LILY OF THE VALLEY

HAPPY BLOODY HOLIDAYS!

2010-12-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

Thank you everyone who read and supported my work in 2010 with LILY OF THE VALLEY. I really appreciated it. Unfortunately as you've probably noticed, Zudacomics.com no longer exists and I'm unable to continue the comic as DC Comics still holds the distribution rights to the work. Unfortunately, I also do not believe they will be distributing it as they've told me several times it would be available as a digital comic through comixology but the dates they have given me have come and gone and it remains unavailable.

I however, still finished my side of the contract in October, completing all 60 pages of the first intended volume. So it has been two months since I finished working on LILY OF THE VALLEY, a project that was very close and personal to me. Since things ended how they did, I've found it challenging to build up energy and motivation to invest into a new project. I've started a few but haven't settled on anything yet.
Anyway, my New Year's resolution is to start on something right away and build an independent webcomic which can't be taken away from me by big company decisions, etc. It'll be independent and I'll fight to rebuild some of the massive fanbase and following which LILY OF THE VALLEY had developed over the past year.

On the brighter side of things, LILY OF THE VALLEY has just been ranked by MTV.COM as #7 on their list of the top ten webcomics of 2010! Accompanying me on the list is Cameron Stewart's Eisner award winning Sin Titulo, the legendary Warren Ellis' Freak Angels, as well as a few of peers from Zudacomics.com!

You can read the entire list right here!

If you would like to keep up to date on other things I'm doing, you can follow me in the following places: FACEBOOK , TWITTER , and DEVIANTART.

Thanks again everyone for your kindness and support and mainly for enjoying my work throughout 2010! I'll have more to share in 2011, I promise.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

- Adam Atherton

Page 44

2010-06-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

Page 44 as well as 40, 41, and 42 of LILY OF THE VALLEY are pages I'm extremely proud of at the moment. Mainly because fast paced action and energy and quick motion, etc, is not something I have done much of and not even something I thought I would enjoy. So it was a fresh direction to have gone in with the comic, and something I really ended up loving alot. Far more than anticipated.

It was also alot of fun creating the splattering effect of the trailing debris and blood and whatever else might be falling from a massive pile of dead bodies blown sky high...

After completing page 44 once and being unsatisfied with the result, I restarted it in hopes of improving some elements. Having the page essentially done and set aside as a backup if my second attempt failed gave me a very comforting safety net and allowed me to experiment without any looming anxiety of messing up the page before deadline.
For the splatter effects I used Winsor and Newton's designer gouche and flicked it onto the page with a toothbrush. Sounds pretty easy, but I had to mess around a bit to get the splatter trails to look realistic and how I wanted them to look.
For panel 2 of the same page, I tried something new as well. The screen tone on the RCMP officers is a transparent sheet of screen tone you can buy at alot of art supply store, usually used in Manga comics. It has an adhesive back so you just cut out the shape you want and stick it to your artwork. I love how it looks and I'm real happy with this page for all the non-digital effects. The more I can do physically on the page the happier I am! And sure I could just scan one page of screen tone and carry it into a layer in Photoshop whenever I want to use it, and sure it would save me the money of buying new sheets every time I feel the need to use it, but I love looking at the actual inked page and seeing it...

Anyway, I'm really interested to hear feedback on pages 40 to 44 to know what I should do more of and what I should do less of! Leave a comment here, or send an anonymous question to me through formspring.me HERE!

You can also send the powers-that-be at ZUDA your feedback on the comic. Let them know you want a second 60 page season of LILY OF THE VALLEY, let them know you want a print edition when it's done, etc! They read all the feedback and it has a BIG impact on their decisions. You can send them feedback directly RIGHT HERE!

Thanks everyone!

PS: I have more LILY OF THE VALLEY buttons available to anyone who wants one!
They're free, you only pay the shipping cost (which is about $2.25 in North America, and $4.25 anywhere else). I have paypal set up for this to make things easy. So far, about 30 buttons have been sent out, with alot of the readers posting photos of their buttons in the facebook group photo album !
To get one, just message me on twitter or email me at AdamDAtherton@hotmail.com. Tell me which one you want, your mailing address, etc. and BAM! BUTTON!

- Adam Atherton

Using Photo References

2010-06-07T21:26:00.000-07:00

This is just something I thought might be of interest to one or two people. This is the kind of behind the scenes, production, and process stuff I always really enjoy seeing so maybe someone else does too.
Sometimes when I'm drawing a page, I'll come to a panel that requires me to draw a difficult pose. Usually action shots need a reference of some sort to understand how to body moves a certain way. Most static shots I can think through in my head or pose and take a photo with my macbook.
Sometimes action shots are tricky so one place I'll usually look to find a helpful photo, is sports photography. You can find all sorts of odd poses in mid-action.

Below is an example of how I used a sports photo as reference for drawing an RCMP officer getting his brains dashed out by barrage of bullets.
I found this image through a simple search online, and reversed the photo to fit my needs for the panel and composition. Then I roughly used the image as a guide to capture the line of action and basic movement. Once I had the body structure down, I fleshed it out with the RCMP officer details; helmet, uniform, pockets, guns, etc. Then plugged him full of bullets... Once that was done, I inked it and that brought me to the stage you see the panel at in this photo!

LILY mentioned on WEDNESDAY WARRIORS podcast!

