This is one of my favorite photos from my entire life. Mom, Nurse Sis and I dressed for Easter. Incidentally, those green gloves of Mom's are the pair I borrowed when I dressed up as Robin the Boy Wonder (I also had the requisite red vest). Stylin'!
Just a nice shot of Mom.
Mom and I during her chemo. Her hair later grew back very well and she looked great. Me, not so great.
The top photo is Mom with her older brother Cal. The bottom is her junior prom in 1957. What a babe.
McCay used his Gertie movie as part of a live vaudeville act in which he interacted with the dinosaur on the screen. She did tricks on command. At one point in the performance, McCay threw food behind the screen that Gertie caught and ate on-screen. At the conclusion, McCay himself "stepped" into the screen and an animated version of the cartoonist took a ride on the beast. By all accounts, the performance was a sensation.
Until the advent of computers, virtually all animation was done on cels, transparent celluloid sheets onto which the characters were inked and painted. Artists only made multiple individual drawings for objects that moved--sometimes an entire figure, sometimes just an arm or mouth. Because cels are transparent, the animators only needed to create one background painting for each scene, on top of which they layered the cels and shot one frame of film. Then they swapped out the bits that moved and shot another frame. Repeat 100,000 times and you've got a movie.
In 1914, they hadn't figured that out yet. In Gertie, Winsor McCay and a single assistant hand-drew both character and background in every frame. Every single frame. They redrew every rock, water ripple, and blade of grass thousands of time on sheets of rice paper that, like tracing paper, were transparent enough to allow them to copy from a master drawing underneath. Then McCay glued each sheet to a piece of cardboard so they all lined up, and shot them.
There are somewhere between 200 and 300 original Gertie cels left. As I said yesterday, until a few years ago I assumed they were long destroyed. Once I discovered otherwise, I learned all I could about them and kept my eyes open. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, everything came together: a beautiful full-figure Gertie pose, good condition, a reputable dealer, and a fair price. I couldn't pass it up. I'd always resolved that I didn't deserve to have a Gertie until I could pay for it with my earnings from cartooning. Thanks to Abrams, that finally came together, too.
To read more about Winsor McCay and Gertie, see
http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/mccay.htm.
It's old and it's important. Ten years ago, I didn't even know it (and about 300 others of its kind) still existed. The first time I saw one, I was thunderstruck. For the past five years, I've kept my eyes open, learning and looking. On my Lifetime Top Ten List, this was numbers One through Three ... and yet, I knew in my heart I didn't really deserve to have it until I was a cartoonist.
This drawing of a game pawn and die, suggested by my editor, echoes the "life is playing the odds" theme of my story. We're going to use it as a stand-alone spot illustration on one of the opening pages, and then again as part of a fine repeating pattern for the endpapers. The endpaper effect will be subtle--imagine this drawing shrunken very small and colored beige against a tan background, repeated in a diagonal pattern.
This was just a miscellaneous spot drawing I did of Mom and her dog Hero that we'll also use in the book, probably on the title page. I'm a modest guy, but I've got to say I like how Hero came out: he's attentive, doting, ready to help Mom any way he can. That pretty much captures their relationship, I think.
This is a skectch that won't be in the book, or anywhere else. I described earlier (August 3) some of the decisionmaking that went into designing the cover. This was one idea I had, and I drew it up in about five minutes using a brush-pen that was a new tool for me. This was the first time I'd taken it out for a spin and I liked the line it produced. If I'd discovered it earlier, I might have done the whole book in brush-pen. Colored in Photoshop.
Good registration (left) and bad (right)
Trapping helps minimize registration problems by spreading out the non-black colors a few pixels so that, even if registration is a little bit off, they still have some "wiggle room" to fit and overlap as intended. With Photoshop, trapping is as easy as pushing a button (I can't imagine how anyone did it pre-digitally, or whether they bothered at all). Coincidentally, a private cartoonists' board I frequent just had a long discussion about trapping.
That discussion came in handy when I got word late last week that the printer wasn't happy with my color registration. It wasn't coming out right. Not lining up. Within half a second I realized the problem: no trapping. When I submitted my final image files to Abrams they were trapless. Trap-free. Bereft of trap. My trapping had shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible. The subject never came up and I never thought to ask. My bad.
So I spent a few hours this morning speedily trapping the 26 color pages scattered throughout Mom's Cancer. I envisioned the overseas printer tapping his toe, glancing nervously at his watch, paying overtime while the presses waited in idle silence for my upload.
Assuming my trapping worked, I should have first proofs to review in a few days. Next book, I'm hiring a high school kid to take care of this.
By the way, the price shown here is what it will be: $12.95 ($17.95 in Canada), which I think is an exceedingly reasonable price for a hardcover. We want Mom's Cancer to be an affordable "gift book." If folks want to buy two or three of them, I'd be all right with that, too.
The Eisner Award is commonly referred to as the industry's "Oscar," given for excellence in 26 categories in addition to special awards for humanitarian work, the Hall of Fame, etc. Eisners go to writers, artists, colorists, letterers, retailers, one-shot projects, limited series, continuing series--and, for the first time in 2005, digital comics. The Eisner judges defined "digital comics" very precisely so that, for example, most animated work would not be considered. In early 2005, Mom's Cancer was nominated for Best Digital Comic.
This was my first Comic-Con, and it was overwhelming. My wife and two girls came along and we found "Kid Sis" (the true comics geek in the family) at the event. I got to meet in person some people I'd come to know on the Internet, make some new friends, and shake hands with some childhood idols. I encourage you to seek out the work of the following creators, even if you normally wouldn't, because justice demands that good people be rewarded: Otis Frampton (Oddly Normal, a very charming character and series), Frank Cammuso (Max Hamm, Fairy Tale Detective), Raina Telgemeier (Smile, The Babysitters Club), Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze), and Ted Slampyak (Annie, Jazz Age Chronicles).
The awards ceremony is traditionally held Friday night in a large ballroom. It is structured much like the movies' Academy Awards, with noteworthy presenters giving the awards a few at a time, interspersed with special presentations or recognitions. The evening seemed to move very quickly until the Best Digital Comic category and then very slowly afterward. What happened in the few minutes between is a blur. When presenter Scott McCloud read the list of nominees and announced that Mom's Cancer had won, my priorities were to move quickly, remember to mention everyone important, and not make a fool of myself. I am told I largely succeeded.
The Eisner Award is a tremendous honor that I never expected to receive. It's extremely gratifying. Much of the success of Mom's Cancer has come because readers found it online, connected to the story in a very personal way, and recommended it to others. I appreciate that most of all.
