tonycliff
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Chapter Two Inks Fully Underway
🕑 Added 2022-01-12 21:51:44 +0000 UTCAbove, three images: the first, a challenging page, but that bridge and those fortress-style walls will be important later.
Then, two of my new favourite pages, for reasons I cannot perfectly articulate. So I will not try. It is nighttime. DD and Katerina (who we will meet in the first few pages of the chapter) are looking at the stars, which have never been so easy to see, because the town is under light discipline (because of the threat of pirates). While they chat, a small tension between them is hinted-at, which will pay off later in the chapter.
Elsewhere, DD and Katerina run into the annoying midshipman yet again…
I am very pleased with that "startled" pose/expression on the midshipman, as well as the self-satisfied expressions on the girls in the panel after.
A QUESTION FOR PATRONS.
A reader was asking elsewhere: how do novels get turned into graphic novels, or how does a writer pitch or sell a story to a publisher with the aim of it becoming a graphic novel?
Is there anyone reading this who might be able to offer some insight or resources?
I can only answer from my own experience. For DD, I just wrote and drew the whole thing, and submitted the drawn book to publishers. For BUBBLE, the author, Jordan Morris, submitted the script to the publisher, the publisher bought it, and then the publisher asked if I would be interested in illustrating it. Unfortunately, I only know a little about how Jordan got the script picked up (and it might have involved turning it into a podcast, first, which is not within everyone's scope, I think).
If you have any insight or can share any links, please do so in the comments!
The "El Camino" Project.
I have been focusing on DD inks since the last update, with the goal of inking 8 pages per week. Once I've achieved that, I'll be free to write the second instalment for that untitled, improvised prose project I've started under the "El Camino" tag. My stated goal was to get three instalments out per month, and that still looks doable.
It has been fascinating to see all the initial results come in, voting first for one choice, then another choice coming from behind to take over. Y'all keeping me on my toes.
Green Bars.
Very pleasing to see that "inks" bar so high, after only a week and a half's worth of work. Huzzah!
Everyone stay safe out there. Take care of each other.
TC
Comments
Camila Espinosa
These inks look beautiful!! I love how DEEP that establishing shot looks. I'm loving DD and Katerina looking at the stars, can't wait to read the story! :)
Camila Espinosa
Jana, thanks for the recommendation! (and what a small world lol)
Oooo, haven't had a good GN based Podcast in a while. Definitely checking that out. Thanks for all the great info folks.
Tony Cliff
FACEPALM Yes, of COURSE Graphic Novel TK! It’s fantastic. It should be mandatory listening to anyone even considering getting involved in GNs in any way. If you listen to all the eps, you will officially know more about gn publishing than I do (I have only listened to a handful of eps). Disclaimer: Gina was FS’s publicist when the first two DDs came out, Ali (the other host) was my editor on BUBBLE, and one of the episodes features Bernadette Baker-Baughman, who is my agent. (And yeah, ha ha ha, when you just have insane popularity or readership numbers, the publishers come to you.)
Jana
I haven't had a book published, but I have found the podcast Graphic Novel TK hosted by Gina Gagliano (previously of First Second and Random House Graphic fame) SUPER informative. Also my friend currently is working on her first book with First Second. My understanding is that for prose books you need the a manuscript, but since publishers prefer to have editorial input for comics they prefer just a script and sample pages. But of course if you're 'Check, Please!' or 'Lore Olympus' then that's a different story. :p
Tealin
Sooooo beautiful!
Tony Cliff
The specifics of my "how did i get published" story are relatively unique I think (or at least, they're hard to replicate) — maybe I'll tell the story in the next post? but the TLDR is that I put it on the internet, it got some attention—including from publishers—and that made it relatively easy to find an agent's help, he asked if I had sent it to First Second, I said I hadn't, and so he did. Probably a PDF of the complete graphic novel, IIRC, certainly no character bios. Now, my understanding is that TYPICALLY you get the whole manuscript together, plus a two-paragraph summary, plus a one-sentence elevator pitch, and you send that to a literary agent. If they accept the book, they in turn send it to editors at publishing houses. That's the old fashioned traditional way. BUT! A thing I have learned: there is no one correct way to do it. The only things that matter are that you make a good thing and you start showing it to people.
Quick question about when you sent DD if you don't mind. Did you literally just send the printed book with, I'm assuming, a letter and whatnot? Or did you also add a package of notes on things like the story synopsis and character bio? Thanks for sharing information like this ( Monique Steele too ). It's not something that's really easy to get concrete information on. But it's definitely an important part of the process. Cheers.
From what I know, author/ illustrators for a graphic novel need a full synopsis of the story some of the script and about twenty sample pages inked / lettered of the graphic novel and they put all this together in a pitch packet to pitch to literary agents. If picked up they go on to finish the work for publication. I learned this from a teacher of mine who was in the middle of a graphic novel project.
