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Hey guys!

As I'm busy as a bee working on the thumbnails for part two of Oh Brother in preparation for my residency with the May Gibbs Children's Literature Trust in a couple of weeks, I've only got a quick little update for you this post. I've been working on a few more diagrams about day-to-day life growing up in the Chadderton household. This one is about the average mail we each received. 

 

JSYK the residency I'll be doing through the May Gibbs trust is called the Ian Wilson Memorial Fellowship. I'll be working and living in a studio apartment in Norwood. My aim is to make as much headway as I can into the pencil draft of part two of Oh Brother. I'm hoping I can finish the whole draft of part two ready for reading by the time I finish up at the residency. While I'm there I will also be doing some networking and meeting with illustrators, publishers and children's librarians to find out about the industry side of children's literature. 

Alrighty! I best be off, still so many pages to get done before I pack. OH BOY I'M SO NERVOUS.

Gx

I'm all Thumbs

Hello!

I thought I would give you guys a little update on where I'm at with the book. It's been a while since I finished the draft of part one (of three) and wrote the massive post about the process of making the draft (you can read that post here). In the time since then I've not done as much work as I would have liked but I have been trying to plug away a little bit at a time. 

Writing for me is the hardest bit. Once I get started it's okay but it's the getting started that's hard. I have to sit down and force myself to write for minimum of 15 minutes, which may not sound like a lot but it it feels like an achievable goal, and after the first 5 minutes of constantly reminding myself not to check my phone and just sit and write I usually get on a roll and write for longer than my personal minimum of 15 minutes. 

What's even going on with my left arm....

What's even going on with my left arm....

I'd set myself the goal to finish the written script for at least part two and part three by the end of January if I could (I couldn't, part three is still buffering) and then finish the thumbnails by the end of February. This would mean that I could go into my artist residency with the May Gibbs trust in March (more about that later) with a full script to work from when I start drawing up the pencils.

But I found that I was getting bogged down by staring at a computer screen trying to write up a visual script with just using words, so even though I wasn't super happy with what I had (I thought I might have missed a few stories and included stories that I shouldn't have in part two), I printed out what I'd written and started to re-read a whole (terribly spelt) script. 

I wanted to get stuck into the thumbnailing because I remember how good it made me feel when I thumbnailed part one. But I struggled to get on board the thumbnailing train and then I remembered I'd missed a step that my pal and mentor Pat Grant went through with me last time. The post-it note stage!

The point of the post-it-ing is to write down the main mini-stories in this chapter and see where they fit in with each other. I also added in scene setting stuff so I can see where there will be story breaks for the reader so they are not too overwhelmed with info. Because colours are king I colour coordinated the post-its. Scenes are in blue and stories are in orange.

I like the post-it method because it helps me to visualise the collection of short stories as one big story (something I struggle with a bit). The post-its help me sort out the general flow and structure of the piece, getting me ready to thumbnail part two. Well, mostly ready: I still don't know quite how to end this section. It leads into the heavier section of the book and I'm not sure what tone I want to end this part on.  

Post-it notes mostly done, it was time for the main act: Thumbnails!

I can't explain just how exciting it is to grab a red marker and sit and look at what you've written and scribble over the top of it. Figuring out what works, what doesn't and what you entirely forgot to put in. That's when you end up with a whole page of big thumbnails (see below) of a very important scene you could've sworn you'd written. 

This thumbnail panel below could literally be my Mum and me at anytime in our lives with pretty much anything. 

This happens literally once a week. 

This happens literally once a week. 

Something I really enjoy about thumbnailing is that because it's quick and small, everything is the essence of the characters and I find it hilarious seeing what my mind has decided is the essence of me, my parents and my brother. 

NO.

NO.

I'm doing okay with the thumbnails but do need to pull my socks up and get them done ASAP as my residency starts in a couple of weeks. I was trying to do a scene a day but I think I'm going to step up my game and aim for two-three a day to make sure I get everything ready. 

So that's where I am at with the script at the moment. I'm pretty excited to be working on something with a visual element again. I find just writing words can feel like I"m not doing very much and it's hard for me to connect with the work. 

Can't wait to start the pencils and share those with you!

Gxx

The draft

This week I'm giving you guys a look at some of the stories from part one of Oh Brother (draft version) that I finished a couple of months ago. I've picked three short stories that I think stand alone okay for you to have a little look at. These stories are currently somewhere between detailed thumbnails and loose pencils (I haven't really decided what to call it other than Not Final Art). 

