Chandra Free
I had the wonderful pleasure of having a conversation with Chandra Free. We could have spoken for hours about her work and her experiences, but we had to cut it to a short 30 minutes of time. We were able to talk about what exactly a “Pitch Package“ is, as well as what to put into your portfolio if you‘re looking for a job. I want to personally thank her again for her time and apologize to any readers who find the format a bit odd. This was trasncribed from a voice recording and I tried to keep her voice in her answers.
You are also the author of The God Machine. Does that give you a lot more creative freedom or do you find it a bit difficult to stick with that story?
It definitely gives me a lot of freedom to do whatever I want to do with it. It is just a bit cumbersome since it‘s just me working on it all by myself. I have to do the writing duties, I have to do the art. It‘s just time consuming. The flipside is that I get exactly what I want out of myself, I don‘t have anybody to blame but myself, and I get to tell my story. Not some one else‘s; my story from my stand point in this world that I created. It‘s very rewarding. I don‘t have to wait on the artwork, I am only relying on myself. It‘s got it‘s pros and cons, but I think the pros outweigh the cons.
Do you go through and edit it, or do you have somebody else going through it once you have a rough draft? What‘s your method for editing?
I do sit down with people for a final script. We bang out all of the grammar issues and spelling issues. Sometimes there are sentences I don‘t get out quite right and somebody will say, „Why don‘t you consider doing something else now,“ and I‘ll say, „I got it! I know how I can treat this.“ Then it ends up coming out a lot better. So, having somebody work with me on the editing process really helps me come up with a better script at the end of the day. It‘s always good to have somebody edit your script anyways. If you‘re too close to what you‘re working on, you usually can‘t see the errors and the mistakes. So you need somebody to give that kind of input.
How did you go about getting The God Machine published? Did you contact somebody or did somebody contact you? I read that your boyfriend [Andrew Gaska] works for Archaia as well.
What happened was, that I was going to New York Comic Con of 2007. I had a „Pitch Package“ to give to six different publishers. I could only afford six „Pitch Packages“ because I had several pages that were in full color and what not, and it was something to give to a publisher. I find that if you have something physical to give to the publisher it makes more of an impression of whoever you are going to pitch it to.
What goes into a pitch package, exactly?
What I had inside of it, was a cover that had an illustration on it and my information. Where I lived, my phone number and email address. Inside was a synopsis of my book, including character profiles with illustrations. I had multiple character designs and I also had about six pages of senquencial art to show that I could do it. At the time I was pitching my book as black and white, but my illustrations had color in them, so when I pitched this to Archaia, they were only doing color work at the time. Mark Smiley, co-head of Archaia, saw my package, and he said, „Wow this is great, we want to publish you!“ Right off the bat.
Did your mind just melt out of your ears at that point?
[Laughing] Well I was kind of expecting it, not to sound like an egotist! I was just so excited that somebody gets what I am doing. The thing is, what he said was „This is really great, but can you make this into a color publication?“ And that‘s when my heart stopped, because I thought „Color?! No!“ Coloring takes so much time. For a painterly piece, it probably takes more than three days depending on what the content is. So I was just terrified because I saw my book as black and white. It was going to be easier on me since I was the only person working on it. The most interesting thing, even though I had other interest from other publishers from that New York Comic-Con, I never followed up. I had a promise from another company that they would maybe publish me. I felt like they were just dangling the carrot in front of me and I would never get it. I got a little bit frustrated with this particular company.
I had a heart to heart with one of my friends, Doc Hammer, of Venture Brother‘s fame. He told me to go out there and go find another publisher. It made perfect sense, so I went out and asked one of my friend‘s Alex Eckman Lawn of Awakening [Omnibus], published with Archaia. This was seven months later from when I was pitching it. Alex told me, „It‘s funny, me and Mark Smiley were just talking about you a week ago, and he wants to know what you‘re doing with The God Machine. He still remembers you! What are you doing? Get in contact with him!“ I said, „Okay!“
That‘s got to be great news to know that somebody remembers you seven months later.
