Illustrated Films vs Motion Comics

Back in 2007, it occurred to me that you could scan the images from a comic book, record radio-play style audio of the dialogue and sound effects, and turn it into a pretty badass underground DVD. I brought some of my favorite underground comix to Brian and asked him what he thought… and he said “if that’d work, somebody would’ve done it by now.” We couldn’t think of anybody who’d done it effectively, so we figured there was a reason it didn’t work and moved on to the next thing.

But I’m a comic book geek, so I didn’t give up on Halo-8 doing some sort of comic book type release and a few months later I started writing a few comic books and set up a publishing arm of Halo-8 to make comics and graphic novels. I went online looking for artists and found the incredible Anna Muckcracker (who took on the task of illustrating ‘Godkiller’) and the wonderful Andrea Blanco & Ale Alvarez (who brought ‘How I Lost My Virginity -by Alexandra Jones’ to life).

I immediately noticed that Anna’s illustrations for ‘Godkiller’ were incredibly cinematic… broad, sweeping landscapes; an epic yet subdued pace; and most of the panels were widescreen to begin with. Plus, the surreal flavor she brought to ‘Godkiller’ made me think it was far more broadly appealing than the viciously visceral aesthetic I’d imagined while first writing it. Anna was an odd choice for ‘Godkiller,’ everyone was confused when I said she was my pick… and truth be told I had to do quite a bit of rewriting to slow down the pace of my storytelling to match her visual style. But the whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts… at least, greater than the parts I contributed–I’m pretty sure anything Anna does is ridiculously awesome all on its own.

So when Anna started delivering illustrations, Brian and I started tinkering with a new filmmaking format we called “illustrated films,” mixing comic book art with voice performances, elaborate sound design, music, and strategically placed motion graphics. Unbeknownst to us, across town the folks at Warner Premiere were developing what they called “motion comics”–and they started with Watchmen.

We had a few extra obstacles than they did… like for example, Anna still had to illustrate the damn thing and I was rewriting it as she went. It took a really long time before we even had enough existing artwork to do our first feasibility tests… and it was pretty slow-going from there. So we were a bit disheartened when we were knee-deep in the Godkiller illustrated film and people started buzzing about the Watchmen motion comic. The nice thing, though, is that Warner Brothers can take a property like Watchmen and use it to convince people that motion comics are a real media format worth watching… we were really nervous that we’d finish our first illustrated film and everybody would say “we’re not watching that thing… that’s… well, that’s not a thing at all!” So we humbly thank Warner Premiere for doing the heavy lifting of convincing people that these are things and should be treated as such.

However, Godkiller is not a motion comic… at least, not as defined by Warner Premiere. We’re filmmakers and we developed our style with a cinematic aesthetic. Watchmen is different. And I find it actually quite fascinating how Halo-8 & Warner Premiere made significantly different creative choices while developing a very similar format simultaneously but in isolation.

Visually, it feels like Warner Premiere went out of their way to make Watchmen *not* cinematic. I don’t know anybody at Warner Premiere so I can’t say authoritatively why this is, but it seems to me that the inspiration was to create a cartoon utilizing existing art–whereas we started with the inspiration to make a film utilizing existing art. I think that’s why our paths stray from one another so immediately.

Watchmen’s visual design takes the original art from the comic, but ignores the visual language of the comic book and treats it like a cartoon. Most of the negative reviews I’ve read of Watchmen seem to focus on the fact that, although the original artwork is used, the liberties taken with animating it aren’t leading to a net-positive in terms of storytelling.

We faced a similar problem of how best to animate elements from existing artwork without compromising the integrity of the visual storytelling. Our assumption was: this is not a cartoon, so it shouldn’t try to be a cartoon. We should use motion sparingly when it serves the story. Other than that, we should let the format rely on the visual storytelling elements already there and only try to augment them rather than replace them. One of my favorite moments in the whole thing is a choice Brian made to have Dr. West’s brow furrow with no other motion in the frame… so subtle, but so effective.

The other thing I found so strange about the Watchmen motion comic is how fiercely it refuses to be a comic book as well. It really doesn’t utilize, even in a self-aware style, the language of comic books in telling the story. Sure it uses word bubbles, but I mean the architecture of the visual storytelling–most notably, the panels. We tried to incorporate the comic book language in our format, often showing the panels on screen and occasionally using multiple-panel reveals onscreen to borrow effective devices from the book. Brian also created some magnificent moments mixing film editing tropes with multiple panel reveals.

But the most confusing part to me about the Watchmen motion comic is Warner Premiere’s decision to use an audio-book style for the dialogue. Having one narrator read all the voiceover, narration, and dialogue is really unsettling. The only reason I can imagine for their decision to do this was to avoid conflict with the casting of the feature… I guess it could be weird to simultaneously cast one actor to play Dr. Manhattan in the movie and another actor to play his voice in the motion comic. But… I dont know, maybe that doesn’t make sense. I mean, Lionsgate put out an Iron Man animated film right before the live-action movie.

Now, let me clarify myself because I think I sound like a dick: I think the Watchmen motion comic is awesome. I was really impressed by what I saw. But they made some creative decisions that I just don’t get. At all. And I think it’s interesting that we made very different creative decisions when developing our “illustrated film” format.

I suppose I can’t really draw a fair comparison until after “Godkiller” is released and all the critics and reviewers and commenters point out all of our misguided choices… then I’ll go back to Watchmen and see how they did all those things right while we totally fucked them up.

This project is exciting in a different way than most, because it’s an entirely new format of storytelling… and each creative decision is a mix of personal inspiration, synthesizing existing methods, and determining the most effective way to serve the story. So two creative teams with different sensibilities, different backgrounds, and different source materials will create wholly different methodologies.

In the meantime, I’m glad Watchmen came out first so we can compare and contrast as we go.