Whisper - p14 (inks)
DAJB on Nov. 6, 2007
This is a page (Page 14) from the first issue of a comic called Whisper - the story of a mixed race female lawyer (Zoe) who, while investigating her father's death, comes to realise she has certain limited powers of foresight - powers which could explain the disappearance of her mother many years before.
Here we see Zoe reminiscing about her father, just as the police arrive to tell her of his death. The pencils and inks are by Federico Zumel and Serge Chatelain (respectively) and have been complete for a long time. Unfortunately, we haven't yet found the right colourist, so this project has been in limbo for, ooooh … ages! (On which note, if you're a colourist and you think you could do justice to this wonderful artwork, please do contact me!)
Reminder: If you're enjoying the BVC Scrap Book, don't forget to look in on our main comic Shades..jpg)
Lemniskate at 2:44PM, Nov. 8, 2007
I thought a lot about what you said and found it to be a very reflexive pov. I intend to go through your works and learn as much as I can (because I think there IS much). There are skills to acquire and a craft to learn for me.
DAJB at 5:06AM, Nov. 8, 2007
Abt: Heh heh - no, I didn't have any specific project in mind when I left that comment. It was more a general reflection on how difficult it is for we non-artistically inclined writers to assemble a decent art team! (Of course, if you [i]do[/i] find yourself looking for something to do in three months' time, you know where to find me!) ;-)
Abt_Nihil at 4:43AM, Nov. 8, 2007
Aaah, now I get it... you were trying to suggest I could be the right colorist? Well, it's certainly a great compliment. But as I said on A.D, I couldn't possibly do this justice during the next two or three months. Then again, I don't know what my life will be like after that...
DAJB at 7:00AM, Nov. 7, 2007
Lemnis: Wow - the hard questions first, eh?! Ummm - [u]writing[/u] is just something I've always loved. I have a "novel" (although I use the term loosely!) in my attic that I wrote when I was about 9 or 10 years old! It's a fairly straight rip-off of the [i]Narnia[/i] books but I can remember feeling very proud of it at the time. I even bound it in cardboard and plastic so it would look like a "proper" library book! As for [u]ideas[/u] ... they can come from anywhere but they often start with a film or a book or something that I feel could have been done better. As I think about what (in my opinion!) was wrong, I find I start thinking of how [i]I[/i] might have handled it differently. For example: I love the fantasy genre, so I was quite keen to do a fantasy story. However, so many stories in that genre are watered-down versions of Tolkien that, in order to avoid falling into the same trap, I started by setting myself a few rules. The main ones were: (i) it would [i]not[/i] be set in a Brothers Grimm style fairy-tale world; and (ii) it would have no orcs, goblins, elves or anthro-catpeople! That meant I had to start by designing the world itself, even before I could think about plot or characters. By trying to get away from a world of quaint fairy-tale cottages and forests, I ended up creating a city-world which I called [url=http://www.brokenvoice.co.uk/spires%20surround.html]The Spires[/url]. In the same way, I made a conscious decision to avoid a plot which involved prophecies or a lone hero saving a whole kingdom etc. Instead I decided to write a detective/murder story that just happened to be set in this fantasy environment. That's it, really. I start with a basic idea of what I want to write and then keep working on different ways to make it different from the way everyone else seems to do it!
Lemniskate at 5:23AM, Nov. 7, 2007
Very stirring. I think the art matches the subject very well. How do you come up with so much great ideas? Or generally, how did you become such a good writer?