And in conclusion

Let's go back to the Outland movie before moving on…

The point of this particular part of the story one guesses is to "destroy" our hero, to put him through an ordeal that challenges his entire state of mind, that leaves him with no reason to continue his quest, in short to make him a true hero he has to loose everything dear to him

But even the movie fails to make that very clear, it's missing some scenes that could have established the family and the difficulties they was having on io, yet another one of a seemingly endless tour of inhospitable places - it wouldn't have taken much extra

So is it fair to wonder why such things are missing from the comic adaptation?

Well, let's take a step back and see everything that has been highlighted as setting the scene in the art and see what out of that is unique within these pages..

It definitely cant be use the of shadow, one could not really say that this was being used to set a mood, without immediately wondering precisely what mood or message is trying to be conveyed in every other page, equally soaked in shadow

It cant be the focus on unimportant things (the apartment) and lack of focus on what is supposed to be the focus (the tiny figure of O'neil) as there has already been inexplicable focus of pipes fixtures and fittings before this double pager..

It cant even be that o-neil is tiny, as elsewhere figures are disproportionate in relation to their actual importance

I think this double spread really probably tells you all you need to know about whats going on in the comic, basically that each double spread will be a abstract study on a particular part of the movie, drawn in a bold and evocative way, but with little actual substance underneath it, particular if it gets in the way of the stylistic depection

until the whole thing becomes almost an abstract study of art that is just kind of related to the movie itself

Is this comics? Only by including the smaller panels actually showing any sequential movement does the art actually hang onto this category, albeit with an uneven sense of time, with a second stretched out, and minutes compressed down depending on where you look

the whole adaptation basically ending up as bold statement, this is Steranko, like or leave it -- I can't get enough of this personally..

so here we go with the pages together..

A nice place to wrap up the year -as this concludes the first episode of Outland as published in Heavy Metal

Of course I will be carrying in the New year or possibly even before then, but just in case ..

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year and a special thank you to everyone reading this for doing so, I hope it's been at least marginally entertaining

Up close and personal

Up close and personal

Now let's "compare the meerkat" between the Comic and the Outland movie for a moment…

This particular scene is markedly different in the movie as O'Neil and his wife are face to face but separated by her being on a video screen as a message and the movie alternates between "talking heads" shots of O'Neil and his wife

In short he goes through this emotional upheaval full on, not at anything like the same distance at all and its made all the more painful and real for doing so (or at least that's the intention)- now there is another scene in the movie, where O'neil replays the video message again (apparently to underline how much the loss means to him) and he occasionally looks at it - this time at a bit more of a distance..

But this scene is not in the comic adaptation either and there are also some other key moments missed

Find out what they are soon… and what this is all building up to...

She just called to say...

So offsetting all the darkness and distance between o'neil and his family portrait is a video call from what can only be his wife..

(quoting from memory the movie dialog)..

"I hate these things" (referring to the video answer machine) "but I couldn't face you and say this…"

"but i'm leaving. "

Sounds very much like O'neil's being dumped…? But, wait there is more…

"it's not you" she says, "it's Paulie" (their child) who has never had a normal environment, never seen Earth

She goes on to describe Earth which in a twist from the usual science fiction story, sounds like its all in one piece as she talks about breathing real air and seeing blue skies (no dystopia here)… and pleads with o'neil to come to earth with them

and says she loves him (from the bottom of her heart?)

In the movie this scene amounts to the only real bit of character moment for o'neil as a person

Why would he stay behind in the perpetual shadow on io when his family and earth awaits him

His wife says he is stubborn but there must be more to it than that? Or is there?

And does this 2 page spread convey the feeling that should be here or say something else entirely…

Find out tomorrow

From a distance..

As we continue our exploration of O'neil's "Bachelor pad", we pass a wardrobe / closet with drawers open, a couple of food shelfs, an unused sink and then get drawn down (by spot lighting - indicating the way to look) a increasingly narrow corridor to see o'neil for the first time as a very tiny figure, slumped in the chair reacting to something… which can only be a video call..

