Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Sept Guerrieres Update



Hey folks haven't updated in a while. I thought I'd give an update on Sept Guerrieres, my upcoming graphic novel from French publisher Editions-Delcourt. It's in the coloring stages right now and they are expecting to have the book published around May. I don't have the exact date but as soon as I do I'll make sure to post it. In the mean time here are some penciled previews, and if you're fluent in French you can check out a recent TV special on the Sept books here: http://www.publicsenat.fr/cms/video-a-la-demande/vod.html?idE=56567

5 comments:

Michael Kasaboski said...

Heya Francis,

Thanks for responding to my question about the alien world from your last set of posted pages. I now realize it's the ski resort world from Legion - just read the issue.

Also wanted to say thanks for the Batman sketch and the chat at the con on the weekend. A pleasure hearing your stories and advice.

These new pages you've posted are awesome. Is the first one a smaller, thumbnail version? Or is the second page the exact same page as the first one, just rendered and tidied up? Oh, and what's up with the word balloons? Did you just draw them in for composition purposes - I've always thought they are put in digitally, afterwords.

Thanks man!

Francis Manapul said...

Thanks Mike! and no problem, you should have introduced yourself as a blog watcher..heh. As for the french page actually the layout page is full size I then lightboxed it onto another art board. The reason for such a big layout is that well, these type of graphic novels have lots of panels and I need all the room I can get. The layout has the balloons with the text in it so that my editor knows how it reads. he often edits it afterwards by either taking some away or adding. On the finished page I just draw the balloons for them to fit in the text afterwards. I'm used to the american way of just having a letterer do it digitally but the french is kinda oldschool in that sense I suppose. Initially they even wanted me to letter it by hand which if they ever saw my hand writing would just be a disaster. So I convinced them to just let me letter the layouts and get someone to copy and paste in the test on the final image scan. It's quite a process but it works.

Michael Kasaboski said...

Hey Francis,
Thanks for the detailed explanation of the process - very interesting indeed. As for being a blog watcher, wellll, I didn't really know you had a blog before we met last weekend. I think I'd seen your livejournal site/blog before but that was about it. I just got into the blogging thing myself so after meeting at the show I came home and looked for you main site and also found your blog. I think you can probably link to my blog from my posts here, yeah? Anway, I have some better design ideas and am just working on setting up a new, different blog today actually. I'll link you to it once I have it up and you can take a peak at some of my art if you've got a spare moment.

Cheers for now, Mike

Sebs said...

Ooooh nice :D Can't wait to read it. Also, as I'm french, I've seen that show on the TV and I appreciated to learn more about "7 Guerrières" ;)

Also, I don't know if you heard about that but here, in France, "the Necromancer" had a pretty good success.
Actually, so much that Delcourt is now planning to re-edit your run on Witchblade. Which is a great news for all the fans, because we never get it entirely with the past editor who had the rights for the translation...

So, we're gonna have a lots of FJM stuff in France on this year :)

Blaz!! said...

Very impressive! These pages are awesome and count on me to buy it when it releases in France!
Congrats! :)