Just wanted to give you guys a quick look at the process of putting together Owen’s blog for the story. For those of you who’ve read American Terrorist #4, and you all should have received the link by now even if you’ve chosen not to read it yet, you’ve seen the blog where Staggs has posted Owen’s entry about the attack on the power plant. For those of you who haven’t been reading along because you’re waiting for the full story, this shouldn’t be much of a spoiler.

My initial instructions for Fabio, when I was having him put together some graphics for the blog was that I wanted it to look like any other blog out there, like it could be about cooking recipes as easily as it could be about politically motivated bombings. Here’s the first draft:

It was a good start, but it didn’t have that same personal touch. I added more information for the  “About Me” section which added to the whole humor element of it being and everyday blog. I also came up with a header image for the title. And I felt that the black background gave it both that ominous feel while still being something you see frequently in blogs.

Now came time for actually fitting it on the page, inserting it in the artwork. I wanted the blog entry and the other text to actually be readable so we had to find the right balance for making everything fit:

You can see we shrunk the video image down a bit, but that still wasn’t enough to fit in as much of the text as I wanted, so I decided to bring the size of that down and wrap the text next to it. That pretty much solved the problem, and here’s that page once it was completed and as you saw it in #4:

There as still somethings I’m not completely happy with. I’d like to come up with a better font for the Blog name, Trial & Terror. But I figured that rather than try to make everything perfect this time, since we’ll come back to this blog a few more times in the story, why not make those changes throughout the story. Next time we see it, in #5, there will be some subtile difference which I think would be consistent with someone updating their blog, especially while on the run from the law.

So look for those updates in future issues.

Okay, the graphics for the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment are finally done, and I couldn’t be happier because I don’t think I could come up with one more bad pun for a blog post title.

In order to get this scene done, I brought in Fabio Redivo, who provided the lettering and graphic design  for my first comic, Adrenaline. I gave him the notes I had on it and explained I was looking for something that had that “touch screen” feel to it. I sent him a few screen shots of menus and App designs for the iPhone and iPad, as well as a quick design I came up with in photoshop that I posted last week.

Here’s my design and what Fabio came up with:

I liked the look of the top part of the file and the “+” button was a nice touch. Because of it, I figured we could loose the text for “Additional Information” as it was self-explanitory. However, for the list of information, I wanted something that had more of a menu feel to it. I used an image from the comiXology app (since our comics are on that app) and place it on what Fabio had.

Here’s what he came up with,as well as a second version following my instructions to bring the left margin in, add a scroll bar, and some arrows for even more information:

So, now for the real test. What would this look like on the page. Here they are on page 1, first on a white screen, then trying it out with a backdrop on the screen:

I though this looked really cool, just a few problems; he forgot to put in Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, he put in the logo for the Department of Homeland Security, which is not the department these agents work for. The other thing, was that seeing these files on the page, I realized how hard it was to read the names. Here you can see a panel to panel comparison on how we fixed these problems:

We had a similar problem with the second page where it was hard to read what button Director Scheffler was pointing to. Fabio fixed this by reversing the text and background, which gave a highlighting effect, and enlarging the pressed button. Also, I felt the forms didn’t look enough like medical records. I just did a google search and found these form documents. If you could read them up close, they just say “John Doe” on them, so I’m not using someone’s real records for this.

Alright, so that pretty much covers it. The only thing left to do is have Matt reapply his colors to the new versions of these pages and tweek some small things to make it all come together. Here’s a run down on the process:

The original black & white pages:

With the graphics added:

And Matt’s colors, which he’ll reapply to the new pages:

You’ll be able to see this all put together and read the story when we post American Terrorist #4 next week. See you then.

In this post we’ll look at the cemetery scene that takes place just before Owen makes the crucial decision to leads the group in an attack against the coal-burning power plant in his town, the one where his father once worked. I felt this scene was necessary to show why Owen would do something like this, how his grief and guilt over the death of his younger brother due to the pollution of the plant would be such a motivating factor. However, I was concerned this scene was at risk of coming off as melodramatic. I mean how many times have we seen the crying at the gravesite scene before a character runs off and does something rash. I might as well have it be pouring rain while I’m at it.

