Its been a pretty busy period for Oli East – his first hardback collection, Trains Are Mint, came out from the new Blank Slate Books (started up by FPI’s own Kenny Penman and James Hamilton) and picked up some great reviews and even an awards nomination, while Oli’s rock’n’roll chums in the Band Elbow were collecting much deserved plaudits and awards in the music world for the Seldom Seen Kid album, which Oli had created the artwork for. He even found time to travel and still keep working on his comics. With his second hardback collection, Proper Go Well High, about to be released by Blank Slate Oli has kindly taken some time out to talk us through some of the art from the new work and share his thoughts on the pages – what inspired him, how he approached them – in his own words, so today we present the first of three articles with Oli discussing pages from Proper Go Well High:
(artwork from Proper Go Well High by and (c) Oli East, published Blank Slate – click the pic for the larger image)
Proper’s the first book I’ve made while having comics in mind. I did Trains two years ago and I can’t remember what I was thinking but it wasn’t comics. I just bashed it out and hoped for the best. But by the time to start Proper came round I’d had a wee education on what comics are allowed to be, which gave me some more rules to ignore and just get on with making a sexy book.
I don’t make any sketches or take any photos on the walks, I just make written notes on stuff but I made a conscious effort to take more detailed notes than I had with the previous book which resulted in this page, which is from some where between Hugh Green and Halewood in Widnes, which I’m very pleased with.
With each page I look at what my notes are and count how many ‘things’ I can fit onto one page before another one’s needed. So here the things start with some fella then a milk float. If they’d been seen together then they’d be in the same panel but there was a street or two between them. So that’s two panels right there. The main bit of the page is a close up of a Post Office window so I needed to set the scene before closing in, so the third is the outside of the post office so you know where we are. And then it’s window, then pond. The size of the panels depends on the content and its importance, but also the time since I had ‘a long one the bottom’.
There were so many things wrong with Trains that I wanted to fix in Proper and one of them was the pacing. Trains is too fast, something happens pretty much every page as far as I remember it (haven’t read it in a while), so I wanted to slow Proper right down. On these walks, sometimes things happen, sometimes I’m working over important stuff in my head, but a lot of the time I just switch off (something I do all too easily) and this is one of the pages where I let Lancashire speak for itself.
I’m very happy with the person in the first panel. Without fail every person in Trains is terribly drawn, mainly because I was trying to draw people, so in Proper I stopped trying and just did it and I’ve almost succeeded here. My notes say ‘dodgy/hiding man under tree’ but I think he looks more nervous than dodgy, but I wouldn’t do it again. I try and keep every first attempt in the book. So that nervous fella is my first attempt at drawing that ‘dodgy/hiding man’. I could have done it again better but I wanted to improve in front of whatever audience I can get rather than in sketchbooks.
He also looks like he’s scared of milk floats, but that’s the order I saw them. It’d look better if the milk float was on the left but it didn’t happen that way. It would also look better if the man was looking to his left but he wasn’t so it is how it is.
I remember the dog but he’s not in my notebook so I don’t know what I wrote but I’m sure he was sleeping. The three handwritten ads in the post office window are all real ads from that window and the printed one is from a Warrington newspaper, whose name escapes me. There are more elements of collage throughout the book and there’s a better newsagent window but that’s almost a splash page (get me, learning the lingo) and would make for short ‘commentary’.
The last panel is a pond I’m sure I passed but I can’t find it in my notes, but the ducks were definitely there, although I may have added the traffic cone. There are a few cones here and there in the book and I think a handful were added by me and not actually seen. But you get them everywhere don’t you? The rest of the page is spot on but that traffic cone has caused some sleepless nights. Looks all right though doesn’t it? Well it’s staying now anyway.
You can get Proper Go Well High from the FPI webstore, our branches and other outlets; you can keep up with Oli’s world (including the intriguing-looking Berlin multi-artist project) via his blog. Thanks to Oli for taking the time to share his art and thoughts on it with us.
Tue, May 12, 2009
Comics and cartoons