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Rediscovering and Old, Lost Book
an interview with Indigo Kelleigh
Continued
Q:
The cartooning style in Circle Weave is a really
fine combination of realistic and cartoonish elements.
How did you evolve this style? Did you have specific
influences?
Kelleigh:
The visual style for Circle Weave comes from a lot of things, but I
think it
owes most heavily to Herge (whose comics I had only relatively recently
discovered with the inexpensive hardcover Tintin collections), and a
bit
from various manga, such as Nausicaa Of The Valley Of Wind. The look I
was
going for was sort of an animated cartoon look, with flat colors and
simple
shading (which has of course become way more complex as the series
continued). I have a lot of artists whose work I really love and try to
incorporate little things into my own work, I can't name them all.
Different
artists influence my work, depending on the story I'm doing. Chutney
Point
has a whole different list of influences from Circle Weave, for
example.
Q:
Can you give us a step-by-step of how you create a
page of Circle Weave? I especially want to know how
you get your coloring effects.
Kelleigh:
Well, it starts with the rough plot - a 2-line synopsis of the
goings-on for
that episode. From that, I'll do a sketchy rough layout on these
pre-printed
layouts I designed for myself, writing the dialog for the episode at
that
point. Then I go into Photoshop, again with a template that mirrors the
pre-printed layout guides, and do the pencils based on my rough. I go
through it again and more clearly define everything (my pencils are far
tighter for this comic than they had ever been for anything else I'd
worked
on prior). Usually I'll lay the text down at that point, and place it
about
where I think it should be.
After that, I hide the text layers and start on the inks. I usually
work
with at least 4 layers in my file above the pencils - FG Inks, FG
Colors, BG
Inks, and BG Colors. This makes it a bit easier for me to do some of
the
layering stuff that I need to do. I'll often have additional layers for
things like colored inks, smoke or steam effects, layers for glowing
effects
(since those are done with Photoshop's layer styles, they need their
own
layers), and so on.
The coloring effects are pretty straightforward - I just outline blocks
of
color and fill them in, then I go back through and add shadows and
highlights where appropriate. I took some advice from Jenn Manley Lee
and
developed my own clearly-labelled color palettes for each character.
That
makes it a lot easier to keep the colors consistent from page to page.
It
also gives me a series of established palettes when it comes time to
designing new characters.
For some sequences, like the underwater sequences or the Poguen-ha'
Rhine
scene at the end of Chapter Three, the whole episode is then given a
color
tint layer to give it a sort of monochrome look.
Some of the files can get pretty big, usually between 20 and 50 MB
each.
Q:
About how many photoshop layers in all do you end
up with?
Kelleigh:
I'll use episode 102 as my example. It's a unique case, because it
introduces a large physical element (the Boglund) who has a number of
accompanying effects, but it's a good example, I think. The layer
breakdown
goes like this:
12 layers of dialog (each 'paragraph' on its own layer)
1 layer of dialog balloons
1 layer of Panel Borders
1 layer for Colored Inks
1 for the Poguen Tattoo that's almost impossible to see in the final
panel
1 for the Splashing Water outline
1 for the Splashing Water color
1 for Foreground Inks
1 for Foreground Colors
6 for the Boglund, including 2 just for the steam
1 for Background Inks
1 for Background Colors
1 for Pencils, this one's hidden
So, that's 29 layers, 15 of which contain actual art.
Q:
I gather from the above that you do a lot of
drawing within photoshop. Do you use a Wacom tablet?
How do you feel about drawing with it? A lot of
artists I've talked to say they have trouble getting
used to it.
Kelleigh:
It took about two weeks to really get the hang of it. I was more
nervous
about using color so much, since I'd never really drawn with color
before -
all my previous comics were black-and-white.
Q:
Another photoshop question-- a lot of your
captions and word balloons have a semi-transparent
background, suggesting that they're 'psychic'
communication and other things. How do you achieve
this in Photoshop-- do you play with the opacity of
the layer?
Kelleigh:
Yeah, I do the balloon borders on one layer, then on a layer just below
that
I draw the fills and lower the opacity for it. I love using color in my
dialog, and I'm glad I decided to do that for that 'Pooka' dialog.
Q:
When you're rendering the artwork, are you
preparing it for the possibility of future print
reproduction? That is to say, are you creating the
images at 300 BPI, and then converting them down to 72
BPI for the web?
Kelleigh:
The working files are created at 11x7.25 inches, and everything is
drawn at
300 dpi. I only reduce them as I'm putting the final image together for
the
site. For that I hide the background and pencils layers and do a select
all/Copy merged (this way all the layers and text are selected in a
flattened state at the same time).