All the proceeding darkness and distance between o'neil and his family portrait and his tiny appearance here telling almost everything you need to know - the family has gone - but how and why…

Tune in tomorrow to find out more

Family Portrait…

"In our family portrait, we look pretty happy, Let's play pretend, Let's act like it comes naturally"

So go the lyrics of the song "Family Portrait" by Pink…

She could well be singing about the Portrait you can see here, next to the bear…

As here we can see O'neil has a family who was happy, before O'neil got his current assignment (as he is not in uniform here) and when he was a bit younger (no beard or moustache though thats rather harder to see)

Here is an example of the overwhelming amount of shadow being used to actually tell the story or set the mood for the story, as O'neil's whole apartment is in almost total darkness and this is one of the few bits of light both in the apartment and in o'neil's life…

But what has happened since and where are the family now?

Next page will bring the answers…

Please, do not adjust your set

Here we go - a lot of lines on the page now…

Speaking of which, have a look at the 4 panels at the bottom, now unless you had really looked closely at Steranko's original, you probably did not notice that these panels had lines across them to represent the fact that the they are being shown on a old "computerised" monitor screen

Mostly because the lines are so small, they almost disappear - but they are uniform on each panel and completely straight as well which just about makes them visible

But I figured that not only would I make these lines a lot bigger but I would not have them in the same place from panel to panel to give it a bit more of a "rolling" look…

how well this will turn out post rollerball is anyone's guess..!

A Scotsman's Home is his Castle

In Sean Connery's case that is probably literally true.. 

but in Outland as O'Neil Steranko's text describes his apartment as being "a narrow and confined space"…

But hang on a minute it is rather clearly shown in the movie a bit later on (and even in this adaptation to a lesser degree) that all the workers have is a cage like cube (all stacked next to and on top of each other) with just about enough room for a mattress and very little privacy…

(Yes that is Steven Berkoff…)

anyways - a glance at the drawing, shows plenty of indications that this is a typical Bachelor pad:- the unmade and untidy bed, bits of paper strewn on the floor, hardly any lights on and no sign of the occupant in the main living area...

That's until you see the little corner on the left hand side, with a Teddy Bear and a family picture - so what's going on here…?

Oh you have to the next page to find that out

The Doctor is In!

I am making good progress this week, but that's mostly down to these pages being a bit easier to do with just the main figures needing the black out or any other stage of inking other than fine line - so here is the finished page of O'neil meeting Lazarus…

And as now become traditional here is both pages combined together as Steranko intended...

Now Lazarus has joined the story - will her character continue with the DeForest Kelly or end up more like Lucy from Peanuts …?

There's only one way to find out..!

Don't turn your back on me!

So here we go with another big cut out shadow of a figure for o'neil…

This time he has his back completely to us and remains expressionless and as before most of the actual "action" within the scene that is set by the massive 2 page spread panel - actually occurs in the tiny talking heads panels down below

But at least this time round the figures are in a more typical proportion, with Montone and Lazarus being roughly the same size and o'neil literally casting a shadow over them all

This does - at least to my eyes bring even more focus to the background remaining fine line and almost melting away into pointlessness this time not just featuring the almost ubiquitous pipes and wall features, but also some random people who remain chipers

The exact same random people who just a few pages back could have been taking up a entire page…

There are so many examples of this adaptation being a triumph of literal reinvention of the form over any substance it does enter the realm of surreality

and that's what continues to get me excited about doing each page, just what is coming next..?

"It's worse than that, she's dead Jim!"

Here goes Peter Hyams again, naming yet another character after their actions in the story..

We have already had Montone (who is just black and white) and Shepherd (who rules over the "sheep"of Io)

And now, we have a lady who apparently must be gong through some kind of spiritual rebirth - a character named nothing less than Doctor Lazarus - who at least to me seems to be borrowing from a character most famously played by DeForest Kelly....

She obviously is not physically dead, so it can only be a spiritual rebirth, right?

But how profound is the rebirth and what represents the "death" state she was in before…

Well it can only be here when she is first introduced, tired, haggard and obviously just not giving much of a damn, in the traditional western this would not have been a female role at all, but these are modern times here in io, so there she is, surrounded by a ton of machinery and a lot of random arbitrary assistants just pushing buttons for no obvious reason, just not caring

Until along comes o'neil who not only profanes her sanctum with his odious presence (which I suppose was shocking enough) but basically yells at her could not care less flip attitude and promises to kick her ass, unless she pulls her thumb out

Is that it? 

