A New Book
By Frederic Du Chau
After the grind of finishing Ameluna, I figured the best thing to do is to start a new book and take advantage of all the things I learned on the first one. This time I wanted to go back to traditional art. I can retouch and finish digitally but on Ameluna, I found myself spending more time figuring out the ‘tech’ instead of drawing.
Having been an animator at a studio I understand the discipline needed to get a certain amount of drawings done every day and to work through the so called ‘bad days’ when you panic and think you can’t draw anymore. It wasn’t long before I found the love of pencil and paper and paint. There’s something about drawing by hand that makes it more interesting than drawing on the Cintique or tablet. I know lots of great artists who are amazing on the tablets but I still get the biggest kick out of seeing the pencil strokes or ink work on paper with all its ‘mistakes’ and imperfections.
I have written a second Ameluna book but I won’t draw it until I get feedback from readers. This will happen after I have found a publisher or publish it myself. Maybe I’ll get a Kickstarter going. Instead I have obtained the rights to a classic animal book everyone in the Flemish part of Belgium has at some point in their lives read at school. ‘Floere het Fluwijn’ written by Ernest Claes, a giant amongst Flemish writers. The story has always intrigued me and I never would have dreamed I could get the rights to turn the story into a graphic novel.
But I got the rights and visited that part of Flanders where the story was set and spent the summer sketching and painting to get a feel for the style and methodology I wanted to use. See below some of the sketches and test pages I produced.
The story is about a stone marten, family of ferrets and weasels, who we follow during his entire life, starting with the introduction of his mother, her meeting with Floere’s father, her teachings to a young Floere and his sister, all the way to his death caused by the farmer’s dog. It’s all about an animal that lives his life according to his nature and follows his instincts. The writer’s descriptions of nature, and the way animals perceive the world are second to none in any language. This is what attracted me to the story and I hope I do it justice in my graphic novel adaptation.
Floere character design options.
Floere’s world in pencil. He lives underneath the stacked hay.
I personally love the off-white paper because it works well with this story, which was written in the forties. I use smooth, hot-pressed aquarelle paper to ink on and then tape to a board to paint.
This is drawn on very white paper with a parallel pen, which I filled with waterproof ink. I then scanned it and used Photoshop to color it.
This is drawn on ultra-white paper with a stiff pen nib and then colored with watercolors. Most people I have shown my tests to prefer this look. The lettering was done digitally with a font originated by Willy Vandersteen, a Belgian comic legend, which I love because it’s from the same period as the original story, adding to the nostalgic, retro feel.
After taking a few weeks to thumbnail the book and adding all the text in Indesign, I am now penciling all 150 pages. I rough out the pencils in blue — a habit from my animation days — and then rework in pencil on the aquarelle paper. I will adjust and improve again when I ink.
As a comic book fan, no visit to Belgium can be done without taking this selfie.
