Comics Cave Continues

A cartoon panel of two people standing on a beach, one with long wavy hair and wearing a stripy orange shirt shaking the other person who has short brown hair and wearing a baggy red button up shirt. The person in the orange top is saying “Ahh, nonsesne, you’re great at drawing!

I’m crawling out from my comics hermit cave to share a panel from a recently finished page of my upcoming graphic novel, Oh Brother.

The deadlines have been crunchy, so I’ve going to head back to the cave now. But I’m hoping to pop in over the next few weeks and share a few snippets of the book when I can. I’m excited about how the colours are looking and can’t wait to share more with you all!

Edith

A sticker of a cute pink, one eyed, fluffy monster with six arms and cool green boots holding a yellow blanket over themselves. The sticker is sitting on a background of a orange woollen blanket.

New sticker alert 2! I’ll be at @zinawarriorprintfest tomorrow (12 Oct, 11-4pm, @mod_museum) hocking my comics, badges and ✨new stickers✨. Thanks as always to @radstickers for turning my sticker dreams into sticker realities.

This is my last event for the year before I hunker down and smash out the last stage of my book, so come say 👋 (and I can even show you a little preview of chapter 1 of Oh Brother)!

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Cartoon Gina leaning sideways on the kitchen bench asking “What should I do now?”

I’m deep in the inking of the book at the moment (although I had to colour a few pages to make sure I’d set my files up correctly - which is where this panel comes from). It’s exciting to finally get to the stage of the book where I can start really seeing the final work coming together.

But because my deadlines are really tight, I’m going to be pretty absent from the world (both online and in real life) for the next four months. However, I will be sending out a few newsletters over that time with updates and sneak peeks at pages I’ve been working on. So make sure you sign up to my newsletter to keep to keep up to date with my book-based shenanigans.

Pencils Complete!

A blue line drawing of a slice of Vegemite toast on a plate and a bite taken out of the corner of it. ‘The End’ is written in the Vegemite.

In very exciting news, I’ve just finished and sent in the pencils for the final chapter of my graphic novel, Oh Brother! This is by no means the end of the hard work (I’ve still got take on final edits and then ink & colour the book!) but it’s a huge step along the way to finishing and publishing my first graphic novel.

Because the book deadlines are super tight, I’m not going to be able to post too much here for next few months. So if you want to keep up to date with what I’m up to (and see more sneak peeks of the book), sign up to my newsletter (link in bio). I send out a little update at the end of each month with some behind the scenes looks at my work and links to any upcoming events I’m doing (pssst, I’m sending out my next newsletter tomorrow).

Alright, I’m going to go nap for a bit now so I’m refreshed and ready to start inking next week! 💪

Meet Agatha

A blue monster with a triangle head, 3 eyes, 3 noses and 3 mouths. She is wearing a pink button up shirt tucked into yellow pants with a belt. She looks distressed by all the mess around her. She has three arms and three spiky tails holding cleaning equipment.

Hello Friends! This is Agatha. Agatha likes things to be just so. She very much believes in “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Agatha can sometimes get very stressed when things are messy and her friends don’t put things away where they should go but she also loves making things for friends. (Those who know me might see some resemblance between me at Agatha).

Agatha is another monster in Edith’s universe.

Meet Edith

A happy pink fluffy monster sitting in their bedroom under a tent made of patchwork blankets. The monster has big earmuffs on and rubbing a blanket on their face. They are surrounded by lots of lights and warm colours.

I know a lot of you already know Edith (who is the star of their very own eponymous mini-comic that you can read at my online clubhouse a.k.a website). Edith’s character is inspired by some of my own sensory needs (loves blankets and the quiet) and doesn’t always cope when they can’t get these things.

Edith came about as part of a monster workshop I ran a few years ago now (along with a few other monster pals I’ll be sharing here soon). I fell in love with them straight away and they’ve never left me. I keep doodling Edith in my sketchbooks and coming up with new stories for them (I’m hoping to eventually make a longer comic with Edith and their pals at some point).

