Unfiltered Smoke

As some of you may know, Adam Atherton entered and won on zudacomics.com. He created the comic Lily of the Valley and due to votes, his persistent marketing and high quality of work, he won in a landslide. The story continues on Zuda Comics tomorrow, October 9. Until then, here is an Unfiltered Smoke Q and A with the Woodstock, New Brunswick native.

Unfiltered Smoke:What are the steps involved with writing and designing and drawing a comic?

Adam Atherton: I think of a concept. Something that involves stuff I like to draw! So there’s usually girls in there somewhere… And subject matter I think I know well enough to write about confidently. I write down the main points into point form and start fleshing it out. I flesh out the end first and go backwards. It’s an easy way to ensure everything is building toward the ending. Then I keep filling in the blanks until it looks sort of like a family tree!

Then I break it down into a page count. What’s gonna be covered on each page. Usually this is the scripting process… but I usually know the story enough to go right into things from my mess of an outline. And since I’m drawing it too I can work out storytelling elements visually as I make the thumbnails. Then I draw the full pages with a mechanical pencil on smooth bristol. I constantly switch things around alot. I ink them with a watercolour brush and indian ink(which I think is more fun than anything else cause the page finally starts to look finished) and then I scan the page into my computer and colour it using Photoshop. I slap on the dialogue and word balloons and call it a day!

US: How did you hear about zuda and how did you get into the competition with Bleed (his first attempt last December)?

AA: I heard about Zudacomics.com back in October of 2008. A guy I knew sent me an email asking me to check out his comic which was competing then. The comic he worked on was called Extracurricular Activites and won the contract that month. (The comic just finished it’s first 60 page season pm Zuda last month.) I looked into the submission guidelines while I was there and thought I’d submit my comic Bleed for the hell of it and see what happens. Bleed was something I was just doing for fun at the time and to entertain myself with really. I didn’t have any expectations to hear back from Zuda but they contacted me at the end of November inviting my comic to compete for December.

US: What did you take away from your experience with Bleed that helped make Lily of the Valley a success during your next attempt?

AA: I took note of all comments. The things people liked I carried over into my next entry, and the things people didn’t like, I avoided. For the technical aspects at least. People have different taste so you’ll never please everyone so I still aimed to just make the kind of comic I’d want to read. But just tried to tell it in a technically pleasing way that even those not interested in the genre could respect. With Lily, I tried to put in enough information into the 8 pages to give a reader an understanding of what the story is about. I also learned the importance of marketing in the competition and started planning that side of things pretty early.

US: Who are your biggest inspirations as a comic artist?

AA: Probably Jeff Smith, Mike Mignola, and Paul Pope. I admire these guys cause they’re not just comic artists, they’re comic creators. They write and illustrate their own stories. When the same brain is writing and drawing a story it really brings the writing and art together into one storytelling language. They also all have ridiculously unique and personal styles and utilize design alot. These guys really use the artform expressively.

US: How have other media like music, film and books inspired your work?

AA: Music, films, and books inspire me with comics more than any comic has. Music can set a tone in my mind when drawing a page. I think through the visual storytelling in a cinematic way. I think of the scenes playing through my head like a film and pull out the significant moments and put them on the page. Books, films, and music also all help me shape a world perspective to use in the stories I try to tell through comics. Music that has inspired Lily of the Valley has been anything by Nick Cave and alot of music by The Cure. I actually have a whole soundtrack picked out for the comic and for the newer pages I’ve been hiding the names of songs, that I envision accompanying the scenes, into the page art. Books that have inspired this comic have been Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. These stories are pretty centered around emotions similar to those I’m trying to express through my comic, so I’ve been able to look to those books and others to see how they’ve conveyed certain feelings visually.

US: How much of the Lily story did you have completed or planned when you submitted the first pages to the contest?

AA: I’ve had the whole thing planned before starting the submission. But it was in point form and I’ve been changing things around constantly. The final comic will likely look nothing like that I’ve written out. (laughs) I like to work organically let changes happen.

US: Do you have plans to finish Bleed? If so, when and is it already sketched out?

AA:I loved making that thing. It was alot of fun and there’s been alot of people who surprisingly liked it as much as I liked making it for some reason. I have it plotted out and know where the story’s going. I have a bunch more pages thumbnailed out too but I don’t know when I will get to them.

US: If you could collaborate with anyone on a story who would it be and why?

AA: I collaborate on Lily of the Valley with my girlfriend Luiza Dragonescu and couldn’t ask for a better partner to work with. She takes a few additional duties upon herself too, like fetching pages out of the trash after I go nutty and throw out just about every other page I draw. If she wasn’t helping me I’d still be getting frustrated and redrawing the first page I’ve ever attempted over and over again trying to make it perfect. Other than that, I can’t really think of anyone I’m dying to work with. I’ve always wanted to be able to wear all hats and do my comics entirely alone.

US: Are there other media that you work in?

AA: I love working with ink on bristol. That’s not an other though. I try out alot of mediums any chance I have. The only other medium I really love but am still learning with, is watercolour. I’d like to do some illustrations, maybe pin-ups or covers for comic series, with watercolour and ink sometime.

US: Are there any other ideas floating in your head for once Lily is done its run?

AA: Bleed. I’d like to find time to do alot more 3 panel humour strips as well. And I’d also like to try a story with a more mature tone where I can challenge myself to work in a more realistic style. I don’t want to get ahead of myself though so for now I’m focusing primarily on Lily of the Valley!

(speaking of 3 panel humour strips, if you missed Adam’s first submission to Unfiltered Smoke, you can check it out here)

If any of you would like to ask Adam a question, please feel free to email unfiltered smoke at ratedargh@gmail.com and perhaps we’ll do another Q&A down the road with reader questions. And now, here’s a picture of Adam and Luiza meeting Nick Cave!