Chapter 5 Page 3

by on May 25, 2011 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 5: Teapot

Recommended Graphic Novel: Hereville : How Mirka Got her Sword

By Peter

I first saw Hereville in the San Francisco Museum of Comic Art giftshop. The idea of a fantasy graphic novel for young readers set in an orthodox Jewish community seemed kind of bizarre to me, but when I finally got around to reading it, I found myself completely delighted by it.

The top of the cover reads, “Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl”. It’s humorous, authentic, and original. And in the end, the time-honored Jewish tradition of arguing something to death is what saves the day.

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Chapter 5 Page 2

by on May 18, 2011 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 5: Teapot

More on Flashbacks

By Peter

One of my very favorite old movies, which I haven’t seen for years, is called Laura. In it, a young woman named Laura is murdered and a detective is called in to solve the case. The detective talks to various people who knew her and she is shown in flashback from several people’s point of view. Pretty soon, the detective has fallen in love with her. What emerges is an unrequited love story, except that one of the members of the couple is dead and only exists in flashbacks.  It’s pretty unusual, especially for a black-and-white movie.

Right now, Joshua’s mom is only seen in flashbacks. I was going to have all the flashbacks be from Joshua, but then I thought of Laura, and I decided to have flashbacks from the three characters who knew her: Joshua, Joshua’s dad, and the General. That way, you can see three different sides of her.

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Chapter 5 Page 1

by on May 11, 2011 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 5: Teapot

Flashbacks

By Peter

Flashbacks work particularly well in graphic novels. I find they rarely work all that well in regular novels.  (Okay, I’ll admit I haven’t read Proust’s famous novel “Remembrance of Things Past”, which is apparently all one big flashback.) But in a graphic novel, add a little gray scale, and everyone knows it’s a memory.

When I wrote Coiled in novel form, there were no flashbacks. You didn’t get to meet Joshua’s mom until very far into the story. But in my graphic novel script, I am going to be inserting flashbacks of her in several places. She’s an interesting character, and I’m looking forward to writing more about her.

By the way, this really cool looking page wasn’t in the script. It was all Amanda’s idea.

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Chapter 4 Page 7

by on May 4, 2011 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 4: Ayana

Recommended Graphic Novelist: Doug TenNapel

By Peter

If you like quirky, you should check out the works of Doug TenNapel. He’s done work for both adults and kids. I particularly like Tommysaurus Rex, about a dog who is run over and is reincarnated as a tyrannosaurus rex. There’s a fairly cliched bully-driven plot that takes a very unexpected twist. Also, Ghostopolis is a good one for kids, about a boy who inadvertently ends up in the afterlife without dying. TenNapel’s work always has a strange quality to it that makes me ever so slightly uncomfortable, but he still manages to be appropriate for kids.

His quirkiest yet is his new webcomic Ratfist. It starts off a superhero parody, but then takes a left turn into the bizarre.

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Chapter 4 Page 6

by on April 27, 2011 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 4: Ayana

Another of Peter’s Projects

By Peter

In addition to writing Coiled, I also teach from time to time. I work with middle school students, primarily from groups who are underrepresented in technology. I come up with creative technology projects and get them involved. The latest one I’ve done is to create a dance game, kind of like Dance Dance Revolution, working with Native American kids and teachers. The kids hand drew the graphical elements of the game using a Northwest Native design technique called “form line”. These drawings were scanned in and used in the user interface. Then they used sound editing software to mash up traditional and contemporary Native music for the “sound track” of the game. Then they brought it all together and added dance steps using XML, an industry standard data format. A couple of guys in the Native community built a wooden platform for the footpads that close a circuit when you step on the neoprene pads, and then that’s attached to a PC using a little circuit board from a company called Phidget.

We showed it off at the University of Washington’s First Nations Powwow. Check out my son trying it out on this YouTube video.  You can’t really hear the music (it was pretty loud in there), but you can see the graphics and get a sense of the game.

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