Brains, am I right?

A borderless, un-pencilled, comic drawn in thick black pen on pink paper. The comic is of my brain and me talking. The brain is saying “You always make the wrong decisions! You are selfish! You are useless! You should work harder.” I grab the brain out of my head and say “Hey. It’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect. You are allowed to rest. Your productivity is not your worth.”

A little comic I noodled out of my noodle a few weeks back. I kept tossing up whether I should redraw it and make it a cleaner, tighter comic. At the moment I’ve decided not to.

Sending love and strength to all those who also struggle with confusing their productivity with their worth.

Oh Brother thumbnails finished!

SO

I realised that I never posted about finishing the Oh Brother thumbnails, and it was such a big step towards getting the book done that I wanted to share how I got there. Last year I spent most of my studio time working on re-drawing my Oh Brother thumbnails for my publisher. When my book got picked up by the publisher, I had written the whole book in script form (although the last 100 pages were a hot mess), drawn the first 250 pages in rough pencils, and inked and coloured the first 40 pages or so. Originally the book was written from the point of view of me as a 25-year-old (which was how old I was when I started writing the book) with non-chronological flashbacks to my childhood growing up with my brother. But just from talking to various publishers who were interested – this is before I signed my contract with Penguin Random House – it became very clear that whichever publisher I worked with would need me to re-write the book to be from my point of view as a kid.

CHANGES

Because of my drawing style (which is such a big part of how comics stories are read), the book was going to be sold as a middle grade (aimed at approx. 8-12 year olds) graphic novel and because the book was bought by four territories (Australia, UK, Canada and the US) it also needed to fit into certain publishing parameters. For example, the main character needed to be 12 or under so the book would be put into the middle grade section (and not the YA section) in bookstores in America. I was asked to change certain words and phrases (e.g. op shop to thrift store) and change iced coffee to a non-caffeinated drink (soda was suggested but I landed on milkshakes), things like why I was starting high school in year 8 needed to be explained, I couldn’t mention sanitary pads without explaining periods and I was asked about changing Vegemite (one of my brother’s absolute favourite foods/hyper-fixations) to peanut butter. I pushed back on the Vegemite change (and some of the other Australian wording changes); instead I leant into using asterisks* to explain things that might be confusing for international readers (anyone outside Australia). I really wanted the book to feel like my childhood growing up in a beachside South Australian suburb.

*My inner Terry Pratchett fan wasn’t mad about this.

A collection of some of the Oh Brother scripts and thumbnails from over the 7 years working on the book.

The biggest change that I had to do was making the story chronological and giving my character a narrative arc. Initially I didn’t really want to do this, partially because I think 8-12 year olds can read non-chronological vignette-y type stories but probably also because I was afraid I couldn’t write a chronological narrative. I’ve never felt confident in my ability to write narrative, I’ve always considered myself a character-focused writer and plot just sort of happens as a side effect (this is why I love autobiography - story/narrative is generally already in-built). My solution to this narrative problem was to create a friend character (called Callie), who is based on a combination of a few of my close friends (and their experiences meeting and interacting with my brother). The personality of and interactions I have with Callie in the book are based predominantly on one of my very best friends from high school (they know who they are). And one of the things I actually enjoyed about having to re-write the book was to get to include their beautiful energy and show my love for our friendship in my story.

 

First sketch of Gina and Callie together.

 

FEELINGS

With all these changes needing to be made, I had to go back to the start and outline, script, thumbnail and draw the whole book again. Obviously I had the original book I’d already made to use for reference but it really felt like I was starting from the beginning. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty hard to sit down and re-write the book. On top of having to revisit some tough memories, I also had to weave in a whole new narrative about myself & my amalgamated friend. I felt weird (and still do a little) for creating this fictional narrative, even though it is based solidly on experiences, interactions with friends and feelings I’ve had. It definitely felt like I was lying to the reader. But now that I’ve finished writing this version of the book, I think that it is a much better book for the changes and I hope that people will see the emotional truths in the narrative sections that aren’t 100% accurate (not that any memory can be 100% accurate ‘cos our brains re-write over memories all the time!)

