Ira Marcks is involved in many artistic projects, but this interview focuses on his Illustrative Score, a scrolling piece of art set to music. As he told me, it’s something like a “45 minute music video” and a “graphic novel told in a single, 50 foot long panel.” Ira answered my questions by email in March and April 2010 (I’m Dan Copulsky).
How did you get the idea to do an Illustrative Score?
The original idea was Jake Lodwick’s. He had commissioned an album from The Few Moments for his record label, Normative (no longer active). Somewhere along the way he had the idea to have me do “one long drawing” to accompany the music. The term Illustrative Score came about from the process. I had the lyrics and the finished album in my hands before I did anything. The story progresses in a mythical way that made me think of the different ways ancient cultures preserved their stories through sequential wall paintings. This combined with the cropping effect of the screen made me think of it as a visual score to the music. Put simply, it’s kind of like Mario Paint Composer.
Could you describe the process of putting this together a bit?
I used Photoshop to build a gridded template where 6.5 inches was equal to 30 seconds of music. I had to be very careful to abide by these rules since it was going to be over 50 feet of illustration. All the little cheats would add up and the images and music wouldn’t sync up. I did a simple sketch of each song using loose geometric shapes to mark the feel and density of the music. Then I traced over that with the content I felt suited the lyrics. Next I inked and water colored the parts in 6.5 inch segments making sure they would lock together when I scanned them. After all of it was digitalized I used After Effects to bump the images up against each other like a slow moving train. Jake helped me out with the render settings and optimizing it for the web.
I was curious what you could say about the relationship of your Illustrative Score to what’s more typically called comics. In what ways are they similar for you? How do you see them working differently?
The only important difference between comics and this Illustrative Score is the automation of the visual. Genres and categorization only serve to organize items, not to accurately describe the experience of the art. I would say the differences between the “score” and a comic is the same as the difference between reading a book and having it read out loud to you.
Would you consider making the art from the score available in a format where the person viewing it has control over the speed they see the images at?
As a whole work, it wasn’t designed to be looked at in any other format than the one it was presented in. As a study of the process or in the context of a lecture on the project, I would display the raw image. If only for the opportunity to see what is lost in the digitization of hand-rendered art. For those people with minimal interest in the work, I would rather they didn’t have a second option than that of the published video.
What do you think the role of experimentation in art is? Is it more about finding the right form for one particular project or more about creating new ways of expressing things that others can use and adapt?
The things I find inspiring are often designed around a very specific set of guidelines. I am inspired by process and the concepts that generates it. I think many artists are. But experimentation is a difficult thing for a patron of the arts to invest in. It can overshadow the resulting art. I’m surprised at the overwhelmingly positive response this Illustrative Score has generated. I suppose, in this case, the art prevailed. The experimentation it was born from can now be addressed as a method worthy of a term. In my vocabulary at least. Early in my career, I thought the ultimate challenge was to indulge in experimentation with minimal regard for an audience. Now, I’m finding the biggest challenge is to create something new, but still accessible and worthy of a viewer. The relationship of art and craft is something I reassess from project to project.
What are you working on now?
I’m preparing a print collection of my comic strip, WITCH KNOTS, collaborating on an experimental radio drama and illustrating a wordless sci-fi children’s book. I’m also in a band and teach art full-time.
When Ryan Estrada was living in Mexico for a year, he let me come stay with him for a couple of months, even though he didn’t know me. What I’m saying is, in addition to being a great artist, he is a real nice guy. Ryan’s got a comic competing for a contract with DC Comics and he’s working on a movie. He answered my questions (I’m Dan Copulsky) in February 2010.
You’re a world traveler, frequently adventuring around the world, but I haven’t heard a reference to your geographic location in a while. Where are you these days, and what are you doing there?
I’m currently back home in good old (boring) Waterford, Michigan visiting with the family, getting ready to attend my brother’s wedding, and getting the ball rolling for my animated feature! The movie I’m working on is an animated feature on live action backgrounds, and I’m going to be shooting the live action bits in Royal Oak, Michigan in the spring. I’m also going to have to do some flying around the US to record actors soon. Later this year, once I get to the animation stage, I plan to move to Costa Rica and animate on a beach somewhere.
I just arrived here in November. Before that I was living in Gimhae, South Korea for just over a year.
You’ve done both comics and animation in the past. Now you’re working on adapting one of your comics, The Kind You Don’t Take Home to Mother, into an animated film. What’s the relationship between the two art forms for you? Is there one you love more than the other, or do they just offer something different?
I just love telling stories. Where I feel my talent lies is in telling long form stories. Movies, graphic novels, and other ridiculously time-consuming endeavors. That’s why whenever I attempt to draw short gag comics, it never works, because I just can’t write that way! So I have all these short comics that are bad, and all these scripts that I’m really proud of sitting around gathering dust, and I want to get them out there. Animation, comics, I just want to share them! I will say that I enjoy drawing comics a lot more than I do the actual process of animating. It’s such a tedious, time consuming process that it’s easy to let it become a bore if your heart isn’t in it at every moment. But I enjoy the end product of animation a lot more.
