Guest Blog: “IRONICALLY FAST” by Chris Watkins

by Brock Heasley on September 22nd, 2011
Posted In: Uncategorized

When I was a kid, imagining I had superpowers, the power I dreamt about most often (aside from the proportional strength and agility of a spider) was super speed. For whatever reason, I was absorbed by the idea of being fast. (Ironically, I think my parents had the same preoccupation; I recall many evening hours spent scowling down a twice-baked cheese potato, with the rest of the dinner table long since cleared and vacated, while my mom begged me to please finish eating.)

The other bit of personal irony here is that my fascination with people going fast ultimately led me to join the high school track team, as a sprinter. The slowest sprinter on the squad. My buddy Mark and I had a fierce ongoing struggle in our first year of track to avoid that dreaded last place. He won–he quit.

There’s so much irony in the concept of super speed. The idea, for example, that a speedster might have the strength to withstand the massive G-forces of circling the globe in seconds, but his clothes don’t. (Anyone care to invent The Mighty Streaker? I guess not.) Or the concept of a hero with lightning fast leg muscles, but ordinary reflexes. (Face, meet wall.)

Or the idea that a speedster’s bones and ligaments might be so worn down by years of creating whirlwinds around villains that, in his old age, he can hardly walk at all. Where would all that energy go? In Swifty, it has fermented quite naturally into vinegar and vitriol.

Swifty is then, perhaps, the SuperFogey most deserving of sympathy, although–like the best of literary curmudgeons–he hides his palpitating heart beneath a crusty prickly shell. Some of my favorite SuperFogeys moments have involved Swifty: His race with Cami, his need/hate relationship with the Space Pig, and the whole Bubbles of Light storyline (which has yet to fully yield us all its secrets).

Altogether, I think it’s fair to say Swifty is my favorite Fogey (not factoring in all the lookers of the Fogeyverse, of course; Swifty does nothing for a catsuit the way Spy Gal does). Maybe it’s because he’s such a richly nuanced character, full of layers and inner turmoil.

Or maybe–a bit like Swifty–I’m just steamed that I can’t be as fast as those darn kids.

Happy 5th anniversary Brock and Swifty!

-Chris Watkins

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Behind the Scenes of SF 352

by Marc Lapierre on September 21st, 2011
Posted In: Uncategorized

Hey, kids! It’s your friendly neighborhood SuperFogeys artist here with a look at how the art for this massive robot reveal developed.
It all started shortly after I agreed to take on the Fogeys as regular artist. Brock told me that Jerry’s plans called for a giant robot to attack Las Vegas and it was up to me to design it. The only stipulation to Brock’s request was that the robot design be different than what has been seen before. After a few quick sketches to experiment with the form the robot would take, I quickly hit upon a shape I liked. I then fleshed out the form to this sketch complete with a tiny Doctor Rocket to show it’s scale.

 

The first two things I decided about the design were that the robot would be asymmetrical and have a giant hole in the middle. Everything else grew out of those choices. I justified the giant hole by envisioning it as a giant energy lens of sorts. It collects any ambient energy in the area then amplifies and focuses it into a giant, devastating blast. The antena on the shoulder was originally drawn there as a way to further break up some of the symmetry. I really had no other purpose in mind for it at the time other than looking cool.

Some time after designing the robot, Brock informed me he had decided to make the robot transform into the jet the SuperFogeys would use to get to Vegas. This presented a new challenge. How do I make this robot turn into a jet without going back to square one? I thought about designing a new futuristic jet that would incorporate some of the robot’s design structure. That option seemed like a lot of design work an also held the potential to tip our hand too early that the jet and the robot were one and the same. My ultimate solution was to have the transformation take place via nanorobots that could rearrange the molecular structure of the robot. The previously functionless antena was then re-imagined as the delivery device for the nanorobots. Hence the antena being part of the jet’s design also.

After drawing glimpses at the robot in SF 310, SF 317, SF 320 and then later the big transformation sequence in SF 346 it was time to plan the Big Moment. In order to wrap my head around a scene that was so very much larger than anything I’ve drawn for SuperFogeys before, I drew a small very rough sketch of what the shot would be:

After getting Brock’s approval of my rough sketch, I then scanned it, blew it up, and printed it out onto an 14″ x 11″ sheet of bristol. This is where I did the real penciling work:

Inks were then laid down:


Colors and effects were added in Photoshop and now the scene is set for some full on giant robot action on the Las Vegas strip!

 

 

 

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PLOTTING A SERIAL WEBCOMIC, PART 6 – “The Conclusion”

by Brock Heasley on September 20th, 2011
Posted In: Uncategorized

AND EVEN WHEN IT’S OVER, IT’S NOT OVER…

The last thing I wanna mention is how difficult webcomics can make seeing your story as whole—even with tons of planning. I want to stress again how many times I’ve read back over a chapter I thought was pretty solid and realized it just didn’t flow right. I’ve gone back and re-edited almost every strip after its initial posting for exactly that reason. Flow—good flow—is very hard to get right when you’re creating things piecemeal.

