Less Plastic, Fan-tastic!

People pay for the vision in a creative product. Yet there's a lot of work required to achieve it.

Page 18 is my favorite page from Pretty Vacant: Final Repose Part II. My much-maligned Mindy character saves the day by fishing out plasticized heroine Gigi from her petrified prison. This wasn’t my favorite page when I started, but it became my favorite when I was able to stamp my personal vision on the final version!

In any collaborative medium, your vision can get lost. From the original script for Page 18 Panel 5:

5. With Mindy’s help, Gigi is lowered onto a hand-held dolly. This time, Gigi’s full body front is shown to the reader. As in the previous panel, Gigi’s right arm is bent above and across her head and her hair is still plastinated upwards. Gigi’s left arm is bent up and to the side with the back of her left hand parallel to her face. The right leg is straight while the left is bent at the knee in front of the other leg, which gives the left hip a nice curve. Gigi is plastinated looking downwards with a slack mouth.

Here’s a copy of the original art:

A very good job by the inker, but lacking the obviousness for the reader of Gigi's plasticized, unaware state.  I'm not blaming the inker -- after all, he was paid to do a job, not live my dream! It was a judgement call, granted, but I felt the scene would be more powerful if Gigi's expression was clearer.   

With a week left before the book was going to print, I had to make the changes myself. With my acquaintance Jolene modeling for me, I redrew the panel to give Gigi a wide-eyed, frozen, plastinated stare:



Whereas George Lucas has spent millions trying to achieve his original vision with his Star Wars films, most of us don’t have that kind of money to spend. Yet it can be done. It is possible to achieve your vision swiftly, simply and cheaply.

And in Gigi’s case, blankly.