Well there appears to be no other real explanation for Lazarus change of heart as the story progress

So to sum up all she needed was a rough Scotsman to yell at her and (almost, though if this was a western with John Wayne it would have been a real slap) figuratively slap her face into realising she is part of the awfulness to be revealed

Oh speaking of awfulness here's the roughshod couldn't care less pencils from me, maybe I need someone to yell at me here?

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programme…

Hey, I am sure you will all remember after some great feedback from Matt Seneca, I did a super-sized degenerated panel just for him?

But, before I get too carried away, why not head over to Death to the universe if you haven't already (or maybe you should just go around in an endless loop of blog entries -- degrading forever.. right, Matt?!) and read an infinitely better blog on the same subject

This blog is of course the copied and degraded version, m'kay?

Well the panel above was not quite the end of our shenanigans, I am sure you may remember that the week following I was a bit quiet?

Well one reason was I had lost a bit of time waffling on endlessly about my "methods" the week before but there was another reason…

And as before it was all down to Matt Seneca… and the conversation we had in around the panel above..

Here's part of a letter I sent Matt..

"I guess I was still hyped from Fridays excitement and had all these thoughts and ideas floating round, Steranko degraded, straight to ink rollerball, exploding conventions, my terrible hand lettering, the pose of the figure in that Outland panel..

And then you mentioned you are getting into two-panel grids and that was it - BOOM was born in my head almost there and then, I somehow knew exactly what I wanted to do, a second panel, flipping the figure from the first completely destroying the background and filling up the panel with a huge BOOM!"

"I suppose it is the figure and his pose that does it for me, in either panel he is standing there as if he has nothing to do with the panel he is in, in no way does he look like a man who is stepping in airlock out of his clock on drugs, yet there he is blithely ignoring enough warning signs to choke a whole state of lawyers on…. I wont even ask how a man that drugged and can successfully fully sequence a airlock?!

I hated trying to letter all of that stuff so took a distinct pleasure in cutting all to shreds, so in a way "BOOM!" is my reaction to the "coldness" your talking about, what's it going to take to get this guy to notice his predicament?! Even a explosion makes no odds...

And also the size of the figure, I mean this person is supposed to be the central focus of the pages I am working on, not those anonymous three or so miners that take up the whole entire other page… man, only Steranko can do that!

And I sure as heck am no Steranko"

Does it end there?

No.. as I also suggested that Matt could "copy it then slap paint all over it, that would be cool"

And what do you know, Matt has delivered and delivered in spades…

Matt's painting on these is absolutely awesome it puts a whole entire fresh level of perspective and artistry on top of those panels breathing even more life into that still locked in figure

Starting off with a cool blue - clearly showing us how cold / neutral the first panel is, while there is still some hints of life and blood flowing through our "hero" contrasted with the bright light distorted orange caution sign overlaid - the painting on this for some reason reminding me of Dash Shaw

Flipping then straight to to full on red explosion of colour over emphasising the intensity of feeling and anger in the need to just destroy all that background and just leave the figure mostly untouched even by this level of intensity, who is now devoid of anything just stark black and white

or you could just say it rocks!

Added to this Matt has Put a black and white striped and distorted background referring back to the original locked in contrast of sterenako's original work and my careless use of the rollerball pen

In short Matt has made a work of art

I wish I could get Jaunty Jim to clap his eyes on this one, this pop art meets I don't know what, it almost defies convention or description!

But is that ALL?… ohhh that WOULD be telling now wouldn't it ;-)

A Lesson in contrast

Ah, not the type of contrast we have seen so far, where everyone seems to live in half if not 3 quarters of shadow, although there is some of that on this page…

It's the contrast of styles Steranko has chosen which make this page really interesting, all the background characters and the all the pipes and wall parts of the medical facility are all very fine line

On top of this we have the cut-out locked in black and white style we are used to but for the main characters only, here we see Monotone and part of O'Neil's arm stand out sharply and lot sharper than they would say, imposed over a huge pool of black…

The message is clear, this is what's important the foreground, the background for all its ridiculous meticulousness might as well be semi transparent

It makes for a compelling contrast from anything seen before and brings the focus back to more regular figure dynamics, with Montone ruling the whole page - even though he is not grossly oversized

Next page, we will see the rest of O'neil and --- The Lady who came back from the Dead…!

