Most of you know `Cedarseed from her wonderful set of tutorials but today we are interviewing the other `Cedarseed, `Cedarseed the independent comic artist.


Tell us a little about yourself?

My name is Joumana Medlej; I was born in 1979 in Beirut, Lebanon, where I've lived most of my life. I started drawing seriously, in the sense of wanting to learn and improve, when I was 12. I used to spend every recess drawing in the school library, and did so until I graduated, by which time every student and teacher in the school knew I had an obsession. I didn't actually dream of making it a career at the time, I wanted to be a naturalist or a veterinarian! Eventually, during a career orientation session, I heard about graphic design for the first time, and instantly decided that was my call. I graduated from the American University of Beirut with a BA in GD in 2001, having left nobody in any doubt as to the fact I was much more of an illustrator than a designer (not meaning that I sucked, I hasten to add!) Design, however, is what allowed me to make a living in Lebanon while pursuing my real passion on the side. I was called in on the animation team of a local and regional TV station, a position I enjoyed for a couple of years before deciding even a part-time job didn't leave me enough time to do something worthwhile with myself. I've been freelancing in design, illustration and some journalism since, slowly converging to my lifetime aspiration which is to be an author, living off my own creations and publications. At the moment the design part of my career is downplayed, which is fine by me. My main professional activities aside from illustration and the comic, are, paradoxically enough, in the polar-opposite fields of traditional Arabic calligraphy and computer game graphics.

I spend so much time making things that I have little left to read or watch anything (I stopped watching TV in high school), but I'm completely hooked on Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Batman and the JLA. I have a large graphic novel collection consisting mainly of European titles. My favourites include classics (Tintin, Asterix, Spirou, Scrameustache) and some much less classic (Soda, Sur les Terres d'Horus, Aurore et Ulysse). I'm a bookworm and have way too many favourite books, but The Lord of the Rings get a special mention as it single-handedly triggered my drive to create things.



What made you decide that comics were what you want to do and what inspires your work?

I started to draw seriously in order to make comics, and not the other way around! I've always felt compelled to tell stories, either imagined or real, but I'm a visual person: I like to show more then to tell. I was brought up on French "BDs" so that medium was a natural, almost instinctive choice. I can't remember at what point I decided "sequential art is my thing", but when I started exploring it, with the help of specialized books and one of the few comickers in the country at the time, I was spellbound by its complexity and possibilities. I still am now: the "8th art" combines visual and narrative principles from literature, art, design and film in addition to its own characteristics. Its expressive potential is mindblowing. There are always multiple dimensions to my stories, some of which are there to be picked up by certain people only, and this is the perfect medium to weave multiple meanings into. I have to say that after graduating from high school, I did not touch comics again for a full 10 years – too much work, not enough motivation. Picking it up again, thanks to a huge stroke of inspiration, was like finding a long-lost love. I am super enthusiastic about all aspects of the medium and I wonder how I could ever forget that we were made for each other Not that my current work represents my final approach to it. I am limited by time so I'm starting by making my imprint – later, there will be other directions.

I have a surplus of inspiration in my life, as I am blessed with a constant sense of marvel at every aspect of the world around me. Anytime something strikes me, I think "I have to use this in something". For the comics though, which are a large endeavour, the inspiration comes from something that looms equally large in my life – in this case, past and possibly future war, the scars of which I can see around me every day of my life. My experience with it and what I would love to do about it provide the material for my story.


What kind of role do you have as a comic artist?

All of them! I'm on my own, so I have to do everything myself. Mind you, I have such a close relation to what I do that I would probably not let anyone help me much even if they offered. Normally, you would find the following roles in the making of a comic:
Writer: Writes the story but also prepares a descriptive script, with dialogues, divided into panels with setting suggestions to the pencil artist.
Penciller: Based on the script, lays out the page and does all the drawing, in pencil. Sometimes a separate penciller does the backgrounds.
Inker: Receives the pencils and proceeds to ink them, which is not as easy as it sounds.
Colorist: I think you get the picture here!
Letterer: Adds speech bubbles and all text, although mercifully they don't have to do this by hand anymore!