It was nice to know they really wanted me. I got in contact with Mark. I finally got up the chops to send him color pages of The God Machine, which I had then had experience by working on Sullen Grey doing colors for that book. It isn‘t mine, it‘s illustrated by Drew Rausch. I started getting the hang of coloring pages, so it was a little less intimidating at that time to say, have The God Machine in color. Of course a scary prospect because it‘s still an intense process, I could tell you that. Mark loved the color pages and I think that year, starting in February of 2007, I had a contract in November 2007. That is how I got into the business for myself with The God Machine. It paid off!
A lot of artists we have interviews have gotten a lot of work by bringing their stuff to conventions, is that how you got most of your jobs?
When it comes to this kind of situation, when it comes to publishers, when you bring them material and you have a face to face with them, that puts a personal spin on things. You‘re no longer a cold submission that‘s been lying on the desk for weeks if not months now. You‘re not that burden. It takes time, and editors don‘t usually have the time to be dealing with submissions. They barely have the time for the people who are creating the content. The editors are there at conventions to talk to people. They don‘t have anything else to do but to talk to potential customers, to artists and creators. This is probably the best opportunity to pitch yourself to anybody in the business. Unless of course it‘s one of the Big Two, DC or Marvel, who are extremely busy. They have lots of people, and Marvel has a portfolio submission process, as well as DC. It‘s a little bit harder to talk to those people, even if you have made a name for yourself. However, for more Indie publishers, to have a packet to give to them and meet them face to face is more meaningful to them than that packet that never gets looked at.
As for other jobs, once you get in and you have something published, it‘s a little bit easier to talk to other editors, and they talk to other editors. You get a networking thing, which is something you have to build up over time. It‘s not just as easy getting the jobs just because you‘re published. You have to start talking to people. It‘s years of just getting to know people and getting into the business. It‘s not an overnight success story.
Also having colleagues and meeting other artists and being in that network. Constantly talking to other creators can put you in line for a job, and they will recommend you. The more people you know and those kinds of connections based on your work should help you. It‘s also great to have other people who you have things in common with. Especially at conventions, when you‘re out in the big world of conventions and you see other people you know who have also been trapped in their cave for months just like you! It‘s our equivelent to the „water cooler.“
Wonderful! I would like to get more into technique and paneling now. What is your process? Do you have a script and plan it out, or do you see what fits more organically on the page?
A bit of both. My first initial thing I do when it comes to scripting is drawing and writing at the same time. It‘s kind of an unusual thing. We are talking very simplistic drawings. Just to get a facial expression down or who ever is talking. This kind of acts as my rough draft. I usually know where the story is going, and that‘s all built up in my mind. So with just basic drawings and a lose kind of script, I take that and tweak it. I‘ll scratch out panels because it didn‘t work for whatever reason. After I‘ve got a better idea of things, I‘ll take that and write my first script. It‘s another type of draft that I hack into later. Primarily I need to figure out exactly what scenes are happening, maybe add more to what my rough draft was, maybe take out other things. See what could be worded more appropriately and adding more action to it by just writing that down.
From that script I go ahead and start thumbing my pages, and note that script is not officially done yet. When it comes to thumbing the pages down and then starting an actual pages, I will start rewriting the script in a couple of places, like where the bubbles are. Sometimes the panels don‘t exactly fit on there from my thumbnails. So it‘s more or less how the page starts flowing organically for me and how I want to change the story. So this is not exactly a typical thing, whatsoever, because I‘m doing it all my self. I have this freedom to work it at the moment to where I feel the story needs to go. So it gets a little bit complicated, and a bit more intuitive to what I‘m seeing at the moment. To not get ahead of myself too much, of course there‘s thumbnail pages to figure out if it‘s all going to fit on the big 11 by 17 paper. Of course, like I said, I don‘t calculate that appropriately or I figure out some other big drawing to do. I always look at pages as a full piece of artwork, how everything kind of flows together as panels and characters coming out. It‘s just one big piece to me.
