Graphic novels. Keep making your own mistakes.

Aura makes her unplanned début!

Ok so here is the deal. Are you sitting down thinking I am going to write the next great European novel or are you sitting down thinking I am just going to let what happens emerge in front to me and  keep going, whatever may appear? The first thought will kill your creativity because it isn’t coming from within you. The desire to create is not a friend of the desire to be acknowledged. The desire to create is not part of the ego. One must lose oneself in the process of creating and keep going in order to find the things we bury inside. This is our unique view of the world and it is lost under the artificial structures of achievement and expectation.

The essence of this post is to encourage doing. It is about letting oneself become free in the process of creation. The creation is not for recognition it is for the simple act of expressing ideas. It is a post about learning through doing. It is more about diving in and trying and seeing what we find. It is not seeking to meet externally set standards. I for example adore film, I love Tarkovsy, Bela Tarr, Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Nuri Bilge Ceylan , Ozu, Kuorsawa and many others. These are great poetic film makers and their work is extraordinary.  Would I want to make films like theirs, of course I would, is it possible? Very unlikely. Do I think it is something that would ultimately lead me to being unhappy to pursue their magic yes I think so. That is because I would be seeking to emulate the greatest film makers in history. This is like saying to yourself sitting in front of a blank page, I want to write a novel as important as a Hemingway. You are the  sum of all voices that influence you but ultimately you have to accept the reality that pursuing artificial expectations of achievement is harmful to your creativity.  Achievement emerges when you have your own voice, it comes from loving what you do, it never comes before it. If you truly find yourself in your work what greater achievement can there possibly be.

Why put this pressure into our lives? Yes we want to be successful but do we have to eat with the gods in order to feel fulfilled. Why spend so much time listening to everyone else telling us how things should be done. Why don’t we just; write, paint, draw, photograph and create every day, purely for the joy of doing it. Would we surely not learn more about ourselves in one year of this, than in 5 years of listening to someone else’s experience of art and then trying to find us through the filter of another’s experience . If you want to get better at something do it, don’t read about doing it, just do it. Write every day for example and at the end of 1 year you will be a better writer and the writer that emerges will be you not someone else who you are trying to be like. Be the best creative you, not the best imitation of someone else’s creative way of seeing.

There are many ways to write a graphic novel, it can take a month or 10 years it is up to you. Hemingway said the first draft of anything is rubbish, so we have to get to the first draft stage over and over to shape it, that is a lot of mistakes and disappointments we are going to have to face up to.  If  Hemingway wrote rubbish first time every time then we are most surely in for the same experience. I want to create and I want to create in a way that I enjoy not a way that makes me depressed, inferior  or not worthy.  I want to do it cheaply and I want to do it fast. I want to learn about myself and understand myself and make mistakes. I don’t want to be taught how not to make mistakes, because I want to learn from my own.  I want to take a story and hit the page running with it and keep writing whatever comes into my head. This often produces the real idea 6 or 7 pages in after a string of total nonsense. We may think it produces nothing worthwhile at all but this would be a mistake. There is something about letting oneself submit to this process that opens our mind to the core of what we are really trying to say and ultimately who we are and what matters most to us as unique individual people.

Aura is an attempt to create a female heroine character in a graphic novel. She is about trying to quickly see ideas of where a story might go, or who might be a heroine. In quickly coming up with ideas about what she looks like I can then start writing down scenes based upon that visual character. It is not about seeking to produce a franchise character or publishing books, it is purely a dialogue with myself. I would say it is about me learning my own methods for expressing my ideas. In the process of doing I learn and often it is the paralysis by analysis syndrome most people find appealing as they can listen and not do. They can look to others to pacify their creative urges because at heart they are more interested in the detail of process and the culture of creative celebrity rather than facing up to the fact they are frightened of doing because they might not be good enough. The question is by whose standards? You must please yourself first, if your objective is to please others then you can only produce derivative work and you will always be removed from your true creative spirit. By all means be inspired by artist’s work but remember you also have to produce too and don’t get caught up in the research and  collecting information mentally. Time is short for all of us and we are here for the briefest moment. In the definite act of doing and not in passive listening we make this precious time uniquely ours.

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Graphic Novels & developing a story.

Setting a consistent colour palette and feel.

I have used in this image what I would think is a more traditional palette of colours in a graphic novel or science fiction comic. The more I read graphic novels the more I realise that each image pulls , much like sentences,  and propels the viewer (reader) forward into the story.  They are essential pieces of ‘direction’ the author is using to draw us deeper into the characters predicaments. Each frame is an edit as in film making, except graphic novels use one still frame rather than 24/25fps to tell a story.  This by definition requires a strong collection of relevant still images, to create the believable environments the character occupies. Populating the environment with the character themselves is another precise matter of timing, gesture and appropriate dialogue.

I think the graphic novel offers a real challenge and requires tremendous discipline for the author. It enables her to think far more deeply about the world she is trying to create for her characters, and in doing so, this enables her to find out more about the characters themselves and she also learns how these created environments reflect a deeper understanding of them as individuals.  You live their lives because you have to connect in a real concrete and physical way with the environments they occupy.  You must create them not in your head but in physical space and I feel that is why graphic novels excel at creating memorable rich characters. Many comic characters have reached iconic status often more so than figures directly taken from literature.  The characters seem equally to continue to find ways of interacting with each new generation of readers.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. I for example take a small environment, in this case the example image is one I drew and photographed of Wembley central underground station in London. There are a huge variety of textures in this one environment; metal, wood, plastic, paper, concrete and so on. There are also; gates, bars, steps,  rails, seats, roofs, passageways and so forth. This is all within one vicinity. I have an 8GB memory card and one spare battery fully charged. I can take thousands of full size images before needing to connect these into a computer.  The story could be set here in this small place but in your graphic novel it  can seem like a huge world to the reader.

I like reading graphic novels and I like the discipline they bring in terms of thinking about a characters physical world and ultimately sharing that in a real way with her. I think it is also a good lesson in transmedia thinking as stories seem to have a much more immersive mixed media future now as publishing changes and authors access to the tools of production and distribution continue to expand each day. Random House for example have just signed a deal with a computer games partner and are looking at a new range of graphic novels to follow soon.

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