Watching the Watchmen: The Definitive Companion to the Ultimate Graphic Novel
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Book Description
Enjoy the ultimate companion to a comics masterpiece, as award-winning artist Dave Gibbons gives his own account of the genesis of WATCHMEN in this dust-jacketed hardback volume, opening his vast personal archives to reveal never-published pages, original character designs, page thumbnails, sketches and much more, including posters, covers and rare portfolio art. Featuring the breathtaking design of Chip Kidd and Mike Essl, WATCHING THE WATCHMEN is both a major art book in its own right, and the definitive companion to the graphic novel that changed an industry.
Voted among Time magazine's 100 Best Novels from 1923 to the present, a perennial bestseller over the past twenty years and widely considered the greatest graphic novel of all time, WATCHMEN is a gripping, labyrinthine piece of comic art, which has earned an acclaimed place in modern literary history.
"I've had a great time, re-visiting the very beginnings of Watchmen and unearthing material I haven't set eyes on for many years. As a fan myself, this is the kind of stuff I eat up and I'm sure the many devotees of the graphic novel will do the same!" says Gibbons.
© DC Comics 2008. All Rights Reserved.
A Q&A with Dave Gibbons on the Making of Watchmen
Question: You were tasked with drawing new illustrations of key shots from the new Watchmen film. Was it a difficult challenge to re-imagine your work in this movie format?
Dave Gibbons: I don’t think that I actually did many key shots from the film. I had to actually imagine them rather than exactly recreate what was going to be in the movie. But as far as the drawings I did for the licensing purposes, accuracy was the real key so that they looked exactly like the movie. Whereas doing the graphic novel was creating stuff afresh and being very creative, this was more the case of interpreting something that already existed. So it was rather more a commercial art job than a creative thing.
Q: How many scenes from the original graphic novel did you redraw in the new "movie" format?
DG: I kind of did them piecemeal, these licensing drawings. I did do a section of storyboarding for Zack Snyder. There is a part of the movie that isn’t in the graphic novel and he wanted to see how I would have drawn it, if it had been in the graphic novel. So I redid the storyboards as three pages of comic on the nine-panel grid, also getting it coloured by John Higgins so it looked authentic. But I think there were probably only 3 or 4 scenes that I drew, which were from the movie.
Q: What was your working method for producing these new illustrations from the film? And how has it changed from when you originally illustrated Watchmen?
DG: When you’re producing things from existing material, you have to look at and assemble the references... you know, keep looking backwards and forwards to make sure what you’re drawing is accurate to what’s in the photos. I did have lots of photos from the movie and in some cases I had more or less the illustration I was going to do in photo form, which made it a lot easier. On others I had to construct it from various references: really just the usual illustrator’s job of drawing something to reference. And on the original illustrations of Watchmen, I was free to come up with exactly the angles and exactly the costumes and everything that I wanted to. When you’ve designed a costume and drawn it a few times, you actually internalize it and you find you can draw it without having to refer to reference at all. So in some ways it’s more creative and in some ways it’s easier!
Q: In Watchmen: The Art of the Film, there are concept designs by other artists of their visions of your iconic characters. What do you think of their versions and did you offer any guidance while they were working on these?
DG: It’s always really interesting to see versions of your characters drawn by other artists. You tend to see things in them that you hadn’t noticed before. So I really enjoyed looking at those. I certainly didn’t offer them any guidance. The purpose of getting those kinds of drawings done is to get a fresh perspective on what exists. I noticed actually that they really stuck more closely to my original designs than those, but I really enjoyed seeing them.
Q: Watchmen: Portraits is Clay Enos’s stunning black and white collection of photos of each character from the Watchmen movie. What was it like looking through this book at all the characters you had conceived years ago now being brought to life by actors?
DG: It’s rather interesting; you know if you look at the Watching the Watchmen book you can see these characters as fairly sketchy rough conceptual versions. Then when you look at Clay’s book you can actually see them right down to counting the number of pores on the skin on the end of their noses! It’s incredible high focus! It’s like zooming in through space and time to look at the surface of some moon of Saturn or something. I thoroughly enjoyed his book... it had a real artistic quality to it that was really so good. And of course to see these actors who so much are the embodiment of what I drew, that it’s a tremendous thrill to see them made flesh!
Q: Watchmen: The Film Companion features some stills from the animated version of The Black Freighter. What do you think of the look and design of this animated feature?
DG: It looks really interesting! Although I drew my version in the comic book in a kind of horror-comic style, these are very much in a savage manga style. I think they work really well... they’ve got the kind of manic intensity, which I think that work should have and I really can’t wait to see the whole feature. I’ve seen the trailer for it and that looks great and again they’ve used a lot of the compositions that I came up with but just translated them to this kind of very modern drawn animation.
Q: How much time did you spend on the set of Watchmen? Was it a surreal experience to see your work recreated like this?
DG: I was on the set of Watchmen for a couple of days and it really was surreal to walk through a door and then suddenly be in the presence of all these people in living breathing flesh! I was there for what you would call the Crimebusters meeting where they were all there in costume in the same room, which was incredible. They had obviously planned that so I would get to see everyone. It was surreal though quite a wonderful experience to see it come to life.
About the Author
Dave Gibbons is best known for his iconic artwork on the groundbreaking graphic novel Watchmen. He has also written and/or drawn many other comics titles, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Doctor Who and his semi-autobiographical graphic novel The Originals.
Chip Kidd has been called "the world's best book-jacket designer" and "the closest thing to a rock star" in graphic design today. His iconic designs include the cover for Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. He is also a writer, musician and avid comics fan.
Customer Reviews
Really for the hard-core Watchmen fan only, though interesting
"Watching the Watchmen" is a good book for hard-core Watchmen fans - it's chock full of conceptual drawings, visual layouts and experiments and roughs of what eventually evolved into the images in Watchmen. Also included are pix/images of various memorabilia, memos, notes, etc. from the back-and-forth creative process between Moore and Gibbons. I found the book interesting, but then again, i'm pretty 'into' Watchmen. Nice presentation, though i think it's not as insightful as i'd like, if only because the writing came first in the process. No slight against Gibbons, who is a fine artist, but I really think the true 'definitive' story I (along with everyone else) would want to hear is Moore's commentary on how he wrote this, what he had in mind, etc....but i suspect, as a 'serious' writer who seems to let his work speak for itself, and given what he's portrayed as his 'bad experiences' with his work being translated to the big screen, we probably are not going to get such a book anytime soon, if ever. In the meantime, this book is a decent substitute, though really for the hard core fan who wants to see everything that went into developing the masterpiece.
Watching this book.
I got this books just a few weeks ago and I have to say, It kicks butt. Dave and company have opened the door so much wider into the world of Watchmen. What you will find is material never before seen such as original character sketches, thumbnails, scripts, advertising sketches for the original run when the series was published in 1987, artwork done for foreign editions of the trade paperback version, and so much more. I found myself in awe at the ideas dave and alan have come up for this unique and original series. I brought the trade paperback at a con before I brought this book. After I have read it, I wanted to buy it. Readers, if you haven't read Watchmen before, I urge you to get the trade paperback first before getting Watching The Watchmen. Consider this book a bonus DVD you can actually read and take with you whereever you go.
Do you like Watchmen? Then what are you waiting for?
For those of us who love Watchmen, this is a great book to own. It has dozens of drawings showing the characters' original renderings (Wow. Rorschach looked ridiculous before!) and final depictions. If you want more back story as to how the series was written, there are several quite lengthy sections by Dave Gibbons (illustrator of the series).
It's quite simple. If you love Watchmen, you need this book. If you only like Watchmen, you might want to re-consider.
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