Palace in the Sky Webcomic News

Comic title: Precocious
Comic URL: http://www.precociouscomic.com/
Creator(s): Christopher J Paulsen
Genre: Humor

1) What is your comic about?

Precocious is about a group of 9- and 10-year-old geniuses who are too smart for their own good. The main four kids – Bud, Autumn, Jacob and Tiffany – live in the Sapphire Lake section of the Gemstone Estates neighborhood and attend the Poppinstock Academy, a school for the gifted. It takes a special brand of genius (and zero common sense) to cause their special brand of destruction. They’re competitive, capable and combative – and none are content unless they’ve built whatever situation they’re in into something epic. Which is usually a war. Think you’re more evil than me? War! Don’t like my dessert choice? War! There’s a bake sale? EPIC WAR! To these kids, this is perfectly normal and healthy behavior. This is what they do for fun.

Stepping back a bit, Precocious is a silly interpretation of the pitfalls of intellectualism. These kids work on a different level than the others in their age group, so they’ve naturally decided the others aren’t even worth acknowledging. Solidly locked in their ivory tower, the group is so insular they even ignore the existence of others in their own class. They’re horribly (and hilariously) elitist. Their mindset is so clearly healthy, after all. My kinds are in no way role models – but role models are BORING. It’s *fun* to watch deliciously flawed people flail around!

2) How did you get started making webcomics?

Oooh, this is going to be a long one.

I’ve wanted to do cartooning even since a neighbor let me borrow a Peanuts collection. They never got it back. I read the comics in the Washington Post every day as a kid, enjoying the modern cartooning heyday when Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side and Bloom County were going strong.

My first attempt at cartooning came in 1990, when I created a strip called Brats. Brats was about… a group of 9- and 10-year-old geniuses who were too smart for their own good! The main four kids – Autumn, Jacob, Tiffany and the main character whose name I forgot – lived in the Sapphire Lake section of the Gemstone Estates neighborhood and attended a school for the gifted. Hmm.

Brats was a failure. I simply could not draw cartoon figures at all! This was especially frustrating for THE CLASS ARTIST! I’m awesome at drawing, capable of working in several styles with high proficiency, but it turns out cartooning requires a completely different set of skills. Embarrassed at my poor drawing skills, I gave up on Brats in 1991. I couldn’t let cartooning go, though. The next year I tried again, this time making cartoons about my classmates. Once again, they were terrible. One time a classmate, who was not artistic in the slightest, grabbed my sketchbook and drew his own cartoon about the class. Every time people looked through the book, it was the clear favorite. I was so bad at cartooning, I had NEGATIVE skill! Someone with NO skill was better! That was enough of a soul crusher to keep me from cartooning for years. I tried again in high school, making comics for the school newspaper. One cartoon ran before I quit due to embarrassment. Here I was, the COVER ARTIST for the county art fair, and I couldn’t draw a cartoon figure to save my life.

When I went to art school, I gave up on cartooning as the unreachable dream. Having internet for the first time, my daily comic reading shifted to webcomics. People no longer needed to fight for syndication – the meritocracy that is the internet would elevate those who were skilled no matter where or who they were! The door was open! IF ONLY I HAD CARTOONING SKILL! Oh well. I settled on being a passionate admirer of webcomics and a kickass fine artist.

And then my life fell apart. Everything went wrong at once and I somehow washed out of school with straight A’s. Twice. Something was wrong with me. I *wanted* to work, but I just couldn’t do anything. I went over two years without doing any art whatsoever. I got help, and was completely shocked when I was diagnosed with ADHD. Turns out I’m a textbook case and I had NO idea. After some experimentation, I was given good old fashioned Ritalin. The next week I went out and bought my first sketchbook in years, and I haven’t stopped drawing since. For the first time in my life, I could THINK without it being a grand effort, and I could WORK without spending hours or days psyching myself up for it! I had a new lease on life.

With that motivation, I set a long-term goal for myself: I was going to learn cartooning. If I could pull off a long-term project – something that would be unheard of for the old me – not only would I be fulfilling a lifelong dream, but I’d prove that I was in control of my life. It took over four years of drawing for hours and hours every day, but I could see the progress I was making! I could launch a strip! Brats was resurrected, renamed Precocious, and on January 1, 2009 my dream of being a cartoonist came true. Ritalin may still get credit for saving my life, but cartooning is why my life was worth saving!

3) Five years from now, what do you see your comic becoming? Will it be over? Will it have grown larger?

By my estimation, it takes about five years before a comic truly gels. At that point, the writing is disciplined, the timing is perfect and drawing is tight and confident. (For the record: Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, has a section with scientific backing for this idea.) In five years Precocious should be clicking on every level, and I can’t wait. I work my butt off every day to get the hours of practice in that I need to achieve the five-year glory. I want to see my character designs evolve and becomes streamlined. I want the things I worry over now in execution to become second nature. Seeing such a bright future ahead of me keeps me motivated.

