Art & Comics by Katherine Roy

A short cartoon story about kissing! I had a lovely time finishing this in pencil and watercolor last week. Hope you enjoy!

We Love You So is a website established by Spike Jonze and the creative team of the film Where the Wild Things Are to “help shed some light on many of the small influences that converged to make this massive project a reality,” and my Caterpillar Tales were just featured on it yesterday!!

http://weloveyouso.com/2010/03/the-art-and-times-of-katherine-roy/

“The only thing better than enthusiasm is enthusaiasm + talent. Katherine Roy is an exemplar of both— a cartooning machine whose Caterpillar Tales celebrates the adventures and struggles of its namesake hero. Roy is a natural storyteller (she released her first childrens’, A Kid’s Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail last year) and a zippy cartoonist. She also maintains a nice little blog cataloging her art experiments and assorted daily thoughts. Just delightful.”

Thank you to Molly for the wonderful review and the nod to my work! I am just thrilled.

More to be posted soon!

About two weeks ago I wrote about a potential project based on my travels in Egypt, and promised to finish thumbnailing the pages for a full length story by February 23rd. “Did she finish?” asks one. “Is it brilliant?” asks another. “Can I read it right now Katherine? When will it be available on Amazon? Will you be doing a promotional tour across America?” That last part, I am quite certain, no one is asking.

The answers are as follows: YES! February 17th (5 days EARLY!!) I finished, printed and bound a 186-page booklet of a thumbnailed graphic novel. NO! It is not brilliant. Not even close. I’m lucky if half of it is even legible to anyone but me. BUT! I think I know where it is going, and that was really the point of the journey: to see if anything was there underneath the mental snapshots of our two week trip, and I think I’m onto some good leads. Tim Stout (my wonderful, talented husband) sat down with me on Sunday and helped me to extract the POINT (theme) of my story from a certain thumbnailed sequence I’m rather attached to, and I’ve spent the week diving into the pencils based on what I’ve learned about that same scene. I am excited about the road ahead over the next two months as graduation closes in. By May I should have a solid idea of where this project can go, and some sample finish pages to show for it. And, in the meantime, I will continue to do shorts, to try out different styles and approaches to cartooning. I will post excerpts from the process as I go.

Here is a sample thumbnailed spread from the Midpoint. This was executed by drawing with a wacom tablet and using photos from our trip to create page layouts on my computer:

And here is a sample thumbnailed spread from the latter half of Act 2:

This method of working has treated me very well. Using photos feels a little like “cheating,” but, hey, I took them, right? They are placeholders for drawings until I get a little farther along, but when trying to get through 10 pages a day, it was one of the best ways I found to keep moving. “Hey, I already composed this image– in a photo!– so I’ll borrow from myself. Thanks self!”

We’re in the thesis homestretch!! This semester is going by so fast I can hardly believe it. I’ve finally started a binder with empty plastic sleeves to hold the drafts of my Egypt project, moving from the full 180+ page thumbnailed rough first draft into the penciling stages for a section of the story. Here’s a sample two page spread from the section I’ve been working on this week:

Above is a spread of my initial thumbnails, executed on the Wacom tablet and printed to fit on 8.5X11 paper.  They are clean, but really boring: see all those medium “two-shots” I am using? This is fine in an early writing stage, but I think the panels can do a lot more to tell the story. So using a light box I then put a new sheet of paper on top of the thumbnails and do a first pass at penciling, which looks like this:

There is a lot of mess and clutter, I’ve taped in new panels, struggled with the perspective of the lounge chairs on the cruise ship, all the while trying to focus on composition, composition, composition. “What is this panel doing for the story? Can it be cut? Do I need more information? Do I need all this dialogue? Is the story moving forward? How’s my pacing? Where do the word balloons go?  Why would a grown person spend so much time filling in little boxes with pictures?” I then scan in this drawing and use the Wacom tablet again to clean things up, resize, and drop in some Google Sketch-Up lounge chairs to get them to look right, and print it again:

Now I’m pretty happy with this spread. I stick it in my binder on top of the first two drafts and keep moving forward. This is pretty much ready to pencil onto Bristol board with blue pencil, so that I can ink on top of the blue lines and delete them in Photoshop. This week I’ve done about 9 pages like this, a scene that falls in the latter half of Act 2 of my story. I’m hoping to get through about 30 pages like this, and then ink and color a sample by the time the year is through. Back to work!

Here are a few panels from a section of my Egypt story I’ve been working on this week. I think I’ve finally figured out how to select a few key short stories from the long 180-page first draft to make a “mix tape” of events that will build to equal a complete narrative. Making the components work together while dealing with separate themes has been tough, but I think I’ve made some good progress.

I am sorry for the delay between posts folks; I should be back to two per week really soon. Enjoy!

Another round of Tucker Box color…

A break-up story to appear in Banner Year Press‘s BEAR FIGHT! Anthology in Portland, OR, to be released in early next month and available for sale at the Stumptown Festival in April. This is the second comic in my Bed Time Stories series. Ink & computer color. Enjoy!!

Last week my work was hung in the Tucker Box gallery, a local coffee shop in White River Junction that exhibits work by CCS students, alumni, and fellows, along with serving delicious espresso drinks. My comic 25 Cents: A Caterpillar Tale was initially completed as a four page comic for cartooning studio, but was then reformatted and colored by Joe Lambert to be published in Seven Days Vermont Magazine about a year ago. It’s so much fun to see it at a big scale! Next to my work (right) hang the talents of former fellow Chris Wright (center) and second-year student Melissa Mendes (left). Hurray!

Here’s a sample page from my thesis project with temporary digital color. I’m still figuring out what the “look” of this project is going to be, but the story is finalized and the finished pages can commence.

This is from the third chapter (of five). Page 5 of of 18 pages.