Marv's Worklog: ideas explored and drawings shown

edited April 2013 in Work Logs
NOTICE:

I have been very low key on this site for the past few months for reasons. 1_ I was tired of seeing my name at the top of the posting list. 2_ I've been doing fuck all nothing creatively for some time now.

Time to change that.

I expect to be very open in this thread about what I'm trying to accomplish. I have some projects filtering through my head, but I am quite thoroughly stalled about them. My hope is that by committing to this thread, I can get unjammed. If you are a creator concerned that you might find some consonance between what you read here and what you are doing; or ideas that you have and what I am doing here and you want to avoid any conflict, then avoid reading this.

I am not particularly contentious about ideas, and mine are not especially fresh. Its execution that counts, and I don't think anyone executes quite the same way that I do. If you do read on, and you wish to pipe up, please feel free.


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Comments

  • This guy is Deed Sallow.

    When Josh H and I were working up a movie script version of The Grave Doug Freshley, I wanted to expand the role of Death and had several ideas some of which were incorporated and some of which got discarded. One of these was that Death was also the star of a series of dime novels under the name of Deed Sallow. It was a name that was at once very 19th C, and death-like. Perfect name for a gunslinger. When much of what I wanted to do was backed out, I reclaimed the name to use on another project. Deed Sallow works well for a Solomon Kane style Puritan demon-slayer. It also works for a fallen angel. Somewhere in that mash-up, this guy lives.
  • Earlier variants on Deed Sallow were more like this guy.

    image




    Uhmmm... the one on the top. Aristocratic long nosed type with flowing locks. The guy on the bottom is someone else. But aristo-long-nose-flowing-locks is a a stock sort of character. At one time, Deed Sallow may have looked something like this. But not now. Things have changed.
  • Those lines on his face... is he aged? Or scarred?
  • As always, Marv, I like how you reach with your characters and gestures.
    Something I'm still trying to learn with my stiff mechanical style.
  • I would love to draw a comic where every pictures feels like its moving.

  • He comes with a sidekick, I think, a familiar. Her name is Isabel Drat. She doesn't look like this.


    image
  • I think perhaps more like this, but I haven't pinned her down yet.

    image
  • edited April 2013
    Some time back Richard posted something about just drawing what you want
    to draw without regard for project or career development, but just
    because you dig it... drawing the way you drew back when you just did it
    for love. Sometimes I draw Batman. Sometimes I draw women who've taken
    their clothes off for my viewing pleasure.


    So really, not safe for work. View at your own risk.








    image


  • I want to know more about Deed Sallow. Tell me abou--

    --hey, boobs!
  • edited April 2013
    More where that came from, Eric :)

    ~ahem~

    meanwhile...

    Just to change gears. My idea for NOT WRAPPED TIGHT still beckons. To recap; after 5000 years of death together, a female mummy is separated from her mummy husband. She wakes up, and in good mummy fashion must consume the ka of a living person to fully revive. She hunts down her husband and revives him, only to learn that he'd prefer to remain dead. I have a graphic novel script set in 1799, which I wrote for Mario Boon. Ultimately we determined that it wouldn't work in a way that met his needs and so he has gone on to something more suitable. So now I could draw this, but I discovered that I didn't want to draw 1799. I wanted to draw 2013. I have a version set in 1925 that would make a better template for a contemporary version, but this is what I have been frozen over for the last few months.

    Its just inexcusable.

    AND; my general approach has been to do done-in-one stories as graphic novels. NOT WRAPPED TIGHT fits that bill, but does it have to? My other thought... as I mentioned in another thread, is to have an identifiable character to build stories about. Can Deed Sallow be fitted to this concept? Sure he can, but should I?
  • edited April 2013
    I'm not particularly a fan of horror. I don't read it, really, nor watch a lot of horror movies. But I do have a theory of horror.

    In horror, the monster is a personification of nature's amoral consumption and fecundity. Nature devours and spits itself back out. In horror, we are fodder, we lose our identities and become the thing devoured. Its this loss of self, and subsequent transformation into the monster, that evokes our disgust and fear. And make no mistake, disgust is an element of horror.

    But just as rockets, ray guns and robots are the furniture of science fiction, so vampires, werewolves etc are the furniture of horror. Now I find that this appeals for me as a fantasy device in a way that superheroes no longer do.