I’m not saying you should get all George Lucas about it. Let your cruddy early art stand. Don’t obscure a panel with some weird creature walking by in front of it. For goodness’ sakes—don’t add a lame musical number.

My point is, with a good plan, tweaks and edits are usually minor.

THE MACRO AND THE MICRO

Good, serial webcomics can be done by anyone, I think. You just have to be willing to put the time in to break things down from the big idea to the much smaller ones. Tasty bites.  The trick is not forgetting the larger meal you’re serving.

Serial webcomics have to work on two levels to be truly successful. They need to work well by themselves as an individual experience, but they also have to feed into the larger whole of the story in a natural way that moves the story along at a good pace. The macro and the micro.

And just think…all this BEFORE you start drawing!

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PLOTTING A SERIAL WEBCOMIC, PART 5 “Writing the Script”

by Brock Heasley on September 19th, 2011
Posted In: Uncategorized

Once I’m confident that each strip will make a proper contribution to the larger whole of a chapter (and each chapter makes a proper contribution to the larger whole of the story), I can set the macro aside and focus on the micro: making the strip WORK.

And what do I mean by WORK? I mean that the strip is:

a) Satisfying as a whole. The strip MUST, above all, provide for a complete experience for the reader, especially new ones. This doesn’t mean that new readers will understand everything going on, but they will understand the central idea in the strip itself and whatever tiny little story is being told in the strip will be paid off  by the last panel.

b) Funny or not funny. Not every strip has to be funny, but if it’s not funny then it should be REALLY not funny. What I mean is, just because a strip isn’t funny doesn’t mean you can let it be boring. Strips can always be either funny or thought-provoking or emotionally satisfying. Preferably all three at once, but if you can do any one of them solidly then I think you’re doing well.

So let’s look at a script. SF 177, from the beginning of Chapter 6. Actually, let’s take another look at the breakdown I wrote for 177:

CS remarks that almost everyone is there, but not Jerry. He doesn’t see Li’l Miss Missle.  Surely she’d show herself for her own father’s funeral?  Swifty wonders aloud if Tom would show up for CS’s.

The breakdown tells me what I need to accomplish with this strip. For 177, it looks like I wanted to point out the reader that both Jerry and Li’l Miss Missile are not at the funeral—both clues to later reveals. Then there’s the bit about Tom, who has been mentioned before, in Chapter 5. I wanted to keep Tom’s name alive in the story because he was going to show up in the very next Chapter and I wanted to remind the reader in some small way of both who he is and that his relationship with his father is strained.

Pretty small goals for a comic strip, which gives me lots of  room to improvise and add some funny. Maybe a bit too much room:

177 –

1: Swifty and CS talking.  We can see other heroes and villains mulling about(?)

 CAPTAIN SPECTACULAR

 I haven’t seen Li’l Miss Missle anywhere, have you?

 SWIFTY

 Nope.

 

2: still talking.  CS looks to the left.

 CAPTAIN SPECTACULAR

I assume they had some sort of falling out,

never have seen her at Valhalla.  Still, you’d think

she’d show up for her own father’s funeral.

 SWIFTY

You think Tom would show up for yours?

 

3: Swifty Looks past CS to see what he’s looking at—it’s Spy Gal glaring at him.

 CAPTAIN SPECTACULAR

I-I would hope.

 

4: CS back on Swifty

 SWIFTY

Why wouldn’t he? Who else can

say their super-powered dad let a psychopath

beat up his woman and kill his oldest friend?

 

5: Swifty with a notepad, licking his thumb as he prepare to take notes. CS not looking too happy.

SWIFTY

Lay some more on me. When I hear

a scream from a dark alley, do I take the old lady’s purse

first or do I have @#$% tea and crumpets with

the mugger?

Gosh, that’s wordy. Sometimes, these early scripts are tough to read. Take a look at how crowded that all ended up being in the final strip:

Setting aside the wordiness for a minute, you’ll see that the thing that emerged in the final script that just wasn’t in the breakdown was probably the most important component of comics writing: character. Swifty is barely present in the breakdown, but in the script? He’s all over it. He gets the most lines.

In the end, the strip ended up with a script that was funny (Swifty’s joke at the end), thought-provoking (hey, why ISN’T Dr. Rocket’s adopted daughter Li’l Miss Missile at his funeral?), AND emotional (Things are clearly not right between Spy Gal and Captain Spectacular, nor between him and Tom—there’s a longing there). If only I’d been able to find a way to do it with less words, it could have been much more successful.

