Drawing with Character: Part 2

The Practical Bit …

Okay, picking up from the last post, once you have taken ownership of the story, inhabited the characters fully and approached your work armoured in integrity and honesty, (whatever that means!) there are a number of very practical tools in the illustrator's paint box that can help you tell the visual story you want to tell and invest its characters with, well, character.

1. Character Sketches

Whenever I begin a story, I always spend a little time doing some character sketches for the main characters. As I work fairly impetuously, often those characters come out whole cloth. Others I work through a bit more until I've got what I want.

This is a very important process and you should spend as much time as it takes at the beginning to make sure that you are comfortable with your characters. Be sure to know them in a number of different guises - surprised, angry, sad. Even in attitudes that aren't necessarily going to be used in the story, as this will help you to more fully inhabit the character and make it three dimensional (character-wise) when it comes to working on pages.

These are my character sketches for Pedro, a panther that befriends (sort of) our two heroes in Hometown Otto.  You can see how I'm working my way through this character, ditching the first couple of head sketches and getting more of a feel for him on the third try. About this time I think I actually went and took a look at what a panther looks like, flattening the forehead and raising the snout higher on the face in sketch four. I try Pedro out in a variety of expressions, trying to capture the friendly yet self-serving and somewhat shifty character that he is (and as are all cats!) You can double click on these images if you want to see them larger.

These are some character sketches I did for Snake (an evil - or at least not so good - carny). Again, you can see me working through the character, eventually returning to something closer to where I had begun. When my editor read my manuscript for Hometown Otto she thought Snake really was a snake so that was a good point of departure for this character. I made him long and sinewy, with snake skin boots and snake tattoos. The tattoos became simplified as I developed him, realizing early on that I didn't want to have to draw anything that elaborate over a multitude of pages!

I'm not shy, as an illustrator, about reaching for archetypes when I'm creating characters. A case in point would be the other day when I was sketching up some ideas for a small town sheriff for Hometown Otto. My small town sheriff archetype would have to be Rod Steiger from “In the Heat of the Night” and as  I already was working with a bit of a spoof on the movie anyway, I went to Google's Image Search and pulled up a few pictures of Rod Steiger. These then shaped the basis for my character sketches.

Not shy of reaching for archetypes, when I needed a southern U.S. small town sheriff, Rod Steiger from The Heat of the Night, came to mind.

Drawing with Character: Part One

The Heady Bit …
I was writing up some notes for a presentation I will be making at the Packaging Your Imagination conference in Toronto on November 5 and I thought the observations around visual character development were worth repeating here. Although this particular talk is more directed to picture book illustration, much of it applies equally well to character development in graphic novels.

So here you go!

One cannot talk about character development without talking about the story in its entirety.

As an author/illustrator ownership is obviously not an issue. But as an illustrator of someone else's story, ownership is key.

You need to remember that you are a 50% partner in the relationship, and, for the duration of your work on the project, 100% owner. Only by fully embracing the story as your own can you give it the life and verve that will come from the tip of your pencil, brush or stylus.

Think of the story as your story, the book as your book. This isn't to cut the author out of the process but rather to put yourself in a mind set that will allow you to give your very best to the story. Because at the end of the day, your responsibility isn't to the author but rather to the story itself. You as illustrator are not simply a third party mediator between author and reader but a bonafide story-teller in your own right. And your story is the drawn one.

To really portray a character effectively you need to inhabit the character fully. You need to crawl right into its skin and peer out through the eye holes. This is the case whether it is a person or dog or cat or pig or whatever. You need to move beyond thinking of the character as separate to yourself, a third party entity.

This will help not only with character development but also the drama of the story. And again, the two are inextricably linked. There is an elation in inhabiting the character. As illustrators we are blessed with the opportunity to travel through our imaginations, do things we would never dare do, all from the safety of our own desk. 

Draw on your own experiences fully in the process of this possession. This will be easier with a character that is sympathetic to your own personality but in this respect we all have to be fairly versatile actors, and usually there is something within ourselves that we can dig deep and latch on to when we put pencil to paper.

It is said that when an athlete watches a film of someone doing their sport, in their mind all the same signals are being sent out as if they were actually doing the sport themselves. Or something like that.

