Cover, redux

The Top Hat

Animated Gif Film Photos

As they do usually, some sudden ideas for the novel came to mind this morning in the middle of work. As I was pissing in the library stalls, my mind did one of those crazy whacked-out trips about making the novel into something for the whole family to enjoy. I wondered whether I should make it so you could pick up the novel at any point and begin the journey, whether it could be an infinite novel, one that never really ends but continues on (one page a day for 10 years = 3,650 pages), whether I should podcast the thing, how I could exploit web 2.0 theory to make this even more interactive. In any case, my ideas simply led me to thinking about the images on each page. It occurred to me that to get the real noir effect, the images should feel like film. So, with some very brief tinkering in Adobe Image Ready, I came up with this prototype (simply add 1 more frame with the "noise" filter).

How to Draw Noir Comics

My rendering of Shawn Martinbrough's bookcover

Elisha Cutthroat

Today I began to get a real sense of the illustrative possibilities of this game novel. Besides being a creative inspiration for the story (and the story for the art), I'm beginning to understand how these images could tell my story in a way that the words couldn't (which surprises me). It seems to me almost as if the final part of the novel is more graphic novel than plain ol' novel--and by that, I mean that I want to convey the story in a more allusive, imagistic and dialogue driven way.

This of course brings up the aesthetic/philosophical question of what kinds of fiction seem more real than others. It seems to me that the graphic novel is inherently (not simply by virtue of tradition) more fantastical than the printed page (even when the printed page can be magically realised.

Moir Noir

From across the cafe, I could just barely make out the shadow of the chick that I'd never noticed before--I'd been conscious of her, lurking in the shadows before, but she'd been so good at being completely uninteresting (and given that I was usually zoned in to my games), it had never even slightly registered--her presence, I mean. It was like she melted into the shadows, and where she left off the shadows began in one long unbroken swath of black.

"Masturbating and Making Money"

"The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize that you only ever lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room, masturbating and making money." -- Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

I spent the evening at the library, among tired bookshelves and bums and forlorn legged kids who, like I did when I was their age, find the pubic library to be one great playground. I had planned to write some poetry. Instead, I sat reading about computer programming and, more often, staring off into space thinking about my novel. I loved it.

Five minutes before closing, I ran into a former roommate, and as he talked and talked and talked as he always does about the most fascinating and simultaneously mundane things, I gazed at his face, sizing up proportions, shapes, emotions. I caught how his eyes would dart from contact with you to pondering the labyrinthine sky above, checking in with your eyeballs as if to make sure you were still listening. I saw how his mouth hung down at the corners, though still smiling. I noted how he hardly ever answered my yes or no questions with a simple yes or no, a masquerading litigator wandering the streets of Fort Ord, California.

I suppose I was deconstructing his face so much because I continue to draw sketches for my upcoming novel. The latest are below.

I'd just like to add that I love the sound of Palahniuk's quote above, yet I do not--at least not at present--share his fear in the least. I think that means I'm living.

Noir Graphic sketch #1

I'm learning from Martin Goldbrough's How to Draw Noir Comics how to draw noir comics. Here is an early attempt, which to me is both exciting (because hey, I can sort of do it) and frustrating (since it looks a little childish).

Cover Art

Here are two early designs for the book cover. I'm pretty sure I want to go with the binary code, but neither of this quite look right to me, just yet.

I guess I'll have to keep fiddling while Rome burns.