Story one. From near the start of part one we have How to Explain Rob. This is fairly self-explanatory. Before this story we have a few examples of what it's like to live with Rob. This is the first time in the book that you see Rob and Gina interacting with other kids. 

Story Two. The Diagnosis. As it sounds, this story is about my parents finding out about Rob's diagnosis. Rob was two when he was diagnosed with autism (I would have been four). We also jump forward in time to see my reaction to their story of Rob's initial diagnosis.

And story three. As part one is called Communication, most of the stories and anecdotes are about my and my family's attempts at communicating with Rob. In The Mist I talk about the more ethereal feelings around having a brother with autism. 

Those are the three samples I thought would work well displaced from their home in the book. I hope I picked the right ones.

If you want to read more of the draft and live in Adelaide, you can! I'll be putting on an end-of-year Oh Brother wrap-up show, exhibiting some of the diagrammatic illustrations I've done during the year, the sketchbooks with notes and illustrations, and the full comics manuscript draft for people to read and flick through. I've also put together a mini-comic sampler of some of my favourite Rob comics and background material. For more info about the event, click here.

Write you next week. 

Gxx

Artism

I have always loved art in its many mediums – particularly drawing (comics) and writing (comics). I've dabbled in music, I tried my hand at printmaking, I even once made a nifty fish-shaped knick-knacks dish (it was a cartoony fish, giving the knick-knack owner a thumbs up, of course). I've tried sculpture and installation but I can't say that I was, hmm, successful. 

My mother is always a whiz at most things crafty. Where I would fix a broken zip on an overall dress with several button badges, she would sew in a new zip. Where I would blutak the crack in the broken vase, she would plant a succulent in it. Where I would throw away that pair of old jeans with the awkward hole in the crotch, she would craft them (with the help of paint and glitter) into nifty bags and quilts. Where I would knit a scarf that gained so many new stitches that it had doubled in width by the time I'd finished, she would knit me a rad knitted vest (with a design to make it look like I'm wearing a tie). 

And where I couldn't see that Rob had any interest in creating art, she would see Rob's many abilities to create art out of the most ordinary of objects. Mum would see what she calls Rob's 'Artisms' (like art and autism smooshed together) all over the place. And once Mum pointed them out to me I couldn't not see them. Here are a few of the highlights from over the years. 

Now that Rob lives in full-time care, I don't get to see these Artisms anymore, as you need to spend lots of time around Rob to really get to know him and to experience his creations. 

That's one of the things I miss most about having regular doses of Rob in my life: the moments when you just stumble across a pile of things, arranged just so, that you know Rob has carefully thought about and placed. 

That's it for this post. Catch you next week when I write about all those other ideas I have floating around in my head and talk about my addiction to buying sketchbooks. 

Gx

F-f-f-f-f-fashion

I've always loved putting together an outfit, although it wasn't until high school that I admitted this. I remember talking to my Dad once when I was about 10 and I was very adamant that I would never wear make up or care about how my clothes looked. His response was 'Just you wait, in a couple of years you'll change your mind'. Well, he was wrong about the makeup but he nailed it with the clothes. I love colour coordinating my wardrobe and finding items that match perfectly together. I love op-shopping and finding the perfect cardigan that I've been searching for, and having 10x the same pair of shoes but in different colours so they can go with different outfits.

For Rob's part, his tastes were less narcissistic than mine and focused around comfort levels. I have always claimed that I would choose comfort over style but I don't know if I'm entirely telling myself the truth. 

But although I'm pretty happy with how I dress now and I think I manage to tread the line of comfort and lookin' good, there were many painful years of trial and error (mainly error) to get to this point. Let's start at age 8 (Gina) and age 6 (Rob). 

Next up we have ages 10 (Gina) and 8 (Rob). Desperately not wanting to look like a girl (but still being proud of being female), I took to wearing baggy oversized clothes and imagining myself as a much more adventurous sort than I truly was. Being a spy was a big one. I would fawn over the 'Spy Gear' in the David Jones and Myer toy sections (they seemed to have the best spy gear range) that I couldn't afford. In particular I wanted a 'Spy night glove', which was just some lights you'd clip to your hand so you could break open safes and the like in the dark. My Dad decided that we could make one (so I could learn about batteries and science stuff) instead of forking out dollars for something that would inevitably break, get lost or thrown out. I still have the glove today. 

