SHOP
TALK
For those of you wondering which art materials I
use.
BEFORE
THE WEBSITE
The bombastic origin of Lowbright.
SHOP
TALK
Every once in a while I'll
receive an inquiry into the type of art materials I use
to create my comics, so I'll just tell you here.
My preference in art materials
has changed numerous times over the years. I think I've
finally come to a point where I'm completely comfortable
(as comfortable as you can be drawing, I guess) with what
I'm using.
When I was first starting
out, I had these preconceived notions about what a "professional"
had to use. I thought you weren't a "professional"
unless you were inking with a brush. So on my first project
years before Lowbright, I used Winsor & Newton
00 and 0 brushes to ink everything. For sixty-five 11x14
(bristol board, hot press) pages I was killing my hand.
I realized right away that the brush wasn't for me, but
kept at it because of my naive preconceptions. Even though
it was painful to move my right hand after a day's worth
of drawing. Like an idiot, I continued with a brush for
another 40 pages or my second project, which ended up
never even seeing print.
On Duncan's Kingdom
I switched to a pen nib(Hunt)-- the kind you dip
into an inkwell -- which was better, but I still didn't
feel comfortable. I settled on the pen nib for Pulling
and Super Unleaded.
These days, I ink everything
with a simple pen. I always felt most comfortable with
a pen but avoided it because of its stigma of amateurism.
But that's just lame. Each artists should decide which
materials are the most comfortable and produces the best
results for him/herself. Not only is the pen the most
relaxing, it's the fastest, neatest, and was most beneficial
in improving my art. The pen let me loosen up and not
be so uptight. As a result, I think my characters these
days have a much greater feeling of motion, emotion, flexibility,
and liveliness. I started with Pigma Micron
pens from Sakura, but since my two year stay in
Korea, I've switched to Copic MultiLiner
from a company called .Too from Japan(sizes 0.1
and 0.3). The point holds up a lot better than Pigma
after continual use.
Also, I switched from 11x14
paper to 8x11(another thing I previously denounced as
amateurish), and with the pen, this reduced my drawing
time by half. I use this 8x11 preruled comicbook
drawing paper from Japan. I'd tell you the brand, but
I can't read Japanese. It's not "Deleter" though.
I found that pens bleed on "Deleter".
For lettering, fililing
in blacks, and color(unless it's watercolor), I use Photoshop.
Never for drawing though. The font I use was created from
my handwriting.
BEFORE
THE WEBSITE
The three stories, Pulling,
Super-Unleaded, and Shaved Asians
were originally printed in a mini-comic called Small
Stories. After my first professionally printed
series crashed and burned, and my next project was cancelled
due to extremely low orders, I was thoroughly disillusioned
with the publishing world.
Once I realized and accepted
the cold hard fact that making a living from comics was
equivalent to spotting a Korean in an anti-smoking protest,
I felt free to create something completely unhindered
by concerns such as advertising, or "target audience",
or percentages, or any other crap-filled baggage that
comes attached with going through a publisher. Of course,
this meant that only a small group of people(smaller than
even the normal miniscule amount of comics readers) would
see my work, but as long as it was the right small group
of people, I really didn't care.
So with a lightened shoulder,
and the help of Gene Yang and computer-whiz,
Jeff Yip, I set out to "print" my next project
in the good 'ol zine tradition. After the stories were
slapped together in Pagemaker, we rushed
over to Copyworld in Berkeley and had 200 copies
whipped up. This was all days before the Alternative
Press Expo in 1998, where it debuted. Below are
more specific commentary on each individual story.
Pulling
This was the first short
story in comics form that I had completed. I had this
story, in various forms, kicking around in my head years
before I finally strapped myself to the drawing board
and finished it. It actually started out as two separate
stories and merged into one. During every summer with
my step-father and mother, my brother and I had to clear
our entire backyard, which was rather spacious, of every
single weed in sight. The problem was there was nothing
but weeds. This was a tedious, grueling, and extremely
aggravating hunk of work, especially as a kid, which took
a week's worth of working until the sun went down to complete.
The single greatest joy in moving into my own place that
I thank whatever's-up-there every single day for, is the
fact that I will never touch another weed for the rest
of my life, so help me whatever's-up-there! Anyway, this
was one topic I had to get off my chest in a story, but
it seemed a rather mundane subject to devote an entire
story to.
During this same time, I
was also working on a story about my first girlfriend.
As I was writing the two stories, I started to see many
thematic parallels forming between them, believe it or
not. And the fact that they were wholly unrelated in any
way, taken literally, excited me. So I tried tying the
parallels together, the success or failure of which I
will leave up to you.
Looking back on it, there
are many things I would do differently, were I to do it
over, but I think that's an inevitable fate for every
story as you grow and develop. So I will just hope for
the best and leave its cage open.
Super-Unleaded
Story-wise, I'm going to
let this story speak for itself. Technically speaking,
this story was tricky because I had originally written
it as a prose piece. Trying to decide what to leave out,
what to add, and how to keep the two versions distinct
was a challenge. After all, if the comics version was
simply going to be a copy of the prose version, what would
be the point of doing it?
Artwise, it's one of my
proudest and most labor-intesive work.
Shaved Asians
It was the night before
I had to get the pages of Small Stories
#1 into the computer and then into the copy center if
I was going to finish it by the Alternative Press
Expo. I needed five more pages to make the book
an even twenty pages, and my brother wanted to fatten
up the second issue of his Orange Tango.
Brent had a little story he didn't have time to draw and
I was in a frantic state, not knowing what to do. So we
collaborated, with me providing the art for his panel-less
story, then putting it into both our books...over-night.
To speed up the process, I drew on 8"x11" paper
instead of the 11"x14" sized paper I normally
used at that time, and inked it with Pigma
pens. I pulled an all-nighter and nearly had an aneurism
completing it as the sun rose and the birds chirpped.
I think I lost sensation in my right hand for a little
while afterwards. The things we do for comics...
All
contents © 2004 by Derek Kirk Kim
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