You can read the webcomic by following the link here.
contents
>thanks
>deleted panels
>similarity
>transitions
>process
>the original story vs. the comic
Thanks
Im in the car on my girlfriends laptop on our way back to scad from a stressful, fun, and short road trip to long island. But before I sign off here’s some of the last of my tidbits. And before I forget, thank to matt for his fresh set of eyes, though out of order he helped me with his opinions on certain sequences and panels and eventually helped be print copy cut and staple the physical books together at 3am the night before the due date. Sorry green tea ice cream at the Frigate in NY wasn’t as good as you’d hoped, thanks anyways though.
My parents and josh for reading over the original story and helping me with constructive criticisms as well as a ever important fresh pair eyes.
And lastly robin for staying most ever night I was drawing this beast, even if you were sleeping on the couch in the conference room, you were with me and supported me - thank you and it meant allot to me. And for checking my grammar and finding a flipped word balloon the day before it was due. I love you with all my heart. Thanks to all.
Deleted panels
the first panel was in the first sequence and was replaced by the panel of the waitress turning around. This way I set up the direction in scene geometry of the diner from the waitress. I did however leave the text inverted, which is the way I did it for real and then like all the white text in the book planned on flipping once I scanned it into Photoshop.
This sequence was a very classically cinematic shot. I envisioned the camera panning with the character down to get the photograph and when he sat up, the camera pinning with him again, to see a tree in the headlights only a few feet from his hood. However in the process of making the panels I had drawn the first one in such a way that the interior of the car did not have barley any details, and in this way would contrast the outside. I eventually got so wrapped up in drawing the car and having it look totally off without a glove box, radio, footrest and so on that I forgot what I was trying to accomplish in the shot. Eventually the solution ly in raising the angle of the camera so that it was almost overhead of the character in the shot where Logan dives for it and then panning back up. It works generously in film partially for the format and aspect ratio of film. However vertical panels trying to hide a very horizontal windshield became a very difficult problem. So I eventually redrew them with reference and kept the concept above the image. Now its one of my favorite sequences in the book.
When I drew this panel I knew I needed the phone to be in his right hand but what I didn’t realize was that in the following panels I was going to have to pan into the phone speaker (very matrix and city of glass transition). - not all of us can do the creative wipe to show a change in location George Lucas!!!
These panels were meant to go between the shots of Logan loading the adultery bullet into the cylinder with the sister’s names and was a spur of the moment decision that I wanted to add. Eventually the discontinuity in shapes didn’t end up transitioning as well as I’d hoped and I had to cut panels so multi panel shots would line up on the same page later in the book. (Probably something I should have figured out in the first place.) This one was a panel I had drawn as a direct reference to a line in the story I wrote as a way of literally illustrating the metaphor. It didn’t work as well as id hoped and I had to cut panels. Though did like the “ahhhh” sound effect bridging panels from sleep to reality but eventually had to steal the text from the first panel and digitally combine them leaving ahh in the second panel and scrapping the first one. (I planned on inverting the roller coaster panel by the way.)
similarity
though these two aren’t actually next to one another in the book, I tried to show the children in similar positions to show even more the deja vu or symmetry of the past present and future in context of the story. Two girls in his life two children, two halves of a photo, two holes in the door and so on.
The panel on the left is actually from later in the story. I put them next to one another because I wanted to show how the panel on the left was meant to subconsciously put in your head that it would actually be him on the other side of the photograph. Almost like the transition when the waitress is looking at the photo and holding it where his head is and then turns revealing the same face behind the photo and you are meant to make the connection that it’s the same person even before she explicitly states it.
Transitions
these two actually came after one another and as many transitions were supposed to transition by composition but because of the text and lower contrast on the left panel few people saw it, though a fade in film would have worked beautifully. I shall work on it in the future since my mind thinks very much in a film sense.
This sequence was something I thought of as I was drawing it in pencil. At first I wanted to show her division in wanting Logan to save her and wanting to kill herself then I thought about the ever abundant duality and decided one side would be the first sister and the other a different sister. The text reinforced the idea for all of you who didn’t catch it the first time around.
