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The Devil's Concubine

Con fatigue

by Palle Schmidt Leave a Comment

Whether you’re a writer, an artist, a musician or a film maker, there’s a good chance you have an introverted personality. I don’t think anyone would call me an introvert but I can tell you for a fact that being “on” for days on end really drains me. I need alone time to recharge.

In Angoulême in 2012, I wrote a blog post on the phenomenon I later started calling “con fatigue”. It was day 2 or 3 at the festival. Sure, I had a hangover. But the hangover was more of a psychological kind as I walked around the exhibition tents that were packed with comics fans in all ages and genders. I should have been thrilled to see all this interest for my field. I should have been enthused at looking at all this great art and inspired by the spirit of the festival. Instead, it all felt overwhelming and my own role in all this seemed completely redundant.

I don’t know everything about how the creative brain works but it does seem to reach a point sometimes where it cannot process any more information and just wants to shut down. Where you can’t look at any more art or meet any more interesting people. It creates a sinking feeling that I suppose is not unlike depression. I say this here, because we need to know it happens – and that it is okay. It’s part of the human condition.

So there I was in Angoulême, feeling sorry for myself, just wanting to go home and hug my kids. I felt like no one was even remotely interested in looking at my work and I completely understood why. It’s useless! Look at all this other stuff! How can I compete, why even try? In other words, I was being a self-centered little cry-baby. Frustrated, I went into a crowded lunchtime café and got a soda at the bar, tried to check my e-mail but couldn’t log on to their wi-fi. Off course.

Then in the door walks Brian Azzerello. 

I’ve been a fan of Azarello’s since his early work on Hellblazer, that was so scorchingly cynical and hardcore I’d never read anything like it. I was working on the layouts for The Devil’s Concubine when 100 Bullets started coming out, and Azzarello’s stark writing and Eduardo Risso’s slick line art blew me away. The pages were so perfectly balanced, the blackness bled across panels and the colors were vibrant and bloody awesome. It looked exactly like my book! It was like they had plugged into my brain and pulled out the look and style that I was unable to put down on paper. Looking at Bullets, I knew how my book should be done. I tried putting it away and I tried to create my own style, but the damned thing had etched itself in my mind so permanently that The Devil’s Concubine in certain places looks like – let’s be brutally honest here – a rip-off.

Bumping into Azzarello like that, I had to shake his hand and thank him. I was able to fumble a book from my bag and give it to him, along with my sincere apologies. I said it with a smile and I hope he took the fact that I was so inspired by his work as a compliment. We had a nice little chat but I didn’t want to outstay my welcome. I just felt honored and privileged to be able to give something back.

As I left the café, I left my inner cry-baby behind.

Later I met writer Joe Keatinge whom I’d recently met in New York, and he was nice enough to introduce me to a couple of French editors he knew. Suddenly my visit at the festival seemed to make sense again. You can’t plan things like these. But if you’re not there, they certainly don’t happen.

Later on in the evening I ended up at dinner with a bunch of comics guys. We discussed the topic of hitting the wall. Feeling so small and useless in a sea of talent, that you just want to pack up and go home. I don’t know if we broke a tabu but it seemed Danes and Americans alike lit up at the reveal that we all at one point or another had shared the same experience. When you hit that wall, you just have to wait for the sensation to pass through you. And it will.


This post is an excerpt from my book SOLO – Survival Guide for Creative Freelancers – Get in now on Amazon.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: 100 Bullets, Brian Azzarello, Comics conventions, comics industry, con fatigue, freelance life, introvert, Joe Keatinge, self-employed, self-examination, setbacks, SOLO, The Devil's Concubine

Case study: THE DEVIL’S CONCUBINE

by Palle Schmidt Leave a Comment

This book was over ten years in the making, a perhaps overly ambitious project designed to kick down the door to the US market. 

I wanted the book to be look like a music video and be as stock full of gratuitous violence as an early John Woo action movie. I wanted to create a book that my 13-year old self would find it impossible not to pick up. I had a dogma that no matter where you opened the book, there should be someone getting shot, something blowing up or someone taking their clothes off.

For years I tried the traditional route of mailing test pages (this was almost before the internet!) to US publishers, getting rejection slips or no reply at all for years. I tried publishers in France and the UK as well, getting close to a deal a couple of times but never anything set in stone. The industry seemed far away and interests were slim. I knew it would take years (with no incoming salary) to finish the book and was almost ready to give up. It just seemed like it would never happen. Then one night out drinking with a bunch of comics guys in Copenhagen, I got to chatting with small press editor Paw Mathiassen of Fahrenheit. He asked what I was working on and I told him the woeful story of The Devil’s Concubine. I’m sure this dead-end project of mine was a joke among my peers at this point but apparently Paw hadn’t heard it. “Send it to me,” he said and as it turned out that slight interest from an editor was enough to kick me back into work mode.

I translated the script to Danish (it was originally written in English) and rough sketched the entire book in a few months, so I at least would have something readable to present. Paw agreed to publish the book and although it was a back end deal that never made me any money as far as I recall, I could now see the finish line and was able to drag myself out of the ditch and finish the race. I worked on the book any chance I got for the next year or so and The Devil’s Concubine was finally published in Denmark in 2009 – more than a decade after I came up with the initial premise and main characters.

With the book finished, I was now able to present to US publishers with a little more confidence. Time and technology had worked in my favor because now most publishers could be reached via email and I was able to send a full PDF with links to a cool trailer a friend of mine had made in after effects and both a Danish and and English version of a website (created by another friend, still available at devilsconcubine.com). IDW showed interest and we reached an agreement after about a year of going back and forth. The book finally came out in the US in 2011.