Current scanned and printed thumbnails on top of their original drawings.

STEPS

Here are the steps that I have gone through to complete this new version of the thumbnails:

(1) Outline
I had never written an outline before, so I wasn’t really sure exactly what needed to be included (and I’m still not sure). I ended up with a 3 page text document that explained who the characters are, highlighted some of the major story beats, and outlined the narrative journey and ending for the characters. I received a 3 page document from my editors with suggestions and things to think about when I moved onto the . . .

(2) Written Script
This was initially quite hard for me, as I haven’t written many scripts for other people to read. For my mini comics I usually settle with a dot point list of story beats or just go straight to thumbnailing out the story, as I’m more of a visual thinker/writer. I gave myself the goal of writing 5 pages a day (3-4 days a week, basically whenever I could get studio time outside of other work). This helped me to break down the daunting task of re-writing the script into manageable chunks (it was still pretty hard though). What I did enjoy about the script stage was the puzzle solving of taking the stories I already had from the previous version and working out how to fit them in the new version of the story.

I wrote the script in Pages (Apple’s word doc program) because it’s free and I already had it. I set up the pages so each page of the word doc related to a drawn page of the comic and formatted it so I would view two pages at a time, so I’d get an idea of where the page turns would be, which are super important for a comics story flow.

The text itself was written kinda like a film script with each panel numbered and followed by the dialogue or brief description of what is in the panel. Like this:

Example of a page of my script.

Once the script was done, I sent it off to the the editors for feedback. I mostly have contact with my Australian editors (who take all the feedback from the UK, Canadian and US editors and collate it for me to read). It’s such a great opportunity to have so many eyes on my work but, heck, it’s suuuuuper daunting too. I found feedback on the script initially overwhelming and needed a little break before I took it on board and starting applying it to the . . .

(3) Thumbnails
After I gave myself a brain break from the script feedback and reminded myself not to take it personally and that my editors don’t think that I’m a terrible writer (which is what my jerk-of-a-brain naturally jumps to thinking), I was able to see how useful a lot of the editors’ feedback was for my book and start to put even more of those story puzzles together (I can’t emphasise enough how good it feels in my brain when I make good story connections that I didn’t see before!).

 

Some original pages of thumbnails. Ink drawings with limited texta colour and some whiteout.

 

One of the main pieces of feedback I received on the script was that I needed to cut out about 30 pages of story (minimum) to hit the maximum number of pages the publisher could print. The printer that my publisher uses prints pages in groups of 16 - so that means the page count has to be a multiple of 16 within a specific range of page count options that are average for the type of book being published. It was the hardest thing having to cut out scenes that I’d had in the book from the beginning but didn’t really fit in this new version of the book. The one I’m still the most sad about is the Vegemite Parrot story.

My amazing partner Owen formatted a thumbnail template with guidelines so I could more easily draw up panels (which is my least favourite thing to do, my panels are often wobbly at best). There were four comics pages to each sheet of thumbnails. I drew the thumbs about a third the size of the final printed page with a uni-ball ‘eye’ fine pen (and colour-coded some of the characters so it was easier to tell who was talking). Then I’d scan the pages in, cut them into individual pages and hand them back to Owen (with a plain text doc of the script) and he lettered the thumbs digitally so that they were readable.

Some original pages of thumbnails. Ink drawings with limited texta colour and some whiteout.

In the future (whether I’m working on personal projects or with a publisher) I think I will merge the script & thumbs stages, as I found that I edited script pages a lot as I adapted them into comics (when I realised that a certain angle might not work as well or I needed more space or panels [or less!] for a particular scene). I think going straight to thumbnails would reduce the amount or at least some of the type of feedback I'd get from just a script version.

