Li'l Kids: ''road to god knows...'' adventures!

88 Pages·2008·18.46 MB·English

by  Von Allan

Li’l Kids: “road to god knows…”adventures!

Von Allan

a Von Allan Studio book
Ottawa
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Allan, Von, 1974-
Li'l kids : "road to god knows--" adventures! / written and illustrated
by Von Allan.

ISBN 978-0-9781237-1-0

I. Title.
PN6733.A46L54 2008 741.5'971 C2008-900811-1

The road to god knows..., Von Allan and all characters and likenesses are ™ and © 2008
Eric Allan Julien. All rights reserved. No reproduction without prior written permission
of the publisher except brief passages in reviews.

Published by Von Allan Studio, P.O. Box 20520, 390 Rideau Street, Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada K1N 1A3. Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.vonallan.com Phone:
613-236-9957

If you’ve enjoyed this Ebook, a hard copy is available on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0978123719/ref=nosim?tag=vonallstu-20
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No
Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/ or send a letter to Creative
Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
The road to god knows..., Von Allan and all characters and likenesses are ™ and ©
2008 Eric Allan Julien. The licence deed can be found on page 86 of this Ebook.

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Table of Contents

Introduction 5
The Stories 6
Fast Friends 7
Brawl 14
The Old Crow 22
Concept Art 32
The Scripts 39
How I Write 40
Fast Friends Plot Breakdown 43
Fast Friends Outline 44
Fast Friends Script 47
Brawl Plot Breakdown 57
Brawl Outline 58
Brawl Script 60
The Old Crow Plot Breakdown 68
The Old Crow Outline 70
The Old Crow Script 73
About Von 85
Creative Commons Licence Deed 86
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Introduction

When I was 25 years old I didn’t know how to draw. Not at all. I was managing an independent
bookstore here in Ottawa and really trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life. I loved
comics, always have, but drawing comics was not something I ever felt I could do. When I was a kid, I had
pretty much convinced myself that artists were born artists. There was work, to be sure, and hard work.
But it didn’t undermine my basic belief that these artist folks (y’know, those guys, over there!) had
something within them that I didn’t.
What changed for me? Well, a number of things. One was that I began to meet artists and in
discussing art with them I realized just how much work went into their craft. Not just hard work; the very
skills they needed to actually do the work in the first place were acquired and not gifted to them. I also
realized, increasingly, that while I loved to write I always came back to script writing instead of prose
writing. Prose held little appeal to me, despite the fact that I worked in a great little bookstore. I love
reading prose, but writing…? Not so much.
I also knew that being a script writer in a visual medium is a tricky thing to do. There have been
some truly amazing writers that have worked within comics (Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and so on). No
argument there. The problem with this is that the writer is always having to work with someone else to
get their vision across. Collaboration, though, can be a wonderful thing and when it works, some truly
remarkable stories can be told; being an unknown writer and trying to connect with more established
artists is a big problem. If you can write and draw at the same time, things become that much easier.
With this in mind and with the fantastic support of my wife, I began to learn to draw.
It took time. A long time. A really long time. Drawing is challenging even for established artists,
and comics pose some unique problems. You need to know just about the entire realm of drawing and
illustration to do comics effectively. Anatomy, perspective, light and shadow, and even colour (and on and
on!) all play a part in putting a comic together. One of the biggest problems I faced was just trying to get
these sometimes disparate elements to work together and harmonize. The other big problem was making
drawing look effortless. I don’t think that ever really happens and most likely is just part of the equation.
It’s never easy.
Learning to draw was, I think, the biggest challenge I’ve faced in my life. There were setbacks and
bad days and I can truly say I was awful at the beginning. My mantra became pretty simple: just suck
less each and every day. That didn’t always happen but I tried to keep it in mind no matter what. Despite
the difficulties, I can truly say it has been incredibly rewarding, too. I love to draw.
The stories contained within these pages are written and illustrated by me. Each story stands on
its own and can be read out of order. They do connect, loosely, to a graphic novel I’m just finishing up.
Entitled the road to god knows…, that book deals with a teen girl’s struggle to cope with her mom’s
schizophrenia. These three short stories help shed some light on road and, when taken together, I think
help to tell a larger story. The stories are also prequels, helping to set the stage and show how some of the
characters we see later on in road got to know each other.
I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing and illustrating them.

Von Allan
Ottawa, Ontario
April 4th, 2008
For more on my art, please see the various links on my website at http://www.vonallan.com/art.html.
There you’ll find examples of comics, lifedrawing, painting and more!

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