And it was this concern that lead me to start hinting at, but not fully revealing, this story element earlier, back at the beginning of Digital Issue #2 of American Terrorist when Owen stops by the diner in his old town.

As for the graveyard scene its self, I was looking for a different way of conveying the emotions and one of my inspirations was a scene I remembered from the movie There Will Be Blood. In this scene the father is reunited with his young son after a long absence; not exactly the same event, but it was handled beautifully in the movie. We watched the two characters engage from a distance, the camera never came in close. It was less intrusive this way and  let the weight of the event and what it meant to the characters convey the emotions instead of overly dramatic close-ups of facial expressions.

When I wrote this scene in the script, I tried to keep this in mind. Most of the panels called for showing the characters at a distance. Here’s how Andy drew it:

I thought it came out great. I love to see when an artist resists the temptation to pull in too close and fill up the panel with just the face. Here he really let the body language speak for the characters.

And here’s the first version of the colors:

Now there’s something I wanted to point out before we move on. While looking over the pages, I noticed that Hannah looked too short in that 3rd panel on the first page (of the black and white art). Andy had already moved on to later pages in the story and I didn’t want to interrupt his momentum so I asked Matt if he could stretch her out in Photoshop. Here’s how he fixed it:

It’s just a small change, but she looks so much better. I love how he managed to make her body longer while still leaving her head the same size. It might have looked too big if he had stretched that out with everything else.

And now to the final correction I made on these pages. I loved the way that Matt colored these pages, the trees against the sky really looked nice, great color choices, but I felt that the time of day was still too early. The scene immediately following this one is pitch black at night. I thought the transition was too quick, so I asked Matt to darken this scene up  a little. Here’s the most recent version:

I think this is a little more fitting with the tone of the scene as well, but I’ll ask all of you. Is the new, darker, color version better, or do you think it’s worth it to leave it like it was?

I was hoping to have the pages for this post fully completed by the time I put this up, but it seems to be taking some time in order to get them how I’d like them. So, I figured since its high-time for a new post, and we have a number or “early drafts” of the pages, I might as well put some stuff up for you to see. Then when we do finish them, I’ll be sure to put the final pages up on a future post. Who knows, there might be a number of additional drafts before we get to the end.

The two pages we’re working on involve the members of our Domestic Terrorism Unit at the NCTC. What they’re looking at is a program called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or T.I.D.E. It’s used to keep tabs and store information about suspected terrorists. I’ve done what I could to research this program, but it’s hard to say exactly what it would look like on screen, or what’s stored in the files.

The principle I went by while trying to create our own version of T.I.D.E. was that they would get as much information as possible on each suspect.

So here’s what the pages looked like before we put anything on the screen.

And Matt’s already colored the pages with the blank screens. Once we fill them, he’ll go back in and adjust what he need to.

So the questions remaining is what these files would look like. Andy gave a shot at filling the screens, but I thought it came out too busy looking. Here’s his attempt on the first page.

Something this busy might be fine for the control room where tons of intel was blasted at them 24/7, but my impression of the T.I.D.E was that it would be more organized. Or at least that’s how I wanted to portray it for the story.

I sent some notes along to Kristyn (letter & graphic designer) to come up with something. Here’s what she came up with:

This is getting closer to what I had in mind, but I still wanted some adjustments, something that looked a little more like our modern touch screens, like an iPhone or iPad. I thought the black background might work and on it we could have free-floating icons with drop down menus. Heres’ what I put together in photoshop from Kristyn’s desgins.

It’s not colored exactly right yet, and I think we could still play around with it to make it look slicker, but I think this is the idea we want to go with. Or who knows, we may end up doing something entirely different.

