Picture this the movie
Ξ July 14th, 2008 | → | ∇ Uncategorized |
Ben Balistreri’s “Seaweed and the Cure for Mildew”
Its Comic Con season and I know that a lot of you are getting excited to go. So to help get people even more excited, I wanted to let everyone know about Ben Balistreri’s new book “Seaweed and the Cure for Mildew”. Even with his busy schedule at DreamWorks as a story artist, he had time to answer a few questions about his awesome book
Ben when did you first think of the story for this book and how long did it take to create?
I was on vacation in San Diego and was enjoying a drink or two at the Tangiers Bar, which had a very ” Casablanca ” feel to it. I had been thinking of creating my own comic for a while, and this bar really inspired me. (Or I guess it might have just been the beer…) In any case it set the wheels in motion and I set about writing the story. That was about 9 years ago.
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So what was the process you went through in creating your book?
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I originally wrote an epic, that if completed, would have spanned seven books. It was a total mess. I showed that script to a few friends and most replied with dead silence or quickly changed the subject when I asked what they thought. I got some really great notes from my Dad (who has excellent story taste) as well as a good friend of mine, (and an amazing storyboard artist), David Prince. Their notes really centered on simplifying the story and making ideas clearer. I went through a few attempts to fix what was there but eventually threw the whole idea out and started over with a very simple idea of a pelican who was trying to find a cure for his crippled wings.
The second go-round I kept the script to a basic outline and figured I would “write” it with the drawings, as that felt more natural to me. I drew and hand-inked the pages and then did the color in Photoshop.
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What’s going to happen in the future; do you plan on doing more?
I planned on only publishing one book with one story but it’s taken so long that I decided to split the story into two books. Luckily the halfway point made for a nice break which, though the story’s not finished, there’s no annoying cliffhanger.
The second book is fully written and drawn and now just needs to be inked and colored.
Do you have more stories you would like to tell with different characters?
Absolutely! Creating this comic has been so fun and rewarding that I can’t imagine not doing more. Seaweed and Poisson’s story will be done at the end of book two, “The Devil’s Cookbook”. After that’s finished, I have plans for doing a story set in World War II.
Not only did you come up with the story, and pencil it, you also inked and colored the whole thing too. What were some of the difficulties and/or enjoyable experiences you had doing it by yourself?
Writing dialog and coming up with the story were the most challenging parts for me. I tried like hell to make the characters all speak with their own unique voices and spent a lot of time trying to make them likable. I wanted Seaweed to be a cool Humphrey Bogart “type” who even though he has a problem to overcome, he doesn’t seem like a loser or a standard underdog.
I spent most of my career working in character design, so drawing backgrounds was a real challenge as well. My favorite artists, Uderzo and Andre Franquin, draw every detail to perfection. There’s no slacking off on elements that the artist was too lazy to research or draw properly. I worked toward that kind of discipline for my book. I went on “location” scouting trips to take reference photos. I built a model of a tug boat so I could draw some tricky angles on Seaweed’s boat, “The Salty Sugar”, and otherwise spent a lot of time drawing and re-drawing all those details that I otherwise would be too scared to attempt.
Color frightened me as well. I was used to laying color down on individual characters but combining them on a background and then thinking of the color on a whole page was intimidating. I thought early on about going mono-chromatic but I didn’t think that would help the story and I didn’t want to take the “easy” way out. Thank God for Photoshop and the “hue/saturation” bar. This book would be a complete disast
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