Transplant - to make a short story long

Transplant is posted at webcomicsnation so go read it here.

This page was meant to be the page before my story, in Amanda's proposed but never published Apologue book, you can find more links to her art, thoughts on the book and ways to contact her at her deviant art page here. About a year ago, aaprox. sept. 2007, She held a fan art competition I asked if i could do a fan comic, came up with this and then she asked me to make this page to explain it, just read it. Below is a paper I wrote for Bob's class explaining some of my thoughts further, but with the prospect of its publication looking gloomier every month I have decided to publish what I had previously and curiously kept under wraps.




Fan Comics: creating comics inspired by other comics.
By Zach Bassett
Knowing that my story would encompass multiple locations meant that I would need to detail backgrounds and base my story in a more solid reality and physical world that Mythchan’s surrealistic watercolor dreamscape. However I also knew I was going to need to fit seven to ten panels to a page in order to tell my story, in the five page limit set by the competition. Though I did change my style a bit to fit with that of her manga inspired characters, I had to follow, be inspired by and essentially transplant Sleepsong in tone, subject matter, and theme more than I would be able to visually.

At the time I was approached about the fan art contest I was reading A Foregone Tomorrow and The Counterfifth Detective from Virtigo’s 100 Bullets series, featuring art by Eduardo Risso. As I skimmed through it visually, I noticed the amazing number of panels he was fitting on the page and knew he would be a perfect artist to look at for my own similarly panel heavy story.

A few days earlier a friend had seen my pencils for Transplant and told me it reminded him of an artist named Stuart Immonen. So I went to his website and found one of his blogs particularly pertinent. After briefly discussing how comics rely on deadline he hit went to the figures, saying that the average comic page has anywhere from four to seven panels, and the average superhero comic book has something like 90 different drawings in a 22 page story. In 100 bullets there was an average of nine panels per page, and you wouldn’t even need all your fingers to count the number of pages containing six panels or less. Needless to say Risso did quit a bit more than 90 panels a book. Risso’s style is not necessarily simplified per say, but does rely heavily on lighting to and separate foreground and background.

I probably should have taken note of his figure shading though, I left my characters shadowless in almost every panel and relied more on line weight to separate them from their backgrounds. Speaking of backgrounds, the stylized noir-like backgrounds and lighting of Risso’s 100 bullets and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween gave me great ideas for simplified environments.

All in all, Transplant, while heavily influenced by Mythchan’s Sleepsong, Transplant turned out to be quite a different animal than I thought it would be. But thanks to some inspiration from Tim Sale and Eisner Award winning artist Eduardo Risso I was able to make Transplant into an easily readable story, despite it’s dense number of panels. For a more intricate look into the inspiration for Transplant as well as Mythchan’s original story, Sleepsong, checkout her self published Applogue.


I did the story, pencils and inks over a weekend on top of other homework, these were my thumbnails, pencils, inks and rough dialog, i scanned them before trashing them.





inks

Qutluch assassin

i did the inks on the plane back from tx, here's a couple different versions i was messing w/. i dont know why i like lens flair i know its cheesy, anyway w/ my girl friend's help i came about the final version which you can view on my deviantart page here
i put a glow around the top side of the knife which was inspired by this poster i have in my room and i love how it was colored.




while i was in tx, i stumbled on a david mack gallery that was awesome and the best comic shop and biggest ive ever been in. they had an entire wall of discount graphic nocels all for like 1-8 bucks. that was awesome.

colorado

finally got word back from the guy at pendant audio and found out i had 2 days to do a cover and no scanner, so i inked different parts photographed them as best i could, assembled them in photoshop and colored them sampling colors from cam kenedy's dark empire. which was kind of my inspiration, along with allot of kirby fun space reference. i had allot of fun, though looking back on it i think i could have pushed it farther and used less muted colors, but it was quick and i learned allot, and ill be doing a monthly cover so that's fun. check my cover out and all the others here. http://www.pendantaudio.com/defiant.php
http://www.pendantaudio.com/defiantimages/Defiant_25_cover.jpg
also ill be posting the progress and final on deviant with the rest of my art.

i also posted one of the videos i made, this one i shot all before hand and taught a class with robin's help at the Humboldt public library in iowa, so the kids edited it together, it's got some simple effects and some music but it was fun and now its on the web so check it out here.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UM0djc3onLQ
the only other video i currently have up is another i made with austin and his family, we did as an fx test for light sabers i did in flash. you can see that one here
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1QK9uBtWMP0
i am really anxious about loading Drown, my 15 min movie - the most serious of my film and editing experiments. which took me about a week straight to film storyboard and script and another 2 days editing. but im really proud of it. so hopefully that will be up soon maybe ill even post the storyboards too.

