Interview with Ben Newman about his new comic book Ouroboros
How did this project come about?
I was half way through my Small Press book for Nobrow when they asked me if I would be interested in creating a comic book to launch their new 17×23 range. I’ve been a huge comic fan since before I can remember but I’d given up on the idea of illustrating comics because I’d been concentrating on exhibitions and freelance work for the past six years. The opportunity was too good to turn down so I said yes, put my nose to the grindstone and got to work trying to figure out what story I wanted to tell.
Can you describe the process?
I always knew how I wanted the story to start and end but the middle was a complete jumble of events and ideas. I wrote the story out numerous times and starting switching around the narrative beats until I felt that they flowed together and were paced well. I had to make sure that the story wouldn’t be too jarring for the reader and that the scenes followed on naturally from each other because the story would be told without any words. Then I sketched out thumbnail pages of my story in two-page segments so that I knew what the first panel needed to start with and what the last panel needed to end on. By breaking the narrative down to twelve two-page segments made it much easier for me chip away at the project rather than becoming totally overwhelmed by it.
Once I knew how the story needed to be told I started fleshing out the thumbnail roughs and developing the characters until I felt happy enough to begin drawing the pages out in neat. Many of the original panels were scrapped and redrawn numerous times in the vain hope of improving composition. I traced the neat drawings on a light box and then scanned them into my magic box (technical speak for computer). The whole book is printed in just three spot colours so I had to work out how many different colours I could create from such a limited palette before I started colouring the final images in. For example, the black colour used is actually all three spot colours printed on top of each other and the light browns are a red and light green overlapping at a lower opacity. It made my brain hurt. A lot.
Did you enjoy creating the story more .. or creating the illustrations?
I enjoyed both equally because I feel that they are just as important as each other. The story had to interest me enough, so that it could sustain my imagination and push me to create images that I felt were exciting and different. Saying that, I have to admit that I do get more of a buzz from the illustration side. The illustration stage is where everything starts to come to life and the project feels real. It’s impossible to not get excited when you see the visuals forming a narrative.
How long did this project take you to create?
I’d thought of the idea for the story a couple of summers ago whilst day dreaming in the back of my friend’s car, but it was only last April that I managed to start putting pen to paper and writing it out. I had the comic finished and the print layers ready by the end of the first week of January so I guess it works out at about nine months. It would have been finished sooner but I had to balance my lecturing and freelance jobs while I worked on the comic so that I could pay the bills. Damn living expenses!
Why is there so much violence?
I think the violence stems from my love of pulp novels, noir, samurai films and westerns. I love the scenes in Shogun Assassin where he chops off the enemy’s arms and legs so that a thin, concentrated stream of red paint jets out of the lost appendage. I wanted my fight scenes to have that quality to them, so that it leaves an impact on the reader without being gratuitously gory.
One thing I really like about this comic is that there are no words.. everyone can enjoy it.. young, old, people who speak different languages. Was this intentional? Why are there no words?
Yes, very much so. I wanted to challenge myself not to use words and let my illustrations speak for themselves. I want anyone to be able to pick it up and understand the narrative. What is even more exciting is that people can read into certain things differently from each other depending on their cultural background so that elements of the comic can to be left up to the reader’s interpretation.
Comics to me are basically storyboards for animation .. would you like to animate your comics at some point?
It is definitely something I would like to try out but currently I’m really enjoy the physical printed nature of comics and that one on one interaction the reader/audience has with the material.
What did you learn from this experience?
I learnt that my schoolteachers from my childhood were wrong, you can learn a lot from reading comic books. I was pleased to find that after reading thousands of them and bleeding my bank dry on graphic novels, that I had actually, over a long time, developed a good sense of pace and narrative.
What’s next?
I’m just coming to end of a job designing a wine label which has been a great deal of fun. Once that’s finished I’m working on a couple of projects with Nobrow that will be due out at the end of the year. One of the projects is a revisit to my first book, The Bento Bestiary, which I cannot wait to get started on because of the creative freedom that Nobrow allow on their projects. I feel very lucky to be working with such a forward thinking and exciting publisher.
Links
- BEN NEWMAN at: Profile / Website
- Buy the comic book
Tags: Ben Newman, Comic, Ouroboros