Writing a Digital Multimedia Comic

I was brought up in the very rich French comic-book tradition of bandes dessinées which includes such great classics as the Tintin series, the Asterix series, Lucky Luke, the Smurfs and tons, tons more. The French tradition is one of the three great comic-book traditions of the world, with the Japanese and American traditions being the other two. Andt five years ago, my first graphic novel, The Secret Army: Operation Loki, illustrated by Anthony Davis, was published. I always wanted to do more, but it’s not easy to get publishers to commit to what can be a pretty expensive undertaking.

But times have changed and thanks to e-publishing, we have many more possibilities than before. With that in mind, I decided that the sequel to my first book would use all those possibilities to create something magical and different, using words, pictures and music. And so, with myself as scriptwriter, two illustrator friends, David Allan and Fiona McDonald, as pictorial creators, and my musician/composer son, Bevis Masson-Leach as musical creator, we set out to create The Secret Army: Order of the Vampire.

I really wanted with this one to have a style firmly set in the French tradition of ‘ligne claire’ (popularised by Tintin, but also by many others, it is THE classic style there.)  It’s also great for the period in which our comic is set, the 1930’s. It’s been a very exciting project, but also exhausting and difficult, and I can’t speak too highly of the enormous talent, patience and perseverance of my co-creators in what must at times seem like the maddest project ever! We are working in a very new area, and having to learn ‘on the job’ all the time.

We’ve been working on it on and off over several months, in between other things, and don’t expect to finish till some time late next year. We don’t know yet whether we’ll go the indie route and publish it ourselves on a dedicated website(David, who’s a website designer as well as artist, is the genius there!) Or perhaps to save ourselves all that work, we’ll try for one of the new digital comics publishers. Whichever way it goes, anyway, it’s going to be great!

We’ve already learned a great deal over the year we’ve been beavering away at this, and today I’d like to pass on some notes for anyone interested in having a go at this amazing genre themselves. The notes on script and pictures apply to ‘traditional’ print comics just as much as to digital and multimedia comics, of course.

Script:

Is the foundation of a comic book/graphic novel, and must be plotted carefully. I wrote a comprehensive synopsis, from beginning to end. Then I wrote the script like a play, with ‘stage directions’ (which don’t appear), narrative lines(eg, ‘the next morning..) and dialogue. It’s useful to ‘storyboard’ the plot as it goes along, just roughly.  By the way, remember the story doesn’t always need to advance through action scenes or conversation but can also be propelled along with such features as maps, extracts from books, newspaper articles or TV items, letters, emails.

Dialogue is what conveys character in script terms, so think about speech and how it makes impression of character stronger. For instance, do they speak in short sharp sentences or long(ish) flowing ones? Do they use slang? You can even convey ‘the strong silent type’ effectively by having another character they’re with speak a lot and having them just say the odd exclamation mark, like ? Or !! Or even emoticons, like :) or  :(

Mood will be set in the script depending on the genre: thriller? A mystery? A ghost story? A fantasy? A humorous story? Etc..The mood is also linked directly to the setting, and settings are described in the script and are then transmuted into pictures to transfer to the ‘story board’.

You need to also think about the length of the entire work, to know how overall your comic will work.

Pictures: (notes here are by David Allan and Fiona McDonald)

Creating characters pictorially normally starts with doing various sketches, by hand, to pinpoint how best to portray them. An innocent character might be wide eyed and soft faced while an evil character might have angled eyebrows and sharp features. Varying clothing, facial hair, height, weight etc all help to differentiate and define the characters personality. It’s also good to draw your character from several angles to see how they will look in every situation.

For our comic that is set in the 1930s we have found reference imagery from the time period to work from. Colour can be used to convey mood. Order of the vampire uses a slightly muted palette to convey an “old fashioned” style. Effects such as using silhouettes and stark lighting can portray a feeling of menace, while using “gentle” colours could express a more serene setting.

Much like a movie director you now present your characters in their environment in the best way to tell your story. Different lengths of a shot can have different effects. For example a wider view will help convey the relative positions of characters in their surroundings while a closeup helps your reader to identify with your character. As when you create your characters, a rough layout of the page is done first to see how the pictures come together as well as the relative prominence each picture will have.  After scanning in line work from the initial drawing, Adobe Photoshop “layers” are utilised to colour the comic with a tablet and stylus. You can even out the colours that need to look smooth, often using the paint bucket tool. The brush tool can also be used to fill in areas you want to  change or that need a small spot of colour, or that need the colour changing with the brush tool.  Using layers, you can do lots of different things with your work. It is easier to delete a layer than to go back and try to fix something done on the one layer ages back in the process.

Music (notes by Sophie Masson and Bevis Masson-Leach)

In our comic we are using musical flash clips to flag each episode (there will be six episodes). This propels the story and indicates certain plot elements as well as helping to create mood and character. The clips are available to watch before you go into every episode(though you can also watch them afterwards), and contain not only the music for that episode but also extra illustrative material, such as maps, posters, brochures, postcards etc which will fit into each episode. Music’s also great to convey an impression of character. A powerful character should have music to match, the feel of a ‘baddie’s’ music will be different to a goodie’s, etc. It also helps create setting and mood—for instance an exciting ‘movie-style’ introductory theme; a train-like sound building to a sinister undercurrent of the Orient Express scenes; creepy music for the vampires’ stronghold, a more light-hearted one of Archangel Island—and so on.

For each piece of music, says Bevis, I start by carefully reading the script-writer’s briefing notes about what the song is meant to represent, the type of atmosphere, characters, etc and then I go into this process: I try and find an atmospheric sound that will underpin the whole mood of the song. You don’t usually notice this sound unless you’re listening for it but it makes the song’s sound fuller and more complete. I follow that up by finding a lead sound, be it piano or bells or strings or whatever, and I try find a melody that I feel fits. I will usually look for some type of bass and make that complement the melody—often have a tonal bass sound and a sub as well to get the really low end and create atmosphere. I would then do drums or percussion if there was any. I work usually by adding elements till I feel it’s not missing anything and then arranging it and adding effects and little bit of sounds. With the arrangement of most of the pieces for Order of the Vampire, I worked using additives rather than having a constantly changing melodic pattern. Meaning I added elements building to a crescendo and then dropping back. After finishing the arrangement and adding final elements I will mix it, getting volume levels and EQing it so there are no frequency clashes. I am throughout making sure that I am creating the atmosphere that has been asked for and not pushing too far away from that.

Note: I plan to write a progress report later on in the process looking at how how we go with the internet elements and setting all that up. Wish us luck and watch this space!

Illustrations:

Half-page from Order of the Vampire, by David Allan

‘Book within book’ element, by Fiona McDonald

Music: ‘Orient Express music, by Bevis Masson-Leach.