Making of Junkyard Chase 1 – Inspiration

Many people approach me at conventions who want to write (or are writing) and they ask about the writing process. It’s difficult to get into the nitty gritty details during a panel at a show, which is only an hour at most and you have to impart a lifetime of knowledge within a short span of time. However, for a while now I’ve wanted to provide a step-by-step process guide for how I went about creating my latest work: Junkyard Chase.

Please keep in mind that what follows is the process I followed for this particular project. It doesn’t reflect how I work on every project, nor should it be considered the definitive “How To” guide on making your own comics. It can be a template, however, for those of you just starting out or wanting to see how another professional makes comics.

We’ll start with the inception of the storytelling idea. Many books skip over this, and with good reason – if someone has to tell you how to have an idea, chances are comics are not for you. Also, you may have some additional issues that would plague you in the professional world, and I recommend getting together with a professional counselor or therapist to work that out on your own.

While I can’t tell you how to have a storytelling idea, I can tell you where I drew inspiration from for this particular story.

INSPIRATION comes in many different forms. Typically I draw mine from music – the way it makes me feel or a memory it triggers, and that gets the creative juices flowing. In this particular case, however, I’d been inspired by classic cartoons.

The physical comedy of the antics of kids cartoons aren’t really something I had tackled before in a comic, and I wanted to do something with a lot of movement and tell a visual story – but also be fun, light-hearted, and something the whole family can enjoy.

From there you start thinking of funny situations: anvils falling on heads, rockets strapped to someone’s back and going awry, gravity-defying moments of pure comedy gold.

These are elements – scenes that can be built into a story. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We’ll cover the next step – developing the elements of plot – in the next entry!