A Midwinter Nightmare
Fitz on Jan. 20, 2008
A new page up - as promised :) And I bet most of you are thinking: what the HECK? ;) So let me explain. This is my little attempt at comic noir. You know, Sin City and stuff. Except I don't know JACK about comic noir :) I never read any of the Sin City comics (although I intend to!) I only saw the movie (which I absolutely loved, btw). So basically, what I'm doing here is based on intuition and inspirations from media other than comics. Of course film noir, with its sharp contrasts. But my biggest inspiration here was the 90's Batman: The Animated Series. If you remember the intro - that's the kind of style I was trying to recreate. Same red-and-blue theme. I love how red's taking this page over towards the end. And there's no speech bubbles. The narrative is a monologue. You know, the typical noir, drunken, disillusioned private detective sorta talk. At least I hope it sounds like it. I just wrote it the way I thought sounded noir. All in all, I was trying to make it look a bit like a movie and a bit like a bunch of movie posters. I really like the fonts, too. Got them from Blambot ( http://www.blambot.com/ ) - the one I use for narrative is called Winter in Gotham (how appropriate, especially considering the Batman reference!) and the one for gunshots is called BlamBlam (go figure!)
As for the story - which is probably even more confusing than my sudden change of style… As you might have figured out from the chapter's title and some hints on the page itself - it's a dream sequence. More specifically, a nightmare of being chased. Erica compla– ummm, I mean –noted that the comic's too static, nothing much going on. So there You go, Erica: an action-packed episode, just for You :)
Hope you enjoyed the earlier update :) If you did, I have good news for you: the whole chapter will update weekly! :D It's a bit easier - and faster! - to make due to the simplier style. Then again, it's not THAT much faster, since it's Sunday night, well past midnight and I'm still up :P But oh well, I enjoyed doing this one so much. Looking forward to drawing more!
See you guys next time! Hope I'll see some friendly lurkers come out and say hi, too! Over the past week I got some 7,000 views and about three comments from new readers. Not complaining - because how could I? - but just wondering… So come on, guys, show yourselves :)
Abt_Nihil at 1:38AM, Jan. 21, 2008
Really really spectacular. The noir-est line in my mind would be the one about the hourglass's crooked smile. Love it! And I bet if they had you on the Batman team, the series would still be running greatly like it did in the 90s... ah, Nostalgia.
Crispiest Fortune at 10:20PM, Jan. 20, 2008
I'm a lurker and this page made me have to come out and say that you are one AWESOME artist/storyteller! Blambot is a great place for fonts- I have all the free ones. Oh, and just about every frame in the Sin City movie is taken panel by panel from the books. You really should check out the graphic novels... you won't regret it. And if you're interested in noir graphic novels, check out Brian Michael Bendis' "Goldfish", "Jinx", and "Torso". Some others to check out (while not exactly noir) are "Powers" and "100 Bullets". Great job, again!
usedbooks at 10:18PM, Jan. 20, 2008
I love the mood of this page. The coloring is so bold and stark -- much different from your usual 3D gradient shading. I really like it. (Not that I don't like the other pages. This one really caught me by surprise, though!)