2010-06-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

Check out episode 51 of the Wednesday Warriors podcast!

At around the 36 minute mark, host John Powell mentions LILY OF THE VALLEY as one of two webcomics he follows religiously. The other being Freak Angels by comic legend Warren Ellis! Great company to be in!

www.fightforcomics.com

To find the episode, just click on "Download Episodes Here" at the top of the right side column!

The meat of the discussion:

"As long as we're talking about webcomics, there's one I just have to mention, that I've been reading along to pretty religiously. It's by Adam Atherton, on Zudacomics.com, and it's called Lily of the Valley. It's this story about a psychopathic girl at her high school prom and stuff. It's pretty intense and it's done just with three colours; black, white, and pink. It's really gorgeous. I read that and Freak Angels. Those are really the only two webcomics I read and I've been really fascinated with both. Warren Ellis' Freak Angels and Adam Atherton's Lily of the Valley, definitely worth checking out."

LILY OF THE VALLEY SOUNDTRACK!

2010-05-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

So throughout making LILY OF THE VALLEY , I've had very specific songs in mind for particular scenes. I've collected most of them and posted them below with the page numbers they correspond to!

I guarantee this will enhance your experience of the series by pulling you further into Elmwood and Lily's world.! If you have other song suggestions feel free to leave a comment here, on Zuda , or the facebook fan group ! or message me on twitter!

When posting these in the facebook fan group , I received ALOT of other song suggestions, or just songs that came to mind to readers at certain places in the story. One of those suggestions I liked so much I added to this list (Secret by The Pierces).

Also, I've included a song from pages which haven't gone live yet, to give you an indication of the turn the story is about the take! The pace is going to pick up in a big way!

Enjoy.

PAGES 1 - 8
Shivers - The Boys Next Door
(I also consider this the overall theme music to the series)

PAGES 9 - 10
Wishing and Hoping - by Dionne Warwick

PAGES 11 - 13
Popular - by Nada Surf

PAGES 15 - 16
This Magic Moment - by The Platters

PAGES 19 - 22
Don't Worry, Be Happy - by Bobby McFerrin

PAGES 30 - 32
Your Hands - by JJ Heller

PAGES 33 - 37
Secret - by The Pierces

PAGES 39 - 43
Sabotage - by Beastie Boys
(I couldn't find a vid that would embed but it's definitely worth clicking through to youtube to listen to. Also the video is fantastic.)

CLICK HERE FOR BEASTIE BOYS' SABOTAGE!

So there you go, the LILY OF THE VALLEY soundtrack to date. There are many more songs I was inspired by, but they can't ALL be included in a soundtrack so I had to pick the most relevant. If anyone is interested, I can post a list of the other songs. It's a longer list.

Thanks for looking!

- Adam

Killer new review and in depth interview with Curtis Lawson!

2010-04-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

LILY OF THE VALLEY is described as "a mixture of American Psycho, Edward Scissorhands, and a touch of Jennifer's Body" in this new extremely well articulated review of the series!

You can read the meat and potatoes of the review below. To read it and the in depth interview in their entirety please click here!

"The premise of the comic is simple and direct, albeit extremely surreal. Atherton's tale follows a girl named Lily Brooke who suffers from an array of mental health issues. Finding that prescription drugs and traditional therapy have done very little to help her feel better, Lily discovers a self prescribed therapeutic activity – murder. Luckily for Lily, the folks in the small town that she lives in are convinced that there is a ghost-boy in the woods who's responsible for her crimes.

Now some of you may be skeptical about this concept, as was I, but Atherton executes the subject matter in an amusing and visually gripping manner. Mixing the truly horrific and the down right silly (such as a plastic flamingo being used as a murder weapon), this webcomic is imbued with a whimsical madness that captures the reader.

Furthermore, Atherton has crafted Lily so that the audience can sympathize with her, in a manner similar to Dexter Morgan or Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Though I wouldn't classify Lily as a hero, or even an anit-hero, there is a sense of misguided justice behind her actions. One might say that Lily is the armored fist of the crazed, displaced and introverted. This in itself makes her character appealing.

The art has a very stylized look to it that works incredibly well for the story. A careful and limited pallet of colors adds a moody atmosphere with a hint of darkness while staying away from horror comic cliche's such as heavy inking or the overuse of red and black contrast.. What stands out to me most about the artwork on Lily of the Valley is the incredible attention to detail, which I'm a total sucker for. There are no blank backgrounds in this comic. Atherton makes sure to bring the setting to life in every panel, bringing out the little details like magnets on refrigerators and the knots in wooden beams. With such a gorgeously rendered and detailed setting it becomes easy for the audience to submerge themselves in Lily's hometown of Elmwood.

The over all result of Atherton's efforts produces an entertainingly macabre webcomic that might be described as a mixture of American Psycho and Edward Scissorhands, with a touch of Jennifer's Body. All in all, Lily of the Valley is a very impressive webcomic that helps demonstrate what a boon the Zuda competition is to the webcomics community and to the comics industry as a whole.

Now I will say that Lily of the Valley is definitely not for everyone. If you're only into cape books with definitive ideas of right and wrong, or if you simply don't care for surrealism, then you probably aren't going to like this webcomic. For those of you who do enjoy a little fictitious carnage, Lily of the Valley is definitely worth checking out.

