LET'S TALK COMICS 2: Behind The Scenes of Arden High!

This is part two of my deep dive into what it's been like to work on my first ever graphic novel: Disney-Hyperion's ARDEN HIGH! Here is part one, which was a casual Q and A podcast. Like I mentioned in the podcast, this part will be covering the more visual aspects of the creation process including character design, script-to-comic process, and paneling/environments.

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Here is the "before you read" which includes everything you might need to know before we get into the meat of things:

First of all, I want to give the biggest shout out in the world to the two people who are the masterminds behind everything I have been illustrating: Molly Horton Booth and Stephanie Kate Strohm. These two wonderful folks are the authors of Arden High, and we've been having frequent giddy conversations since I got signed onto the project as the illustrator. They have helped me to keep my head held high during this process. Right when I started to feel the most burnt out, like magic I would receive a loving message from Molly or Steph! The project manager Rachel Stark and designer Tyler Nevins have been just a dream to work with as well. I feel so lucky to have a good first experience with comics...seeing as I never planned to do them, and actually kind of resisted when my agent first suggested comics to me. 

Now on to plot! Here is the first synopsis in the first email I ever received (and what a weird feeling it was to see the client of Disney sitting in my inbox): 

She’s the Man meets Nimona in Arden High, a school where magic is real, fairies run the party planning committee, and backstabbing is totally a thing—all based on Shakespeare’s timeless tales.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Welcome to Arden High School, where all the world’s a stage, and the drama is Shakespearean – literally. In this YA graphic novel series, Shakespeare’s classics play out in the hallways, sports teams, and after school clubs of a modern high school, all updated with fresh, funny, and fast paced twists that showcase the Bard’s stories as timeless and inclusive.

AHS is no ordinary high school. Just like in Shakespeare’s plays, fairies, witches and other supernatural beings coexist with mortal students, causing their own special kind of chaos. But like every high school, a year at AHS runs the full range of feels from comic to tragic: surviving power struggles, being true to yourself, and navigating friendships. And of course, crushes – the course of true love never did run smooth, and neither does high school.

I got this email on October 2, 2020. I was told that I was the illustrator they wanted for this project, but that just to be sure we were heading in the right direction, to create some character samples and two fully rendered graphic novel pages using the script. The idea was to sign me for the two books that were written, the first of which being Twelfth Grade Night, based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. I was to start with the first book.

This is where the journey begins!

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To create my samples, I was given a spreadsheet of character descriptions as well as the full script. I cannot show everything that I produced for that, seeing as our main character Vi actually changed a bit and I have been asked not to show anything that isn't "final design"! But I can show you a few things :-)

Like I said in the podcast, this part was the most fun for me. I felt like I was doing fan art! As I developed the visuals for these characters I recalled things from my own past as a teen growing up and consuming media. For Orsino specifically, I had a freaking ball. I looked at modern tiktok e-boy fashion, but incorporated elements from Shugo Chara, a manga I grew up with and I felt really aligned with his style! This is an easter egg (haha, no shugo chara pun intended) that only you guys know so far. I wonder if readers will pick up on that influence at all!

As for the rest of the cast, let's have a look at the sketches. If you're familiar with the story of Twelfth Night (or A Midsummer Night's Dream) you might recognize some of these names and be able to start dreaming about how these characters are alike/different from their original counterparts. 

It's kind of funny for me to look at the middle drawing because Andrew is so damn TALL and the only one in color--this is because we redesigned him a few times, and they suggested that he have kind of a gamer-boy look with colorful hair, and to show this I went ahead and colored him entirely. His hair color is, you guessed it, 100% because of Hatsune Miku (another childhood hero).

Tanya, Ron and Puck do appear in book one but are from Midsummer Night's Dream...I will not say much more on them, except that Ron is an absolute and utter himbo, and yes, he is wearing a boilersuit from Lucy & Yak.  

The next thing I would like to highlight about this process was translating script into comics. I was worried this would prove difficult for me, but I think because I have consumed so much storytelling content in my life, I was able to visualize what I was given so clearly, like it was a movie playing out in my head. The fact that the authors did such an awesome job of providing notes and carefully worded action definitely helped with this. Here are a few pages to show you...trying not to include any major spoilers (after all I still want you to want to buy it right? hehe).

In no particular order, and almost entirely out of context:

(above) I loved when the authors gave me such clear mental imagery like this--I could totally see this moment going down in my head. I tried to use panel sizing/consistency to lend to the pacing of this scene.

Iconic Orsino moment. I got to incorporate a lot of scenes with phones in them and tried to keep it fun and fresh in how they were presented. Sometimes it's just the phone screen, a whole phone in hand, or just snapshot closeups like pictured in this page. Either way, I had to open my phone on multiple occasions to make sure I knew what the interface of a modern iphone looks like. Unfortunately this will probably change a little by the time this book hits the shelves....please apple, do not change too much. I don't want teens making fun of me.

Another one of those pacing moments, with no dialogue but clear body language! Kids with morals realizing their revenge pranks aren't so funny after all.

Sometimes, I left speech bubbles blank in the sketches, just to save time! There's a lot of little text I would have to write out, especially for longer dialogues. The designer and project manger OK'd this when I asked them about it early on--basically told me they could fill in the blanks and that everything was still clear to them, as well as enough for the the letterer to work off of. In case it isn't clear that's panel 3/// TOBY speaking. 

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The paneling style I went with was greatly inspired by snotgirl. Instead of my panels all fitting within a frame, they sometimes break the outer frame and extend past the bleed, as well as overlap, or sit within themselves. This kept things interesting for me and allowed me to use certain panel shapes and spacing for various dramatic affects. There isn't a ton of high-energy action in this story, but there are a few scenes (such as the page above) in which I used diagonal lines and dutch angles. Most of the book though, is drawn with rectangles with 90 degree angles for panels. 

Additionally, there are a few full-bleed one-panel illustrations which were SUPER fun to work on. 

The hardest part for me was without a doubt environments (as stated in the podcast), and especially putting characters in the environment in a way that made sense--basically having to pay special attention to perspective, sizing, consistency and fitting everything I wanted into a panel. Most of the environments are pretty sketchy still and I'm a little scared to line them but something that helped me was drawing the room or exterior on a separate canvas (as its own illustration) and then placing it in the panel such as:

...and technically, I can re-use this same background a few times, just cropped, zoomed-in etc. so long as it makes sense with the camera angles/character placement in the scene! 

I'm starting to find that the one film class I had in college is helping me more with comics than any "comic" class I had (which I did have, and it would be generous to call that experience a "class"). Anyways now that I've thrown some shade, it's just about time to wrap this up.

My experience working with comics has been a learning curve. My first few pages vs my last pages look like a different artist did them. It was a quick turnaround to get these 160 pages in, but thanks to the awesome team I'm working with and the support of friends and family (and a lot of time spent in coffee shops), I can say I am officially about to line + color my first ever full, to-be-published, Disney-owned graphic novel! And I feel dizzy even thinking about it sometimes. Like, how did this happen? I graduated in a pandemic, felt very very lost, I blinked, and so many things were happening so quickly. 

I love these characters and this story with my whole heart. I never thought I'd be so giddy to hear Shakespeare's name, or to be actively seeking out Shakespeare In The Park, but now I feel a little connected to him. One bisexual creator to another. I don't know if you've seen Julie & Julia (2009) but it feels a little something like that.

-JG