    Deed Sallow can be my gateway into this sort of fantasy.
  • Of course, I also want to do a romance/ love story.
  • I have invented two characters, male and female to interact with Irisi, the mummy girl from NWT. A version of them appear in the 18thC script, and with variations in the 1925 script. The woman is attacked first, and haunts Irisi after she is consumed. While the male becomes an "almost" love interest that Irisi uses to help track down her missing mummy husband. I was thinking of inserting Deed Sallow into the story as a kind of detective figure, but it was complicating things and left no room for Isabel Drat.

    But the obvious finally occurred to me; to use Deed and Isabel in those roles. Since I don't want Isabel Drat to die for keeps, then it provides a rationale for Deed Sallow to attempt to resurrect her.

    Or I could reverse it, and Isabel has to rescue Deed. On one hand, it make "no" difference. On the other hand, if I write the kind of rich characters I would like to write, it changes relationships considerably.
  • edited April 2013
  • Of course, I also want to do a romance/ love story.
    That's what "Not wrapped tight" is, innit? 
  • It is in many respects, although it has a kind of sad ending. If I pour in my Deed Sallow/Isabel Drat concept it may impact how that love story reads. I need to think it through better.
  • So I am making a little headway on a sort of outline for my story tonight. The opening follows the original version set in 1925 London, but updated to contemporary northern California, and using Deed Sallow as the first victim of Irisi, and Isabel Drat as her resentful guide. This places them in a competition to each rescue her man at the expense of the other. I believe that Deed Sallow will survive the experience, but will be transformed by it.
  • A small side point occurred to me. The mummies are in the Horace Canning Brownfield Museum of Antiquities up on the Mendocino coast. Brownfield was a Tommy who survived in the trenches of WW1 by drinking the blood of the dead and dying. He lives on today as a wealthy recluse funding the museum and paying Deed Sallow to hunt down exhibits. It occurred to me that changing the name of the museum to the Horace Canning Brownfield Museum of Obscenities might lend a Lovecraftian touch, don't you think?
  • edited April 2013
    But who in the public is going to attend a Musuem of Obscenitiies.... Not to mention what city council is going to give it zoning permits? Give it the more natural name. But use the other as a nickname explained in narration or dialogue.
  • edited April 2013
    A good point. It depends on how naturalistic the world they inhabit is. And how concerned they are with attendance. In a world of boogies and supernatural beasties, perhaps that is their target audience? I think those are the things to be determined in making a final choice... but at least I have two choices available.

    My work can be very cartoony, but I think there is usually an underlying naturalism, and may ultimately assert itself and compel the Antiquities choice. But perhaps not.
  • What about a secret museum inside the museum? A Batcave of obscenities, if you will?
  • That occurred to me as I was writing the above. It may be an excellent solution. Thanks for provoking!
  • edited April 2013
    Getting started. I basically know the opening, and the ending. But will need to come up with something engaging for the "getting there" part. Baby steps and no hurry, but also no desire to dawdle. At any rate, here are my thoughts on an opening:

    Isabel Drat is the Director of the Horace Canning
    Brownfield Museum of Antiquities/Obscenities in rural Northern California. The
    museum’s prize exhibit is a pair of 5000 year old Egyptian mummies; a great
    warrior, called Anokhemnebi and his wife Irisi. When Isabel takes the
    Anokhemnebi to a clinic in San Francisco to be CATscanned, Irisi, separated
    from her husband for the first time in 50 centuries, wakes up.





    But to sustain herself, she must consume the ka, the vital spark, of a living being.
    In Irisi’s case, it is a cat that crawls into the space at Irisi’s side where
    Anokhemnebi had lain, whose live force is devoured.  She is still horrible, however and dances
    madly about as she dons her jewelry and clothes from a nearby case. She eats
    the contents of her canopic jars and retches them back up.





    Hearing the noise, Deed Sallow comes to investigate. He
    subdues her, but when his back is turned, she attacks him and steals his sheut, his shadow substance, leaving him
    immobilized.



    When Isabel returns, she finds the museum a shambles,
    Irisi missing (and the dead cat) and Deed Sallow nowhere to be found. She
    conducts a search, finding Deed comatose and eventually Irisi.


  • I will have to remember to wash these through notepad to knock out the formatting before I post.
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