0003 - New Orleans and the Script

0003 - New Orleans and the Script

This is the 3rd 'Official' entry into my little production journal, but I think I may start adding in a few 'informal' entries here and there. Shorter bursts if info that may not really have a home in a longer entry. Those will likely only be done on the official BLOGGER page since I'll mostly be doing them from my iPhone. But the bulk of the content will still be distributed throughout the webmosphere. :D

Here's the usual disclaimer: "In No Particular Order" is a production journal by me, Kody Chamberlain, for my creator owned comic titled "SWEETS." The blog will include other info, but it's centered around that project specifically. I'm not an expert on any of this, but with a bit of confidence, smarts, and help from my friends, I can work my way through most of it. These journal notes are NOT intended to be perfect, essay style entries. Comic book deadlines are hell, so I make no promises on the quality of the information I'm presenting. You'll find typos, grammar problems, logic errors, constantly contradicting information, and all sorts of things that will annoy and offend those with an eye for perfection. I publish these entries in several different places, please feel free to choose your favorite and stick with it, or jump around if you'd like.

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So toughen up, don't sweat the small stuff, and enjoy the process of making comics, presented in no particular order:

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Took a trip to New Orleans two weeks ago with my wife and our good friends Rob and April Guillory. For those that don't know, Rob is the artist on CHEW, a fantastic new book with writer John Layman.

Our first night there there, we showed up at The Blue Nile to catch a Marco Benevento (piano) show with two of my favorite drummers Johnny Vidacovich and Stanton Moore. Lucky for us, an all-star lineup showed up to play the gig including Anders Osborne (guitar/vocals), Big Sam (trombone), Kirk Joseph (sousaphone). Easily one of the most talent packed shows I've seen in my lifetime.

The next morning we fought a thunderstorm to have breakfast at one of my favorite spots, Camellia Grill, and then "BAM," we had Dinner at Emeril's later that night. Lots of walking, shopping, galleries, and even ran into a few friends from Lafayette. We took the 'Pepsi Challenge' and had beignets at Cafe du Monde. They were fantastic, as always, but I can go on record and say my wife cooks a better beignet. Bold statement, right?

I also shot reference. Lots and lots of reference. There are several locations in SWEETS that I wanted to recreate, so that's the bulk of what I shot while in New Orleans. But it was also important for me to walk, drive, and study those locations again to make sure they felt right in the script. I won't be trying to create the locations exactly, they don't have to be real, I just want them to 'feel' real. When I got home, I made a few tweaks to a couple of the scenes based on impressions I got while walking the locations. Fresh angles, lighting ideas, etc. I have a blast doing this kind of thing, and I hope it shows in the finished comic.

In the last few weeks, I spent a lot of time tweaking the 5 issue script to make it stronger, and used a lot of the notes I got from friends and colleagues. I also ignored a lot of notes. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. In the end, I think the second draft is far stronger than the original.

In my quest to make this project top notch, I decided to send it off to a professional script consultant for a review. This particular consultant mostly does feature length screenplays, but I was able to talk my into having my comic book script reviewed instead. Apparently this will be the consultant's very first opportunity to critique a comic book or graphic novel script, and it seems there's some honest excitement about the opportunity on both ends. Our phone discussion of the script happens tomorrow.  I will be taking detailed notes during the conversation, and I'll try and show some of those once the book starts to come out. Don't want to give away any story spoilers before anyone reads it, so I'll hold that back for a while.

Time to get back to work, but for small chunks of nonsense, feel free to follow me on Twitter or Facebook .