Babbling all the way into Limbo…
As everyone is no doubt aware, stories have been circulating around the Internet about Insomnia Publications and them ceasing to, well, publish. Unfortunately, this isn’t as clear cut a situation as you’d expect and no one’s sure how quickly – or even if – it’s going to be resolved.
So, it is with a heavy heart that we have to formally announce Babble is being put into limbo for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully, things will be worked out one way or another and we’ll be able to back to work on Babble and get it out there on the shelves and into your hands. We’ve poured a lot of work into the project, and we’re desperately hoping that we don’t have to watch it be shelved forever. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your kind words and support for Babble. It means a lot to us that we had something people were genuinely looking forward to reading.
Never fear, though, because it’s not the last you’ve heard of us!
Coming soon[ish], we’ve got an appearance lined up for a future issue of Zarjaz, with a story called Broken Dreams, featuring a certain war robot…
A WIP panel from Broken Dreams
Later this year, we’ll be appearing in Accent UK‘s 2010 anthology Predators, with a story called Just Like You. With kind permission from the Accent UK team, here’s a sneak preview of that strip…
From "Just Like You" - click to read
We also have a slew of fresh projects in the pipeline that we’ll no doubt ram down your throats in a blaze of shameless self-publicity, both here (while we still have the hosting) and on our respective blogs.
Needless to say, as soon as we have any more information on the future of Babble, we’ll be shouting it from the rooftops. And posting it here.
A whole new look…
It’s been long overdue, but this here blog has finally got the facelift I’ve been promising it since… Well, since it first went up, really. I’m still figuring out a few teething problems with the new look, but nothing that will affect the browsing of the site.
As for the book itself… Well, the script is almost finished and Bryan is planning out the rest of the second chapter, and… Well, there’s not much more to report on that side of things yet. We’re in that weird phase of development where we’re keeping our heads down and trying to make sure it’ll prove to be a damn entertaining read.
In the meantime, be sure to go and check out the new Read Us page, where you can find the details of our previous collaborations (and read our very first one for free), and remember, you can follow us on Twitter, and stay up to date with what we’re up to as the production rolls on. If you want to know what we’re up to individually, be sure to check our personal blogs (Bryan’s is here and mine is here).
For now, though, it’s back to the grindstone!
- Lee
We’re still alive!
Yes, it’s true! We are still alive and working hard on getting the book together, as well as some other projects… For the moment, though, here’s some work-in-progress images for you…
Run, Forest! Run!
Contemplative Carrie
Arguments in the workplace...
Carrie in her glad rags
And those other projects we’re working on? Well, Lee’s working on a new OGN for Accent UK called Chosen, and here’s a little something from an upcoming Zarjaz! strip by Bryan and Richmond Clements…
SHAKO!!
And, Bryan and Lee are teaming up again for an upcoming issue of Zarjaz!, starring a couple of 2000AD stalwarts. More on that later.
The Secret Origin Of Carrie Hartnoll
So far, the name Carrie Hartnoll has been bandied about, dropped here and there, but there’s been no indication of who she is.
Most people have assumed that the girl on the banner at the top of this very page is Carrie, but she’s not (well, she is, kind of, but more on that another time). So, who is Carrie Hartnoll?
Well, in a nutshell, she’s the main protagonist of our story, the person around which everything turns. She’s a very down to earth, working class English girl who gets thrown head first into the middle of something that will change the world forever. But who is she, where did she come from?
Let Lee give you a little background on it all first, shall we?
[If you're the impatient type, you can scroll down to the pictures below and see what she looks like. But for those of you who are interested in this nonsense, keep reading...]
My original handwritten story....
Humble Beginnings…
When I originally conceived Babble, it was a prose story, with a male lead. There wasn’t much of a character to him, to be honest; in fact, there wasn’t much of a story around him either, just a handful of handwritten pages that didn’t – and still don’t! – make much sense to anyone but me.
The story got laid to rest for a long time, until I started exploring the world of small press comics. I got in touch with Selina Locke at The Girly Comic, from Factor Fiction, about submitting a short piece. Not having anything already prepared, I quickly wrote a brief outline for a story called Babble, building on what little work I’d done on the original prose version.
To keep it inside the guidelines, I made the lead character female, thinking that it didn’t really matter if the lead was male or female. And so, Carrie Hartnoll was born, not with a bang, but rather a whimper.
