Artist Corner – Douglas Noble

Posted: February 22nd, 2009 | Author: sean azzopardi | Filed under: Artists Corner | Tags: Artist corner, Douglas Noble, Strip For Me, intereviewed, by, Sean Azzopardi ,2009 | 5 Comments »

Douglas is the writer and artist behind the comic and website Strip For Me and has produced dozens of mini comics utilizing a stark illustrative style and a literary writing approach. He has also been published by Marvel Comics, and is currently working with Daniel Merlin Goodbrey on the webcomic The Rule Of Death at serializer.net.

When I first read your Unfriendly Romances I was thinking that your process was photographs manipulated in Photoshop. On closer inspection I realized that it was an intensely worked graphic styling using traditional materials.  So, Doug, what are your pens and pencils of choice? Do you buy really expensive art materials, or are you an expert in the art of Biro manipulation?

It’s all pens.  Cheap pens.

I don’t use any particularly exciting art methods or materials.  For me it’s all just a matter of getting the marks down on the paper.  I’ve never really considered myself and artist, just a writer that happens to draw a little.  If I could get other people to the hard work, I would.  For preference though, I like the Schnieder Topball range of pens, which flow well, and with a little scribbling give a nice, obsessive line.  Round our way they are a big hit.

Here’s Takashi with the Schneider Topball 861.

And here’s Klaus, this time showing off the Topball 845. 

(Don’t mind them.  Their comics are terrible.)

 

I tend to work at A4, largely as it’s easy to get the paper, and it fits into the scanner with no difficulty.  At that size the Topball looks good: solid, but not too heavy.  For big areas of black I’ll use whatever marker comes to hand, or write in a little x and do it after scanning.  There’s no mystery or magic, it’s all about getting the job done.  That’s the main thing. 

Once you have a script how do you break things down and get to a finished page. Is there any difference in the approach between say The Rule Of Death, or The Silent Choir?

My process for every story is radically different, and is tied to the project at hand.  Sometimes, as with The Silent Choir, I’ll be starting with a fairly full script, with all the text in place, and notation for what the images should be.  What I do is to decide how the pages are going to look, thumbnail out what I’m going to do, and use the computer to print out the panel grids.  This is especially useful for strips that use the same layouts over and over, like The Silent Choir or Unfriendly Romances.

The Unfriendly Romances exist as a layout first, in fact.  I draw the page first, filling in the panels within the existing layout, and then see what story is suggested by the juxtaposition of images.  It sounds like a fairly dry process when it’s written down like that, but there’s always room for surprises.   

With The Rule of Death, because there’s a script coming in from Mr Goodbrey, it’s a whole other thing.  I’ll read the script through and then thumbnail the tranche of pages he’s sent me, happily rejigging the page count and pacing.  He complains constantly, but I think deep down that he knows it’s for the best.  It’s not that I necessarily come up with a better way to do things, but I tend to come up with the best way for me to do things, whether that’s because I’m able to keep myself amused with what I add, or simply to avoid drawing something that I just can’t draw.  I’ll change the pictures that he asks for, but it’s not often that I change his dialogue.  He should think himself lucky.

So, once I have my layouts printed, I go through as many pages as I can in very rough pencils.  Here’s a Rule of Death page to show you what I mean.

Mainly this is just to place things, to sort out things in my mind.  I’ll have a good idea of what’s to go in each panel, but this lets me make sure that the page balances out.

After all the pages are sketched out like this, I will go back over them and firm the pencils up into something that’s a lot closer to the final art.  It’s still fairly sketchy though, as you can see here:

Once it’s got to this point, it to the inks, where I’ll ignore everything I’ve done before except for the pencil mistakes that I like the look of.  By the time I do this, it has probably been a few days since the initial sketch was done, so I’ve changed my mind about what I want from the page.  The inks allow me a last go over and most details are finalised here.  I tend not to change much after scanning, unless I make a horrible error of some kind.  It ends up looking like this:

 

The letters go on in Photoshop, and then we’re done.  You can see the final version  on the 20^th of March if you go to the website.

