Seeing Red Ice

Home Stretch

2008-06-24T15:30:00.001-07:00

It's the home stretch with only a few days left in the June competition.

If you ahven't already, please go vote for RED ICE. Thanks!

RED ICE is REAL!

2008-06-20T11:03:00.003-07:00

Ha! Art imitates life imitates art ad infinitum.

I love it when the stars align like this.

Help make the art a reality, too, and vote for me over at Zuda.

2008-06-20T11:03:00.001-07:00

Ha! Art imitates life imitates art ad infinitum.

I love it when the stars align like this.

Help make the art a reality, too, and vote for me over at Zuda.

Interview at Zudafan's Blog

2008-06-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

I did a fun little interview over at Zudafan's blog about working on RED ICE. Swing by, check it out, and go give me a vote if you haven't already.

Thanks!

CLICK ME!

Redlined: the RED ICE script.

2008-06-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

Here's the script for the first three "comic" pages of RED ICE. You'll notice a lot of rewritten dialogue. It's a liberty I take on self-produced projects. Given that I've lettered every comics I've written (with one exception, book two of SHADOWCAST for Harcourt), I feel no need to refine and rewrite the dialogue until I'm drawing balloons on the page. It gives me more control over the flow and how they stack in the balloons and captions.

But enough commentary. Enjoy the script!

PAGE 1

PANEL 1 (TOP 2/3RDS OF PAGE)

Mars from space. It consumes the entire panel except for a sliver of space just above the north polar ice cap. In the top left section of the panel, we see Deimos, Mar’s smallest moon. It’s 15 km across. More like a deformed asteroid than an actual moon, Deimos is much closer to Mars than the Moon is to earth. It is in the midst of a solar eclipse, casting a tiny dot of a shadow on the surface. Landing bays and small buildings are woven throughout the moon. Get inventive: radar dishes, solar panels, lights, etc. It’s a relay station for incoming and outgoing traffic to Mars. A few shuttles are orbiting it. A few are leaving. One is entering the atmosphere below. It’s run of the mill traffic. Everything has a MARS CORPORATION logo.

1 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) DEAR DANA,

PANEL 2 (NEW TIER)

Long shot Deimos. A cargo shuttle (looks like a Mack truck with jet engines instead of wheels) is pulling into the dock.

2 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) THIS FRESH START HASN’T BEEN WHAT I THOUGHT IT WOULD.

PANEL 3 (SLIGHTLY LARGER THAN PANEL 2)

Same shot, but the landing bay explodes with furious anger sending the surrounding shuttles and a chunk of rock spinning toward the planet.

3 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) I’VE HATED EVERY MOMENT OF IT.

PAGE 2

PANEL 1 (FULL TIER)

Panoramic shot of a vast, rocky Martian plain. A transport rumbles along kicking up huge amounts of dust in its wake. It has a big MARS CORPORATION logo on its side. Elysium Mons dominates the background.

1 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) THE AGENCY SAID THAT FOR A MONTH DURING THE SUMMER, TEMPERATURES REACH SIXTY DEGREES.

2 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) WHAT THEY DIDN’T TELL ME IS THAT IT’S TWENTY BELOW AT MY ANKLES.

3 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) AND THAT EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE ROTTEN EGGS.

PANEL 2 (INSET ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF PANEL 1)

Long shot, angled down on Mars. A huge chunk of Deimos burns towards the planet.

NO DIALOGUE

PANEL 3 (FULL TIER)

Roland Allegro sits in a transport in a row along with ten other excavators. He types on CommPilot, a futuristic palm pilot kind of device that most people use on Mars (it’s the narration/letter). Everyone on the transport is suited up for outside activities with their helmets and facemasks in their lap. A row of spare oxygen tanks is latched behind and above them. Everyone has frost on their breath. A few guys have full beards full of frozen droplets of condensation. The rough Martian landscape jostles them to and fro. They aren’t very comfortable; none of them look like they want to be here. Especially Roland. The guy next to him, Alex, sneezes.