Rob favoured the simpler approach of a bright pink body tube. He would shuffle around the house wearing nothing but this thin tube of material. It was pretty hilarious. 

13 (Gina) and 11 (Rob). First days of high school are always daunting and scary. Still a proud tomboy, I would soon find out how mean girls can be. I was pretty okay on the bullying front; I had enough friends that even though I was low-level bullied until year 12 I managed to get through reasonably unscathed. The thing I most remember about my first day at school was that when I was washing my hands in the girls' bathroom, another girl came out and started screaming that a boy was in the bathroom and then laughing at my face. For some reason it didn't much bother me. Maybe because having Rob as a brother had instilled in me that everyone is different and it doesn't matter what we look like or how we act, we are all just humans.

Rob, for the most part, loved school. He would run out to the bus when it came by to pick him up and for a while pretty much wore his school uniform everywhere (not just at school). 

15 (Gina) and 13 (Rob). My tomboy phase, although spanning several years, came to a head when my body hit puberty. Most of my fashion of this era consisted of baggy open button-up shirts over tee shirts and cargo shorts. I was inspired by the fashion sense of Gordo from the popular children's show Lizzy Maguire.

Rob's tastes weren't dictated by popular culture; instead he went for the more natural look. 

17 (Gina) and 15 (Rob). Everyone has a hippy phase, right? Where you just really like flares and corduroy and vintage kitsch kitchenware? I was chatting to a pal about the various fashion phases I've gone through and she talked about how the style of the 'hippy' was a way I could experiment with my femininity but still be kinda scruffy like a tomboy. I thought she raised a good point. 

Rob around this time grew very attached to some 'happy' pants I bought on a whim at the kind of store that would sell beaded bracelets, incense and tarot cards. They were made of a patchwork of crazy patterned materials and Rob loved them. He even started wearing them to school instead of the uniform pants. 

Rob (18) was most famous in our family for co-opting our father's leather jackets and transforming them into works of vegemite art.  

Me now (25). It's scary to think about my age. About how much I wish I'd already done with my life and how many things I want to do before I turn 27 (which is a special number to me) and when I turn 27 I'll basically be 30 and isn't that when you're supposed to have your life together? That seems to be what the movies tell me. Either that or that you shouldn't lose the child in you or shouldn't wish to grow up too fast? Maybe I need to watch BIG again. 

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with my ability to dress myself now. If I was able to just decide on one style I really like, I'd be able to downsize my wardrobe. But somedays I want to look a bit fancy in my culottes and cardys (see below) and sometimes I want to wear dresses and denim or check shirts and cotton skirts. And sometimes it's jeans and a t-shirt or it's nothing. 

Sometimes I think if I just stick to buying a limited amount of colours then I'll be okay. You know, just red, blue and green. And black I guess. Oh and mustard yellow. And you can't forget purple or the occasional orange. And you know sometimes brown can look really nice. You see my problem!

Basically, my choice of what to wear these days comes down to "Can I draw that?" If I can't draw it, is there any reason for me to have it?

That's it for this post. I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into some of the many fashions I and my brother have had. 

xx

Scout patches

Growing up with Rob was mostly fun. But at times it felt like a lot of hard work having to remember to lock all the doors all the time and making what felt like 100s of pieces of vegemite on toast. You would learn ways to tell when Rob was about to have an angry episode and know when to dodge his pinch attacks (he has the fastest hands in the west).

Learning all these skills and clocking toast-making time felt like I was part of the Scouts. I always liked the idea of Scouts: adventuring and exploring, always being prepared. I felt I was a born cargo short wearer. I particularly loved collecting things (literally anything), so the idea that you could earn cloth badges for learning skills was very appealing. But for some reason I never ended up being a Scout. I was probably too scared to meet new kids.

Anyway, thinking about all the time I spent learning to be prepared for and around Rob, and learning ways to avoid Rob's meltdowns, I realised I was a Scout. A Rob Scout. So I thought I'd design myself some badges to celebrate my preparedness. I mean, the bruises from bites and pinches are okay but they don't look as good as cloth patches sewn on a sash. 

I picked pink to be the Rob Scout colour because, as mentioned in the Pink is the New Black blog post, Rob's favourite colour is pink, so I thought it appropriate.