"Let's be careful out there"

Well while we are looking at a picture of Monotone:-

How about the actor that portrayed him.. James B. Sikking?

Who is Probably best known for is portrayal of Lieutenant Howard Hunter the EAT Commander in "Hill Street Blues".. Boy that takes me back awhiles..

Hey YOU be careful out there!

"There's a thin line between love and crime"…

So go the lyrics of the Pet Shop Boys song "in the night" (best known as being the theme to the BBC TV show "The Clothes Show")

The love in question, of course being my love of art and comics…

The crime - being mine again against art in making a mess of Steranko's unique vision…

The thin line?  Oh they are all over the place, witness the below:-

The Theme from M.A.S.H…

Did you ever wonder why the TV show theme was just a instrumental - when in fact the actual song in the Movie had lyrics…?

Well I can only guess it was on Monotone's mind during this exchange, which somehow comes across as a bizarre sit-com type delivery

O'Neil's dismissive "never mind", sums up the usefulness of Monotone quite succinctly, I mean after all he is black and white…

no shades of grey?  hmmm… maybe… maybe not…

Another double spread for you! (Parental Advisory)

I have finally managed to complete the "grisly elevator" page which now looks like this (parental advisory):-

And as usual here is the two pages together, as Steranko intended:-

Now I am getting a bit behind with this, so I am going to move onto the next page as soon as I can!

A man fell into a airlock - parental advisory

No the advisory is not for the text but rather the last panel on the page, which actually appears lined for the first time..

But before we get there is it me, or is this whole sequence completely unrealistic, not to mention rather unlikely

to quote a movie (though I can not remember which one right now), "You don't just fall into a airlock, levers have he be pulled and buttons have to be pushed" yes, and all in the correct sequence - what's the chances of doing that while out of your head on illicit narcotics? (oops that should have had a spoiler warning before it..)

and don't even start me with the depiction of what happens to the guy once he has managed to cycle the airlock - either the movie, which cuts to a shot implying that the mans guts turned inside out completely or Sterenko's version which seems to suggest the guy had a massive carton of tomato ketchup with him..

But - don't just take my word for it..

"In scores of science fiction stories, hapless adventurers find themselves unwittingly introduced to the vacuum of space without proper protection. There is often an alarming cacophony of screams and gasps as the increasingly bloated humans writhe and spasm. Their exposed veins and eyeballs soon bulge in what is clearly a disagreeable manner. The ill-fated adventurers rapidly swell like over-inflated balloons, ultimately bursting in a gruesome spray of blood.

As is true with many subjects, this representation in popular culture does not reflect the reality of exposure to outer space"

says http://www.damninteresting.com/outer-space-exposure

and it goes on to explain what would happen.

No, sorry these sort of "splatterfests", are just a hollywoodisation, similar to how a car can just spontaneously explode for no apparent reason what so ever, its all designed to introduce a element of drama in a cutting way, taken as a piece of entrainment, well that's  question of opinion

But as a fact, no - it isn't!

Finally that panels finished

I was beginning to wonder if there could be any more pipes left in the world...

I mean how tiny is the character your supposed to be actually focusing on here...

Here is that tiny tiny figure in the airlock door..

He actually appears largest (in one piece that is) in that panel I infamously featured oversized...

before he meets his untimely (not to mention rather unlikely) end..

What did he do to deserve that?!

The pipes are calling me..

Now I don't know about you but I think that is one heck of a lot of piping!

Am I slowing down here? Guess so… More time drawing and less talking then!

Another Twenty Four Hours?!

Hey no, Eddie Murphy it was only about 2 hours - again 

And I am short of time - so thankfully (?!) not much commentary

Anyways here is the progress I made, it's a lot easier to do this now I have covered my "methods"

Enjoy 

Two hours Twenty Minutes

That's how long it took me to do this portion of base linework, a heck of a lot of tiny detail there especially the airlock itself:-

- Oh as I have had enough self indulgence in the last few days to last a while, I thought I would cut it our for a while and just let the "art" speak for itself..

M'kay?

The Dude Abides!

Golly - did I get carried away in my last blog entry or what?

