I thought I’d take the time to explain my working process on my recent comic, 5-Track Mind. It started as a comic challenge from my good friend and fellow artist, AC Galaga. AC and I have often talked about comics together, and tried to explore new ways of creating stories. AC sent me five songs to listen to, with which I was to create a 3-5 page comic.
The tracks were:
- Silent Hill (Other Side)- Yamaoka Akira
- Fear- The Ventures
- Black Wine- Angelspit
- Third Mall From The Sun- Snog
- Butterfly- Perfume
I began by listening to the songs and writing down my initial impressions as I went.
Even at this stage you can see my notes are a combination of words, shapes, squiggles and pictures. It was all about impressions. You could perhaps see this stage as a kind of stream-of-consciousness exercise. The notes for each song are as follows (images are in parentheses):
Silent Hill (Other Side): Arrivals, cowboy, lone traveler, dust, yellow, brown, lonely, hotel, old, crackly radio.
Fear: organ, 50′s TV, Outer Limits, (infinity symbol), Hawaii, green, tiki, skull, (skull with umbrella and straw).
Black Wine: (squiggles), machine, production line, sparks, blips, Metropolis, metal, repetition, EXAM, zippers, (man sitting on a chair, looking at a desk).
Third Mall From The Sun: pedestrian crossing, traffic, wind, inside, abandoned office building, automation, light strip, desert, photo, bounty.
Butterfly: birds, stars, synthetic, (dots and stars), TV monitors, repetition, (ascending and descending shapes), shiny, pastels, (puff), hallucination gas, ‘cat nip’.
Can you see which of these first impressions made it as concepts into the final comic? Listening to the music for the first time with no expectations was an amazing way to access parts of my imagination left untapped by my usual creative impulses. After this initial response I listened to the music repeatedly to refine those impressions, and try to form a cohesive landscape for them to inhabit.
It seemed to me that certain aspects were quite important to the story. The repetition in the music was a strong motif, and I wanted to reflect that in the art. The image of the skull with the umbrella and curly straw, the pattern of the crossing, and the boots were all aspects I could repeat in different ways. The idea of a dream/hallucinatory world was very much influenced by the strange nature of the music, as individual tracks and as a collection.
The next stage was to plot out the story. I decided to go for the full five pages offered by AC’s challenge, to make full use of the space available. Even so, page one isn’t track one, and so on. The music as a whole influenced the story as a whole. As you can see from the image above, I didn’t just sit down and draw out a comic. What I put down was a path of words and pictures, that lead from one scene to the next. The words affecting the next image, the image affecting the words. In this way I was able to crystalise for myself what I wanted the story to be, before continuing to the drafting stage.
Here you can see the draft version of page three. How it relates to the notes I made is clear, but now it closer resembles the final comic art. Composition was a serious consideration, especially when dealing with such an abstract-style story. I had to make each page as easy to follow as possible. The content of the comic was quite surreal, so simple frames and simple text were necessary to get from A to B. Also, it’s worth seeing each page as a scene in itself.
You might also notice the small change I made, tilting the photo booth on the first panel. Keeping the frame the same shape, but changing the angle of the subject was a technique I used repeatedly in this comic, as a way of creating a slightly unsteady feeling for the reader.
After this, I took reference pictures for every pose in the comic. As a result, but also by design, the unnamed character is very much myself. I also sourced reference photos for the boot, the skull, photo booths and desert scenes. The bar was based on a tiny spot I used to visit in Japan. Using references for everything was a key way of creating believable environments, people and objects in an otherwise unreal world.
The final artwork is pretty much as you see it. Small changes were made, and the text was added in Photoshop. It was a truly exciting and fascinating exercise, and my thanks go to AC for proposing the project. If you have any questions about this comic or my creative process, please feel free to send me an email. dave(at)sundayink(dot)com.
Pip pip!
I’m really glad that you enjoyed this project. Many people are really into pop and lyrical based music, but I was really turned on to the visual journeys that this ‘lucid’ music could take me. I often ask people, when was the last time you sat down, put on some headphones and just listen to music. Just listen to music and do nothing else. I am surprised at how little people really ‘listen’ to music. It’s always a background to cleaning, working, driving, etc.
So, the inspiration for this project really came from a sequential artist named Jim Mafood. I read his book 40oz. Collected and was really inspired creatively. Not only did he promote making comics zines and handing them out to everyone, but he’s also list a track list at the beginning of his comic. It seemed like this was his soundtrack to the comic or recommended listening while reading or something. After that, I always thought it would be a fun experiment to make a track list to inspire a story or even set the mode.
I wanted to take it a step further and offer you a list of songs that were interesting, visual, and most likely new to you. By listening to my own track list, I might be biased to preconceived thoughts. But for you it’s completely fresh.
I’m really happy you excepted this challenge! Your finished outcome is definitely a beautiful achievement.
Thanks for your wonderful addition to this analysis, AC! Your perspective on this particular challenge is unique, and it’s interesting for me to see where your idea sprang from. The notion of adding a playlist to a comic is fascinating, especially if a reader took the time to recreate it and listen to it, reflecting on the effect it had on the printed work.
I’d like to encourage any Sunday inkers out there to find a friend and give this a try. It’s a truly exciting creative exercise, and no matter what the outcome, you’ll have a shiny new comic at the end!