"Purple Bands and Spirals"

This is a post about how I made my first comic book. :D

In July 2012, I was approached by a fan (of my webcomic) with a unique request - she asked me to draw a comic book for her to gift her boyfriend.

The story, their life together.

I was naturally thrilled at the idea of doing something like this, not to mention quite honoured at the opportunity. I worked on this comic book through the months of August and September.

It was a hard and laborious process, exacting a very high price in terms of time and effort, as I tried to fulfil not just hers but my high expectations as well. Letting it go, calling it complete, was both a relief and slightly painful. There was more I wanted to do with it, more I wanted to learn for myself, but I was also quite exhausted and fast running out of holiday time.

In this post, I want to share the process of creating this comicbook for Sukirti, which I called - “Purple Bands and Spirals”. :)

The inside left facing cover. It's unconventional as a cover, but it's this way for a reason (revealed at the end).

This first page was actually the last page that I drew. It has been made as the left inside page of the book itself, the special reason for which I will reveal at the end of this post.

The process of drawing an entire comic book is more complicated than I had imagined. There are ideas for the overall story, its presentation, its reveals, its hints and its clues. And then there are many, many more ideas for the individual pages - for the panels which take the story forward in time, for the right artistic link between the paneling in a page and the story it says.

I was drowned in these numerous ideas and thoughts even before I had drawn the first page. And as it turned out, that had its effect such that the first page I drew belonged chronologically near the end.

The first panel - at the beach one night...

I began the story at the beach at night, and designed the comic arc in flashback mode. The story she (my client?) told me involved a long conversation and events that night at the beach, which I used as the time period of the comic, with all their personal anecdotes and other stories as a flashback from there.

As she dived into their quirky (but lovely) love-story, I had to ensure that I was not just accurately recounting facts but also tracing her own memory.

The mind keeps what it feels relevant and discards all else. The final product is often mysterious even to the person whose memories it comes from.

How amateur storyboarding brought ideas to final portrayals!

I’m obviously concerned for privacy, which is why all significant dialogues inside the comics have been hidden.

Her purple hair-band was an important point in her recollections, she told me. She couldn’t point out the importance in simple words, but it was one of those things her memories wouldn’t let go of. So, it obviously had to be part of the comic book too. It makes an appearance in numerous places throughout the book, always just there somewhere, you know such things are.

A tricky page, me trying to show an entire conversation in a single panel.

Drawing this night-time stroll was one of the most difficult experiences for me. I tried my best to represent the tiny lanes of a city by night. In her mind, the world comprised her and him at that time but, like in any other Indian city, there were many, many lives living on around them, a fact I tried to emphasize here.

I have never considered myself a very accomplished artist. Some of my difficult moments were over the simplest things, such as learning how to draw curly hair! :P There were many failed attempts on paper, the one below being just one of them…

Artist needs to learn to draw!

Then sometimes there would be some pages which just drew themselves straight out of my mind. Their first time drinking was one such, and I guess this is where my own ideas directly coincided, quite beautifully, with her story.

I could see it even as I read it from her recollection the first time. Early sketches were slightly different, using three panels at the bottom to show the same picture across different moments, just seconds apart from one another. But finally I used this technique on another page - the page with the paper plane shown above - and decided to keep this one more simple.

Still, I’m very happy with how it turned out. Sorry again for the blurred dialogues!

Being the way I am, it was tough to restrain myself once I really got into the thick of things. I wanted to say a lot, irrespective of who the story was intended for. So I did, writing out ideas for a more lengthy narrative and dialogues which would better connect the anecdotes to each other. But wisdom prevailed at the final drawing board, and I kept my own words at a minimum.

Some of the discarded ideas which, given more time and independence and all that stuff all artists crib for, could have gone in...

There was also a very urgent need to remind myself of the key facts. Every now and again. :P

She insisted it had to be that way.

But hey, what’s the point of saying a story if you won’t even have any Easter eggs hidden here and there! I put myself in one of the pages, a hat wearing observer of the scene. I had an amateur juggler (only 3 balls!) in the cafeteria as the two of them passively addressed themselves over their cellphones.

And there is this here below, where I hid something again.

Since it’s probably too hard to spot, and you aren’t versed in the language, that’s my name and Sukirti’s transliterated into Mandarin on the top right corner sign of a food stall, reading - “For Sukirti, from Nishant.”

The final page of the comic book, its Epilogue, was drawn on the right inside page. I managed to find time for a small typo, it seems. :/

I’m not going to help find the typo. But I will still tell* you one thing…

Finally, the connect! An idea that made me very happy when it struck me, because I was under a creative block, and didn’t think there was any more that I could throw into the comicbook. The cover page was drawn as a left inside page and the final page as a right inside page so they could be seen together, for the final panel they framed.

When seen together, printed this way, her lines hold a deeper significance with respect to the book. Hence, the left INSIDE facing page for the front cover.

When seen together, printed this way, her lines hold a deeper significance with respect to the book. As her boyfriend watches her from across the street (on the first inside page), she wants to see how long it would take him to fall in love with her across the street.

His walk across the street to her side, and their falling in love, is told through their story encapsulated within this book I drew for her, quite literally when you hold the printed copy to read these two pages (as below).