Wednesday, August 13, 2008

My brush pen has been busy...

Last week I showed a few pages from Hamlet at a conference called "Multiliteracies". I was on a panel with Shaun Tan and Bruce Mutard, moderated by the fabulous Erica Wagner of Allen & Unwin, and we were talking about graphic novels (of course!). Good fun, and as always more ideas than we could cram into the allotted time.

So, now that I've shown a few pages in public, I (finally) feel ready to reveal a tiny glimpse on the blog. Only a tiny glimpse though! Here's Polonius, popping out in our faces.
I'm really pleased with the torn paper - and yes, it is "real" - scanned in a delicate balancing arrangement so as not to squash the little "petals", then tidied and colour-corrected on Photoshop. Oooh, I love doing collage. And even though there are no actual scissors and glue involved here, it's still lots of fun.

There's a fair bit of sitting around waiting for the computer to process some of the larger images in Hamlet. For example, getting my 1200 dpi scans of the black ink-work into the right spot on a 300dpi page involves a 5 minute "transform" process. What's an impatient girl like me to do during such an enormous stretch of empty time? I can't resort to the internet, because that crashes Photoshop during a transform. So instead I play with my biggest brush pen, and fool about with creatures like this:
But more often, I must admit, I'm distracted by other creatures!
Awwwww!!!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I hear that "Multiliteracies" seminar was awesome! ; )

Greg G said...

I think you need an otter or maybe a miniature horse to complete the set of creatures in that last photo...

fabulous heretic said...

Love the 3D effect!

Can you do me a tattoo like that?

spacedlaw said...

The 3D pop up of Polonius looks great!

Bobby.N said...

You need another computer Nicki. No wonder 'Gatsby' took you so long! - ;)

-Bobby.N

.

Greg G said...

I do love Polonius... but I'm also kinda keen to see more of these sketchy critters!

Anonymous said...

I was one of th lucky attendees at the Multiliteracies session. I loved the Hamlet drawings, and the way that your work brings so many new meanings and layers to the original. Much like collage as a process overall. Good luck.

Unknown said...

Hi Nicki,

I'm so excited to see some of Hamlet, can't wait to see more!

x renee

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