Using The Whole Stage

Hello from my office. Outside of which Storm Éowyn is currently disassembling the neighbourhood. So let's talk about neighbourhoods. Or, at least, environments.

In production:

• PuddleJumpers - Clear Skies 1-shot

Working On:

• PuddleJumpers Outline

Thinking About

• Tumult Issue 1
• My prose backlog

This week I got my first look at the sequential art for Clear Skies and oh boy am I excited to share a bit more about those in future posts. For now though let me say I am thrilled by Vicky's ability with gesture and expression. It was one of the reasons (among many) that I sought her out for this project and she is delivering.

Today I'd like to talk a little bit about how Vicky's concept art has influenced and shaped the way I'm telling the story, particularly how characters are making use of their stage; A little island in the middle of a flooded world.

Here's the brief that I included in my first script through to Vicky. First the 'notes to the artist' page:

The entire comic takes place at one location, a refuelling station on a small island in the middle of the ocean. There are some palm trees and bushes, all kept clear of the runway. The island itself is surrounded with floating solar panels which collect and send energy through thick cables to a large battery storage, like a futuristic grain silo. A slightly smaller cable runs out of the bottom of the battery storage and connects to the ATTENDANT. It is long enough that they can go wherever they want on the island. The ATTENDANT is permanently based there to help any Jumpers who come through with their refuelling.

And then in page 1 of the script itself, which I think I actually wrote before I was advised to write a 'for the artist page' in the first place:

Birds-eye: A tiny island, 0.5km long and narrow, with an even more narrow runway right down the middle. Like a strip of electrical tape on some yellow sand. The runway is short, too short for anything but the smallest of planes to land and take off from.

The weather is clear, Mediterranean. A few wispy clouds over clear azure waters that catch the sunlight. A couple of clusters of solar panels float in the water around the island, with cables snaking in out of the sea towards where ATTENDANT and the power station is. He's only a tiny dot from this height

Some of this is important stage direction, other parts are more for vibes. They were also accompanied with pinterest boards to help everything along (I can share those in a future post if that's of interest to people). From that, Vicky expanded, plucked out, trimmed and designed the space. The space naturally evolved and came to life more in her imagining and I, in kind, found that I was thinking more about the ways these characters would interact with it.

Once again, tight feedback loops that build energy and momentum. It's a profoundly different experience to writing prose. And (I like to think) that energy is finding its ways into redrafts of the script. For much of my first draft I had my characters largely in once place. They stand at the side of the runway, having a conversation. And I'm happy with the pacing and energy of the conversation, but I couldn't help but think about all how so much of the scene setting that Vicky did was being missed out on. And I think about all the little moments I love in comics from people like Guillarme Singelin, where you are invited to go digging in the corners of the frame to find something cool that paints a picture of a wider world.

So I'm moving them about a bit more, and in the final few pages we get to take a little tour of the island with the characters. They check the notice board, get some snacks from the vending machine. It feels like a chance to do that 'two messages in one' that makes comics such a fun medium. Demonstrate that the characters have moved into a new stage of their relationship by moving to a new part of the stage they're on. All while hopefully seeding a couple of cool world-snacks for those of you who love to re-read and put the pages right up against your nose. I hope these moments add something. A bit of naturalism. If they don't, I'll take them out. But for now they stay.

As a learning experience, reviewing and feeding back on concept art is a great chance to see whether the information I'm putting into the script is clear and precise enough. Not in the sense that I want to control where every item in a scene is put, but in the sense that the vibes are right. The first drafts above helped me realise that calling it a 'fuelling station' implied a establishment and in service-ness that I didn't want. This is meant to be a remote spot in the middle of the sea. So I updated the description and made a note to self that I need to refine the way I use descriptions.

And, frankly, these are the kind of experiences I hoped to have when I threw my hands up and decided to just get something made. I love the openness of it, the malleability of the process. The sense that things are evolving under my feet and that I get to experience new parts of the story even as I'm writing it.

I'm having so much fun.

Alex