The use of color in Splinters

My new story Splinters is playing in different periods before, during and after the Second Worldwar. The present time in the story is the year 1946. The year in which Victor and Esther meet again. There are also a lot of flashbacks to the years before the war and the war years themselves. To make clear to the reader in which part the story is, I have given each period its own colour palette.

The years before the war are drawn in warm grey, which refers to black and white pictures and the period of crisis in the Thirties.

The war years themselves are coloured sepia. Brownish colours that have a relation with the sepia photographs from the beginning of the last century. The 'present' (1946) is made in 'greyish' full colour. That kind of full colour appeared in pictures shortly after the war (even already in some pictures taken during the war).

I also coloured the background of the pages. The pages about the years before and during the war have black backgrounds and those that play after the war are kept white. On the one hand the black background together with the warm grey and sepia colors shows the gloominess of the (pre) war period. On the other hand, the white pages with the cautious full colour drawings show something of the hope just after the war. So the use of different colour palettes in Splinters is not only functional, but also has an emotional component.

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As a comicartist it's not easy to get your stories published or get publicity about it. A lot of people still think comics are meant for children. But that's history since a long time. Especially Graphic Novels are responsible that comics are taken more serious, but, as I said before, there are not many ways to draw the public's attention.

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The story so far

My new story Splinters  is growing and growing. In volume and in atmosphere. I have almost finished page 135 and I think at least one hundred pages will follow before I finish Book One.

I also try to catch the atmosphere of the period during and around the Second Worldwar as realistic as possible. I will come back to that later in another post.

The thread through the whole story is the meeting between Victor and Esther on saturday the 4th of May 1946 at a cemetery. A year after the war ended, they both visit the grave of a loved one. Their meeting brings back a lot of emotions and pain about the past horrible years.

On the one hand Victor is very open in telling all about his adventures as a soldier fighting the Germans, about the dramatic events during the days in May 1940 and the loss of some people.

On the other hand Esther is reserved in talking about what she has gone through, although before the war she and Victor were loversand told each other everything.

So Victor is telling a lot but when he asks Esther about her past years, she keeps distance and changes the subject. After some time at the cemetery Esther says she has to leave. Only after Victor urges her to make an appointment for the next day, she agrees. Victor hopes she will tell more about her war-years and how she survived.

After Esther has left, Victor goes home, but his meeting with Esther has brought back a lot of memories. They don't leave him alone and he shares them with the reader. The reader does not only discover what has happened to him but also sees how his personality is changing during the war. That brings him to make a decision that will influence the rest of his life.

Scraps

After making sketches and descriptions of all important characters, I decided to visualize them also in another way. I made scraps (a sort of collages) of all persons from the first book. From Victor to Geert and from Chris to Maas. I wanted the scraps to have the atmosphere of the period in which Splinters takes place.

So I bought all kind of authentic stuff, like paper, accessories, used old photo's and newspaper articles to create that authentic feel. My goal was to get more grip on the different characters, to create some -fictitious- personal history. About a characters' background, profession, circumstances, etc... That would help me to have a clearer view on how each other would act and react in Splinters.

I don't know what I am going to do with the scraps. Maybe I put them in a special quire in the book or maybe I make a seperate booklet together with the documents and photographs of the part of the story that really happened.