Stick around. I’ll be sure to let you know how it works out in a future post.

Among all the research I did and all the books I read while writing American Terrorist, one of the more fascinating topics was the National Counterterrorism Center. This is a central building in Mclean, Virginia where all the government agencies, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. work together and share intel.

My primary source of research for the NCTC was a book by Ronald Kessler called The Terrorist Watch. I had also read the book, The Bureau, specifically about the FBI, but The Terrorist Watch pertained to the agency’s war on terror and therefore a bit more relevant to my story.

It’s a fairly well-written book that I would recommend to anyone. It does have a right-wing slant it which I don’t mind so much in the context of the effort by the men in women in serving in the military or intelligence agencies. It does unfortunately feel the need to wedge in a number of references to the “heroics” of George W. Bush and how much the military respects him that just comes across as forced and brings the integrity of the book down.

That being said, it gave me a lot of information for American Terrorist, more than I possibly could use. It’s funny how much research can go into something when I end up using only about 10% or it for the actual script. But all of it gives me a greater sense of understanding and authority to write an authentic scene.

However, when it came time for Andy to draw these scenes, I realized it was difficult to find photos of the NCTC. I searched for a while and what I ended up finding that worked out really well where a couple or arial shots of the building and road leading up to it.

This pictures gave us just enough visuals to  come up with what it might look like when our agents drove up to the NCTC and showed their i.d. at the guard station.

Next, I wanted to include a establishing shot of the building to give the readers a sense of what the NCTC looked like.

Then of course we had the entrance to the building. This photo proved useful. All we had to do was add our characters walking towards the doors.

And I’m sure you recognize this page from the book by now, but here’s the photo I found to base it off of:

And that’s how we recreated the NCTC for American Terrorist. Look for more important scenes from upcoming segments of the story to take place here. I didn’t do all that research just to stop with these pages.

Even since I conceived of Hannah’s character I knew that I didn’t want her portrayed as a great beauty. In comics there’s this tendency to draw all women in the most “idealic” way. And while this impulse is something I can understand, I wanted American Terrorist to be more grounded in reality. I felt Hannah should have a distinctive, and I wanted to express that she was comfortable with her sexuality (or at least trying to be) despite not looking like a pin-up model.

This is a tough assignment to give an artist, it’s much easier to do a stunning beauty or a someone completely unattractive. To make the task even more difficult, I would often write scenes that called for unusual facial expressions, such as in the scene where Hannah meets a man at a coffee shop. Here’s how Andy originally sent me the page:

He did a great job with the scene (especially the background, look at everything he drew in the glass case), but I wasn’t happy with panel 3. I thought Hannah looked a little too old. In this instance it was pretty easy fix. I just asked Andy to do a patch for that panel and make her look a little nicer. Here’s the patch:

And the fully-colored page:

But in a later scene I felt I needed to take more of a hands on approach. Here’s the original version of page in Hannah’s apartment from the end of issue #3.

The first decision I made was to change Hannah’s top. Andy was keeping it consistent with the earlier scenes, but it seemed reasonable to me that she might have changed by now. I mean, we’ve established that she’s been in her apartment long enough to pack,  plus she’s attempting to flirt with Owen, I think a sexier top might be appropriate.

This part was easy enough to describe, but not so much with the last two panels. I thought the motion in the second to last panel was too extreme and in the last panel Hannah wasn’t quite sexy enough.

I felt the best thing to do was to draw a rough sketch of what I wanted and send it to Andy. Here’s what I did:

A slightly more reserved jump onto the bed, plus I got rid of that one shoe she was wearing. It is true that she had lost one of her shoes earlier in the story, but using the same logic to explain a change of outfit, I also felt that she might have discarded that one shoe by now.

And then of course a much a sexier pose for the last panel.

Here’s how it turned out:

And colored:

I think this page turned out pretty nicely and we were able to maintain that balance with Hannah. She’s almost got like a Tina Fey thing going on here.