What mediums do you prefer to work with and why? What mediums/artists do you admire?

I use a variety of mediums, courtesy of dabbling in so many things, but for comics I have a fixed work process that involves sketching on paper, inking on tracing paper, and doing the rest digitally. It's the most effortless way for me. It's a practical rather than aesthetic preference, because I can't spend too much time on each page. When I don't have deadlines and I can play around, I really enjoy cut-outs, collage (I use that a lot), mixed media (beads and such on paper), pixels and watercolor.
The artists I admire are people who have becomes such masters of their craft that they can bend its rules and reinvent it in all they do. Hergé was such a master and an early influence for me. More contemporary, David Mack (author of Kabuki) awes me. I love collage, and he uses it to create meaning in such brilliant ways! I'm also in love with Isabelle Dethan's use of watercolors in her graphic novel series, Sur les Terres d'Horus. I would love to have such a mastery in that medium.
I'm going to leave it at the comic artists, otherwise the list will be way too long

Are you self-published or do you work for a major comic label? Can you share some of your experiences with us?

I am self-published. There are no comic labels in Lebanon and very few art-oriented job opportunities: most people like me are independent and make their own way. I wouldn't want to work for a label though – I'm waaaay too independent, and I'm more interested in manifesting my personal vision than in fame or fortune.



How do you select a printing company/publisher to work with? Do you maintain creative control of your work? Please explain how one becomes a published/printed comic artists based on your experiences.

Where to begin! My own experience will not be applicable to all, but I'll share it briefly. The pros of working with a publisher are that they'll market your work to the vast audience they already have, print it, distribute it, get you an ISBN, get you in the media, etc. The cons are that you have to relinquish some of your creative control and may not have your word to say on how it'll be printed, who'll do the cover or write the intro, and you'll be bound by a contract that may or may not be good. Not to mention, you'll have to deal with a long wait and a lot of rejection before being picked up. The exact mileage varies with the publisher, some are nicer than others, some are genuinely interested in your work and others just want to know how much profit they'll make off it.

Personally, as I wanted my book to be published in Lebanon, I had few options, and I knew from previous experience with publishers that they would probably not, in fact, finance the printing; that I could get an ISBN myself directly from the Ministry of Culture; and that I could sign a contract directly with a distributor, cutting out the middleman. I was rather known to the press so I knew I could whip up a media storm to get exposure, and that it would snowball from there. I am self-sufficient, as my design training enables me to plan and create a publication from scratch, up to the point I hand the print-ready file to the printer. So I prepared the first issue for press and decided there was no point at all to waste time looking for a publisher I could persuade to support or even sponsor it. I shopped for a printer, again helped by my design experience and that of my colleagues – it only took a few phonecalls to get printer recommendations, send them the book specs for an estimate, and decide. The most problematic part in the entire publishing deal was the printing cost, but I believed in it enough to see it as an investment, and I knew I'd get at least part of it back. The rest: ISBN, distributor, media coverage – took no effort at all and I even organized a booksigning at a big bookshop. I spread the word about the signing through Facebook, word of mouth, and by notifying weekly and monthly publications that print the dates of cultural events. I put up posters in cafés where the kind of people I targeted hung out. I could have just as easily done the signature in a pub or some other fun place – I will next time. It's as easy as talking to the manager and seeing if they like the idea, which they should as it would mean bringing them a crowd of customers at no effort on their part.

Now, I know all this is an unconventional approach and maybe not what you expected, but I'm trying to say that you don't really need to go through big organisms to spread your work. If you're motivated enough, you can do all the networking you need online, find outlets in your community that you can use to gain exposure, arrange ISBN and distribution yourself, and even get a loan to do the printing. All you need is initiative, and if you're in the field you're already well-placed for all the contacts you need.