4 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) FAIA LEFT ME. SAID I LIVED IN THE PAST TOO MUCH, THEN TOOK A JOB WITH GOV-4 SECURITY.

5 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) I WANT TO GO HOME, AND I HAVEN’T EVEN PAID MY WAY HERE YET.

PANEL 4 (INSET ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF PANEL 3)

Long shot, angled down on Mars. That huge chunk of Deimos just keeps spinning towards the ground.

NO DIALOGUE

PANEL 5 (NEW TIER)

Same shot as previous. Roland hands Alex a couple of nose filters as Alex brushes dust from his suit’s neck.

6 ROLAND: BLESS YOU. NEED A PAIR?

7 ALEX: THANKS. NAME’S ALEX.

8 ALEX: (CONNECTED) CAN’T GET AWAY FROM THE SHIT.

PANEL 6

Same shot as previous. Roland rests both hands on his helmet and wrinkles his nose. The guy sneezes again.

9 ROLAND: I KNOW. THIS DAMN DUST--HELL, IT’S TOO SMALL TO EVEN BE DUST--IT GETS EVERYWHERE.

10 VOICE: (ELECTRIC, NO TAIL) ETA IN FOUR MINUTES. SUIT UP.

PAGE 3

PANEL 1

Close medium shot, angled up on Roland tediously shoveling. In the background, Alex man a stripped down, a backhoe made with an aluminum frame and lined with solar panels. Instead of treads it has giant wheels like a monster truck.

1 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) THE ONLY THING KEEPING ME HEAR ANY MORE IS THE 300TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION NEXT YEAR. OLYMPUS WANTS THE OLD COLONY DUG UP AND RENOVATED.

PANEL 2

Long medium shot. Same angle. He’s shoves the shovel down hard into the Martian soil.

2 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) IT’S THE CLOSEST THING TO ARCHEOLOGY I CAN GET ON THIS PLANET.

3 SFX: CLANG!

PANEL 3 (NEW TIER, SLIGHTLY LARGER AND OVERLAPPING OTHER TWO TIERS)

Medium shot. General Hand is frantically screaming into a videophone. Lot’s of dim light here, many shadows.

4 HAND: HAVE WE HEARD FROM THE FIELD TEAM YET?

5 VOICE: (ELECTRIC TAIL TO VIDEOPHONE) YES, SIR. THEY’RE AWAITING YOUR ORDERS.

PANEL 4 (NEW TIER)

Medium shot, angled down on hand. He sits at his desk hanging his head in front of the videophone.

6 HAND: TELL THEM TO MOVE IN AT FIRST CONTACT.

7 HAND: (CONNECTED) AND SCRAMBLE RESCUE SHUTTLES TO DEIMOS.

8 HAND: WE DON’T HAVE A LOT OF TIME.

PANEL 5 (NEW TIER)

Close on the hole in the ground. Roland has pushed aside enough dirt to reveal a dull metal surface beneath the regolith with a faint, weathered American flag painted on it.

9 ROLAND: (ELECTRIC, OP, TOP LEFT) OVER HERE! I’VE GOT SOMETHING!

10 ELECTRIC: (NO TAIL) ROLAND, CHECK IT OUT! FROM THE EAST AT TWO O’CLOCK.

PANEL 6

Medium shot, angled up from the ground. Roland looks over his shoulder, shielding his eyes from the glare of Deimos as it burns brilliantly through the air.

11 CAPTION: (ROLAND CAPTION) I HOPE I GET A CHANCE TO DO MORE THAN SHOVEL DIRT AROUND.

12 ELECTRIC: (NO TAIL) WE’RE CLEAR. GOV-4 SAYS IT’S HEADING FOR THE M.P. LET’S GET BACK TO WORK

Adapting to Life of Mars

2008-06-07T10:35:00.001-07:00

I was going to talk about the script, and I’ll come back to it shortly. But the most interesting part, at least to me, is how I adapted RED ICE into Zuda’s format.

