I was blown away by A Tricky Kind of Magic
A moving graphic novel created by Nigeel Baines
I loved how the characters expressed emotions
In words and pictures
I loved the dual storytelling voice
And how it helped me to see how characters were facing different situations
My 12 year old daughter is currently designing her own graphic novel
She loves to draw and tell stories
She is dyslexic and graphic novels have been a powerful tool for her
Getting her reading independently and creating magical stories of her own
I am always intrigued by how she creates her characters and settings
So being given a glimpse into the mind of Nigel Baines
And understanding a little of how he draws characters
Like Cooper
Has been a joy and a privilege
Do read Nigel’s article all about creating Cooper
I had an idea in my head of what Cooper would look like even though I wasn’t consciously aware of it. I’m not a natural draughtsman so I sketch and doodle a lot and get things wrong. That is the key to drawing actually, getting it wrong. It might even be the key to a well lived life! Each line you put down is an exploration, and usually incorrect, but each time you put a line down you move closer to the one you need. Our lived experience is like that with decision making. It doesn’t have to be correct but at least in doing something we move closer to a resolution that works and further away from a blank sheet of paper.
A few years back I made a little promo book for my work. I did a cover which took about 45 minutes but everyone kept being drawn to. It was a small figure (me) in a red coat, hood up, stood at a bus stop in an industrial road with rain lashing down. I look back and I can even tell you where that road was in my childhood. I knew I had captured something, the starting point of a story – Why is the boy there? Where is he going? – But I never knew how to take him on. I liked the red coat so that kind of stuck. I have a red coat that has travelled the world with me so in a sense that visual link meant I could place myself in Cooper. Characters often become an avatar of the self!
When I started thinking about Cooper I took that boy in the red coat and played around with images…illustrating him in the round, trying different hairstyles etc. For a while I had him walking around with a lost Polar Bear, but you don’t see many of those in magic tricks and they really don’t like being put into hats never mind pulled out of them. So I switched to a rabbit although I was always worried about scale, rabbits are small and a boy, even a small one, is bigger.
I remember Matt Groenig saying how important it was to give characters strong silhouettes for The Simpsons. Hair style usually does that. In retrospect I would ignore Matt Groenig and give Cooper a short back and sides! Drawing that spiky hair 548 times (sad I know, but yes, I counted) was a task even Sisyphus might have baulked at.
Should the face be round? Oval? Should he have cartoon eyes or just dots? Or a mix of both (which I went for in the end. Dots are less heavy, help you see the whole person somehow, but in close up and when you need to express emotion, eyebrows and ‘cartoon’ eyes make all the difference.
I didn’t want him to look too young. So I made him a little lanky, as I was. Achieving consistency is hard when your character is experiencing so many emotions and doing so many physical things. Before I started I wrote a piece about each character. What are they afraid of? What are their most common phrases? How would they behave if trapped in a lift? And so on. This builds a person and their body poses come as a result of that. Some people jiggle a lot, some are very excited, some are very stiff and composed. So I tried to be conscious of that all the time. Did I achieve what I wanted? Well there is a lot I would change, I got a bit frustrated at times with the coat and backpack but then he was on a journey so there would be no change of clothes!
The character of Tori/Rori came fairly easily, I wanted her to look cool and smart and a little different. The Magician character…arrogant, pompous, deluded…I mean so so many role models to base him on but I did find one over the Atlantic who seemed to suit!
People often use the phrase ‘talented’ to describe drawing but it feels wrong to me. It suggests you’re overtaken by some force from out of this world and that actually, you are (in my case) just a six foot tall puppet with hair coming out your ears. But it’s more than that, it’s practice. Relentless practice. And practice is hard work…well, immediately I think of my Dad’s hard graft on the railway and the Monty Python Miner/Poet sketch but you get what I mean! Of course it is amazing what you can do even with a stick figure as Allie Brosh has done in her books. That’s the great thing about graphic narratives. After a few pages you accept this character however they are drawn and start to understand them as a living thing with a whole complexity of feelings and motives.
You can read our review of A Tricky Kind Of Magic here
Do also follow the rest of the Blog Tour
To learn more about the book
And more of Nigel’s own words about his book, reading, writing and drawing
