August 28, 2008
Interview with Karl Kerschl
Mike Schramm interviews Karl Kerschl, the creator of the comic The Abominable Charles Christopher. This comic, if you didn’t bother to notice the first time I told you, is clearly one of the best I have seen on the web. I particularly love his creative process:
The process of actually producing the strip is much the same as the process of the character’s creation. I just don’t think about it. I wake up on Wednesday morning knowing that I have to do a comic before the end of the day, then I make some coffee and sit around until an idea comes to mind. Sometimes this is immediate, but usually I have to wait a couple of hours for inspiration. A shower always helps. And music. Very often I’ll know what tone I’d like the strip to have, emotionally, and I’ll put on some music that matches that tone and just allow ideas to come to me. As soon as something occurs to me that feels right, I flesh it out in my head into a mini-story.
Then the drawing starts. I rough in the sequence of panels with a blue Col-Erase pencil, and whenever I have an idea about specific dialogue I jot it down in the page margin. That’s as much ‘writing’ as I ever do. When I’m happy with the drawing (usually an hour of work) I go over it all with black ink. I use a combination of tech pens and brush pens to get the organic look I want, and this part of the process is the most time-consuming because a lot of the finished drawing takes place here. I scan the strip into Photoshop (still using my old G4 Powerbook and a Wacom tablet) and then colour it with a very limited palette.
And then I post it. And stare at it for a while hoping that it works.
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