MELLYBEAN GRAPHIC NOVEL SERIES
Role:
Creator, Writer, Penciller, Inker, Lettering, Compositing & Prepress
Medium:
Print & eBook
In the summer of 2018, I adopted a puppy from a local rescue adoption event. She was full of personality and expression and I did a few doodles of her that I liked and wanted to do a project with her as the main character. By fall of 2019 I came up with a little adventure story sort of along the lines of an Alice In Wonderland meets Totoro concept.
This being a personal project, I didn't really have a deadline or an agenda for it, but I knew that if I didn't create some sort of structure it may never see completion.
I decided to treat it like a project that I would work on with a team; only it would just be me responsible for each phase of production.
Equipped with my initial sketches and the idea of a giant grumpy monster who wants to find a place to be left alone to sleep, I set out to write a script. So over the next 4 weeks during my evenings and weekends, I wrote a full script for 250 pages of comic content using bullet points to break down the dialogue and illustration descriptions for each panel. This step would help me pre-visualize the entire book and make edits before committing the artwork.
Once the script was completed, I set to work on penciling the pages and created an art production pipeline where I would work in stages doing all 250 pages of pencils, then compiling a rough “edit” in Adobe InDesign similar to a rough cut of a movie. This way I could have a completed first look at what the book would be like and be able to work out any visual issues with my rough drawings. Every stage of the art production was designed to allow for adjustments and improvements with minimal rework as possible as the final images would be the most time consuming part of the project.
After I was happy with the penciled version of the book and the story points and story pacing were further visualized, I would then begin “inking” over top of the penciled pages so there would be a crisp black final line version that could be scanned for digital composition and coloring.
At this point in the project, I was under the assumption that I would be self-publishing the book myself, likely using a print-on-demand service like Amazon KDP or Barnes & Noble Digital Publishing. Knowing that printing in color is more expensive than printing in black and white, I created a final grayscale version of the first draft so I could print and share it with anyone interested in the project as well as having a prototype copy to solicit to potential publishers as a full manuscript.
This black and white, grayscale version is what I ended up sharing with agents and editors to see if anyone was interested in publishing the book traditionally and releasing it to bookstores.
In March of 2019, I had found an agent to represent the project and by June I had offers on the table from three of the “big five” publishers. I ended up selecting Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House to partner with to release the book along with 2 sequels. Once the deal was signed, I began working on a new draft of the book based on feedback from my editor in which I would write and illustrate another version of the book for a reduced page count with considerations for a full color release and two follow up volumes.
This draft would go through the same process as the previous iteration starting with an outline, a script, a penciled draft, an inked draft and then a final colored draft using Adobe Photoshop which would then be digitally composited for prepress and production using Adobe InDesign.
While releasing the series during a global pandemic did not help the project become a commercial success, the series was well received by critics and readers, with the first book, Mellybean and the Giant Monster, going on to win a Canadian readers choice award through the Forest Of Reading literary organization.
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