 

Some original pages of thumbnails. Ink drawings with limited texta colour and some whiteout.

 

When I finally finished the thumbs, I uploaded them to Dropbox and emailed through the link to the editors, which was super underwhelming. I really thought it would feel good to finish everything but just sending off the link really didn’t do much for me. What did get me excited about finishing the thumbs was when I printed out a physical copy of them for the Comic Art Workshop (which I attended in November 2022). Holding the 270 pages of comics in my hand made a HUGE difference in how I felt about finishing the thumbnails. It felt like I’d actually made a book (obviously there is a lot more to do still, but holding the printed copy made me feel better about all the hours I’d spent working on it over the past year).

 

Gina is smiling, wearing a pink t-shirt and round silver glasses and holding the printed copy of the Oh Brother thumbs next to her face.

 

After completing the thumbnails, my next step was to get the book ready for . . .

(4) Sensitivity Readers
The final step for the thumbnails was getting them ready for sensitivity readers (a sensitivity reader's job is to read a manuscript and make sure that the story is sensitive to marginalised groups - for me, specifically the autism community). To get the book ready, I needed to go through my editors' feedback on the thumbs (which was minimal as most of the major story feedback was at script stage) as well as re-read the book (again) to try to cut down even more text on certain text-heavy pages. My editors will also do copy edits (probably more than one) on the book, making sure all the text meets the publishing house’s style guides.

As someone who hates re-reading their work and is not a succinct storyteller (I always want to over-explain everything, like right now!), this is a particularly hard but essential part of the writing process for me. As well as making these edits, I also created a 3 page comic introduction (page 1 pictured below) to the story and a little afterword (which explains more of what happened after the story in the book finished).

 

A page of pen sketch drawings that introduces Gina and things that she likes to do.

 

The editors gave me some really good feedback for tightening up or clarifying some of the plot and I think I managed to catch a few things that I would've kicked myself for later, if I'd missed them. So even though re-reading my own work pains me, I know it's the right thing to do.

What’s next

While I wait for the sensitivity readers’ feedback and initial copy edits, I’m going to get stuck into my pencils. The amazing Owen has done it again and has helped me set up templates for my pencils (which I’m going to try to do in Procreate for ease of editing and convenience of being able to take with me wherever I want) and a page count tracking spreadsheet (to help keep me on task). I’ve got to pencil the whole book by the end of April, so I’ll be heading into the comics mines and probably not posting (or generally leaving the house) much. Wish me luck!

An illustration of Gina holding an iPad, paper, pack of pretzels and a cup of tea and wearing a sash of pencils and a cap with a candle melted to the brim. Gina is looking unenthusiastically at a cave made from comics pages. The cave has signs stuck to it that read “Welcome to the comics mines”, “Danger RSI Ahead”, “Turn back and back up your harddrive” and “Beware of papercuts.”

Bonus

If you want to read about how I went about thumbnailing Oh Brother the first time (it’s a quite different!), you can read my I’m All Thumbs post from 2017.

Oh Brother Update 2022

Back in 2016, I started work on a project I thought would take me a year (hah!). This project was to be my first graphic novel: a memoir about growing up with my brother (who is autistic and has an intellectual disability). My goal was to create a book for 12-year-old me, a book that reflected my experiences and feelings and would’ve (hopefully) helped me feel less alone in those feelings and experiences.

From a technical comics-making point of view, I thought it would be pretty straightforward. I’d made lot of mini-comics by that point (but nothing longer than about 40 pages) and I’d made lots of autobio comics before, even some about growing up with my brother. I already had in my mind a lot of the experiences I wanted to share, as a lot of them I already openly talked about with my parents and friends (they had become family fables such as the “Vegemite Parrot story” or the “Pad-peeing incident”. And I’m a pretty quick drawer, so I thought once I got the story down, the rest would be a breeze!