As always, thanks for reading. Please let me know your thoughts on this new format. I'll catch everyone here again in fourteen days. Don't close that window just yet though. Check out this interview I conducted with Adam Atherton."

LILY OF THE VALLEY TOPS 100000 PAGE VIEWS ON ZUDACOMICS.COM!

2010-03-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Today LILY OF THE VALLEY topped 100000 page views on Zudacomics.com!! Thanks to everyone who continued to read since the series won this opportunity to continue back in May 2009. It means alot to me. Here's to 100000 more :)

To celebrate, here's more LILY OF THE VALLEY fanart! I found this today on deviantART.com.

You can check out the rest of the artist's artwork at: http://kure-ji-ori.deviantart.com/

and of course you can continue to read a new page of LILY OF THE VALLEY every single Friday on Zuda: http://www.lilyofthevalleycomic.com
Thanks again everyone. :)

- Adam and Luiza

(Click on the image to view it at a larger scale.)

NEW Lily of the Valley artwork by AZURE creator Dan Govar!

2010-03-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a really cool piece of LILY OF THE VALLEY artwork by Dan Govar, creator of Zuda's popular AZURE series!

As of this post, AZURE has 82 pages of great storytelling and amazing hyper-real/hyper-detailed atwork with a new page updating every single week! Check it out at:
http://www.zudacomics.com/Azure

Dan frequently runs live videos on livestream.com of him working. This piece was broadcast live as he worked as well. While watching, you can even chat with him and other's viewing the feed. He usually announces his livestream sessions on twitter. You can follow him there at @saulone.

-Adam

(Click on the images to view them at a larger scale.)

WAPSI SQUARE creator draws LILY!

2010-03-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

Here's some new LILY OF THE VALLEY artwork for you, from Paul Taylor, creator of the popular webcomic series WAPSI SQAURE!
I'm a fan of Paul's stuff, so this was really cool to receive!

Check out WAPSI SQUARE at:
www.wapsisquare.com

And a new page of LILY OF THE VALLEY every Friday at:
www.Lilyofthevalleycomic.com

- Adam

LILY OF THE VALLEY reaches the midway mark of season one!

2010-03-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

So this past Friday, LILY OF THE VALLEY reached 30 pages. Before creating this series, the longest comic I made was 14 pages, the second longest was 5 pages. So this feels like quite an accomplishment to me.
At 30 pages, the series currently holds a near solid 5 star rating, 849 favourites, and is closing in on 100,000 page views! Not too shabby.
The real accomplishment to me in these numbers is when comparing them to the numbers at the end of the competition last May which won me the opportunity to continue the series. LILY won with around 575 favourites and I think it was 20,000 page views. To think the series has gained around 275 addition registered Zuda reader's interest in just 22 page updates is very flattering. And to see the page views continue to grow as the series progresses makes me excited for the future.

Thanks to all of your support I've managed to reach these numbers and achieve a Best Horror Webcomic of 2009 Award Nomination at ComicMonsters.com in the process!

Thanks everyone. :)

- Adam

PS: Here's an unrelated bonus drawing. Done with pen, brush and ink on 2 ply bristol, and photoshop. Click on image to see larger.

LILY OF THE VALLEY art from CELADORE creator Caanan Grall!

2010-03-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a piece of art I recently received from fellow Zuda writer/artist Caanan Grall!

You can read all 180 pages of Caanan's CELADORE on Zudacomics.com right here.

and a new page of LILY OF THE VALLEY every Friday around noon on Zudacomics.com as well!

January 15 2010

2010-01-15T08:29:00.000-08:00

LILY OF THE VALLEY mentioned on Acmecomics.com in an interview with Len Wallace, writer of LOVE BUZZ published by Oni Press!

You can check it out and read the rest of the interview with Len Wallace RIGHT HERE.

I actually picked up LOVE BUZZ from my local comic shop last month and read it through and it was quite fantastic. I know Len's been working on this comic for years and he's always been very passionate about it and it shines through in all the writing on every page. It also has some stunning artwork.

Fan Art

2010-01-08T11:20:00.000-08:00

My Birthday was last month and an aspiring artist and Lily of the Valley fan named Cachy sent me a piece of fan art as a gift. I think it's fantastic and to think someone likes what I'm doing enough to do that made my day and inspires me. Here it is!

Thanks again Cachy. :)

And for fun, here's a before colour and after colour comparison of a panel from page 13. (Click the image to see it at a larger scale)

While I'm at it, here's something similar from another page. This time with some of the digital cleanup and effects stripped away! I know I always enjoy seeing the stages of finished artwork and some of the construction behind it, so maybe someone else does too!

PAGE 21

2010-01-05T19:32:00.000-08:00

PAGE 20

2009-12-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

This Christmas, LILY splatters Mrs. Mary Bellows' kitchen with the blood of Elmwood's police department! Check it out HERE!

NOMINATED BEST HORROR WEBCOMIC OF 2009!

This week, LILY was nominated for a Best Horror Webcomic of 2009 Award at Comicmonsters.com. If you want to see the other nominees or want to vote, just go here and register, then vote.
I've been going to Comicmonsters.com for years before I even had a comic, so it'd be a really cool honour to win!

Thanks to everyone for the support throughout 2009. Look forward to lots more in 2010, as my New Year's resolution will likely be to increase my productivity!

And for no reason other than because it's Christmas and I love this movie...