So carried away I forgot a few things :-

A Big Thank you to Matt  "The Dude" Seneca who's views and praise are really out of this world

I guess it's more than fair enough to say "The Dude Abides..."

And this Dude is going to get the chance to be the first Professor of Comics at UCLA

If nothing else this shows finally how important comics actually are to culture as a whole, no more dismissive "it's just for kids" it is now serious enough to study at one of the most prestigious colleges anywhere!

About time - don't forget everyone - "kicking the doors down, both barrels blazing - now that IS comics" as Matt's uber blog and his rocking podcast will readily attest

And a special thank you and hi to Sean Witzke whose quote I misappropriated the last blog entry

Now - normal service will resume next time around!

Californication!

Ah, California – “Where the sun shines on the just and unjust alike” – Home to the O.C. and Matt Seneca…

Yeah that Matt Seneca:- 

“Matt Seneca is the rare guy who writes about comics that can make you excited about a medium that’s in the process of chewing off its own legs and slowly bleeding to death.” said Sean Witzke fairly recently

Well it turns out that Matt sent a tweet on his twitter account saying the following:-

"also: this cat is SO TOTALLY my favorite comics artist right now"

Which was linked to this very blog (and brought along a lot of extra views, Hi everyone!)

So I figured Matt must have meant Jaunty Jim Steranko – I mean its fairly clear that Matt is a massive Steranko fan, it was after all his enthusiasm and inspiration that started me off on this project in the first place – but if that was not enough grab two eyes full of his and Sean Witzke’s take on the first issue of “Nick Fury : Agent of SHEILD" 

 But in reply Matt said…

“No man, I meant YOU! Those Outland pencils look incredible, I love the rawness of the first drafts.  You should do some pages straight to ink with no pencils, really nail the immediacy of the off-kilter handmade shapes you're making before you polish them up.  The stuff looks incredible -- Barnard's Outland is looking like it's gonna be my favourite comic of 2011!”

Wow – I mean like, totally wow, what can one say to something like this? Barnard's Outland --- seriously?!!! Hey Jim I am profoundly sorry.

I think I need the rest of my life to recover from that, and I can't even contemplate it for real as that would be one lengthy blog entry,  full of endless soul deep pudibundity -  but instead -- in reply to Matt, I said:-

"Okay I am more than up for some wild experimentation as I suppose its kind of the name of the game as someone like me trying to do Steranko is a bit crazy - so why not got just a little bit further?!

So what I am going to do is the last panel I just done again but this time I have printed out as large as I could its about half A4 size and I will use JUST the rollerball to draw directly from what I can see on my tiny light box"

to which Matt replied:-

"Yes!  This is going to look great: Steranko's obviously got the structure, but what you bring to the table is the rawness, some human handmade element that cuts through the cold I always talk about finding in his comics.  

Can't wait to see it! "

This guy has just completely floored me...!

Well Matt, wait no more - here you go I done this exactly as I said I would!

Here is the large sized original under the white craft card on top of on my tiny lightbox, with the rollerball in view:-

with the base linework this time as well and inking straight onto the card using the rollerball I forced myself to try and do this quicker so it would look "rougher", I will let you judge how successful or otherwise I was

and here is the final product to which I probably have only mildly exaggerated the figure this time around, but the small letters degrade to pieces

Matt, I hope it is what you was looking for -?!

But honestly I love to hear from anyone following or visiting this little blog and  Iam more than happy to have a go at something - especially if its a bit off kilter

And yes my commission rate is zero , no dollars - Matt will be getting the original bit of art in the post hopefully soon

What on earth could possibly top this?!

Outland - The Methods - "inking" part 2

So, Okay I have a panel with base linework, and I said I use 2 more processes before having something finished

The first process I describe as "inside line" / small blacking in

For this I use a standard handwriting pen - small blacking in is reasonably self explanatory - anything that is too tiny for a large black out will get blacked out using the handwriting pen

"inside line" is where I will draw a line using the handwriting pen inside a object that needs more or a lot of blacking out

So in our example panel I have done "inside line" on the big lettering and on the figure:-

Another thing I have done is made the outside edge of the figure "pop" a bit by doing the outside line again with the handwriting pen

The next process is simply blacking in and for this I use a liquid ink rollerball pen!