Next: And Even When It’s Over, It’s Not Over…

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PLOTTING A SERIAL WEBCOMIC, PART 4 “Breaking Down a Chapter”

by Brock Heasley on September 16th, 2011
Posted In: Uncategorized

One of the things I didn’t learn to do until Chapter 4 of the SuperFogeys was to break each Chapter down by strip. Before Chapter 4, I would write and draw a strip at a time, keeping in mind where I wanted to end up with the chapter and trying to make each strip as entertaining as I could on the road there. It was seat-of-my-pants creation. It was fun, but by Chapter 3 it was coming across like stalling. The story just wasn’t moving along. So, starting with Chapter 4, I established they way I continue to work to this day: strip-by-strip breakdowns.

Unfortunately, none of the breakdowns from Chapters 4 and 5 survive. I would erase the breakdowns as I wrote the more detailed scripts. It wasn’t until Chapter 6 that I started saving the breakdowns and the detailed scripts in separate documents.

So, let’s take a look at the breakdown for the first 6 strips of Chapter 6:

176 – Display of pictures of Dr. Rocket and friends and enemies.  At the end of the panel stands SG and CS in church clothes.

SG: He sure was an evil #$&@, wasn’t he?

177 – CS remarks that almost everyone is there, but not Jerry. He doesn’t see Li’l Miss Missle.  Surely she’d show herself for her own father’s funeral?  Swifty wonders aloud if Tom would show up for CS’s.

178 – -Star Maiden and Swifty moment.  Death, M.D. says hi to them, comments on SM’s condition and tried to take her temperature, which ticks Swifty off.

179 – Space Pig outlines the program.  Dr. Klein will say a few words first, and then all are invited to come forward.  We see heroes and villains alike.

Spy Gal: And why aren’t we doing this in a church?

CS: Dr. Klein said he couldn’t find one that would take him.

180 – Dr. Klein speaks a bit about DR and his place in Valhalla.

181 – Dr. Klein continues, but is interrupted by the Thrice Evil who accuses DK of something, but it’s hard to tell what exactly.  He’s not very intelligible.

What we see here is a story, but not a lot in the way of jokes. If I thought of a line, I wrote it down, but otherwise this is just me keeping the story straight. In this breakdown, you can see specific details that would become more important later (like Tom and Thrice Evil) that I’ve made special mention of. By the time I got around to actually scripting and drawing Chapter 6, my ideas for what that chapter would be about and my understanding of the SuperFogeys story in general had greatly expanded. I’d moved way beyond my initial ideas.

One of the big things I keep in mind during the break down phase is pacing. That’s why you have a strip like 180 and it’s one sentence description of Dr. Klein speaking. I knew I didn’t want to jump straight into the Thrice Evil interrupting Dr. Klein. That would have been too quick a move off of Space Pig conducting. But I also didn’t know what else to do with that strip. Doesn’t matter. I knew I could figure it out later. Didn’t need more than a sentence to mark its place in the narrative.

SIDEBAR:

This is maybe the trickiest thing about doing serial webcomics: pacing. Because, while you do want to make sure each and every strip is a satisfying bite, you don’t want to forget about the meal. Think about it: there’s really only one time any given strip will be read in isolation–and that’s on the day it’s released. After that day, it becomes a part of the archive and will only be read a part of the larger whole. So your strips not only have to be satisfying in and of themselves, they have to work for an entirely other experience as well. That’s friggin’ hard to pull off.

I’m not above going back and changing strips once it becomes obvious it doesn’t work as well as it should in the greater context. Take this strip for instance:

That’s how it originally appeared here on the site. A month ago, I went back and read Chapter 12 from the beginning and noticed something was way off. This is what the strip looks now:

Yep, I just flat-out deleted all the dialogue. It’s a transition strip and I felt the dialogue didn’t give you the sense of time and space. The first version played out like just another joke. The second one makes you stop and consider what’s happening.

But… that second version would never fly as someone’s introduction to SuperFogeys. It’s not the first thing anyone should see because it’s means NOTHING on its own. Works great in the archive as part of the chapter, not so great by itself.

SIDEBAR OVER

Anyway. Once I feel like I have a pretty good breakdown, that’s the point at which I start showing my ideas to trusted friends like Mike DeVito at Th3rd World. Mike is always real good about spotting a moment I may have forgotten to include or coming up with an idea that I haven’t thought of.  Other people’s perspective on my work and ideas is a very important part of my process.

With webcomics, you only have about four panels at a time to tell your story. Notice that the strips in my breakdowns are relatively small events individually. Two people looking at a table of memories. One person (or person-like thing) taking another’s temperature. You take them as a whole and you have atmosphere and story.

But what I still don’t have are those tasty, satisfying bites that make you come back for more of the meal. That can only happen at the script stage.

Next: Writing the Script

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