Q:
I wanted to ask you about layout. The standard
Circle Weave page is actually quite small, and yet you
manage to fit a lot of story, a lot of action, and a
lot of spectacle in it. Do you find yourself bumping
up against that size limitation a lot?
Kelleigh:
It always feels pretty big to me, since I'm working at a fairly high
resolution. I also zoom way in when I'm drawing, usually at about 200%
for
pencilling and inking.
Q:
Can you describe some of your strategies for
encapsulating a complex scene in a limited space?
Take for example, the scene where the courtroom of
King Gael is visited by the emissary from Mulba. It's
a complex scene, with many participants, lots of
dialog, a flashback describing the ongoing war, and an
angry parliamentary debate. How did you handle the
layout to make all this manageable and understandable?
Kelleigh:
The biggest key I think is to really think about what your characters
are
doing there, and figure out a way to let them make their point in as
few
words as possible. The Iscian/Mulban debate you mention was an example
where
I needed to do some serious exposition to make the whole rest of the
subplot
(and later the main plot) make any sense at all. I was worried that it
went
on for way too long (it was basically seven pages of dialog!), but I'm
happy
to know that it reads well when taken all-at-once. In all, I just try
to
keep the dialog feeling natural and make sure that if I have someone
saying
anything, there has to be a reason for it.
Q:
Another very impressive scene is the ascent into
the palace of Pogues, where you've used this tiny
space to suggest enormous scale and fantastic
splendor. How did you come up with this scene?
Kelleigh:
This was another one of those scenes that had to introduce a whole
culture
as quickly as I could. I put them in the trees to illustrate their
connection with the woods, and I made everything glow (even the Pogues
themselves) to show that they had some magic left in them. I tried to
make
the whole Poguen-ha' Rhine appear to be this magical 'other world', and
I
was happy with the results. Making everything glow like that went a
long way
to achieving that effect, I think, though I should have shown more
Pogues.
As for the scale, like I said, I draw pretty small, so some of the huge
panels that show lots of architecture felt pretty large to me. One
trick
that I did, and I'm sure there's a rule about this somewhere, is to
draw
only parts of things. Like all the architecture is these huge spheres,
but
you almost never see a whole sphere - just a small part of it, a corner
here, some bit poking out from behind the tree - and I just let the
reader
fill in the rest of the sphere on their own. It might not have worked
as
well if the architecture wasn't based on a universally recognized
geometric
shape like that, now that I think of it. That part was just luck, I
guess.
Q:
You've hosted Circle Weave in various
environments; first as a free webcomic, then as a
subscription comic with Modern Tales, and now as a
Bitpass comic. How well have the different
distribution methods worked for you?
Kelleigh:
It started as free, but I always had it in my head that I wanted to
somehow
make a living doing the comic. When Moderntales started up, it seemed
like
the best way to achieve that goal, and I think it could have been if
I'd
been updating more than once a week at best. It seems to me that the
most
popular comics are the ones that update daily or several times a week
at
least. I was never able to do more than once a week, and usually not
even
that often, so I didn't do as well at Moderntales as I'd hoped.
Eventually I
decided to go back to releasing the recent week for free, and putting
the
archives behind my own bitpass-wall, so people can read a full chapter
at a
time. That seems to be working out pretty well, and I'm happy with the
control I have over how those chapters are presented.
Financially-speaking, I made more at moderntales than I have so far
through
bitPass, but I'm hoping that as I continue working and releasing new
chapters that that might change. We'll see!
Q:
What's been your experience with update frequency?
As I recall, Circle Weave was a weekly comic for a
while there.
Kelleigh:
You had to bring this up... Yes, Circle Weave was pretty much a weekly
for
quite a while. After my daughter was born, and I got laid off of my
job, I
found that I had less and less free time to work on the comic, so it
stopped
coming out as frequently. That was one of the reasons I decided to
leave
Moderntales - I felt guilty for those subscribers who signed up for my
comic
and didn't get it in a timely manner. Now, I feel a lot less guilty
about
the fact that I've only been putting out about a page a month for the
last
six months. I'm still not happy about it, but I don't feel guilty. My
dream,
though, is to ultimately be able to support myself with the comic well
enough that I can do about 3 episodes a week. I've done the math, and
if I
could work on Circle Weave full time I'd be able to achieve that,
easily.
It's a long story, and at the current rate I'll be long-dead before
it's
done. I'd really rather be here to see how it ends.
Q:
How does Chutney Point fit into the chronology of
your work? Did you work on it concurrently with
Circle Weave?