It's just a little blog for you today but don't worry, more will be coming soon. 

xx

In which our hero meets 'The Slump'

You may have noticed that in the past few posts I've been writing about going through a bit of a flat patch or, if you want to go all '50s horror movie on the idea, 'The Slump!'

So with The Slump hanging over my head -- or more specifically in my head -- I thought it was time to get my thoughts out onto paper. I grabbed a book I've been using to keep track of thoughts and things to talk about with my mentor Pat and started writing what I'd been feeling. BUT THEN I COULDN'T STOP. It just kept coming out. Because this was originally just going to be something that I would send to Pat and not share online, I didn't pencil anything or even plan what I was going to write. Sometimes I think I managed to pull it off and then some pages maybe not so much. Anyway, here it is, in all its glory. 

Halfway through writing these thoughts I kinda wanted to stop. I wasn't really sure where they were going and not knowing when the comic would finish made me start feeling flat. But I pushed through with a few pitstops to breathe and think about what I was writing and once I'd finished (despite it not being the best thing I've ever drawn or written) I was so glad to have done it. 

Even though I would say the process of making something is maybe sometimes more important than the final product, it sure feels good to hold a finished thing in your hands. Even if the very next day you think it's terrible. 

Hope you guys are doing well. Can't wait to write you again real soon!

Gxx

In which our hero is defeated by a box of papers.

Howdy there!

Sorry I've been a little incommunicado the past few weeks -- lots of travelling, script editing and figuring out where I want to go next with the book. Not knowing if I'm picking the right path to go down and trying to find that spark of inspiration that tells my brain I'm doing the right thing.   

This is just a little comic of a time about a month ago when I was feeling low. It's only recently that I've been able to sit down and actually write down some of these feelings. They are not new feelings but they are getting more acute as I grow older and could see myself as a parent. 

This comic by no means covers all the feelings or thoughts or worries I have around having children or how lucky I feel about the way my parents brought me up. But that is for exploration another time.

This year has been a huge learning curve for me when it comes to writing and drawing comics but something I think that is less tangible and possibly more important is having the time to think about my life growing up with my brother and just stewing in the feelings that come with that. Sometimes it's so hard to think about the future and what that means for me and Rob and sometimes it's so hard to think about the past and everything that my parents and I and Rob have been through. It feels lonely and tiring. My head fills with the pain of sadness and makes me want to stop writing.

But just because it's hard does not mean it's not worthwhile. I love Rob and I always will. I love him for all his obsessions and strange habits. And I like to think that if he could, Rob would love me back for all the same reasons. 

I know other people are out there just like me and just like Rob and I want them to know, I need them to know it's okay, I'm out there too. 

xx

In which our hero talks about her process

This post is all about how I got from the starting point of having the idea for a graphic novel memoir about growing up with a brother with autism to where I am now: holding my first draft manuscript of part one of Oh Brother. Here's the step-by-step process. 

Step 1. Filling your belly with tasty beverages. 

A good drink to start the day is important to me and my brain processing. It gives you a chance to sit and think about what you've written, a chance to ponder. Also the act of making a cup of tea (boiling the kettle, steeping the leaves) helps to get my brain in the right frame of mind. 

Talking about what stories I want to tell or discussing what I'd written that day over a cuppa with a friend helped me to figure out if the story made sense or hit the right emotional tones. 

Step 2. Setting up shop. 

The first thing I did was pick a colour for the notebooks and sketchbooks that I would be working in. Colour is important to me and having all my notes and stories, sketches and ideas about Rob and autism in books all the same colour just makes me happy. They look so good on the shelf together. 

When setting up what I was going to write, I decided to make a list of different types of stories or things I wanted to talk about in the book. Each category had a different coloured post-it:

Yellow // Happy or Funny stories

Dark Blue // Sad or Fearful stories 

Lime Green // Questions I have or Questions I get asked

Red // Over-arching story themes

Purple // Stories about carers or Rob going into care

Light Blue // Misc. stories or facts about me and Rob

This was a great starting point, just getting all the stories I possibly could down and then expanding on them when I started...

Step 3. Writing 15 minutes every day.

To start off with I found it hard trying to get myself to write. I would also be put off by 'not being inspired' or expecting to write for hours at a time. But I soon realised that wasn't how I worked. I like to do things in little fragments of time and waiting to be inspired to write just meant that I was also drawing other silly nothing comics. So after a recommendation from Mentor Pat to do my important brain work in the morning, and reading someone else online talking about forcing yourself to write for 15 minutes no matter how bad you think it is , I started a new routine.