So basically, two pieces of advice here:
- Place yourself in a position of power. If you haven't made a career choice yet, make one that will put you in touch with people and industries that are related to that personal project you want to pursue. Build up professional recognition, as well, and socialize with like-minded professionals. I'm a freelancer but I'm not isolated: I have loads of connection and great PR. Having a good rep in my field and being known to the press, I could walk up to any professional, say "this is who I am and this is an idea I want to work on, that I may need your services for" and I would have their attention. This is not something you can do if you're a quantity unknown.
- Don't do anything until you are ready to roll and to keep rolling. If you drum up interest but your product is not in fact ready to go to press, you will lose the momentum and not get it back. If you launch your first issue but don't have a website for your comic, people will have nowhere to go to stay posted, and you'll lose readers. If you have a hiatus between publications but don't have anything to keep your audience interested in the meanwhile (such as downloads, contests, whatever), they might move on.

I spoke above of the independent approach; if you want to go for a publisher there are other people who can advise you much better than me on this. Here's another piece of advice, however, that applies to anyone who wants to get their work out there: be sure of your product. You have to set a high standard for yourself and reach it before you try to break through. As a rule, you should spend much more energy on your creation and skills than on trying to market them. Publication can happen out of luck if you have something exceptional, but will likely not happen at all if your work is half-baked, unoriginal or poorly finished.

Also related to publication, is how to prepare your comic for printing. Converting a webcomic into a printed volume is not always easy, or even possible. You need to work with the knowledge that your end product will be printed, and prepare your files accordingly. Here are a few points I discovered along the way:

Resolution: Files to be printed need to have a resolution of 300 dpi. Some PoD take as low as 150, but some printers will produce horrible results at less than 300, so play it safe and never work at less than 300 dpi. I found this out when I printed a test for my senior year project, which I had made in 150 dpi. I had to redo it all at the higher resolution, in 2 days. A lesson well learned, I assure you!

Page size: Work at a larger size than your desired print size. My printed volume is A4, but my files are A3. It's not like I'm working on paper and it can get unwieldy, right? You never know when you're going to want a larger version of a page (heck, I can think of pages done by some comickers that I would BUY in poster size) so again, plan ahead.

Color space: Work on the screen is in RGB mode, but printing is done in CMYK, so not only will your final files have to be CMYK, they will be subjected to the limitations of actual ink printed on paper. Not all colors on the screen can be reproduced with a CMYK process! For instance, I make extensive use of the Color Dodge and Linear Dodge blending modes to obtain the green light effects of my character's power. These modes can only be used in RGB mode, and converting the file to CMYK was disastrous. My luminous green blobs became muddy green blobs. Argh!! I was able to fix it by flattening the page before converting the color space, and then re-saturating the green light in each page as much as CMYK could handle. You need to closely examine each page you convert to see if something got "lost in translation", and compensate for it. If you'r enot posting your work online at all, it's even better to work in CMYK from the start.

Margins and bleeds: In a printed page, the inner edge gets eaten up by the binding and the outer edge by the cutting, especially if the volume is stapled. Use wide margins so that the page looks right after being thus diminished, no less than 1.5 cm on each side. If the art in your comic touches the edge of the page, it is said to "bleed". In this case you have to add 3 more millimeter around your page, before you start working on it. The art needs to extend beyond the page so that if the cutting is not accurate (it NEVER is in the real world) you won't end up with a white line on the edge of your page. Let me illustrate this. Suppose your page is 20x30cm. Your work file will be 20.6x30.6 cm (3 extra millis on each side). Use guidelines to define the page's "real edges". Inside this, with at least 1.5 cm margin, add another set of guidelines to indicate the surface your panels can occupy.

Page position: It doesn't matter online, but in a book, a given page will be on the right or left, and it matters a great deal! Your story will be enhanced or weakened, depending on whether you plan for this or neglect it. For instance, I keep all my cliffhangers at the bottom of the right-hand page, so that the reader doesn't discover what happens before they turn the page. If you have a splash page, you have to arrange it so that the previous page is on the right as well (unlike a commercial comic, you can't insert an ad where it's convenient). This must be planned for in the very early stages.


Do you still use reference material such as stock or from life for poses, buildings and other props and item when drawing out comics? How do you come up with the poses?

