moon_custafer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer) wrote2012-01-08 09:03 pm
moon_custafer) wrote2012-01-08 09:03 pm
Writing/Drawing Stuff
Have decided to try writing/drawing another comic, this one based on an idea I had a few years ago for a noir-thriller-pastiche. Will try and make it a series of short stories to avoid the running-out-of-steam mid-epic problems I had with Personal Information. I'm also going to give the characters faces with this one. I may do it greyscale, not to make it look "old" but so if I decide to publish in book format I won't face the costs of colour printing (or alternately, it will work on b&w e-readers.)
The big thing with anything period is all the research, and a visual medium doubles the work - you have to look up at least a half-dozen details every time a character walks into a new room. I spent all this morning trying to learn enough about mid-century hair dyes to decide if the opening scene I envisioned will even work. Once I get the main character through that, I have to take her into a diner, which should be easier to find visuals for, as it's a pretty archetypal location.
In keeping with this, I finally caved and got that book of 1920s-40s crime scene photos I first saw last year; not so much for the actual crime details (which are probably too gruesome to draw, unless I want to lose 99% of my readers, and their lunches, right away) but for the locations - since in theory the police weren't supposed to touch the scene before taking the photo, these should be pretty accurate portrayals of a cross-section of American homes of the time*. Also, the photos of suspects and victims should give me a roster of unglamourized faces to draw from.
Meanwhile, I now know something about the following topics not directly related to my plot:
Shirley Polykoff, legendary ad writer (supposedly one of the characters on Mad Men is based on her)
Murray's Pomade, formulated in 1925 and still in business.
The Blackburn cult.
The Beebo Brinker Chronicles - 1950s lesbian pulp-fiction in which not everybody ends tragically!
*The camera angles tend to be pointed towards the floor, however.
The big thing with anything period is all the research, and a visual medium doubles the work - you have to look up at least a half-dozen details every time a character walks into a new room. I spent all this morning trying to learn enough about mid-century hair dyes to decide if the opening scene I envisioned will even work. Once I get the main character through that, I have to take her into a diner, which should be easier to find visuals for, as it's a pretty archetypal location.
In keeping with this, I finally caved and got that book of 1920s-40s crime scene photos I first saw last year; not so much for the actual crime details (which are probably too gruesome to draw, unless I want to lose 99% of my readers, and their lunches, right away) but for the locations - since in theory the police weren't supposed to touch the scene before taking the photo, these should be pretty accurate portrayals of a cross-section of American homes of the time*. Also, the photos of suspects and victims should give me a roster of unglamourized faces to draw from.
Meanwhile, I now know something about the following topics not directly related to my plot:
Shirley Polykoff, legendary ad writer (supposedly one of the characters on Mad Men is based on her)
Murray's Pomade, formulated in 1925 and still in business.
The Blackburn cult.
The Beebo Brinker Chronicles - 1950s lesbian pulp-fiction in which not everybody ends tragically!
*The camera angles tend to be pointed towards the floor, however.
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First up - can my white-girl main character refer to a lesbian as a "bulldagger," or should she stick to the period-but-less-colourful-sounding "dyke?" She is pretty bohemian and may well have visited Harlem on occasion.
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Slang, is weird. :D
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"The Girl Hunt Ballad" number in "The Bandwagon" - Fred Astaire does Noire! See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuJxYmJlEHY
"The Killing" - Stanley Kubrick does Noire: "Open the garage door, Hal!"
"The Big Combo" - The camera work is so Noire your eyes will bleed! Plus Mr Big's great sermon on Hate!
"The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" - Kirk Douglas's first acting job and he almost steals the whole movie from Barbara Stanwyck! Free at the Internet Film Noire site http://www.archive.org/details/Film_Noir
"Quicksand" aka "Andy Hardy goes to Hell" - Mickey Rooney vs. Peter Lorre and Jimmy Cagney's big sister. Also on-line as above.
"Detour" - film an archetypal Film Noire on an Ed Wood budget! The original voice-over introduction from the loser caught in Fate's Web Of Doom.