Maps, Ogres, Radio Stations

Hey Everyone!

Hope this message finds you well. Seeing as it's the 20th anniversary of my second album Some of My Best Friends are DJs, I thought I'd dig out some of the early sketchbooks which would eventually evolve in the final comic book that was included in the packaging.

First, here are the sketchbooks I would use back then. They were these spiral bound ones I found at local art stores in Montreal at the time. The pages could be laid flat which was good for scanning and also to sometimes work out 2 page layouts to see if the certain pages flipped correctly.

Often I would have the idea for a comic in my head and I would take one of these square books on tour with me and just roughly map out what the panels would be like. I would draw these on the tour bus, or on the train, or backstage before the set at the show. I would do them very quickly just to see if I could get a flow going with the arrangements of the panels.

For instance, here's a really terribly rushed one, where Negatron puts on some headphones to listen to some the radio.

You can see me drawing arrows and renumbering things so that it would read better.

Here's version 2 in the new order. I would do these in pencil, then ink them.  These would be the originals that would be scanned into computer before Louisa got them:

This version would be scanned into the computer and then my friend Louisa Schabas would do the beautiful grayscaling of the work!

At the time there was a sort of new tech that became available called a Wacom tablet which allowed you to digitally draw with a pen on a tablet. I picked up a Wacom tablet for Louisa so she could try it out!

Here are both take 1 and 2 from my sketchbooks. The image on the left is the one I probably drew on the tour bus while it was moving. Then as seen on the right, I would take some time to do a proper pencil and ink version when I got to a hotel.

And after Louisa did her grayscaling magic, it would look like this!

Here's a page where the DJ at the radio station is playing an angry record.

In the bottom of the page I was practicing how to draw the hand pushing the fader up from this angle so that it would read correctly.

Here's the final version that appears in the comic after Louisa's awesome lighting!

When I'm sketching stuff out I get a lot of random ideas and sometimes I have to just quickly jot it all down before I forget it. Not all of it ends up in the comic book. Some ideas actually reappear in a later project or show.

For instance this one... I guess I was so struck by inspiration that moment that I had to get this idea down as quickly as possible. I didn't even bother drawing ears or legs on the dog. LOOOL.

Here is a scene where robot is hanging from a cliff!

Incidentally, I didn't put these scenes into the comics that year... BUT a similar scene will be in the forthcoming Creatures of the Late Afternoon live show which we are currently developing.

Here is a panel from the comic where Grandmaphone stands up to an Ogre armed with only a ball of yarn. I won't give the whole story away but she has many tricks up her sleeve and this is just the first step in the plan!

Louisa had fun painting the ogre. One of our favorite characters. I ended up building a real life 20 ft. version that now tours with our Vinyl Vaudeville 2.0 show 15 years later.

Other ideas were saved for a rainy day.  Speaking of which, I remember the day that Louisa discovered using the eraser/smudge tool on the tablet to help with the lighting. It worked for the ripples in the water!

We had a lot of fun working on this comic book and laughed a lot while putting it together!  For those of you that have the comic book, hope you enjoyed reading it!

I can't believe it was 20 years ago!

Thank you for your support!

E