I certainly hope my readership will continue to grow. Like every cartoonist, I would love to have my passion also pay the bills. Between cartooning, illustration and my fine art, I think I can cobble together a decent life over that time. I may have to starve a bit before I get there, though.

4) Tell us about your main character. What are his/her motivations? How did he/she join up with your other characters and why?

I’ll start with Bud, since he’s the central character of the strip. Bud is the one responsible for the main group being what it is, good and bad. Since he began as an avatar for a 10-year-old me, it’s only natural he shares some of my tendencies. My bliss is to have a small group of extremely close friends who energetically bounce off each other, and that’s what Bud created. He also shares my bad habits, such as my insular nature and smart mouth.

Autumn is the co-lead, and she’s taken one the more central role in these introductory stages due to her being the new girl. She may be new, but it’s very clear she was meant to be in Sapphire Lake. She fits in almost too easily. Spoiled by always being far smarter than everyone in public school, Autumn must reconcile being in a group of equals with her love of brutally dominating others.

Overall, the dynamics between Bud and Autumn continue to amuse me. They both feed off the other and soon things are blown out of proportion in spectacular ways!

5) Who is your favorite secondary character and why?

From the regular supporting characters, I’ll go with the devious pageant girl, Dionne. My main kids may like to talk a big game and pretend they’re evil supervillains, but they’re still good at heart – if horribly warped. They’re no match for Dionne’s gleeful villainy. It’s really fun to write for Dionne, and it’s nice to have one character who can get the better of my kids. Without Dionne, Bud and Autumn would spin out of control.

6) What is your favorite comic page?

“YOU DON”T LIKE CHOCOLATE!?!” That whole dessert violence week is full of favorites. It’s showing all my kids at their best – which may be their worst.

7) Is there a storyline you’re really looking forward to? What is it about? Give us a spoiler warning if necessary!

Precocious was originally going to launch in the summer (which is why all the intro arcs take place then) – but I ended up bumping its launch date to 2009. In doing so, I missed out of my chance to tell the story about electing a class president – a battle between Roddy and Dionne. I refuse to let it go, and it’ll run this October. With a year of experience under my belt, I bet I can make it even more awesome this time!

Can you give us a short explanation on how you make your pages? If you have a tutorial or anything, please link it.

The first thing I do is write up the script. When I get an idea, I mentally toss my characters at them and see where they take me. Whatever works gets written down in outline form. I come back to the outlines later (fresh eyes) and begin to flesh out strips and cut the weaker ideas. Once I have scripts I like, I print them out. I like to work on strips in bunches, so I try to have at least a week’s worth before I move to the next stage.

I use pre-printed templates for my strips. That may be lame, but it’s the only way I can guarantee scanning it with straight lines. The daily format is too big for my scanner, so I have to scan it in two parts. Hand-drawn panels adds one more way to throw things off in the process. When lettering, I use a light box and a page I designed with text lines. This ensures my letting will be straight and the same size on the strip. I first write in the dialog with no-copy blue pencil to see how it fits, often changing the script as I go to tighten things up or save space.

The next step is drawing the figures in the no-copy blue. I use a mechanical pencil with uni-ball soft blue lead for this. This part takes the longest, as I try to sketch everything. I’m not confident enough yet in my inking to improvise too much.

I next ink the borders and dialog balloons, using a dip pen with a Speedball #513EF Globe Nib. Dialog is handwritten with a .08 tech pen. Figures and backgrounds are done in a combination of dip pen (same nib – it’s the only one I’ve ever used so I’m set in my ways now!) and tech pens for the smaller figures and details. For corrections, I can’t recommend the Uni-ball Signo white gel pen enough. The white is nicely opaque and the line is fine enough to give one excellent control.

With the strip complete, I scan it (two waves to get it all) into Photoshop. Once the two halves are lined up and merged, I use the contrast tool set at 50 to bring the blacks out and knock back the whites. Then, since my scanner doesn’t filter out all of the no-copy blue, use the select>color range tool. I set my color to #aaaaaa and select a range of 135, deleting most of the gray artifacts. Then, just to be sure, I set the foreground color to black and select the same range. I select inverse and delete, leaving only the full black lines. I can then color it, or drop the strip onto the white background of my saved template. Ta-dah!

9) Be your own critic! When it comes to your comic, what are you looking to improve upon?

There’s a constant effort to tighten up the execution in general. Character proportions still shift from panel to panel, and it bugs me. I’m still brutal with perspective for some reason, considering I spent YEARS learning all about it. I’d like to put in more backgrounds than I do, but time is also a concern when doing a daily strip. For the writing, it can always be snappier. Going back to the five-year plan, these are things that only practice can fix – so I try not to fret over it too much. That’s a mighty tall order for a perfectionist, however.

10) Here’s one I’m sure everyone reading this is asking: Can you please stop writing novels all about yourself?

The answer is NO! I find myself far too interesting! I tell long rambling stories in the comic, so no one should be surprised it’s a part of who I am! I’m a Vonnegut disciple, so I thrive in the heartfelt stringing together of tangents. Still, I do take breaks between the ramblings, so you’re all off the hook.