Friday, December 28, 2007

Storytelling 101 with ZIP & LI'L BIT's Trade Loeffler


When I first saw the Webcomic series ZIP & LI'L BIT "The Upside Down Me," I was really impressed. "Who is this Trade Loeffler guy who drew all this amazing stuff???" I thought to myself. I fired off a fan e-mail to Trade. And Trade answered back!

Within a couple of emails, we found out we both lived in Brooklyn, and we were just a couple blocks away from each other! So, we started hanging out, having some beers, stopping by Rocketship to say hey to Alex. I miss seeing Trade around the neighborhood since moving away (and Rocketship, and all those pubs), but I can always check out Trade's great work online.

Beginning this fall, he's been doing writing some behind the scenes, informative "how I draw what I draw" background. Trade is a meticulous guy. He was showing me roughs of the current adventure, The Sky Kayak, last winter. Here are some of his insights into the process:

Storytelling 101a

Storytelling 101b

Storytelling 101c

Storytelling 101d


Thanks for this, Trade! Fascinating reading! And here's hoping it's a matter of time before a major publishing house picks up Zip & Li'l Bit! Sign me up for a limited edition hardcover!

Related: From Pappy's Golden Age Blogzine comes the same sequence of events from the TARZAN origin, three times over; each time, as drawn by a different master comic book artist.

2 comments:

richardcthompson said...

Thanks for linking to this; I'd looked in at his work before but had lost track. It's just lovely stuff, and I like the commentary, how he figures things out as he goes along, sometimes understanding what he's done in retrospect.

Mark Anderson said...

Oh man, I could read stuff like that all day. And I love his color! Thanks for the linky Lynchy!