It‘s not always a perfect way of doing things, but I‘m always perfecting how I do this, so this isn‘t always the gospel by me. I‘m trying to create a whole piece that works together page by page. It works a bit better for me stylistically. I have organic panels that kind of flow into each other, and nothing‘s really on a grid like Marvel-esqu boxes. Sometimes I use boxes here and there depending on what the scene is and also the mood. I‘ll incorporate boxes and borders that have more whispy lines or more ornate things going on. Scratchy lines for when a character is agitated or angry or going through an emotional time. It really depends on what‘s going on in the story.
That sounds like a manga technique. I read a lot of manga, and watch a lot of anime, is that where the influence comes from?
It‘s funny that you say that. I grew up on anime and manga. I‘ll take certain things, of course, whether it‘s the eye‘s get super big, almost like a chibi face, or just two dots for eyes. Also, when a new character get‘s introduced, I know some people hate this, but I give little bios for the characters who just came up. Their age and who they are seeing, you know, just a little bio.
[This pleased me greatly] That‘s fun! It‘s helpful, you get to know the characters a little bit more.
I like those personal touches, I like reading about characters. Usually when we get introduced to a character nothing really exciting is happening anyways. It‘s not like we‘re in the middle of a fight sequence. Although, a bio in the middle of a fight sequence might be really funny! It‘s interesting how manga and anime has kind of incorporated itself into what I‘m doing, and obviously I have other influences beyond that, which is the Indie- American comic scene, like Jhonen Vasquez. Of course I have my cartoon background like Animaniacs and Batman and other random miscellaneous stuff like that. So I have some crazy Warner Brothers, Disney, DC, Marvel cartoon style that has kind of entered into everything I‘m doing. I don‘t really think that I‘m really pulling from any particular source, but everything has influenced me.
Do you have any advice for aspiring artists?
Make sure that when you‘re pitching your artwork to a particular publisher that you‘re pitching to the right publisher. Say if you‘re trying to pitch your manga series to Radical comics… Wait, that doesn‘t work, they did have a manga! Well anyways, we will still use Radical. Radical has a very realistic style going on and it‘s very painterly, almost hyper -realism. If you‘re pitching your super cute shoujo manga with cute little magical girls, that‘s just not going to fly. You‘re going to be rejected faster than anything else. If Tokyopop was still in existence, you‘d be better off pitching to Tokyopop. So it‘s all about genre, types of style and do you fit into that particular company‘s business model. Always do your research on those types of things. Know what you want to do and if that particular company is looking for artists for their projects, or if they are looking for completed projects, wher eyou need a writer on board as well. Know that kind of information.
Also, if you‘re looking for a writer, typically writers are looking for you. I don‘t really know because I‘ve been pitching my projects myself, but there are places online where you can go to hook up with writers who are looking for particular artist on a project. Typically publishers are looking for completed projects if we are going the Indie side of things. However, if you‘re just trying to get in for DC and Marvel, know how to draw the ,Marvel Way‘ or the ,DC Way‘ and just have a strong portfolio that shoes backgrounds, perceptive, characters and that you know anatomy. Whatever you‘re going for, whether it be pencils, inks, or colors, have the appropriate things in your portfolio. Make sure you‘re informed about whatever you‘re trying to get into.
Always read your contracts. If you don‘t understand your contracts, always find somebody who understands. Know your rights, you can have a little bit of input on your contract. You don‘t have to necessarily take a bad deal just because you want to get in. You can ask for things within reason, but you don‘t have to be anybody‘s slave. You do have powers as an individual to know what you‘re getting yourself into so there‘s no surprises at the end. Being legal savvy will help you out in the end, so you don‘t get screwed over.
That‘s a good reminder for people who finally get to that point and are just so excited that they can‘t sign a contract fast enough.
I don‘t think a lot of people think of that when they get the contract that they need to sign it. They might not question what‘s going on and might not get the best deal. It‘s about being business smart to take care of yourself.
Awesome! Thank you very much.
[End Interview]
Thanks again to Chandra for taking the time to speak to us at Panel Bound. You can check out The God Machine and her site below.
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