The Hinterland – Sneak Peek
Here is a sneak peek at the cover image for my upcoming graphic novel “The Hinterland”, along with a few sample panels.
The cover image was done in a large spiral bound sketchbook, the day that I accompanied John on a sort of peace talk with a major columbian drug lord, who flew into San Pedro. The details of which will be revealed in my graphic novel. Needless to say I was a bit frightened. I was told that I could come along, or stay back at the villa, when the meeting took place.
I was so nervous, I didn’t get a good drawing of this man, but I did manage this portrait of John, which everyone knew would instantly be the cover of the book. It isn’t spot on, but it captures the feeling and steel eyed intensity of the man in that very moment, months ago in July of 2012.
(Click for a larger image)
It’s a bit unlike anything I’ve done before, style wise, and it’s taken some time to dial in the look as far as the characters go.
I mostly draw using a brush pen, using Pelikan 4001 ink. I’m approaching the panels in a few different ways.
Either drawing rough artwork on a Cintiq, printing that out and then using a light table to trace my computer ‘pencils’ .. or just drawing each frame flat out, with no planning beforehand using the brush pen.
Often, I get far better drawings this way.
I’ve left some of the notes I leave for myself on the paper in the top frame featuring an older man giving the young woman pictured a gift. Note to self. Redraw breast! Move that line in the computer!
(Click for a larger image)
More to come as I finish the book that I started many months ago. I’m picking up the pace, as I didn’t expect to be in the eye of a media storm over my association with Mr McAfee.
Aside from that, part of the narrative I was using, was stolen from a private message board, along with my original photographs, and sold to Gizmodo by a party whose name I will not bother to mention.
This made me have to re-tool the book considerably and between managing the blog, and drawing.. not much time for anything else.
Thanks for taking a look! I hope the book is as entertaining as the adventure was, and continues to be in real life.
-Chad Essley
A recent find..
As a collector of vintage dirty cartoons.. imagine my luck when I stumbled across this little beauty! Dan Dicarlo and a few nudie pix..! Ahh heaven. If you’re stockpiling bunches of old risque comics.. box em up and send them to yours truly.. I’ll pay postage.. 
-C
Comics..!
Ok, the jig is up! My friend Sean has a fantastic graphic novel coming out called “Lulu and Mitzy”. It’s well written, touching, hilarious, and fantastically well drawn!
He asked me to do a little comic for the back page.. So over the past five days or so, I put these two pages togetether. During this process of writing and creating a simple two page comic, I discovered one thing.. I CAN’T DRAW on PAPER anymore!! Agh! At least, layout isn’t my strong suit. I have such utter admiration and respect for people like Sean who can make this all look so effortless. My process: First, writing the script in ms-word. Then.. I used a copy of “comic life” to make a basic page layout, and place word balloons. Then, I began to quickly draw out all the frames / artwork on single peices of paper using my brush pen.. these get scanned in, and placed in photoshop. Balloons and font were done in Flash, then exported into photoshop and placed over the page. Phew! And this was my solution to doing things the “fast” way.. In the real world, I’d be working on a large 11×17″ peice of bristol or paper, and carefully pencil out everything the way I wanted it, before painstakingly inking everything by hand, then probably hand-lettering everything..
Comics.. they’re hard work! I love to do them.. but I get so impatient with all the layout.. phew.
Anyway, here’s the strip. It’s notably absent of backgrounds and .. oh there are a slew of other problems with it really.. but here it is!
(click to enlarge)
Also, after you read the comic, you might want to read THIS article.
c
MEAT..
..the FUTURE.
A panel from an upcoming strip I just completed for a friend’s book.. I’ll post the full strip in the next day or so..
C