PAGE 19

2009-12-18T07:55:00.000-08:00

"Hey, I'll give you my phone number. When you're worried, call me. I'll make you happy. Don't worry."

FRIDAY = NEW LILY OF THE VALLEY COMIC/BLOG UPDATES!

Page 19 is live today on Zudacomics.com. Check it out HERE!
As always, it's best viewed in the full screen mode. To do that, click the little box that says "full" in the bottom right of the comic viewer. Much more enjoyable, trust me. lol

So this page demonstrates alot further, Lily's completely misguided approach to healing her mental illnesses. Sure, she's read the right books on coping with panic attacks, but she applies the knowledge wrongly. I guess maybe some people are meant to be controlled by phobias, anxieties, panic, etc. Maybe it's doing us all a service by containing a monster. Maybe she's a monster because of it and the sinister acts she commits are her desperate attempts at freeing herself. So, what do you think at this point in the story? Is Lily a natural born monster? Or a sympathetic and tragic figure that displays the torture, confusion, and desperation of living with mental illness?

I can draw parallels now with Lily and Frankenstein's creation. Both are quite similiar, only Frankenstein's creation is likely better written... but only slightly... ;) . Maybe I've read Mary Shelley's novel so many times it's seeped into my subconscious and influences everything I do now. The similarity I'm pointing out is the tragicness of the character. It's unfortunate and tragic to me to see Lily become a monster when all she ever wanted was to belong. Much like Frankenstein's creation, she only turned on society when it seemingly through her eyes turned on her. Perhaps it was all in her head, a victim of automatic thought and paranoia, which makes it sadder in my eyes. At this point, she's far detached and believes her actions to be just in much the same way Frankenstein's creation though.

What I like about page 19 is it reveals that Lily has done her research, she's tried hard to control her struggles with anxiety and panic. She says herself on page 18 that she's read the books on controlling panic many times. She's even memorized them and recites them to us on page 19. She's made solid effort to heal herself but she got lost somewhere along the way. This is what I was trying to demonstrate with this page and the previous. I've tried to show how much effort she's made to live normal but at the same time show that with every effort she pushes herself further from normalcy. She's only curing the symptoms in the end.

Anyway this page was one of the most fun pages to draw yet. Drawing anatomically correct lungs and brain was a blast. I had to do more anatomy diagrams after discovering how much fun it is while drawing the heart on page 13. If I can think of any more relevant anatomy to draw into the comic, I surely will.

I had to crop some of the brain diagram out, so I thought I'd throw the whole thing up here:

I chose all the tilted angles for the panels to reflect a feeling of insanity and panic. I also took them as an opportunity to lead the reader's eye through the busy page. Specifically with the gutter running vertically down the center of the page. I made it slightly wider to divide the two sides. It tilting from left at the bottom to right at the top hopefully leads the eye easily from panel 4 to panel 5. I hope it kinda tells you where to go without you having to think much about it. I tilted the image in panel 4 to help with this as well. Everything leads the eye straight up to the top again for panel 5. That's what I was hoping anyway. This turned out to be one of my favourite pages. Especially once I discovered an opportunity to reference, in the dialogue, the song I envisioned playing during this scene! I wanted the song to seep slowly into the reader's mind as Lily tells herself not to worry, which is why I skipped another panel before following it with "be happy". I'm happy with how it turned out.
Also notice the lemons, to anyone paying attention to the running motif of fruits in the book...

PAGE 18

2009-12-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

Friday means another new page of LILY OF THE VALLEY.

Here's a clip from the page. The full page can be viewed in full screen high resolution HERE!

This page returns to Lily on the night of Mrs. Bellows' horrific demise.

The first panel I wanted to establish visually that this is the same house where Lily attacked Mrs. Bellows. So there's the blood in the doorframe and the mailbox. I regret covering up the pineapple on the mailbox with a caption though. There are lemons and a banana and the last panel to make up for it.

STRAWBERRIES, LEMONS, AND PINEAPPLES

I like the aesthetic that the image of fruits offer this comic so I've been working them in wherever I can. In my mind it just balances the violent content. Like I could do the most violent scene imaginable on half a page and if the second half of the page was an enormous pile of strawberries filling the entire panel, everything would be alright. Please leave a comment and tell me if that makes sense to you, because for some reason it makes absolute perfect sense to me. And I hope I'm not the only one...

Just for fun, here's a rundown of all the fruits to date:

Page 1 - panel 2 - lemon magnet on the mirror

Page 1 - panel 3 - strawberries on the lip gloss

Page 3 - panel 4 - pineapple on the mailbox

Page 18 - panel 4 - lemons, banana on the kitchen counter

Watch for more.

THE CURSE OF MILLHAVEN

Designing this page I was listening to The Curse of Millhaven by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The page as a whole is mostly influenced by the end of the song/story with the killer's home being invaded by cops. It's amusing to me how the killer in the song feels bothered by the cops entering her home "without even phoning". I wanted a similar vibe to be going on here.

ANIMALS AND NATURE

Throughout the comic so far I've tried to keep aspects of nature alive everywhere. It keeps things primal and to me suggests that the town of Elmwood is just loosely balancing the line between civil and primitive. A town in the centre of the woods trying to fight its natural urges and pretend to be separate from the animals. I've used plants in houses, leaves, the wind, animals (rats, flamingos...) to achieve this. On this page, in the second panel, I used a group of wooden geese decor on the wall behind the cops.

