Seven Guerrieres interior art!

Been a while since I've updated with anything. Work has been kicking my butt as of late with the crazyness that is SDCC approaching pretty much the whole industry is in overdrive. Anyways I have a bit of time tonight to put up an update. Here's a sampling of some interior pages from Seven Guerierres which is being published by Editions-Delcourt in the first half of 2008. I've also included the layouts to show the process work. Normally in "American" comics we don't really put in the word balloons in our layouts, sometimes we don't even have to do layouts at all. However the French graphic novels are done sorta "oldschool". With the balloons drawn traditionally on the original pages. This took some getting used to for me since I'd never done that before. To tell you the truth I found it quite difficult at first. That being said, I've now have a new found respect for letterers. Having now done pages using this process, I started thinking about how I drew my pages back then and thought "man the letterers must hate me!". It's quite a difficult task trying to tell the story and not covering too much of the art. Now I find myself concerned more about balloons placements as I do my layouts. The advantage of doing it this way though, is that not only can I now control how the readers read the story with my panel layouts, I can now also guide them along with my balloon placements. It's almost total control in how I can lead the readers through the story. Now I find myself placing the balloons in my new layouts for "American" publishers even if just for me to see, but at least now whoever is lettering my work will probably not hate me as much. :)