Kelleigh:
I started working on Circle Weave in 1989 or 1990 I believe, and the
first
issue of Chutney Point was done in 1993, so they definitely overlapped.
Chutney Point was always my 'back-burner' project, my fun relief from
the
seriousness of Circle Weave. It took about ten years to finish, and now
that
it's done I miss it.
Q:
Chutney Point has a radically different style and
story than Circle Weave, kind of a comedy of horror in
the Edward Gorey vein. You remember I interviewed you
when Modern Tales Longplay published Chutney Point,
and at the time you said the story was inspired by
Twin Peaks and cartoonist Richard Sala. Can you tell
us more about how the story evolved?
Kelleigh:
I honestly don't remember too much about the development of the story.
It
started with a phrase, "Linda Owns a Lighthouse", and grew from there.
I
know that one of the first things I did was get out a couple sheets of
paper
and design all the characters, their names and all their quirks. Then I
figured out how long I wanted to make the story, and wrote out one
sheet of
typing paper for each issue. I tried to make sure that each of those
characters had something to do in each issue, but I gave most of them
breaks
occasionally (something I learned from theatre). I didn't script the
first
half of the series, I just went off those rough plot sheets. It wasn't
until
I was halfway done that I realized that I needed to script out the rest
to
make sure it came to the right ending, otherwise who knows where it
would
have ended up. As it is I had to add 12 extra pages to get it all to
fit.
Q:
You mentioned theatre. Have you had
background in the theatre?
Kelleigh:
I used to do a lot of community theatre when I was a kid, and then some
more
in high school. The only acting job I got paid for, though, was a
one-night
gig as an extra for the film 'While You Were Sleeping', and they didn't
even
use me in the scene. It was cool, though, I got to stand behind the
camera
and watch them film, and I still got paid, so there you go.
Q:
Speaking of theatre, you told me once that Chutney
Point was written as 'a play for bad actors,' i.e.
very melodramatic and overdone. Do you feel drawn to
'bad' acting and over-the-top stories?
Kelleigh:
If it's done right, yes. One of my favorite directors is Richard
O'Brien,
creator of Rocky Horror Picture Show and Shock Treatment, a much
better, but
far less-well-known film that also features Brad and Janet. His
combination
of weird characters, fun and frantic music, and a strong visual sense
is
just great, and if Chutney Point were to ever become a movie, I'd want
it to
be a Richard O'Brien musical. I think we need more campy melodrama in
our
entertainment, otherwise it starts to feel less like entertainment.
Q:
You mentioned the artist Herge as an influence for
Circle Weave. Can you tell us what attracts you to
his work?
Kelleigh:
I love his clean line. Nothing is wasted, right? Every line makes sense
in
his work, and it's all there for a reason. He had this great ability to
take
a real-world object, anything from a fountain pen to a rocket-engine,
and
render it in this clean, simple way that was also quite accurate. His
cars
weren't minimalist cars, but they were drawn with very few lines. I
haven't
reached that level of simplicity with Circle Weave, and I don't think
I'm
going to, but I hope to with other works in the future.
Q:
Another influence you mentioned, Nausicaa of the
Valley of the Wind. Can
you tell us a little about it?
Kelleigh:
Nausicaa is this wonderfully layered environmental fable about the
world
AFTER the end of the world. It deals with the ways in which nature will
take
care of itself if left alone. Miyazaki is a great environmental
supporter,
and you can see that in Princess Mononoke as well.
Something else that
Nausicaa has in common with that movie is the idea that the bad guys
aren't
truly evil, they just have their own priorities. Everything they do has
a
reason, and it might not be a reason that you agree with, but it makes
sense
to them. That's the best lesson I learned about writing 'bad guy'
characters, and I've tried to carry that into all of my work since
then. You
can see it in Chutney Point, where the 'mad scientist' is really just a
family guy who's trying to somehow get his youth back. You'll see it in
Circle Weave, too. Everybody's just trying to do the right thing, but
they
all disagree on what that thing is, and who it's right for.
Q:
You mentioned being a dad. Can you tell us about
your family life?
Kelleigh:
It definitely keeps me busy. All the time I used to spend on the comic
has
been absorbed by my daughter, something I'm sure most new parents can
attest
to. She's a great kid, though, and I've already gotten her hooked on
drawing
with a computer - I bought her a Mac Classic II with SuperPaint on it,
and
her new favorite activity is 'painting stripes', as she calls it.
Return to Page 1
Tintin and Nausicaa of the
Valley of the Wind images copyright 2004 by Herge and Miyazaki respectively.
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