In the last panel, I chose the angle I did to create a claustrophobic feeling, like Lily is trapped, which she very well may be. But I also used this angle to establish key elements including the pots and pans hanging from the ceiling and the knives on the kitchen counter.

FAN ART!

Here's a really beautiful piece of LILY fan art by Walter Ostlie! I really love this. It really captures the tone and spirit of the comic. Check out his other work HERE.

REVIEWS

Webcomic site Decaffeinated Coffee recently constructed a list of what they consider the top ten webcomics of 2009! LILY OF THE VALLEY actually appears on the list! and at fourth place! Read what author Chuck Harrison has to say about it as well as check out the other great comics on the list RIGHT HERE!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this page and take it all in. I hope it brings things to your attention you didn't notice before so you can go back and find more enjoyment in earlier pages. This page and page 19 going live next Friday have become two of my favourite pages to date. Enjoy. :)

PAGE 17

2009-12-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

Sorry this one is late. Friday usually means new pages of LILY on Zuda, but in this case that is what Monday meant. lol

Here's a page sample. You can view the full page in full screen high resolution at www.zudacomics.com/node/1237 !

This page bridges the events from Lily's semi-formal 3 months ago back with the fateful night of Mrs. Bellows demise! Page 8 left off with Lily inside the house seemingly carrying on a delightful conversation with Mrs. Bellows' head, while swarms of cop cars pulled up on the flamingo covered lawn. If you were wondering how she gets out of this scenerio, or if she does at all, that all starts now.

THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

I couldn't resist including somewhere in this comic a newspaper front page that says VALLEY OF DEATH? It is something I imagined from the beginning. Doing an entire panel as a newspaper itself rather than a character holding it, etc, was an idea I got from reading Bayou on Zuda. After I think the first chapter there are several pages which are just news articles about the events taking place and I really enjoyed the perspective it gave on the story so I wanted to do the same. Both headlines on the article have relevance to the story as well.

Designing the newspaper I looked at the newspaper from my hometown, Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada. The paper is called The Bugle. I actually scanned a copy of this paper and removed the words to get the texture for The Elmwood Conch.

The name of the paper I wanted to include the name of the town, as it's a character itself in the comic I think. The Conch aspect was inspired by William Golding's Lord of the Flies; a story about a group of schoolboys isolated on an island trying to govern themselves. They fail at doing so and mostly all resort to their primitive and animalistic instincts and nature. In this book, a conch is originally used to sound each group meeting with all the boys. The conch comes to represent civility, order, and rationality. It becomes the only reminder of these things as the boys spiral out of control. When the conch is eventually destroyed it represents a total disconnect with order. I wanted this newspaper to subtly draw these similarities to anyone who gets the reference. This paper though displays more of the town's character of panic and delusion so it's not as objective as the conch. It can still be used as a similar storytelling tool however.

The images of the 'ghost of Elmwood', I used pencil sketches to give the paper a different feel, like it's more real.

SHERIFF BELLOWS

So here we're introduced to the Elmwood Sheriff. The newspaper leads into his introduction somewhat as well. By the way, I'm aware Sheriffs do not exist in Canada and Lily of the Valley takes place in Eastern Canada, but I wanted to use it regardless. It adds something more than constable, or whatever the equal term would be here.

Sheriff Bellows has a bit of a smoking addiction. Notice the nicotine patch on his arm. When drawing the Sheriff, I was aiming to go for a Johnny Cash appearance. I think he ended up looking more like my dad though.

That's about all for page 17!

PAGE 16

2009-11-27T06:30:00.000-08:00

It's Friday. So Lily of the Valley updates with a new page on Zuda and a new production blog entry here!

Elsewhere, while Lily pounds the tar out of Erika at the Elmwood High semi-formal...

There's not much I can say about this page without giving things away so I won't. This page is the end note of the semi-formal scene.

LILY OF THE VALLEY REVIEWS!

In the past week a few different sources have written very entertaining reviews on Lily of the Valley.

The first review is by a professional writing teacher who has been writing a memoir of her life with manic depressive disorder. Like Lily, she refuses to take her meds... Read what she has to say about the comic here.

The second review is by a Zuda regular who goes by the username Illinest. In his review he points out a few page details that you might not have noticed yourself. Worth the read. You can read it here.

EXTRA ARTWORK

Here's an image of Lily. This image isn't in the actual comic anywhere. It's just something that was in my head and I thought I would draw. Click the image to view it at a larger size.

BEFORE AND AFTER COLOUR

Annnd here's a little glimpse into the process. (Click on the image to see it at a larger size.) This is page 11 before and after colour. Go to Lily on Zuda (http://www.lilyofthevalleycomic.com/) to view the page in full and with it's dialogue.

If people enjoy seeing this sort of thing I'll try to post more progress stuff like it in future updates. So let me know. :)

Page 15

2009-11-20T10:41:00.000-08:00

THIS MAGIC MOMENT

Page 15 is now live on Zuda! (Best viewed with the full screen feature.)

I'm a little late today with this update. I slept in because Luiza and I went out to see the premiere of New Moon last night. lol It was delightfully cheesy!

