Friday 23 January 2009

Spread 'Em!

It's another monthly update for 'House Guest: The Graphic Novel', my endeavour to milk the film for all it's worth by making it into a comic book. I've finalised the layout of the entire book and it now comes to about 106 pages. So, it's not 'War & Peace', but pretty respectable for a graphic novel.
As the film adaptation itself only takes up two thirds of the book, I wanted the additional material to be justified and not just filler. Admittedly the last couple pages will be ads for my other projects (books, music and so forth) but I'm such a whore I would've included those anyway.
Aside from an intro and an afterward, the book is divided into four sections. Here's a little glimpse of how the spreads will look:

Section A: The Graphic NovelThis is essentially the story as told in its original, animated form. I've also included some dialogue and visuals that were eventually omitted from the final edit.

Section B: Concept Art

This part features all the original drawings I slapped together for my UWE pitch presentation back at the start of '07. Between then and the film's completion there is an obvious chasm of stylistic development.

Section C: Rough LayoutsThis section gathers together a selection of layouts on which the animation was based. I'm really fond of the way these look, just pencils on creased paper. While it is undeniably more watchable and professional, the cleaned-up/coloured-in visuals lose a little bit of the artist's soul in translation. That isn't self-aggrandising on my part (well, not deliberately), I find it true of all animation.

Section D: Production Scrapbook
A short, sweet and indulgent note to end the book on, this last part features a handful of behind-the-scenes photos with scribbled captions.
Excitement!

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