DS Comic: Speranza's "Interrogation," Part 2 (pp. 4, 5, 6)

[zelempa]

Part 2, or "how many different ways can Ray yell at Fraser?" (And there's still more to come, people!) Story by Speranza, art by me. Part 1 here.

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Artist's Notes: Ha. Hr. Hm. These take a lot of work, but I'm a little bit addicted. (Okay a lot bit.) I've had to revamp some of my thumbnails because the amount of material I wanted to include per page was ridiculous. On the plus, I'm having to look at reference photos less, which either means I'm getting to know what the guys look like or I'm slowly straying from reality.

Today I remembered what doing this reminds me of. When I was about twelve, I did a comic book version of a sci-fi story my brother wrote when he was about fifteen. (By this time he was about twenty-two and embarrassed of his teenaged work, but I really loved it.) I don't know why it never occurred to me to do comics of my favorite fics before, as apparently that is my M.O.!

Comments

[reflectedeve.livejournal.com]

More fantastic body language. :D (I will get over that someday. Maybe? Also, speaking of, you're going to post that new L&E page at some point, right?)

I love how close-together Fraser and Ray keep standing. Was it really that close in the show? (Probably, huh?) I can see that I have to give the later seasons yet another watch-through. ;)

These comics also look a lot more . . . cleaned up than some of your other work? (I love your other work, but it stands out a bit.) The inking looks great.

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

Auuugh. Shhh. Yes. But, obvs, this is getting drawn instead of any new pages. (Sigh.)

Close-together-standing - nah, maybe not quite that much in the show, but in the story. The first panel of the second page, with them standing super close and a bunch of brick wall behind them showing all the space Ray COULD be taking up but isn't, is meant to illustrate the passage: "Ray took a small step backwards and dropped his hands, giving Fraser some space, but not much. The sense of claustrophobia was intense..." Also, he has to stay in arm's reach if he's going to keep grabbing Fraser by the shoulders randomly!

Cleaned-up: Yeah, I'm doing more work on these than I do on L&E - because it's an adaptation, because it's for a person, and because it's Fraser and Ray and 1. they're real targets to hit, not characters I made up and can say, "good enough, that's probably what they look like," and 2. I love them. (Not that I don't love Lance and Eskimo, but I'm not fangirlish about it right now!)

Like for these I am actually doing thumbnails, roughs, and then a final pencil version, which I then ink. For L&E I just basically ink over a full size thumbnail.

Still, these still come out looking a lot less close to what I want then L&E does. Sigh. Probably due to that whole "real people" thing.

[reflectedeve.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, sorry. ;) And it happens - but it looks like you're keeping yourself on a tight enough schedule for these. (Oh, fandom and your broader audience. So tempting.)

Clearly I should read the story as well as the comic. Well, I keep saying I'm going to try some of Speranza's Fraser/Kowalski.

I hear you. When I was doing a lot of real people-based comics and illustration last year, I had to keep reminding myself that I am really not a portrait artist, and that if versions of characters in "my style" didn't look exactly like themselves, that was fine (even right).

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean, I guess don't need to try to capture every aspect of each guy (but I want to!) and maybe if I attempted a mite less detail it would work better for my style since I don't have the technical skill to do a straight-up superhero-type realistic portrait (but I want to!) The thing is, there's a certain stoic beauty to Fraser, and a certain catlike smooth/cute visual appeal about Kowalski, that I feel I have thus far inadequately rendered, and *I want to find that.* Each drawing is like a discovery, am I going to do it right this time? I tried to do some character design drawings before I started but I figured as long as I'm drawing them over and over I might as well just draw the comic and see what happens. Which of course means that as I go through the comic the character design is changing. So. Um. Look over there.

If Speranza's Fraser/Kowalski doesn't make you love them, I don't know what will. And the Zebra vid (http://www.intimations.org/vidding/). Which I think I've already told you is like my all time favorite love song to RayK. He could be a gentleman! He could be violent! He could be ignorant, or he could be informed! HE COULD BRING LOVE BACK INTO HIS LIFE. (Canonically he wants to.) Okay, I'm done.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Thanking you for the rec *g* and also reccing Wonder of Birds to you!

http://blip.tv/file/2296407/

And honestly, don't worry about ME--you be true to what YOU want to do. Its YOUR artistic vision at stake here: bend anything about the story to that!

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

I know, that vid is awesome! The teamwork! The smiles!

Trust me, the text is not an impediment to my artistic vision - it's giving me inspiration and focus and clear goals. I love clear goals! My ability to meet them to my own satisfaction is, well, I'm working on it. :)

I just now drew an awesome sketch of Ray's pointy face, btw. I think the next set is going to be good.