This page sees Lily unleash the monster inside of her for the first time. I wanted this instance where Lily hits Erika to feel violent and ferocious. From a technical standpoint I kept the backgrounds minumal in the first three panels to focus all the reader's attention on the action. This, I hope, also makes it read quickly so the attack just feels fast and sudden. The red background in panel two I used to make the action stand out even more in that panel and to make it feel more violent, along with the use of the CRACK sound effect. The use of rain comes into full effect on this page too. I had hinted at the coming storm (literally and metaphorically) throughout this scene at semi-formal. You can see drops of rain falling in previous pages. I wanted pouring rain on this page to further emphasize the violence and make things feel very primal and jungle like. Like Lily has transformed into a carnivorous animal. The hunter becomes the hunter as Lily stalks her prey from behind the statue.

LILY OF THE VALLEY SOUNDTRACK

As I've said before, I've been imagining this story playing out as a film and the soundtrack plays a huge part of it in my mind. For this page I envisioned This Magic Moment by The Platters playing. This song goes with the feeling of great relief Lily's feeling to finally release some of her anxiety (Even though in a negative way). I hid this song title on the page as well! Try to find it. lol

I wanted this page and the entire scene in general to sort of feel like a revenge fantasy as well, to anyone who's ever been picked on, or made to feel inadequate in school, or anywhere. Obviously her actions are misguided and wrong but I know from time to time everyone imagines clocking an antagonizer in the face. I think it's something everyone can relate to. When I was drawing this page I put myself mentally back in high school with my antagonizers to put myself in the right mindset. It was actually a very cathartic page to draw. lol

SHAPES AND BACKGROUND ELEMENTS

I explored shapes an composition in the large panel, for no specifica reason aside from trying to learn more about the medium and what can be done with it design wise. The statue and it's shadow act just as one solid block leading the eye from the top left through the two figures and to the bottom right. The placement of the dialogue balloons I also used to lead the eye in a Z pattern through the panel. Even with the girls' shadow I tried to simplify it and use a minimalist and design heavy approach.

In the large panel I littered the background with condoms, beer bottles, and beer cans. When I was in high school, my good friend Greg and I used to take a shortcut walking home through the golf course across from it. Leading toward the golf course was a rarely used parking lot area which was a minefield of condoms and beer bottles. This became my understanding of what surrounded high schools. I used these elements to also contribute to the primal and animalistic feeling I was going for with this page.

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

The original animated film based on Dr. Seuss's book for some reason which I'm not quite sure of yet has been something I've wanted to emulate a bit with this comic. The dialogue on this page about Lily having "a wonderful, awful idea" is a homage to the film. You can probably expect to see more tributes in future pages. lol

LILY'S MENTAL STRUGGLES

I had someone ask in the comments below the comic on Zuda, if Lily was deaf. Which I guess is an understandable question since I have only revealed her thoughts through captions and she's yet to have any verbal dialogue. Here's a few videos from Youtube which describe one of her conditions examined in the semi-formal scene more clearly.

It's a difficult condition to understand and one of the things I was trying to accomplish with this semi-formal scene was to put the reader into the mind of someone who deals with it. I chose to write about this subject matter because I don't think it's often covered in comics and you rarely see stories from this perspective.

UNRELATED

In unrelated news, Luiza and I both got new tattoos last Friday! :)

Mine is a Mike Mignola skull design. I'll post Luiza's maybe next Friday once I get a pic.

Also the Lily of the Valley facebook group is two members away from reaching 1000! Do a search and join if you haven't yet. There's lots of photos and updates going on there. :)

PAGE 14

2009-11-13T01:26:00.000-08:00

It's Friday, which means a page update on Lily of the Valley at Zudacomics.com. Page 14 goes live today.

Here's a clip from the page. To view the full page in full screen high resolution, just go to Zudacomics.com or the new direct domain name: http://www.lilyofthevalleycomic.com/.

On this page, Lily escapes the crowded area of Elmwood's semi formal event. Lily and Erika now isolated, Lily is more in her element. Erika is outside of hers and powerless really without a crowd to feed off of. The thunder symbolizes a change in Lily's mindset. In a fight or flight situation, Lily usually flees. She's beginning to recognize her thought patterns and how they're doing nothing to help her mental struggles. She decides to take a different approach to the anxiety inducing situation. I thought the storm would create more of a jungle atmosphere to represent Lily's internal changes.

"What is it, you taciturn tampon?"

- To clarify for anyone unsure of the term 'taciturn', it means someone or something which is uncommunicative. I felt rather than Erika referring to Lily again as a mute, I would use something more creative. In my mind, Erika has a whole reservoir of insulting terms she can draw upon anytime.

With the background on this page I took the opportunity to remind everyone where this story is taking place; in Canada. It's not important to the story itself but it is the setting and it is where I imagine this story being able to take place. In New Brunswick, of the Canadian Maritimes to be specific. With Canadian locations very often used as stand ins for movies and television series set in America, I just think it's important to set something in Canada and make it obvious that it's Canada. I'd like it to be as much a part of the personality of the comic as America often is in comics like Superman, Spiderman, etc.

The comic which influenced me initially to draw upon Canada and locations I've actually been to and live in was Brian Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series. Scott Pilgrim is set in Toronto and frequently uses real Toronto landmarks as locations such as Castle Loma, the CN Tower, Honest Eds, and more. The city of Toronto is as much a character in the comic as any other.