speaking of i still have yurushi to deal with, i did the comic, rewrote it as a 60 pg script, even had scores and sound fx picked out and about half of it storyboarded but its been so long i dont know what to do with it. i was thinking of reformating the comic as a fold out verticle comic but im not even that proud of it anymore, the art is old, the script is bad admitidly, i even turned down a chance to autograph a copy because i didnt really like it that much anymore. if youd like to see it though i have posted the origional comic here
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/xaqbazit/yurushi/series.php?view=archive&chapter=22387

im also panning on posting my 24hr comic i and have been selling called square one - its kind of a weak title, i had fun challenging myself with the layouts but unfortunately everything i didnt have figured out ened up falling into routine and so its kind of a clone of torn, and has allot of similarities. everyone was calling it the "crossword comic" but the cover is kind of fun, ill have to post it with the rest of the comic whenever i get around to it.

im also reading the next two graphic novels of astonishing x-men, the one whedon was witting and im loving, i got the 1st one at the swap meet and am reading the second 2 from teh library. as well as osama tezuka's adolf which is amazing me how deep the themes are with such cartoony stylized art. but it helps me think i dont have to change my style, just draw like i do and do it as good as i can. you kinda accept the style and then get lost in it just like a normal story. almost like watching a film with dubs or subs.

well i have allot of stuff to look through from the library, my cousins just left after a week, kinda stressfull but i had fun havinga supersoaker game with our neighbor emma, aidan, me and colten. whoever had the hose, would hide a tennisball in the grass and the others would have to try to enter the yard and hold off the monster with the supersoakers, while looking for and recovering the ball from the hosemonster. anyway it was fun.

cant wait for new york, but i also am really excited about seeing dan again, talking about stories for senior project and finishing the scripts and starting to record novus terra. were going to be recording the voices just ourselves - sinking the fx and music and then rerecording the dialog track with the voice actors. hopefully ill be able to air an episode a week on a new scad radio show im calling scadrd (scattered) for scad radio dramas. i have a facebook group if anyone would like to help here
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=16437995460

i have so many projects i want to work on and scripts, art stories etc. my mind is so creative and my attention span is so short im constantly jumping from project to project. it will be nice to finally have something nice to show for all my work, i just am really going to be relying on a few peopel that will make or break the show so i hope they dont let me down, specifically adam - who seems to be buisyer than me and jagoda who seems to have more time than me. i havenet got anyone to help with the scripts like i wanted, but its almost done so i hope it isnt too bad, dan can help story edit for the last few episodes and im sure we'll make some changes when it comes time to record. but i hope the show does well because i could see allot of people doing weekly shows or one shot bits if it does. but ill just be doing kind of an etertainment block with 1 episode from multipule different shows each week so someone can tune in just to see what happens on their show, or maybe even listen to them all. im also interested in hearing something i saw ona road trip, a new company adapting books, graphic novels etc into audio drama format and calling it "graphic audio" - obviously a piggy back on eisner's phrase "graphic novel" however io persoanlly find it funny considering there is nothing "graphic" or visual about radio dramas, if it had that it would be tv. lol.

anyways, hopefully next time i post i will have my junk up on deviant art, hope i get allot of feedback - ive done allot of work this last semester and was one of only 3 to pass larriosn's pen and ink 1. when i get back im moving downtown so ill be buisy. ill also be inking james ww2 pages so i have some stuff in the works, and im scared about losing my drawing skills if i dont draw enough. but my work speaks for what i can do so im anxious to put it up.

some stuff will take time though, like storybaords for simpsons, that id like to sink to the audio like my noah storyboards and my simpson storyboards, but i think it will be worth it i just cant forget it.

i also overdrafted like mad so im barley still alive financially and now indebted to a few people for keeping me afloat, but a big thak you goes out to those who helped. ive never been so scared.

ive been trying to find a movie called "robot wars," it goes along with or is somehow connected with "robot jox" which is on youtube. ive also been craving to watch the made for tv-movies Generation-x, and Intensity. as well as the series, Roswell.

i also read up on the death of superman movie's on wikipedia, that were trying to be made in the 90's which was very interesting, along with summaries for mmpr series arcs.