Commentary: Out After Dark

 I spent the past week working like crazy on sculptures and such for the SPACE convention. I have so much to talk about here from that event, including remarks concerning the anthologies (OH, Comics and S.P.A.C.E. Anthology), my general views of the show, and reviews of the comics I picked up during the show.  However, I’m going to start today by discussing the webcomic that premiered last week, Out After Dark.

Out After Dark is an adaptation of an episode of the webseries Out With Dad that never got filmed.  It is a “lost episode”.  I covered some of my involvement last year shortly after starting the project.  Now I can talk a bit about how I went about drawing the comic and why, as well as praise the writing and comment on the story.

When I got the script for the episode-comic-to-be, I was amazed at the story.  It’s a great piece of characterization and says some things about rose and her feelings about coming to terms with her sexuality, while at the same time showing us more about the relationship between Rose and Kenny.  After marveling at the script, though, I had to figure out how to adapt in into a sequential art form.  Because the story is just two people having a conversation, it could be told by having two heads talking to each other.  But that would be pointless and boring.  Instead I tried to find ways to make the conversation move with the characters as they walk down the street.  There are some things that I could do in a comic that Jason could never do if filming (or at least not easily).  Including sudden shifts in camera angle and effects such as silhouettes and flashbacks and the floating heads effect. I also tried to establish a good page layout and pacing as the story progressed, then had the final page contain sparse dialogue to break the pacing for effect. At the same time, I didn’t want the art to be too radical, because I didn’t want it to detract from the story. Hopefully, some of these tricks were effective and enjoyable.

It was a challenge to portray characters based on real people, and I thought it important to figure out “my” versions of the actors/characters so that I could make the story flow without too much worry over getting every miniscule detail about their appearances correct.  Finally, I wanted to make sure I started the first page with a creator’s credit, since Jason is the source of all these characters and situations and creator credit is a big deal in comics.

I could go on and on and babble some more, but I’ll leave it at this for now.  I’ll be back around these here parts in a week or so.  Stop by and have a look.