, Ms. Nolan . . . Ozzie said you think this house is haunted?

NEDRA: These spirits are as spoiled rotten as any movie star.

PANEL 2: Reverse angle from the last panel, so we can see the characters walking towards the camera. In the background, behind them, the front door is now shut.

NEDRA: They think it’s all about them, them, them.

PANEL 3: Odd cocks his head to one side, eyes rolling a bit in frustration and bemusement. Nedra is blissfully unaware of this as she continues to lead them deeper into the mansion.

NEDRA: But it’s really my production.

NEDRA: I told Ozzie that I had no need for amateur ghostbusters like you.

PANEL 4: Stormy’s gaze narrows.

STORMY: Amateurs?

NEDRA: No offense. I’ve called in the professionals!

Next up, are the pencils. You may have noticed that I didn’t follow what was laid out in the panels in the script. This is because I feel that an illustrator’s job in comics is to tell the story as best as it can be told, and if that means not following the script, then so be it.

This isn’t uncommon in comics, since a fair number of artists will have been in situations when they can’t follow a script – mostly because what is described in the panels can’t be depicted in pictorial form. If it happens, it’s not because writers aren’t respected, but because writers aren’t always visual people, and don’t always know if what they’re describing in a panel can actually be drawn.

The inks are next. This part is straight-forward. I use a combination of dip pens (The Zebra G-pen and nikko pen) and Sakura microns to do my inking, and it’s worked for me fine. I find that the look of the art changes depending on the tools you use, but for Odd Thomas, I’ve always stuck with this style of art. Different kinds of stories call for different kinds of art, and Odd Thomas requires art that isn’t stylised or takes artistic lliberties. It’s not that kind of story.

Finally, the tones and dialogue. The tones are done by the wonderful Dee DuPuy, and she uses a program called Deleter ComicWorks, which I then later open up in Photoshop to add the words. And thus, the page is finished and ready for print.

Bentocomics.com – Meet Mimi Sashimi

Posted onMay 21, 2011October 2, 2015

I just came back from a holiday on the Silk Road, spending 10 days traipsing around China with a Hong Kong tour, hitting all the predictable places and having a blast. We went from Urumqi to Turpan, to Hamu, then Dunhuang, from them onto Xian, Luoyang and the Shaolin temple. Sure, the last two isn’t really part of the Silk Road, But I must mention that Xian is a fantastic city and worth going to again sans-tour next time.

Now that I’ve been back for a few days and is rested enough, I bring you something fun and interesting: how we came up with the Bento Mascot for Bento Comics.

Introducting the Bento Mascot: I bring you all the mascots we designed before we decided on the official Bento Mascot, Mimi Sashimi. It was meant to be like a design contest – all the participants in Bento came up with their (mostly) food-related designs, and we collectively chose which one we thought was the cutest. Or the most suitable. Or the most clever. As far as these contests go, the criteria is never stable. It’s just a matter of what catches our eye. Which makes you wonder – what makes a good mascot?

Here’s the runner ups, by:

Dan – A bunch of taco octopuses from outer space

Svetlana – It’s a happily crumpled piece of paper

Myung – Food and the one about to eat it

And the winning entry, mine:

The whole sushi family

I’m not sure what it was about my entry that people seemed to like, despite me initially being too embarrassed to show it. After giggling at everyone else’s mascot designs, it seemed that everyone unanimously liked mine the best.

Perhaps it’s the contrast between the 3 different sushi people – I often find that drawing a few versions of a “tribe” and putting them next to each other can often give personality to what is essentially a bunch of line drawings. It’s human nature to ascribe personalities to a “group” of things, no matter how non-human they look. Observe people pointing at a bunch of clouds and seeing giraffes, elephants and Persian cats. What gives? Looking at the three sushi people, who do you think is the out-going one?

We decided pretty quickly – Mimi Sashimi is our new mascot. We (Svetlana and Dan, mostly) tweaked her design a bit, to make her cuter, rounder, and more edible. Look out for more members of the sushi family later on!

Odd Thomas: More

Posted onMay 21, 2011September 30, 2013

Hi all! I’m currently living in Hong Kong (will be here for about 3 months), settling in and entertaining friends. I’ve got some news to announce nevertheless, and some picture to show. Lord knows, I’d like to start posting regularly on this LJ again, and here I am trying to get into the swing of things.

Odd Thomas 3: You may have read that there’s going to two more Odd Thomas books in this ICv2 report, and that I’ll be doing book number 3. Book number 2 “Odd Is On Our Side” will be out this Halloween, so I’ll be starting on book 3 in early August. Book 4 will be done by the talented Ikari Studio, and it’s just as well because I originally had to turn down book 4 because of an

Art I did for a short film: I did some art for a short student film at NIDA in Sydney, and while the concept is quite interesting, unfortunately the sci-fi nature of the story means that funding is limited and my part of the work can’t be completed (due to lack of funds). Still, I thought I’ll show you the art. These are just rough colour works, done in about 30 mins.

: This was my first design for a samurai sword-wielding young girl in a post-apocalyptic setting.

: But it turns out the director was looking more for something like this.

The Strange One: Odd Thomas

Posted onMay 21, 2011September 30, 2013

Odd Thomas: Long time no update – I’ve been real overworked. For the record, I’m still working on the single-volume “Odd Thomas” graphic novel (just finished chapters 4 out of 7), which now has a name – “In Odd We Trust”. Dean Koontz came up with that name, and he’s also writing a fourth “Odd Thomas” novel, to come out just before this graphic novel I’m working on. Yes, Dean Koontz’s most successful trilogy of books is no longer a trilogy.

I promised long ago to write a lengthy description of the whole Dean Koontz-deal I’m working on, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s because up until the end of October, Dean was busy working on his novel(s) and didn’t have time to approve the last chapter script. Now that the entire script has been approved, I can finally tell you who did what part of the work. But I’ll save that for the big “Odd Thomas” post, which unfortunately is only coming out after volume 3 of “The Dreaming” in December.

The Dreaming: Yes, volume 3 is now coming out in December and not November. There’s a very good reason for the 1 month delay – the folks at TOKYOPOP had something to insert in the back and it needed time to get approved. As for what’s being inserted in the back of “The Dreaming” volume 3 – it’s a SECRET (though lord knows, I’ve blabbed it to enough people already. Whoops). Anyway, I haven’t yet posted up the chapter breaks, so here they are.