An exception to all this mucking about would be A Man of Certain Talents, which was all done straight to ink.

On The Rule Of Death, what is the approach to coloring, is it chunky crayola or photoshop magic?

Don’t know, I don’t colour it in.  My black and white pages go back to Goodbrey and he fills them in using Photoshop, I think.  That’s what I did on Robotnik.  It is something that I should pay more attention to, but I think it all goes back to not considering myself an artist, as such.  I should really put the time in and learn how to colour, but that would get in the way of telling the next story.

Certainly, my ideas about how colour should be used are very different from that of my writer, which isn’t to say I don’t like what he does!  It’s nice to get a surprise when I see the finished product.

Once the pages are complete, how are they collected into a comic. Do they get sent to a printers? Do you fold and staple them yourself?

I write pieces that are complete to themselves, so the recent work that has ended up in comics are intended to be comics, and the web site stuff has just been intended for the website.  Robotnik and the Unfriendly Romances have been ideal for the web as they are self contained.  I don’t really have plans to collect either.

With some of the recent print comics, like Cocksmen of the Western World, for example, I’ve sat down and concentrated on making something that the reader would be able to pick up as a whole story.  Not necessarily a story that everyone will enjoy, of course, but I can’t do much about that.  Those comics are all of the fold and staple variety.  I’ve got a long armed stapler, you know.  It makes life so much easier.

The Rule of Death collections are dealt with by Mr Goodbrey through a printer’s.  In the past we’ve been printing them grey from the colourised versions, though I’ve not been entirely happy with the results.  Hopefully, we’ll see t6he next one in glorious monochrome.

I was surprised but also impressed when I realized that you had published 26 issues of Strip For Me. That is a chunk of work. Do you plan to collect it into a book?

Not all of it.  I wouldn’t say that there was a decent issue until 14, and it’s only with the last two years worth that I think it’s become the thing that it should’ve been in the first place.  Ah well.

That said, there’s enough solid work for three or more books, including a collection of The Silent Choir.  The first will be later this year, I hope, which I plan to do myself.  I’d like to collect some of the better pieces from the pages of the comics, along with the long story Live Static, which was on the website and has never been collected before.  The book will be called What We Know About Falling Apart.  Like I say, I’ll be doing the book myself, but if anyone wants to publish it for me, I’d be glad to discuss it!

Also, any new work on the horizon (feel free to big up the Hammer Illo’s and robotnik here, showing the interviewer up for being the arse that he is)

I’m wrapping everything on the website up at the moment, including Robotnik, Unfriendly Romance, and the Hammerama series of illustrations of Hammer films.  The reason for this house clearing is that I will be starting a big new project at the beginning of March.  Complex, the new story, will be a big, expansive take on the end of the world, among other things, and it’s an evolution of some of the themes that are apparent in my other work.  You’ll like it, I’m sure.  It’ll be a treat.

There’ll be bits and pieces in anthologies too – Western from Accent UK will have a couple of one page tales by me.  More to come too.

Along with all that, I’ve been working on a number of different bits and pieces for other people to draw, which lets me wear my writer’s hat for once.  That’s my favourite hat to wear.  If I am not mistaken even you have been tapped to be part of this movement, with the story Sightings of Wallace Sendek.  Maybe you’d like to talk about that one?

Well, i think it would be better to just show a page, and slink of into the shadows, apologizing for how long it is taking…

Finally what would your ideal set up be for your comics workspace? Would you like a studio, cinema houseboat perhaps?

In this most perfect of all possible worlds, I’m happy to be able to get time to put pen to paper.  I work on a wooden board that sits on my knees, and am happy with it.  If I were allowed the ideal set-up though, the absolutely ideal set-up, I would enjoy something like the mountain hide-out from Danger: Diabolik!  

Primary colours and a bed made out of money.  What’s not to like?

 

Doug, thank you for your time.

 

Doug’s website  - Strip for me

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