9. The Making of a Comic: 'ReincarNation' with Madeline C.B.
A slice of afterlife tale, character concepts, and tips for artists
Howdy Brave Being,
Welcome back, fine friends. This week on The Making of a Comic, artist and Maryland Institute College of Art’s illustration student Madeline C.B. joins me to discuss her artistic process with comics and coloring as well as her influences. But first, we’ll take a look back at our short slice of afterlife tale, ReincarNation, from its inception to its color process. Let’s hop to it!
ReincarNation
I first spoke about ReincarNation in this previous post, dissecting it a bit, but I’d like to introduce the story and the artist properly by taking y’all down memory lane. Back in 2019, I first pitched ReincarNation to an anthology with artist TinTin Pantoja (MIRANDA IN THE MAELSTROM) and brought on frequent collaborator and editor Heather Ayres (SPITTING IMAGE) to edit. While it didn’t get picked up, I didn’t want to give up. When TinTin couldn’t continue on as the artist, I put out a call on Twitter. Here’s what it looked like:
That’s when I heard from Madeline C.B. who sent me her portfolio. I gave her info like payment, timeline, and a brief pitch, noting how it was a heartwarming story that explored the concepts of luck and life after death. Then, she kindly joined the team! What I didn’t share with her at the time was that I had lost two very important people in my life and was looking for some hope, and with Madeline on board to help me make this comic a reality, I felt hope again—hope in life and all that comes with it.
So here’s the pitch: Down on her luck, Joanna has died and wakes up in the limbo land ReincarNation--a weigh station of sorts where she has to figure out how to live her (next) life!
So we got down to business and made the comic with letterer Calico Davis (ARTIFICIAL). Almost a year later, I ended up self-publishing it on Gumroad during Emerald City Comic Con’s virtual convention in 2020. It was the start of the pandemic in the United States and people were pretty scared, so I felt like it was the right time to share it and hopefully give them what it gave me and a way to process whatever grief they were going through or was to come. My eternal thanks go to Madeline and our stellar team Calico and Heather for helping me make this little comic that could! And now, I’m pleased that Madeline joins this humble newsletter to talk about her work on it and then some.
Brittany Matter: What was your first step in drawing ReincarNation?
Madeline C.B.: I think it was the basic character sketches, when I was shifting around different face shapes and features and trying to figure out how they’d be presented in appearance and demeanor.
BM: What was your first impression of the story and characters?
MCB: I thought it was cute! I’m always interested in stories that deal with death in some way, either with the life before it or after it—and this story happened to have explorations of both, which was interesting.
BM: Tell us a little bit about your character designs.
MCB: I think my favorite character design was the Weepers, I had a lot of fun depicting their vaguely unsettling organic features.
The toughest character design was easily Hank, considering I am not particularly good at drawing animals in general, let alone anthropomorphic ones with clothes and robotic accessories.
BM: How did you approach coloring this world?
MCB: I think I based my color scheme almost entirely off of the descriptor of Joanna having an apron with “clouds akin to cotton candy.” If there’s any vague descriptor of color anywhere in a pitch, I’ll really focus on that for the whole look—so ReincarNation ended up being all pink, purple, and blue.
BM: When I received the final pages, to my surprise and which I was absolutely ecstatic over, I spotted Aziraphale and Crowley from the fantasy TV series Good Omens in one of the crowd scenes. Do you often include Easter eggs to other stories in your work or was this a one-time deal, and what inspired you to link them to our short?
MCB: During the timeline I was working on ReincarNation, I actually went to London and studied abroad at the same time Good Omens was coming out—the promotions were everywhere, and I figured I might as well watch it while I was over there. It was on my mind, so I thought it might be funny to try and slip the characters into a crowd. I honestly didn’t think you’d notice, or if you did I expected to be asked to edit them out!
I usually include some kind of background character easter egg in things I make because I get tired of coming up with side characters, especially in something that has a lot of crowd scenes. I think ReincarNation actually has a couple of my own characters in there on the sidelines, and I might have put a mini-me in a crowd too when I was really running out of steam.
BM: Who's your favorite ReincarNation character?
MCB: The Weepers technically never spoke, but I’ve always had a penchant for mysterious side characters, and the concept of their species was definitely the most appealing to me out of the cast.
Comics and Coloring
BM: What's your process when starting a sequential story?
MCB: It’s abhorrent! There’s no rhyme or reason to anything; sometimes I start with a few lines of text I scribbled in my notes app at 2am, sometimes I just start with one really cool sketch I know I want somewhere in the middle and work my way out on either end from there. Most of the time I don’t even plan to make full stories, I just draw one dramatic scene I’ve been picturing in my head and call it a day.
BM: When it comes to sequential art layout, how do you tackle it when drawing from a writer's script versus drawing your own comics and illustrations?
MCB: Having a script makes everything a lot easier, you don’t have to think about where you’re going to add page breaks! With a script it’s more of a puzzle of “How am I going to fit this much into one page,” as supposed to “How am I even going to begin to do any of this.” When I do my own comics, I usually just write a loose script and make up panel placement as I go—I don’t even go in knowing page count, whatever it happens to be at the end is what it is!
BM: When it comes to coloring, how do you approach choosing a palette?
MCB: I usually lean very heavily towards the monochromatic; I tend to tint everything towards one color, and sometimes I add few other colors for accents.
BM: What are your top three tips for prospective illustration students?
MCB:
Get your time management skills ready.
Don’t tie yourself to one kind of illustration practice! It will help you a lot if you know how to use a variety of traditional materials and how to make three-dimensional work—and if you find yourself wanting to switch to a different major in your explorations, do it! In my year a few students found themselves switching from illustration to fibers and they enjoyed themselves a lot more.
Please take care of yourself—get good sleep, make sure you eat, and stretch your drawing arm; you can burn out physically or mentally in a lot of bad ways.
Getting to Know Madeline
BM: What or who most often influences your art?
MCB: Definitely my friends and peers. They’re the ones that are bringing new concepts and ideas to the table, they’re the ones driving change in the industry and they’re always the ones that push me to want to keep up. One of my biggest comic inspirations (out of many) is Casey Nowak, I especially love their works that have explorations of difficult and complex human emotion in juxtaposition to the experiences of robots or AIs (such as in Diana’s Electric Tongue and Bravo).
BM: What are you reading or watching right now?
MCB: My favorite thing right now is probably my friend’s webcomic PROVIL on Tapas. It’s about a rival hero and villain that may or may not have a crush on each other, with some very interesting takes on classic superhero character types and really fun character interactions! I’ve been lucky enough to get to do a guest comic and some color work for it, and to be someone the creator occasionally bounces plot ideas off of. I’m really excited about what I’ve seen released and what might be to come!
BM: That’s so awesome that PROVIL creator El Dettmann asked you to join their webcomic. I just read it, and it’s wonderfully hilarious. Dear readers, be sure to read Madeline’s ProVil guest comic here. I guarantee relatable goodness.
Before the end of our chat, Madeline mentioned to me that when it comes to creating comics, she’ll “try any genre once” but that she likes “weird genres the most”. So keep an eye out and maybe we’ll be seeing more of Madeline’s comics in the future.
Follow Madeline @chickpeamcb and check out more of her work here. If you’re interested in reading a digital PDF of our short ReincarNation, it’s available on Gumroad for a $1 at the button below!