The first thing I would do after I got to the studio each morning (after making a cup of tea, obvs) was to sit down and write for 15 minutes about whatever stories I could think up about Rob. Sometimes I barely managed to scrape in the 15 minutes, really struggling to get ideas out, and sometimes I would write for up to 40 minutes. 

Sometimes the ideas were terrible; sometimes awesome. Sometimes they were okay and the next day I would use my 15 minutes to re-write the passage, having had a day to think about and refine what I was trying to say. 

Step 4. Drawing one illustration every day.

As well writing something every day, I drew something every day. I wanted to fill the book with diagrams that would demonstrate what it was like living with Rob and help to illustrate his cheeky  personality. You can read my previous blog posts with diagrams here, here, here and here.

While writing things down helped to get the stories clear in my mind, drawing the characters and places helped to figure out how I was going to portray my brother and parents. (I've already drawn myself a bunch of times and I'm all over that). 

Step 5. Writing a script. With, you know, words.

After a few weeks of writing every day I thought I should start collating the stories into a script form. I found that the stories generally fell into three broad categories: 1) Communication; 2) Obsessions; and 3) Fears. I decided that these would be good section dividers for the book and I would focus on part one, Communication. 

Having never written a script previously (because I always draw my own work and my previous comics have been so short that I only needed to jot down a few dot points at most), I had to sort of play it by ear - I had no idea what I was doing. 

But I needed to have something written down as I was heading on a two week trip to learn from my mentor Pat about his process and he was going to need a script to read, give feedback on and help me edit. 

Step 6. Editing the script and learning about Pat Grant's thumbnailing process. 

When I got to Wollongong to meet up with Pat all I had was twelve pages of written words and a few character illustrations. In the first couple of days Pat read, pulled apart and discussed my script.

I took a notebook along with me with a heap of questions for Pat about comics making and in particular how to do thumbnailing. He kindly obliged by responding in comic form. 

Thumbnailing, for those who haven't heard of it, is the process of rough drawing the comics panels generally smaller than the size they will be printed at so you can get the general idea of what image you need in each panel, camera angles, characters, layout etc. 

By the end of the first week of hanging out with Pat I had fully thumbnailed my script using Pat's method of drawing all over the printed  page with lots of arrows and reference numbers. I love this method of thumbnailing. I'm never looking back!

Step 7. Drawing a first draft manuscript (or readable thumbnails). 

Once I got back from visiting Pat with my new thumbnails under my belt, I was pumped and ready to start the readable thumbnails. Readable thumbnails to me means taking my script and thumbnails and turning that into comics pages, so a reader can get the general idea of what the final book will read like. It's a mock up of the final story. 

I found this process very interesting and surprisingly easy. It wasn't a walk in the park but having already done preliminary thumbs it was fun working out how the individual panels worked on the page. Also knowing that this wasn't the pencils or final art meant that I didn't have any hang ups about whether it was the best thing I'd ever drawn. 

I didn't let anyone give me critical feedback while I was writing the draft as I didn't want to put any doubts in my mind (battling my own double talk was enough). But the moment I finished I opened the floor to anyone who wanted to read it to give me feedback. 

After a little while I realised I was having trouble with showing different emotions for the main characters in the story, so I created an emotion guide for each of the main characters. This has already been useful in this first draft so I'm sure it will continue to be in the next two chapters. 

Here are all the pencils I used to draw the 100+ pages of chapter one. 

Step 8. Finishing part one, bound and ready for feedback from pals.

Then, 6 weeks later, I had the very first part of my very first graphic novel. I keep all the pages in this folder to keep them safe from harm. It's also pretty exciting to hold a big folder that holds all my comics. It reminds me how much work I've put into this book so far. Also this neat folder looks exactly like something from Harriet the Spy, so that's another win. 

I scanned and edited the pages ready for printing (with formatting and proofreading help from Owen). After a little mis-printing mishap at Officeworks, I now have 7 bound copies that I will send out to mentors and some family members and then await feedback. 

When the feedback comes back, I will edit anything I need to and then start the final art for the chapter. Which is both awesome and scary. 

Mostly awesome. 

And that's it. That's how I got to this point.

Phew, that was a long post. 

xx