Spoiler alert: It was not a breeze.

I found that not only was there a steep learning curve in making a 300 page graphic novel vs a 30 page mini-comic (let alone watching my drawing style evolve and refine over that first year of working on the book), but there was also a steep emotional learning curve. Working on these stories meant that I relived a lot of my childhood experiences, and some, particularly stories about times when my brother would attack me, were a lot harder to relive than I expected.

Where I’m at right now

After years of working on the book in my spare time, or when I got the support of a residency or fellowship or grant for a more concentrated period of work, I was lucky enough to be approached by my now agent, Annabel Barker. With Annabel’s help (and that of another agent, Dan Lazar), I was able to talk to several publishers that were interested in working with me on the book. And in early 2021, Penguin Random House (PRH) picked up the book in a deal that means it will now be published (ETA 2024) in four territories (Australia, Canada, UK and US).

Although it is super exciting to be working with such a well-known publisher, it’s also been quite nerve-wracking to think that this book that I originally assumed I would be self-publishing is now to be published by one of the major book publishers in the world.

There have been a lot of changes that I’ve had to make while working with PRH (more on that in a future blog post). Last year (2021) and this year (2022) I have been working with my four editors (one in each territory) to re-write the script and thumbnails (the rough comic drawings). It’s definitely been a challenge re-writing something that is so personal to me (and so complex). I would be lying if I said I’ve enjoyed having to make big-ish cuts to a project that has lived with me for multiple years. But saying that, although the book is quite different now, I think I’m starting to feel proud of the type of book it has become.

So far this project has taken: 6 years, 1 scholarship, 1 fellowship, 1 grant, 2 mentors, 2 residencies, 3 peer feedback sessions, 37 blacking pearl pencils, 2 agents, 3 publisher rejections, 3 publisher bids, 1 publisher, 4 editors, 4 territories, 3 versions, 24 therapy sessions, 1 brother, 2 parents, 1 million cups of tea and 1 ongoing case of imposter syndrome.

I’ll be doing more posts soon about the re-writing process and how my art has evolved. But if you’re keen to read more about my early process with the book, check out the Oh Brother tag in my Blog Posts Archive. There are quite a few posts there (although these are from 5 or 6 years ago and I haven’t recently re-read them, so I’m not sure how similarly I feel now — I’m not ready to re-read them yet).

Also, for those who are curious about all the steps I’ve taken with Oh Brother over the years, here’s a timeline:

Timeline of making Oh Brother GN

2015

  • The idea for the GN starts forming

  • Created short comic stories about Rob and me that were published in Voiceworks and the comic anthology Australia

  • Took part in Comic Art Workshop residency on Maria Island (but workshopping a different memoir comic)

2016

  • Put aside other memoir comic to focus on Oh Brother

  • Received the Colin Thiele Scholarship for Creative Writing through Carclew

  • Worked with Mandy Ord & Pat Grant as mentors

  • Kept a weekly blog about the process of working on the book

  • Finished pencil draft of part 1 (approx. 100 pages)

  • Created a comic about growing up with Rob that was published on The Nib

  • Printed an Oh Brother mini-comic sampler

2017

  • Received the Ian Wilson Memorial Fellowship from the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust

  • Finished pencil draft of part 2 (approx. 150 pages)

  • Quit my day job at the ABC

  • Took part in Comic Art Workshop residency on Jogjakarta (received feedback on the pencil drafts of two-thirds of the book & the script of the final third)

2018

  • Dead year. Kept trying to tackle editing the final section of the script but struggled to get anywhere

  • Cried a lot

  • Did some other things. Probably

  • Spent 6 weeks in Melbourne working with 100 Story Building

  • Spent 9 weeks travelling overseas

2019

  • Started therapy for the first time, turns out most people don’t cry all the time

  • Co-organised the first Papercuts Comic Festival

  • Took part in Comic Art Workshop residency on Dangar Island

2020

  • Contacted by Annabel Barker (literary agent) through website

  • Signed on with Annabel & developed a pitch for publishers

  • Annabel brought in Dan Lazar (New York agent) to help with the American side of things

  • Sent out book pitch to publishers and waited to hear back

  • Had phone conversations with various interested editors from different publishers in US and Australia

  • Received Independent Artists and Groups grant from Arts SA

2021

  • Three publishers put in offers for the book

  • Accepted PRH offer!