It’s no secret that RED ICE was originally written as a European-style oversized graphic novel. In fact, Horacio and I already have finished lettered, but uncolored, art. Consider it hedging my bets. I was having so much fun working on HIGH MOON, I figured I’d give it a shot. What’s the worse that could happen?

This created some minor issues with reformatting. I had to ask the hard questions: What stays? What goes? How much do I need to lay the groundwork? The biggest drawback was pacing. The opening sequence I compressed into Zuda’s format was about half the space I really wanted to tell the opening sequence. And in making these hard choices, I realized I could even cut a full page from the graphic nvoel formatted pages as well.

Feel free to hop on over to RED ICE @ ZUDA to compare and contrast these rough pencils with the final product on the site.

Take the first page for example:

I had to keep everything to show the attack. While we don’t get a payoff in the first eight for this explosion, it comes into play in the very next scene. Besides, what’s a better way to open a story than with a nice establishing shot and an explosion.

All I did was cut some detail out of the splash of Mars and tweak the inset panels to fit.

I cut the original page two out. There was a conversation between Alex and Roland that really was designed to help with the world building. I did a full-scale rewrite to create the dialogue on Zuda pages three and five.

Page three got split in two. With the middle two tiers coming out to become page two, and the rest forming page three...with a little help form the opening panel that I pulled from elsewhere.

The page four splash is the same as the top tier of the pencilled page four. The bottom half of that page was left off for economy’s sake. I hated cutting out the dialogue in the rest of the sequence. It was supposed to play off a big reveal at the end, but again, I had to make sacrifices for the format. If we get to continue on Zuda, I’ll simply adjust the story down the line.

Pages five and six were combined. I’m actually very happy with how this turned out. I was able to do some world-building AND economize a two-page section that felt was a little loosely paced in the graphic novel format. If I ever explore publishing this as originally intended, I’ll actually reformat it, and use the extra page for more action later in the book.

Page seven on Zuda is one panel shy of everything on page seven in the original art.

In retrospect, I wasn’t happy with page eight. In part, because I originally wanted the ladder to end up being part of how he escapes from the site and ultimately, as I worked out the next scene, I realized I didn’t need the ladder. Oh, well. Still made for a nice image in color on that first panel of page 8, and I was able to get to the damn point faster: opening the door.

I’m still not going to tell you what’s on the other side.

Not unless I win.

On the spot

2008-06-04T08:33:00.001-07:00

I've been put on the spot over in the comments section for RED ICE. Swing on by and see what I have to say.

http://www.zudacomics.com/node/464

Origin of the Species

2008-06-03T18:01:00.001-07:00

I came up with the idea for Red Ice around 1997 while I was zoning out in a writing class that felt the need to teach us how to be artsy writers instead of commercial ones. Given it was a genre class, the literary process wasn't working for me. Unfortunately, it would plague my attempts at writing this story for years.

It's original incarnation was a Rashamon-style murder mystery, taking different points of view, following the first murder on Mars.

Then Whiteout came out. Given my plot was almost beat for beat Rucka's...well, so much for that.

Then Burrough's influence reared its head. After plotting it out as a pulp adventure, I realized I had no desire to write it. Artistically, my goal was to turn Red Ice into hard sci-fi to hung on an adventure story's trappings.

After going through a couple of artists, I finally decided Horacio was the man to do the job. We'd collaborated on Death Valley and They Do Not Die! as well as a fistful of short stories. But we hadn't done a sci-fi piece yet. Perfect opportunity.

Last summer, Horacio took the first 8 pages and created the art you see. The catch was it had been formatted for the printed page. I streamlined the story, picked the more relevant image, and Andy worked his magic.

Viola. Red Ice.

Anyway, that's a bit of the history behind the project. Check back on Friday for the next update: Scripted Comics.

Welcome to the Red Ice Production Blog

2008-06-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome!

Here, I'll be chatting up the process that brought RED ICE to its current form in the June competition at Zuda. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at the twists and turns of this unique sci-fi project, check back every few days. I'll cover everything from concept to final execution, and the strange tangents in-between.

And while you're at it, toss a vote my way, please. Just make with cliky below.

Thanks!