Creating THE COMA

As announced in a previous post, I've begun working on a comic book featuring a new character of mine, The Coma.

Here's page 6 of the story:

  

I've always liked the idea of mixing artwork with typography. Kind of like the James Bond films with their opening titles featuring the credits and lots of visual eye-candy.

 

In my next post, I'd like to share with you where many of the inspirations for the Coma may have come from. I say 'may' because who can really say what motivates someone to create something. Sure, I always mention the artists and things that gave me that creative inspiration to pursue my own ideas, but often the variety of sources that may inspire a project come from a tremendously wide range, seemingly unconnected. Until of course, you start crafting the project and then see clearly where everything came from and how you choose to use it.

 

This comic, by the way, is going to be published in what the printing company calls 'manga size', which is 5" x 7.5". Why print it that size? Well, one reason is that I haven't put out a comic book in that size, so it's always fun for me to experiment with varying sizes of comics. I don't feel that a comic book should always be in the same 6.625" x 10.25" format. Also, because of the nature of this story, with it's landscape of a character's dreamworld, a universe inside the mind, I felt that a smaller book would offer a more intimate reading experience. A book you might be more prone to up close and personal with, so to speak.

 

 

A doodle I drew one day while 'warming up' to work on a page. This

was drawn on a 5.5" x 5.5" piece of scrap Bristol paper (the same paper I use to draw the comic,  Strathmore Bristol Vellum). 

I was also trying out some new Tombow color markers I bought. The drawing was kept in a much looser style than I'm drawing the

 book in, but for a warm-up that's good enough.

Sometimes to break up the process of the book, I'll switch from drawing the pages to working on some design work. Here's what I came up for the back cover (which will give you a bit more idea of what you'll find in the final story):

The color image is one I did a few years ago, with the new logo I created for the character. I penciled the front cover image over the weekend as well, with the intention to paint it with acrylics. I'll show that here when it's done. I'm going to print a limited number of this book for it's first release, and then most likely create new front and back covers for it once it's reprinted. The book is scheduled to debut at the Alternative Press Expo this October 1 & 2, so releasing a linited version of this is actually continuing a tradition I've had at APE over the years.

In the next post, I'll reach into the archives and share with you where oh where this Coma character may have come from....