A Toronto streetcar in Scott Pilgrim:

The Scotiabank movie theatre and Chapters bookstore downtown behind the Much Music building:

These aren't the best examples, but the quickest I could find in a google search.

Get ready for a subtle tribute to The Grinch on page 15 next Friday! I have alllllot I can blog about with page 15 and I'm looking forward to it. Next Friday. :)

Also for anyone interested, the Lily of the Valley group on facebook is very close to topping 1000 members which is pretty amazing to me. If you'd like to join or check it out, it's at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=71143685849&ref=ts

PAGE 13

2009-11-05T22:14:00.000-08:00

Today's Friday, which means a new page is up on Zudacomics.com and I'm back here to type again.

Today page 13 hits. so here's a preview of that page. The full page is up on Zuda and is best viewed in the full screen mood.

This page continues the first person perspective panels from page 12. I explained the reasons for using this approach for the storytelling in the last blog entry for page 12. Basically it's intended to make the reader understand her fear of these situations by putting them in her place and showing things through her eyes. All eyes are on her. The laughing has been replaced now with unpleasant stares as the popular extroverted girl confronts Lily.
This page attempts to fully display Lily's shy and introverted personality by putting her in a setting completely out of her comfort zone, and one which she actually fears.

The anatomical heart in the last panel was a choice to internalize all of Lily's thoughts and emotions. All of her suffering is all on the inside and she does it all to herself essentially.

(I originally wanted to draw a magnifying glass over the heart to show it, just as a homage to How the Grinch Stole Christmas but thought it would confuse things. I intend to throw in some Grinch elements eventually though. The original animated film shares an aesthetic I'd like to include in this series.)

Anyway, the heart panel and the caption within it I wanted to convey the feeling of repressed aggression reaching it's boiling point. If you've ever been in a situation where you have so much aggression inside that needs to be released in someway, you'll likely understand the comparison to a jar full of buzzing wasps.

This page has no music suggestions. I pictured things going silent for this moment. The only background noise would be the whistling from Brad's lackey in the first panel...

This page also shows the logo for the Elmwood Cannibals; Elmwood High School's big hockey team. They wear their team jackets everywhere I imagine. I don't think they'd even take them off to sleep. Without the status symbol of the jacket, they'd just be ordinary after all.

NEW DOMAIN NAME!

Lily of the Valley now has it's own domain name. www.Lilyofthevalleycomic.com will now take you directly to the comic on Zudacomics.com. I think it'll make things alot easier for people to remember and to find. Just remember Lily is spelled "Lily" and not "Lilly" and it should make things pretty simple.

LILY FAN ART

Here's some recent fan art. The first one is by Luke Andrew from deviantART.com. His page is at: www.fireflyluke00.deviantart.com.

The second one is actually one of the daily strips of Decaffeinated Coffee by Chuck Harrison. It was featured on his site, www.dcstrip.com on Monday and was a cool surprise to me. It's not technically fan art but he drew in a tribute to the comic in the top right corner of the strip on the fridge!

HALLOWEEN

Not much else to say about this page. I hope everyone brought in a good haul of candy on Halloween. Luiza and I went to a Halloween party in downtown Toronto hosted by Warner Brothers and Rue Morgue at the Revival. We saw some really cool costumes... which made me feel pretty stupid for not wearing one. Luckily, Luiza wore one good enough to make up for my lacking. lol She was a living dead girl of sorts.

RUNNING TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

In other unrelated news, a video for Marilyn Manson's Running to the Edge of the World was released yesterday. It's quite an arty little video and with it's cinematic quality could probably be classified as a short film. A very raw, honest, and genuine display of a broken man. I'm interested to hear what others think of it.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

2009-10-31T16:52:00.000-07:00

Helter Skelter!

I am the devil and I am here to do the devil's business.

Or I may just read too much into coincidences...

On Zudacomics.com, mid October:

On twitter, from @gliovampire:

Online banking:

PAGE 12

2009-10-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

Friday's here again, which means a new page of Lily of the Valley is now up at Zudacomics.com. It ALSO means that tomorrow is HALLOWEEN. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

Here's a preview of the page. Click on the Lily of the Valley logo at the right to go directly to the comic.

So with this page I wanted to continue the feeling I was going for with page 11 but now even more from Lily's perspective. I wanted to put the reader right in the crowd with her and see things through her eyes and mind. With the first two panels I wanted to create the effect of one long 180 degree camera pan. I feel like this accomplished what I wanted and presents the crowd as a bit of a claustrophobic enclosure. I wanted the laughing faces to be even more exaggerated than on the previous page to show how Lily's mind perceives and distorts social situations. All eyes are on her.

The two bickering girls introduced on this page are adaptations of recurring characters of the same names which I used about a year or so ago in a series of comic strips. I've changed them around a bit to fit this story and the purpose they serve in it, but their premise is the same; bratty teenage girls being bratty teenage girls. This is a subject I've always found alot of humour in and always enjoyed writing. There's really nothing funnier than listening to girls talk with each other. Specifically when they're fighting for the attention of popular teen heart throbs, like Elmwood High's Hockey hero Brad.

Here's some of those strips to demonstrate the evolution of the characters. I know they're not too spectacular (a few of these are the first comics I've ever done) but I find the evolution of the characters fun to look at, so you might too.

(Sorry for the excessively large sizes.)

