Crafting An Epic Comics Collaboration (Slashfilm interview)
Nov 17, 2018 by Mark Siegel
This fun interview with the great Rosie Knight includes special time-lapses and mini-movies about the making of 5 WORLDS—a nice share for any young or aspiring graphic novel creators...
We were thrilled and hard pressed to select from among so many exquisite entries! Here is the 2018 selection—look for them in print inside 5W3: The Red Maze, now available for pre-order.
People often assume that making a graphic novel is pretty much the same as making an animated movie; some people even use anime and manga interchangeably—or that people can seamlessly jump from one field to the other. Even though perhaps a screenplay bears similarities to a graphic novel script, a storyboard is only a very distant cousin to an actual comics page.
Hi everyone! I'd like to introduce my teammates on 5 Worlds in the next few blog posts... Today, let's start with Xanthe Bouma.
Xanthe joined the 5 Worlds project along with fellow MICA alums Matt Rockefeller and Boya Sun. They had taken classes with the brilliant Sam Bosma and Kali Ciesemier who suggested I get in touch with these wunderkinds... And what a lightning bolt of inspiration it was discovering their work...
Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson first announced itself as a little watercolor doodle one morning on a train ride to work. You can see it here, there's a captain at the prow of a ship, and he's talking to a mermaid in the water.
I'd never given much thought to mermaids before this one turned up in my life. And as happens in my doodle journals, I don't know what else might be attached to a thread like this... I started pulling on it, day by day, and a 400 page graphic novel was on the other end of that line. Along the way, over a period of years, I got to learn a few things about mermaids.
May 8th, 2018—5 Worlds, book two releases in the English speaking world. We dedicate this launch to our re-readers.
But first, thank you to my teammates, Alexis, Xanthe, Matt and Boya, for journeying this far together. Who knew that fateful meeting at MoCCA in New York three years ago would have such durable friendship by this point?
We're in the midst of inks and colors on volume three, but it's nice to come up for air and enjoy today's birth. Producing a 250-page, full-color story every May is a tall order, even for a team of five. It's also a marvelous adventure, and a collaboration like none I've known.
The 5 Worlds experiment is a gamble for all of us. We set out to tell a densely layered story, with a vast loom of world and character design, and themes that are intended to unfold over 1,250 pages. Within what is hopefully a riveting, world-hopping delight, filled with wonders, thrills, and mysteries—we are also exploring our shared humanity, and our place and service in the universe.
We're not just making the 5 Worlds series for readers—these are offerings to RE-READERS. And re-re-re-readers... We dream of crafting a story that gets better on the seventh reading! And one where each book reveals something about each previous book.
If you haven't already, hope you'll consider buying one yourself, or treating a young person you love to it.
And check out this fun swag! These are some of the items we offer at signings...
5 Worlds lapel pins, 2018 set
With 5W2, the second of our collectible bookmarks is out!
And the Behind-the-Scenes-'Zine reveals sketches and concept art of all kinds...
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