Lessons learned: 

Ambition is great, finishing something is better. It’s also a whole lot easier to sell a finished project than an idea. If you want to create something, do it for your own sake in your style rather than trying to cater to any market.


This post is an excerpt from my book SOLO – Survival Guide for Creative Freelancers – Pre-order now on Amazon.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: behind-the-scenes, case study, creator-owned, graphic novel, IDW Publishing, making comics, Peter Snejbjerg, pro tips, process, SOLO, The Devil's Concubine, working with editors, Writing

Seeing the images before drawing them

by Palle Schmidt 1 Comment

I got a really good question in an email the other day. A subscriber in Nigeria (Hello, Africa!) asked me about conceptualizing: “How do you see each drawing before you actually put pen to paper?”

My gut response was: Well, it just pops into my head.

I realize that’s not very helpful – although it’s very close to the truth! The whole truth is of course more nuanced.

The reason why these images just pop into my head on a very intuitive level is because I’ve put them there. Not on purpose, not by design. But by watching a whole lotta stuff over the years. Comics, painting, movies, real life – all of the things I’ve seen with my eyes, my brain remembers. All right, maybe not ALL the things I’ve seen. But you get the idea. The more you look at images, the more likely you are able to remember and replicate an image.

But again that’s not the whole truth.

Drawing these images vastly improves your ability to remember and replicate them. The more life drawing, the more copying you do, the more images you solidify in your subconsciousness.

The images that pop into my head probably do so, because I’ve seen them or drawn them before. Not that exact image, but something similar.

A few exercises:

  1. Watch movies. Pause the dvd, draw the image on the screen. As fast as you can. Study the composition, the lighting. Save your sketch for later. Steal from yourself.
  2. Read comics. No, in fact just pick a few comic books off the shelf and flip through them before you start your work. Put some images in your head (but don’t copy them!)
  3. Sketch. A lot. Try out several versions of the same image, different angles. Do thumbnail versions of your pages and be conscious about varying the sizes of the panels, shift between close ups, tilted shots, silhouettes – whatever you can do to shake things up.

The image the Nigerian subscriber mentioned as a reference was this one.:

DC-excerpt

I can see why it looks seducingly easy, like I’m some comics genius. But I probably made half dozen versions of this image before landing on this one. At least in my head. That’s where the images usually come from, as I’m writing the script.

It’s not easy. But it get’s easier. The more images I see, the more images I draw, the more I have to replicate from.

And you know that feeling of having an image inside your head and not being able to get it down on paper? Yeah, I get that too. But I’ve learned to ignore it. The image in my head washes away and is replaced with whatever is on the page, and that’s OK. It’s just one drawing out of hundreds, thousands. I get less attached the more I draw. I feel like that’s the secret to making comics in some weird way. Not caring so much for the individual image but caring about the flow of the story.

Hope the longer answer is more helpful!

Related podcast: Drawing Every Day

Filed Under: News, Pro Tips Tagged With: career, creativity, critique, drawing, how to, idea generation, improving as an artist, learning, making comics, mind hacks, mindhacks, The Devil's Concubine, tips for making comics, workflow

Self publishing – print or digital?

by Palle Schmidt 3 Comments

I’ve had several people ask me about self-publishing and the pros and cons of digital comics. I am by no means an expert here, but luckily the very talented Becky Cloonan just did a post on this very topic!

Cloonan is an Eisner-award winning artist and writer of creator-owned books such as Wolves and Demeter. In her recent post she breaks down her self-publishing experience, beginning with the toils of living with boxes of comics everywhere and constant runs to the post office:

The time it started taking out of my schedule was almost too much as well. One full day a week was spent filling orders, putting envelopes together, and mailing them out. I’d enlist my friends’ help carrying boxes to the post office. It got to be a bit much, and honestly I remember almost giving up a few times.

I did some self-publishing here in Denmark some years back and remember that state of constantly putting books in envelopes and orinting invoices. A luxury problem, for sure, but I hadn’t calculated shipping costs in my cover price, so it actually ended up costing me money every time I sent off a book! Between that and retailer discounts, I think I lost quite a bit of money on a fairly succesful book. I still have quite a few boxes in storage and no real plan to unload them. Putting money down for print and handling distribution is NOT something I feel like doing again any time soon.

Today I would definetely prefer digital over print, if I was to self-publish. The cost is lower and distribution is completely hassle free. Cloonan was lucky enough to get into the digital publishing platform Comixology, which makes it even easier and it’s still valuable to have a big player involved that can help handle logistics and marketing.

Cloonan continues to describe her experience with digital publishing:

DIGITAL COMICS! Yay, I have no idea what I’m doing! Submit was perfect for me, I got to choose the prices of my books, and they held my hand through the whole process. Now I know how to buy ISBNs like a boss, and format digital books. They did some great promotion for DEMETER too, and really pushed the book as part of the Submit launch! I have nothing but praise for ComiXology.

To read the rest of Cloonan’s run-down, go to her Tumblr. For me, the conclusion would be, if I can get digital distribution taken care of through another vendor, I wouldn’t mind digital publishing (Bonus info: You can buy my book, The Devil’s Concubine on Comixology as well. It’s not self-published, but I still get a cut, so… Appreciate it!), but I think just putting a book online as a web-comic and build the audience for a print or digital copy is really a better plan. I have way too much on my plate right now to bother with selling and shipping books.

What are your thoughts on self-publishing? Anyone have experience they want to share? Let’s hear it!

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Related post: Are printed books going away?

 

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Becky Cloonan, comics industry, comics market, Comixology, creativity, Demeter, digital, Eisner awards, print, self-publishing, The Devil's Concubine, Wolves

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