When Temple met Clay

The first meeting of the two lead protagonists is a significant moment in The Absence, but I played it low key. I wanted Temple to feel he had all the power in the scene, almost patronising the disfigured Clay with his compassion and concern. But Marwood Clay is a dark horse (to say the least) and Temple will soon see his new 'friend' from a different perspective...



With chapter two now finished I'm deep into chapter three. Should have some stuff on here soon but typically it's turning out to be a difficult chapter with a lot of insanely fiddly special FX (flashbacks! snow!) I have to grapple with.

Replacements

I've almost finished chapter 2. It's all drawn - just gotta tidy up the scans and then letter the bastard and then I'll have 60 pages finished. 60!

One of the reasons it's taking me so long is my determination to not allow time to force me to produce substandard work. I'm learning all the time and I'm constantly going back to old pages and worrying them a little on the computer to try and tidy/rework them. Sometimes it even means a complete redraw. The final page of #2 is such an example. In this instance however, it wasn't the drawing that annoyed me, but the story telling. This is something else I'm learning and exploring - ways of telling the story and making it flow cleanly between the panels.

Anyhoo - the upshot of all this is that I end up with a lot of extraneous material. This is a panel with Temple from the afore mentioned last page of chapter 2. I was always quite pleased with this drawing - it captures the energy and looseness I like in my work. So I thought I'd post it here.

Rocks and Rolls

A pic! It's been a while. Been busy actually drawing the damn comic - uploading work-in-progress always seems like a luxury I don't have time for. But I've scanned and am currently piecing together about twenty new pages (chapter two is gonna be about 32 pages in total I think, so it's longer than chapter one!) Here's a pic from it. Can't explain too much without plot spoilers, but the car belongs to a chap called Taylor who is Robert Temple's 'employer'. Can't tell here, but this panel is a biggy which spreads across two pages.

Trucking Hell

One of the advantages of setting The Absence in the 1940s is that the vehicles are pretty blocky in shape, and thus easy to draw in perspective. This is especially handy when there's a whole queue of 'em... This was another of those pictures which I approached with a 'gulp - this ain't gonna go well' attitude but which actually worked out ok in the end. Gonna need to fiddle with the load on the back of the truck though. Looks a touch unbalanced.



Oh, and I need to fix Marwood's left eye which is wandering across his face.

And I'm going to add some clouds, cos there's a storm approaching.

And I might add a bit more grass.

Other than that: finished.

Research

Trying to write a 1940s-based comic can be a pain in the arse. Although I'm not slavishly researching the time period I'm doing what I can to at least avoid any basic errors. Currently I'm trying to find out what a medium-scale building project might've looked like (What type of cranes would've been used? What type of perimeter fencing? What type of building materials? What type of trucks? Did the builders wear helmets...?). You'd have thought that, post-blitz, there'd have been a plethora of images online of London being rebuilt. But no. Maybe I need to try (gulp) a library. I think I still have a membership card somewhere...

Occasionally with this research lark you get lucky. Issue #2 briefly has the eight-year old Thomas playing with toy soldiers. Obviously, when I was a kid the things were made of plastic, but in the 1940s...? Well I found this lovely pic:

And here's the pencils for 2.8.1 (issue.page.panel)

How things can go awry

Last post I introduced Mr. Pitman. He only plays a very minor role in the Absence (although oddly his one major 'scene' was one of the first ideas I had). He's Robert Temple's site manager and his frustrations at the demands of building Temple's strange house is meant to reflect the readers feelings.
So, this is Mr Pitman:
Now, in my head I imagined him looking something like TV presenter Dick Strawbridge (or at least having a mustache like Strawbridge's):
I added a flat cap. Because he's a builder. And because it's the 1940s. Duh.
And finally I put him period style over-alls:
Brilliant, I thought. Mr Pitman! Until a friend pointed out Mr Pitman's similarity to this guy:

Bugger. Still as I say, he's barely in the fucking comic so frankly I don't care that he looks like an Italian plumber.
Humph.

Issue 2, Page 6, Panel 1

I'm 7 pages of pencils into issue 2 and, with a couple of days off work, I hoped to have them inked soon. Here's one of the panels featuring Robert Temple (right) and his erstwhile building site foreman Mr Pitman (left). That crater? Ah, well, you'll have to wait to find out about the crater...