Kickstarter

Hey guys, since pledges are already being made (note: thank you soooooo much for supporting this project!), I wanted to share a behind the scene look into the process of how the comic is made. Specifically, I wanted to talk workflow.

The basic steps (for those of you not familiar with comics) are as follows:

• Writing
• Pencils
• Inks
• Letters

The writing all falls on me since... you guessed it, I'm the writer. I studied film when getting both my bachelors and masters degree so when talking about writing, I most comfortable working in a screenplay format. What does that mean? It means that "Holiday Wars" was first written as a 120 page screenplay. Then it was re-written. Then re-written. Then re-written again and again and again. Then it got showed to editors and re-written some more (the whole process took MONTHS).

Once I had a finished screenplay in hand I started breaking it down into a comic book script. It sounds easy but for me it's something that was really hard. I've done it before and knew what to expect. The issue is that I'm not a "director." I've said before that 75% of the time I don't care about the aesthetics of the panel as long as it doesn't get in the way of the story telling. So having to break down the full screenplay panel by panel was hell.

Screenplay Format:

Comic Book Script Breakdown:

With a finished breakdown completed, Micheal Odom (our wonderful penciler) works his magic. When we first started working together he would send me roughs and then I'd give him notes and then he'd go and do the actual pencils. Then sometime in the past year we stopped doing that completely.  He started to really get what I liked and wanted and has since been able to jump right in without having to do roughs. Every now and then I still give him notes on what to change or tweak with the pencils, but for the most part he always nails it. Even then when changes have to be made they are normally are plot related setting up something that needs to happen down the road.

Pencils:

Then after the pencils are done Arturo handles the inks. Inking and coloring are both normally a smooth process. Both Arturo and Giuseppe have copies of the script breakdown so that way they know what they are inking if it isn't clear from the pencils. I'm not slighting Micheal when I say that. An example is that near the midpoint there is a cloud-like object and if you look at the pencils it looks like a cloud. However when Arturo and Giuseppe check the script breakdown they will see it's actually a purple mist and not a regular cloud.

Inks:

More than anyone, Giuseppe and I have the most back and forth in terms of giving notes and tweaking things. It's not that he does anything wrong it's more that sometimes you can't really describe the coloring in words. So he will send me a flatted page and I'll be like "The clothing and all is fine, but let's give the trees a more spring or summer type look instead of fall."

Colors:

Once I get the colors, I do the lettering. Generally I do batches of 10 or more pages at once. It's just easier to letter in scenes and sequences then at one page at a time. Plus I also do some re-writing when lettering to make sure the dialog fits with the finished artwork. For example look at the finished episode below and compare it with the script breakdown from above. It's minor changes, but they do make a difference.

Finished Episode:

So there you have it. That's how "Holiday Wars" is made. Down the road we will look at each of these steps in more detail, but I figured it was best to start out with a general explanation of the whole process.