Open the ink gates - Part III

Stiff upper lip

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

Behold, it is I, finally emerging from the pits of hell. As you might remember, I’ve been inking like a madman for the past few weeks, trying to burn through 44 pages of Phenomena madness. If you want to catch up, check out Part I and Part II of this odyssey. I’m starting to see the end of the tunnel but stick with me as we’ll face an inevitable yet final Part IV next week.

Stiff Upper Lip

This is the tittle of a brilliant AC/DC song and of the needed frame of mind for the current situation. I’ve written before that there’s a temptation to rush through the work once the end is in sight - IGNORE IT. “Only fools rush in.”

Whatever happens, you must keep a stiff upper lip. Meaning, your approach should remain unchanged at all times for the sake of consistency. Just make sure, from the very beginning, that you’re being honest with yourself and the people you work with about your pace. That will ensure you have the time needed to do it like you want. Then, keep it rolling.

And if you feel like you need to speed up, don’t concentrate the effort, instead spread the acceleration through a longer period of time and, if possible, before the very last stretch of whatever you’re trying to finish. For example, for the past couple of weeks I’ve pushed harder than I will next week - this avoids having to make the biggest effort when I’m at my most tired point, allowing me to cruise the last dozen pages I have to ink.

With that in mind, a lot was done during the last 10 days. As I said in previous weeks, this last section for Book 2 of Phenomena is particularly dense with characters and action, hence the grueling nature of the work. It’s the big action set piece that precedes the book’s conclusion and it makes me happy that I’m now beyond it.

The last scene is much calmer and with less characters interacting. As rewarding as it is to see all the action done, I confess at this point I’m looking forward to draw a couple of characters speaking instead of an army with a million speed lines around them.

This was all about bringing energy into the scene, through every tool possible. If it’s combat, body language is key so lots of full body shots. And if it’s scale and numbers we want to convey, we need to keep drawing dozens of characters over and over again. It’s an overwhelming narrative moment, so let’s overwhelm the reader too.

There are some calmer bits in the end, but I still have one more action burst to complete before we leave all of this intensity behind. See below two in progress shots:

These are only lacking the finer details and speed lines, so a few hours on Monday will suffice to wrap it up.

Commission update

Let me finish by showing you a sneak peek of the Doctor Strange commission I’m finishing up. The progress has been slow but you want those lines to be perfect on an original for a client. So, it’s better to take a couple of extra weeks if needed than someone having a subpar piece just for the sake of getting it slightly earlier.

Recommendations

I was watching Twin Peaks while working on these pages, which I had never seen before. It’s one of those that everyone who likes movies or tv should watch, even if I have to admit it didn’t entirely work for me.

I loooooooved season one. The quirkiness of it all, the fusing of genres (soap opera, drama, supernatural, procedural) done with incredible balance, the strange and surreal nature of it all, the incredible music. With everything condensed into 8 episodes, the tightness of it all worked fantastically.

But when I got to season two, a lot of what was tight became a bit more distended. With more than 20 episodes to play with, all those subplots started dragging on a bit too much for me. And by solving the murder of Laura Palmer mid season, the story lost a bit of focus.

Nonetheless, it’s a completely unique show. There’s nothing like it, before or after. I’m now interested to eventually watch season three, done almost 30 afters the second one, and see how its uniqueness is reinterpreted in a modern context.

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Today is time to rest a bit and watch Monaco GP. You have a good one and keep reading comics.

André