Dream Sequence in D Minor

A visual development dump of my latest comic.

I enrolled in Jake Parker’s SVS(School of Visual Storytelling) Graphic Novel Pro class the day enrollment ended. Jake runs it with comic veteran Shawn Crystal and this is their second year doing it. As stated earlier this Substack is a part of my network with you, people interested in my work and thoughts. I need it more than you do I’m sure. It functions as a type of microdeadline for me to make and show new work, to get the ball rolling in earnest on a very large project, my next book.

And I’m happy to say Jake’s class has functioned in the same way but with someone else telling me what to do next. Keeping me on track through the pipeline of making a graphic novel. I enrolled the last day of the class not necessarily because I was “on the fence,” about taking it but rather I locked on just recently to an idea for an opener to my next Joe Death book. A dream sequence that I’d like to feel, well, dreamy, but also kind of musically inspired, like Disney’s original Fantasia.

These images were made for the class which has a homework platform for show and tell. The community there is a good one, though of course, you’re on your own to fulfill the homework and no one will give you a bad grade if you just blow it off and don’t commit.

I’ve heard lots of podcasts about story mechanics and as that moniker suggests it can leave me quite cold. Plot as mechanism is a bad way for me to enjoy thinking about plot. Character chemistry turns my interest from simmer to boil really fast and I’m enjoying finding that within my own story’s history and cosmology.

I’m also learning how to say “done” to an image that’s not finished in order to press on toward the larger goal. This image below is a good example. I wanted to illustrate a key moment but I also wanted to bring a spacial, three-dimensional, perspective feel to it. I feel like I hit some new territory and typically would want to flesh it out into a finished illustration for myself. But after doing that countless times before I’m starting to remember the sting of unfulfilled aspirations. A graphic novel isn’t just a collection of pictures and if you put too much weight on one image it may actually hurt the whole, the gestalt, of the work.

If you’re in the dark about this story you can purchase my first book, Joe Death and the Graven Image, HERE. Thanks for reading, commenting and sharing! See you next week!