Of course! If anything, I use more of it because the more serious I am about this, the more I want to have details that are "alive". I don't have anything to prove by avoiding to use references, so I use them anytime I need them. For human poses I can usually do without. I'm a martial artist and I regularly take part in other physical activites: acrobatics, oriental dancing, football... so I have a very good knowledge of my body and I can think kinetically – I can feel a dynamic movement or pose as I draw it. It really helps, as you draw best what you're most intimate with, and it provides lots of inspiration. Nevertheless, some complex poses or angles remain hard to visualize and that's when I need a reference. Most of the time I'll pose for it and ask my mom to take snapshots from the angles I want. Or I'll shoot myself in the mirror. Otherwise, if I don't need something too specific, I just look for a reference online. I use corbis.com a lot as they are a stock provider and their collection is indexed by keywords, which makes it easy to look up "woman running" or "leaping cat" or whatnot. I have to add it's perfectly legal and ethical to use a picture as a reference – if you're not copying the subject, but something about it (pose, folds or proportions...), it's completely fair use.

For backgrounds, in the case of my comic, using reference has become an important part of the work. I take "photo safaris" around Beirut to shoot typical or run-down architecture, details of the urban landscape, textures, so that I can use them (as photos or redrawn) in my backgrounds. It's a way to document the city within the story and it would certainly be impossible to capture its personality if I didn't reference the real thing.

I also need references when I'm out of sorts, as the sketching doesn't flow right and that's when my characters come out disproportioned or flat.

Are you ever unsatisfied with your work or have an artist’s block?

I am sometimes unsatisfied with my work but you'll never see examples of that, because I either redo it to satisfaction or drop it altogether as soon as I see it's leading nowhere. We had an art teacher we referred to as "Just Redo It" and thanks to his unrelenting drilling, I am quite good about starting over something I'm not fully happy with I would never let something I'm not proud of go to print, or if I'm forced to (as happens when you work for clients that are not necessarily design-savvy), I'll make sure my name's not on it. In general I am too used to seeing my work in print, but I have to say that when I received the first copies of my comic I was squeaking for hours. I couldn't stop looking at them, they look so much better in print than on screen!

Art blocks happen. They are bound to: if you're running at full speed as opposed to jogging sedately along, you can't run forever, and if you're pouring your all into your work, you go through cycles. At the end of each cycle is a little slump where your creative energy is spent and you need to let it replenish itself. I also get blocked when I am just not inspired by a job I have to turn in. Either way, the best way to get over a block, for me, is to heed it, not force it. If I am not motivated to work on a project, I'll turn to another. If I don't feel like drawing at all, I'll do something else altogether – catch up on my reading, clean up my room, go out. I understand I need the break to start afresh. When I feel I want to be active again, all I need to do is look over my works in progress or leaf through work that inspires me to fire up my creative energies again. An alternative way, if I have a deadline to observe, is to start on brainless but necessary tasks related to the project – stuff I can do while listening to a movie or music, such as vector-tracing something, knocking out backgrounds, cutting paper to the right sizes, whatever. That eases me into the mood so I can eventually complete the main part of the job. This is not my preferred way, though. One of the first pieces of advice I received was "never draw when you're not in the mood for it" and I adhere to it as much as I can. It always shows in the final work.

Do you have any online comics or comics in prints we can read or buy? Where?

Yes I do! My comic's official website is [link] . Here are the cover and sample pages of volume 1:


And a sneak peek at vol. 2, which is well underway:


The comic is not distributed outside Lebanon but can be ordered directly from me.


In closing:

Given the enormous number of comics and graphic novels out there, many wonder what's the point of starting one and/or how to do something original. The answer is the same: you have to do something YOU feel excited and fulfilled to be working on. The main point is for you to enjoy it, and the best way to achieve originality is to be entirely yourself. Looking for "that magic recipe" that will make people like your comic is a dead end. It doesn't work that way. You will produce your best work when you follow your own call, and you will always find an audience for a job well done.


Stay tuned for a featured chat with `Cedarseed coming soon!