Untold Secrets of the Comic Biz Part 4

Most editors like a writer to write a script which he or she can then pass on to an artist to draw it and send it back and everyone knows what they're doing. I never found it easy to write like that. Over the last ten years I've occasionally written scripts but they are usually written after I've drawn the page. In 2015 I was suddenly informed that we needed a two page Minnie the Minx urgently. Over lunch, myself and fellow cartoonist/writer Paul Palmer, who came over once or twice a week to help with backgrounds and frames and inking, and run scripts past me or ask for ideas, came up with this story and I started drawing it before we'd worked out the details. In the end, we just strung a load of old gags together but I think it suited Minnie!

Secrets of the Comics Biz Part 5

Although I've posted about her before as my colourist, Nika does much more than that! In fact, it would be impossible to do everything I do without her input, which is why we always noted her involvement with her initials "N.N." in a frame, which most people think is "H.H".

As a child in the Soviet Union and then as a teeenager in Greece, Nika dreamed of drawing, colouring, comic books and comic strips. And quite by chance, she came to live in England when she was 21, and the city she chose was Liverpool. Which is where I am.

 Nika has worked with me for over fifteen years, initially in my studio with marker pens, and since 2008 at her home (wherever that might be), via Photoshop. 

It was Nika who encouraged me to start attending comic cons and who either drove us to or accompanied me to dozens of them over the past five years where her super fast colouring skills have wowed all those watching her.

And back on the unseen weekly work of preparing comics, Nika is invaluable, taking the vaguest instructions from me and presenting the finished product I had in mind! See this 2016 Minnie the Minx which I wrote and drew and she coloured and fixed up for a good example.

Whoever sub-edited it added explanatory dialogue, which I hadn't thought necessary. For example, the last panel had no text at all in my script.

Sometimes I would be even more vague! This panel was on the 15th of 18 pages I drew one week and I was feeling a touch rushed!

Minnie the Minx, Dennis & Gnasher are (C) D C Thomson & Co Ltd.

I Will Draw For You!

From July 1st to August 1st I will be accepting commissions for drawings, in lieu of attending comic cons, so now is your chance to get a bespoke illustration! Prices start at only £15 for a nice black and white (and a bit of red) A5 and go up to who knows what!
http://nigelparkinsoncartoons.blogspot.com/2020/07/one-month-only-unique-sketches-by-post.html