Process
heres some pannels showing how and where i used the computer to do some of the work for me in shots where bery little changed.
the original story vs the comic
When I wrote the story I hated the ending, I had wanted to show the remorse in the character and his willingness to change his life. The hole idea of him losing his memories was that he would see his life objectively and approach his old decisions without the subjectivity of the cycle he created. The inescapability of the situation once he started and his inability to appreciate his surroundings. So in the comic I forgot to look at the script though visually I knew I wanted the last set of panels to show the division and then unification of the characters.
I wanted the last two pages to be boarderless pages, the same image, a full page spread of them hugging showing the entire body and with no boarders. One page the inverted image of the other. The great duality. Surrounding I wanted the text from the ending of the story. However once I drew the last actual panel I immediately loved it. And when I looked at the script I realized I didn’t need the last two. All the text had been better and less pretentiously explained and I doubted I could have drawn a better image than that panel and it was 6:45 am the day I needed to scan and print the images so I left it as the lst panel and don’t regret it nor view it as a constriction of time.
Rather that I think I produced better under pressure, though it was very stressful, deprived me of 66 of 72 hours of sleep as finals were going on and was allot of pressure. Though I had people for and against my ambitiousness in the class, the fact that I had stayed up so many nights over the previous week I would have all been a waste had I not finished it so after the second night straight of no sleep I passed the point of no return.
I waned to finish something and this being only my second completed graphic novel and the fact that I want to redo some of the other story “Yurushi” which I wrote as a story then comic book then film script then story boarded 70% of in film aspect ratio. This was really the first project that had turned out better than I expected and I learned so much making it. It was better than the written story which I cannot say about the other. Just the fact of finishing it and actually doing it rather than thinking about it and producing nothing in which to show both the story and my artistic skill to others I had to do it. And love it. I love the different format and the restrictions I placed in the panel size and overcame.
I do like my thumbs better in both stories though, but the amount of detail I added was necessary to keep the characters straight to the viewer. Though they do change preto radically throughout the corse of the book. Probably due to getting to know the characters artistically as I did the book rather than in my sketchbook.
Anyway what I was trying to work towards saying was that the story is different in the ending mainly in the fact that not allot of people bought the ending in the story. They didn’t think she should have taken Logan back he didn’t seem story enough. So in the coarse of revisiting the story which I wrote a year before back at cu in telling tales class. I decided to make Ashley part of the problem by confessing that she too added to the stress by sabotaging the condom that resulted in her pregnancy and his anger towards their future child. However her motivation was that she knew of his relationship behind her back with her sister and thought a baby would bring them back together and force him morally to split up with Julie once and for all. The shots of her loading the bullet in the gun were supposed to be symbolic of her forced sexual consequences and both parts were supposed to be similar in physical form to their genitalia, as gross as it sounds it’s the truth.
The story twist and her deeper motivations made the ending more believable, I think though the whole thing seems kinda fake and unbelievable (or the whole story fro that matter) and as my friend pointed out they would probably go to jail as soon as the found out it was the parents. But it’s a comic book and I loved the story none the less. My girlfriend finds my stories depressing and I guess its because its drama. A series of unfortunate events. And I assumed the heavier the events, motives, secrets and relationships the better the story.
I had just seen magnolia when I saw it and was watching allot of house of sound and fog and other Jennifer Connely movies which tend to be downers. Though she says she wants to do comedy she always ends up balling in some part of her movie. (Ps: also requiem for a dream ) speaking of which I wanted to see “the fountain” which is Darren Arenofsky’s 3rd film though I am sure he is one of the most talented directors of his time and one of my biggest film inspirations as well as depalma but people seem to have mixed feelings about him. However once I saw femme fatale I was sold, he’s also been behind films like Mission Impossible, Scarface and taxi driver so give it up already. Black Dahlia sucked though. But that’s what you get with writer/directors, pure magic or disjointed disconnected and un obliterated vision.
So anyways this may be one of my lastly posts before I get working on the tentatively titled “Sleepgate” another story I wrote last year in creative writing at cu and have changed just like torn.
© 2007 zach bassett, all rights reserved. no part of “torn” related material posted here may be reproduced an any form without written permission of the author via email, also any copyright not stated here is stated at the bottom of the blog. Any art/pictures not done/taken by me are copyright of their respective owners.
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