This last one is the most recent. I did this probably a year later than the rest and did it all digitally, which explains how sloppy it is. lol

If you're interested in seeing a few other old comic strips I've done, you can check them out at: http://adamathertonpresents.blogspot.com/2008/05/uclick-comics-submission.html . But again, they're nothing fancy. lol

EASTER EGGS FROM PAGE 11:

I said last week I'd post the Bottle of Awesome tribute that was hidden in page 11. Unfortunately the idea was an afterthough and the resubmitted page with this tribute didn't actually get published to the site. But I've cropped it out here anyway to show you. It's the bottle from the Zuda series Bottle of Awesome:

The bottle's on the left side of the screen of page 11 also say 'Nada' and 'Surf'. The bottle next to the right hand of Lily's shadow says 'Popular'. These were the references to the song I imagined playing during that page and continuing onto page 12. The song is called Popular by the band Nada Surf.

ELMWOOD'S INSPIRATION:

I thought since I've talked alot about my hometown in the Canadian Maritimes being an inspiration to my comics, I thought I'd share this image I found at www.woodstocknb.ca. This is Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada, which inspires the town of Elmwood in Lily of the Valley and was the setting in my previous Zuda comic BLOOD (You can view the 14 completed pages at http://adamathertonpresents.blogspot.com/2009/01/original-bleed-pages.html).

ZUDA COMICS FAN ART BLOG:

Here's a huge collection of Zuda comics fan art: www.zudafanart.blogspot.com .

Right now the blog is holding a poll to see which Zuda comic people want to see more fan art of. I was flattered to see that Lily of the Valley is included in the poll. :)

New page of Lily of the Valley and a new blog entry next Friday.
Happy Halloween!

- Adam

PAGE 11

2009-10-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a clip from page 11 of Lily of the Valley. Visit Zudacomics.com or click the direct link at the top right to view the page in full and read the rest of the comic. Use the full screen mode Zuda offers to really read it as intended.

So page 11. At this point in the comic just about every page has only contained one character, Lily. The reason for this was a choice I made to emphasize Lily's loneliness and really drive home the fact that this story is about her isolation and alienation.
With the high school semi-formal sequence I really wanted to introduce a crowd scene in a dramatic way and wanted the reader to see the crowd the same way Lily sees it. It's very important to me and the story for the reader to see things through Lily's perspective. I want reader's to understand the poor choices she has made as a result of her internal pain. I don't want her viewed as a one dimensional monster who just kills for the sake of killing. I want readers to understand that she herself is a victim to her poisonous way of thinking.

So as Lily sees the crowd, it's very intimidating. It's not inviting at all. She really sees no where to fit in and the task of attempting to do so seems hopeless. Her heart rate is increasing now and her shadow suggests the monster she contains inside of her is boiling over. Containing all of her fears and anxieties and the toll of constant repression has grown into a monster bigger than herself which eventually will need to be let out. And we know it eventually consumes her as the previous sequence in the story with Mrs. Bellows and the pink flamingo clearly shows.

As for the technical choices of the page design. I felt a full page was the best way to emphasize the weight of this task on Lily. Aside from the expressionistic purpose the shadow serves it also acts as a frame to the word balloon directing the reader's eye toward it. I wanted this small bit of dialogue to have impact and show her desperation to end the pain she suffers constantly as a result of her phobias. I didn't want the dialogue to get lost in the crowd, so to speak. The crowd is all one similar tone to present it as an unpenetrable wall in Lily's eyes while Lily stands out to the reader in a white dress.

EASTER EGGS:

I hid the song title to the song I pictured playing during this scene in the page artwork. See if you can spot it. The band name is in there as well.

Found it? Now you can listen to it...

There's also a tribute to another Zuda comic series in there somewhere. If you spot it, post it in the comments below the comic. If not, check back next Friday and I'll reveal what and where. (EDIT: The revised page with this tribute did not end up being the page up on Zuda. I'll post an image of it in the next blog update though.)

OTHER STUFF:

Here's some photos of some things around my workspace at the moment.

Here's Nick Cave's newest novel; The Death of Bunny Munro. I'm posting this because the original art for page 11 of Lily of the Valley is undearneath the book. Also because it's a really cool book.

My Umbrella Academy mug. Luiza bought me this a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed both volumes of The Umbrella Acacemy written by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance and artist Gabriel Ba. I love this mug.

Framed album art from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads album. This album had alot of influence on Lily of the Valley when I was creating the concept. Particularly the song Curse of Millhaven, which is also about a teenage girl serial killer.

Two comics by two of my favourite comics creators; Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100, and Jeff Smith's Rasil. Both great books.

And I finally own the hardcover of the greatest novel ever written, my absolute favourite story ever told, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. With illustrations by Bernie Wrightson and a foreword by Steven King!

WEBCOMIC SUGGESTIONS:

Here's a few webcomics I discovered this past week which I enjoyed enough to feel the need to mention here.

First is Paul Taylor's Waspi Square. This comic's about a group of women living together in a neighborhood in Minneapolis. It's about their lives and their friendships. Really top notch webcomic. Check it out at: www.WapsiSquare.com

Second is Aaron Alexovich's Serenity Rose. This comic's about a teenage witch with intense powers and intense social phobia (something Lily also happens to suffer from). It's presented with a really gorgeous gothic style. Check it out at: www.HeartShapedSkull.com

Page 12 and a new blog entry coming Friday October 30th!

- Adam