So we have to be the athletes of the drawing board, feeling in every fibre of our being the same thing that the character in your story is feeling. And in doing that the character will emerge.

Whatever you do with your character, stay honest to the story. If your character begins to act and react at odds to the written word then you will loose credibility to your audience and do a disservice to the author. Read the story well, and in the process of inhabiting the character make sure that the character you are inhabiting is the one that the author has written.

One of the most gratifying comments I have received is when an author says that they feel as if I have crawled into their head and put their thoughts on paper. It is not of course the author's head one crawls into, but rather the story that has sprung from that author's head.

If you try to be too clever, too sophisticated or generally start drawing with other motivations then simply to tell the story, then you are in danger of taking the visual tale somewhere that does the story discredit. 

Next time: The Practical Bit!

Launched!

We had a great send off for Otto on Saturday, October1. In the company of friends, fans and relatives Otto and Crackers set sail on the Great Graphic Sea, hopefully to populate far-flung shores with multiple copies of his book (hint, hint)!
The launch, at Titles Bookstore in Peterborough, Ontario, was replete with five (count 'em!) different kinds of peanuts, free Gator Jus and comic sampler give-a-ways. I had the pleasure of reading from Big City Otto ( I blew up the pages real good!) talking a bit about the process of creating the comic and doing a bit of sketching for my loyal fans.
And what graphic novel gathering would be complete without at least one fan arriving dressed as her favourite character!

Otto fan in costume.

Doing what I do best.

How to read from a comic 101.

One of the best parts about doing a book!

Big City Otto Book Launch!

On Saturday, October 1, 2011 from 2 to 3 p.m. I will be launching Big City Otto at Titles Bookstore, 379 George St. N., Peterborough, Ontario. This will be part of the Culture Days events in Peterborough, and will include drawing demonstrations, Q & A, free peanut-related refreshments, spot prizes and give-aways. I hope you can join me.

"Slavin’s illustrations recall latter-day Will Eisner for the urban realism, rumpled figures, and the appealing personalities he packs into the large cast of quirky human and animal characters." - Booklist

Drawing Birdy

So I'm back at my drawing board this week. After a two month hiatus between thumbnailing my new Otto book and beginning the pencil roughs, I'm once again splashing about in the balmy waters of pencildom, happy as a duck.

As I was sketching out an early sequence in the book (shown below) I began thinking about this character Birdy and where she came from. Like authors, story illustrators find their affection growing for certain characters as they work them through, and for me Birdy is one of those. Motherly and kind, she brings our heroes in out of a nasty downpour and brews them up a nice cup of tea. They end up staying the night in her cozy little caboose in an abandoned railyard, and when they prepare to leave the next day, she is talked into joining them on their travels.

But where did this character Birdy come from? It was only when I was sketching her up for the third or fourth panel that it suddenly occurred to me she was a little old Scottish lady I ran into in England's Lake District. Thirty years ago.

The story goes like this. My partner of the time and I had just stepped off our bus in a small Cumbrian village, and were standing staring about, probably looking somewhat lost, when a little voice near my left elbow asked us where we were staying. I discovered the voice's source, a little old wizened gnome in rubber boots and Macintosh, with a load of firewood in her arms, and told her we had no idea. To which she answered, "Well, come along then," and turned and started hoofing it across a field. We grabbed our heavy packs and scrambled to keep up with her as she nimbly hopped over a downed fence, with no idea where she was taking us. Eventually we ended up at her B&B. 

It was along time ago, as I say, but my memory of her is still fresh as the day it happened — her mater-of-fact taking us under wing, the old saggy four poster bed heaped with comforters and replete with hot water bottle. And especially the mountain of food she piled up for us for breakfast. And I remember her telling us her story, how she was "brought South" by an English lad when she was a young girl, lured across the border by young love, by a husband who had had the audacity to up and die and leave her alone away from family.

And it was today that I realized that that is who Birdy is, that I'd drawn a tribute to a long-forgotten memory. But in this story, because it's mine to do with as I please, this time she goes home.

Otto and Crackers meet Birdy on a wet night. My unconcious tribute to
a little old Scottish lady I met thirty years ago.