However, the more I got into writing the script, the more I realised that it worked so much better with a female lead. In fact, it got to the point where I couldn’t imagine anyone but Carrie Hartnoll as the lead.
The next step was to start breathing some life into her.
It’s Alive!!
In the original short, I had her pictured as a feisty girl, recently single and looking for a new start. Seven pages didn’t give me a lot of space to try and draw her character out in any detail, but I did what I could with it. When I got the chance to re-write the story as a long form narrative, I gave myself the opportunity to develop Carrie more, and try to make her more rounded and realistic.
So, this new version of Carrie became a down on her luck girl who’d gone through a rough patch and hadn’t emerged from the other side any better off. She was stuck in a dead end relationship, a dead end job that she hated and was just coasting through life, ready to give up and settle for what she had. As downbeat as that sounds, it was sort of mirroring my own life at the time, and it gradually became an integral part of the story. Perhaps more importantly, though, it became a key element of Carrie’s character; it grounded her in reality, made her human, and to compliment that, she needed the right physical look…
Model Building…
When I started to put the script together for the original short, I left the description of Carrie pretty light:
She’s around twenty-eight, with dark hair and bright eyes; she’s dressed like an average twenty-eight year old.
That description carried over into the longer version, too. I had a rough idea in my head of what she looked like physically, but part of me was always scared that an artist would turn her into the usual, generic comic heroine: massive breasts, tiny waist and legs that stretched on for 17 miles. She was always, to me, a regular, average 28 year old woman, and that was something that I wouldn’t give any ground on. When I started to think about doing Babble as a long form narrative, those original fears doubled. Would I have to turn her into that huge-breasted fantasy figure to make the book more commercial?
Fortunately, when Bryan and I discussed doing this together, I was relieved to discover that we were on the same page regarding Carrie, as his original designs for her will attest:
Bryan's original designs for Carrie
I don’t know how Bryan did it going on such a brief description, but he just nailed my vision of Carrie perfectly. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was the glasses, but we actually hit a compromise: Carrie wears them when she’s working.
Yeah, it’s that kind of behind the scenes gossip that keeps you coming back to this blog…
The Look Is Everything…
So, we had the physical look of Carrie down. Next was trying to decide on her wardrobe.
Again, the key thing was to make her style of dress as realistic as possible. During the story, she was going to doing a lot of running around and maybe some fighting, so high heels and mini-skirts were out of the question (unless we were forced to by a publisher). Jeans and trainers seemed to be the most practical solution, and helped further ground the character in reality.
One thing I was adamant about when I started writing was that Carrie should be wearing a Mod t-shirt when we first see her – the classic target design. When I started this as a longer narrative, I took the decision to reset some of the story to the other side of the Atlantic, purely as a commercial decision, but it soon became a key part of the story. I thought – rightly or wrongly – that the t-shirt design would give the reader a visual signpost, something to indicate that she was English. Of course, I could’ve been more obvious and asked for her to wearing a Union Jack or a St. George’s Cross, but the Mod roundel was more subtle and, frankly, much more stylish.
So, with all that in mind, Bryan sat down to draw and Carrie Hartnoll was finally born into the world…
Carrie Hartnoll
So, there you have it. The Secret Origin of Carrie Hartnoll.
Welcome…
Hello, and welcome to the official blog for Babble!
What is Babble, you ask? Well, it’s an original graphic novel by Lee Robson and Bryan Coyle that’s due to be published by Insomnia Publications. You can check out the Overview on the right of the screen to get an idea of what the book is all about, but over the next few weeks and months, we’ll be posting various and sundry items to whet your appetite and try and build a following for the books release.
In the meantime, you can check out some of the other work from myself, Lee, and Bryan in the Accent UK anthologies ROBOTS (Previews order code: MAR083379), WESTERN (Previews order code: JUN090671) and the upcoming PREDATORS (due for release in 2010):
Robots, Western and Predators from Accent UK
You can also see our very first collaboration in FutureQuake #9:
FutureQuake #9
There’s not really much more to add at this stage, so, for now remember to befriend us on MySpace and ComicSpace and follow our Twitter feed for updates and possibly even the odd exclusive item.
So, all that’s left now is to spread The Word…