To gather funds for your movie, you’re offering some interesting incentives, like putting someone’s name or portrait in the movie, or including their dog as a character. How did you decide on this fundraising model? How’s it working so far?
I knew I wanted to raise money myself, rather than pitch to a big studio, because this is my first movie, and I want to show what I can do without getting steamrolled by some producer that has total control over my project. So I came up with a few ways to try and raise some bucks.
The dog thing came first. The main character is a dog walker, so I knew I’d need to draw 4 or 5 dogs following her around through the whole movie. A few friends jokingly suggested I should draw their dog. I realized I could use that as an opportunity to raise money to get the movie made, without sacrificing the film, since it’s something that had to be there anyway. When I started typing it up, I realized all the other little things in the movie that had to be there but weren’t designed yet. Lists of names on a spreadsheet. Characters with only one or two lines. Random werewolf victims. I had raised money for my first web comic a similar way, by drawing people into the story, so I just decided to go all out and offer people lots of ways to get themselves or their loved ones in the movie.
So far it hasn’t raked in the dough I would have hoped, but I’m still trying to get the word out there!
The biggest incentive package available, for $50,000, includes writing a new scene into the movie featuring someone’s family. As awesome as getting that funding would be, do you feel like letting that have a significant effect on a part of your film could be sacrificing some of the artistic intentions behind the content?
Once again, I only offered that package because there was already a scene in the movie where the main character, who up until that point has been a bit of a shut-in, is trying to be social by talking to random people on the street and is completely out of her element. The scene would change little, except for the reactions by the family, which they could ad-lib. It’d be just like letting an actor ad-lib in a scene!
The website for the movie has an “About the Team” page that lists just you and Kevin Patrick Edhard. Is that the whole team? Are you going to bring in other people to help with recording, animating, editing, or anything else?
Absolutely! As we move on to new stages of production, you’ll see lots of names added on. First and foremost our actors…. I have some big names in mind, and have spoken with agents, but I have to raise a little more money before I sign them on. I’ll also be bringing on a crew for the live action segments, and then the animation team. I’m going to do as much of the work as humanly possible myself though, partially because I want to see it through myself, and partially because the budget of my entire movie is smaller than what a big Hollywood film would budget for the star’s pedicures.
You have a Comic, Sci-Fi Drive-By, competing on Zuda.com. Whenever someone I know or admire has something online that I can vote for, like a shirt on Threadless or a comic on Zuda, I want to show my support. But sometimes I worry that I really ought to evaluate every piece in the competition and try to vote based on the works’ merits alone. How do you vote on things like this?
I’m completely with you! Things like that are, by their very nature, huge popularity contests. Threadless may be a little different, but on Zuda the pool of regular readers isn’t large enough to sway the vote. It comes down to the audience each creator is able to bring in. But if someone has a terrible comic, it’s going to be very difficult for them to bring people in to vote. If people don’t admire and like their work, and think their current offering reflects that quality, they’re usually not going to vote for it.
I always feel awful when I’m in a contest like that. The only way to win is to get as many people to vote as possible, so I feel like I’m begging for votes. Lately though, I found a pleasant way around that. I offered to draw anything anyone asked for in the comments underneath my Zuda comic. They don’t have to vote, it was just a way to get people with Zuda accounts looking at my comic. Then, they can judge it for themselves without feeling like they were begged into it. But I don’t expect people to vote blindly, and I don’t either. When I vote for others, I’ll give the other entries a skim. I don’t mind letting myself be a little biased, but I’m not going to blatantly lie and vote for something I don’t like.
You’ve been involved in a number of daily updating, not-DC-contracted web comics. You stopped your most recent, Chillin’ Like Villains, citing lack of reader interest. Are you done doing that sort of comic for a while?
Yeah, I’m done for a while with regularly updated web series. I haven’t found a way for the web comic model to work for me personally, with the kind of work that I do. All the successful models seem to revolve around consistently working on the same strip with the same characters for years, and that’s just not the way I’m built. I like to develop a story, and tell it in a length and update schedule that fits with the story being told. If I can’t turn it profitable, I don’t have the time to devote to doing it right. I’m a full time cartoonist, so if I don’t get paid, I don’t eat. All the ways I’ve seen to make it work involve getting readers into a habit, and I haven’t found a way to build a big, regular readership for the kinds of projects I like to do. I’m sure it’s more than possible, but I’m a bit burned out on trying and failing.
You have lots of ridiculous stories about your life. You slept on a bench during a typhoon! You accidentally illegally immigrated to Burma! You unknowingly threw away the single game piece in one of those fast food giveaways that was actually worth a million dollars! Do you ever exaggerate?
Oddly enough, I don’t have to! I find that if you lead a life that revolves on showing up in random, potentially dangerous places you know nothing about completely unprepared, awesome stuff just happens!