Now the reason I do the inside line on any large object requiring black out is because the rollerball tends to make doing a fine crisp and straight line a bit difficult and its very easy to just go right over a tiny bit of white that should be left behind.

If you remember the Sean Connery drawing..

At this stage above all I had done was a bit of base line work some inside line and all the rest was just waving the rollerball over the white until none was left to show - like I said before when I first showed this page, it's a neat way of creating the illusion a lot of work was done - as a lot of the page is now filled

but with Outland its all in the detail, and there is mountains of it!

So anyway here is the panel all blacked in and as finished as it  ever will be:-

And this is a pure black and white scan rather than a greyscale as previous, notice how the pencils are now completely invisible - no erasing necessary - another neat trick to use in conjunction with the 4h pencil

and for comparison purposes here is what the black and white version of the original page scan looks like:-

So you can probably see in quite a number of ways how having a really big figure is easier to do than any of these tiny details as you have to almost reinterpret for these details to show up - and unfortunately this means the end result gains some of my "style" for want of a better expression

oh well, you can't win them all!

Anyway that was probably a exhaustive warts and all look at what I am using as methods, so now I can just carry on drawing without having to explain anything further and return to sometimes random and sometimes salient commentary on the art, the movie, the characters and the actors portrayed!

So some good news there?!

Outland - The Methods - "inking" part 1

Outland - The Methods - "inking" part 1 

So okay I have a penciled page - next up is "inking"

As it normally takes a 2-3 days  to put "inking" in place  for one page I have decided to focus on doing just one of the small side panels

Here is the barely visible pencils - the panel is very tiny 73mm wide and 49mm high and is not meant to be seen this large

Though I have not shown this previously I actually break down what I call inking into three separate processes, I will cover the next two next time around

The first process I describe as base linework

I use a ultra fine drawing pen, the smallest tip I could find (it has a 01 on top as its 0.1mm) and I use this to draw lines where I think they should go, this type of pen is ideal for tiny tiny details - I look at the black and white print out and the pencils, I use the pencils as a guide if they are not clear enough and will line as close to what I can see on the black and white print as I can manage - and I will line to the pencils if I think they are not too far from what I can see.

As I think I have mentioned before I try and line inside a shape that will be filled in with black and outside a shape that will be left white - some of the bits of white that will be left are really tiny and need all the help they can get!

I spent around 45 minutes on this bit of base linework - again the panel is very tiny 73mm wide and 49mm high and is not meant to be seen this large - you can see that I have particular problems with hand lettering - which is why I have left the speech balloons all blank so far so apologies for that

Tomorrow I will be letting loose the handwriting pen and possibly the roller ball on this panel as those are the tools I use for stages 2 and 3 respectively….

Oh and hello to whomever is tweeting about my blog!

I would love to hear any comments anyone has, by all means tell me to shut up if I am going on too much!

Outland - The Methods - Pencils

Okay so I have already penciled the next page - so I thought I would use this page to explain / clarify the methods I am using - probably will disappoint a few people here, but I am nothing if not honest!

Firstly I downloaded all of the brilliantly scanned original pages from The Drawings of Steranko web site (be sure to drop them a email and say Hi and let them know what your doing!)

Next I used iPhoto (but you can use anything similar, photoshop etc) to make the images all black and white and to remove as much colour as possible - this image is then printed out on the biggest size you can make it on the biggest size paper you can print on, in my case its A4 size .. (that's 210 × 297 mm)

then… I blue tack this print out onto the back of a bit a standard craft  white cardboard the same size (not  that thick, but thick enough to soak up the ink without bending too much) and place it ontop of a light box (I only have a rather small one, which was cheap)

and use a 4h pencil (as I tend to not erase the pencils from a finished piece due to the sheer amount of ink on a page!) and spend around 2 hours drawing everything I can see - 

so yes I am just a shameless tracer

 - but the challenge is between the end result being too degraded and as close to the original as possible

I do try and take my time and make the most of the existing detail as I can, but I have to admit my pencils tend to be rather loose - the method and pencil type I am using do not lend themselves well to the extremely tiny details found in outland..

Anyway - this is what I got after about 2 hours - (thankfully its barely visible!)

Why don't you have a go, I would be interested to see the results!

Tomorrow I spill the beans on how I do linework..!