  • PRH took forever to send through a contract (four territories even within the same publisher don’t often talk to each other)

  • Started work on re-writing the book, creating a new story outline (making the story more narrative) and taking away the adult perspective of the story

  • Received PRH feedback on the outline, which was as long as the outline itself :/

  • Wrote a new script

  • Co-organised the second Papercuts Comics Festival (and was totally burnt out)

2022

  • Received script feedback from PRH in January (four months after submitting script)

  • Feedback was extensive, with the major notes being that the page count needed to be reduced (and some elements needed to be adjusted for the American audience)

  • Started tackling thumbnails

  • Had to renegotiate the thumbnail deadline several times because taking on the feedback turned out to be harder than expected

  • Completed the thumbnails!

  • Will take part in Comic Art Workshop residency at Yarrangobilly Caves

  • Received Professional Development grant from Arts SA to attend Comic Art Workshop

  • Currently awaiting feedback from editors about thumbnails

Oh Brother, it's a book update!

Oh brother update_Colour.jpg

Howdy pals,

So I've been thinking for a while that I should start giving you guys more updates on the progress of the book. I'm sorry it's mostly words, time at the moment is sparse and I have to really get down and focused on this book. So please forgive the lack of photos/pictures/visual reading aids. Anyway, here goes update numero uno:

Since I finished part two, I've had my edit session with my comics pals (which you can read all about here) and collected, taken note of and thought about all the feedback, and then put it aside for now. I've decided I wanted to focus on getting the script done for part three (the final part) so I can start thumbnailing and then penciling the draft comic pages. 

At the moment I've outlined all the stories that I think I should cover in this part. I'm now going through and fleshing out the stories that I haven't written in full yet and editing the already-written stories so they fit better into the book as it stands now (it evolves with every scene I write). 

The stories for part three come from interviews with my parents and events that I remember happening to me growing up. The theme for this chapter will be Fears (the theme for part one was Communication and part two was Obsessions).

I've been chipping away, trying to get one story or section finished every day, but I've been really struggling to keep motivated. This section (although still heavily talking about stories of my childhood) has a lot more emphasis on the emotions and feelings behind growing up with Rob and the fears that I hold around what happens when my parents die and I become Rob's guardian. 

I originally wanted to have the script all done by June so I could start thumbs and pencils in July, finishing everything up in August. However, it is now July and and I am yet to get this script finished. Admittedly, the written word is not my forte and I find the problem-solving of panel layouts and the inking of pencils the best bit about comic making. But to get there I have to get this script done. 

Although I knew this part of the book would be hardest to write, I didn't realise just how hard or just how it would make me feel going back over some of the more emotionally draining stories about growing up with Rob. 

And I thought I knew my feelings about what the future holds for me and Rob, but in writing the script I have found that they are not as clear cut as I thought, which makes writing a little harder and takes a little longer than I would like. 

I know it doesn't really matter how long it takes me to get this part written but I I feel like I really need to get this book done soon: I need to get this book out of me. I'm a little bit sick of writing stories about myself (I'm definitely sick of drawing myself). So I'm really looking forward to finishing this project and getting into writing some fiction again. 

So I'm going to give myself a soft deadline of August to have the script done by and now I've told you guys I'll check back in a month with an update. Fingers crossed I'll be deep into thumbnailing. 

Catch you soon!

G xx

 

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