'SEMPER ARDENS' is a four page short story penned for the 2013 Observer/Jonathan Cape short story competition.
Left to my own devices, I tend to draw things out and can sometimes look back over four pages and wonder 'what exactly has changed from point A to point B here?' Honing a story to a strict four pages is challenging, but perhaps handy for understanding story punctuation and reader engagement.
This story is based at least a little on real life experience and my conservative panel layout reflects the slice of life subject matter. The desire to explode panels all over the page is still there, but there's a decent point in structuring panels in an easy to follow manner in order to pack them full of crazy detail if that's your schtick. I guess it's a quiet/loud thing.
I broke out a Wacom tablet to colour this bad boy digitally, thinking that with only 4 pages to do, it couldn't be too bad. While I still feel a nasty disconnect 'drawing' on a horizontal surface but seeing the result on a vertical screen, the resulting colour job seemed to work out, so perhaps a technique to be revisited.
Didn't win this time round, but hey, third year lucky, 2014, you're mine!
