While attending this year’s COMIKAZE Expo, I was able to sit down and speak with a talented creator, Larime Taylor.
He’s the man behind the fresh and amazingly awesome series, A Voice in the Dark.
If you’re ready to dive into the thick of it with this talent than scroll on!
UTF: Since A Voice in the Dark is a brand new series can you do our readers a favor and just tell them about it?
Larime Taylor: Basically Terry Moore summed it up best and he gave me a great blurb for it, which was, he described it as “Strangers in Paradise meets Dexter.” It’s basically about a young woman who is going away for college, moving away from home, and is trying to get away from something that she did right before she went away. All of her life she’s had these urges and compulsions and she’s always resisted them up until this summer that she graduated high school and she finally gave in and killed someone. So now she’s struggling with those urges and trying not to become a serial killer. She’s fighting against those base instincts that she’s always had from her earliest memories.
UTF: That sounds very fascinating.
Okay, so when you start to work out your own idea, your own property, where do you begin in your process? Do you have a specific time of day that works best for you or perhaps a room or something that sets the mood?
Larime Taylor: Yeah, I do all my work in my garage studio area. That’s where my computer is set up and I have my big tablet screen and everything. I’m more of a night person personally but I can draw and work with whatever time. My one main rule is I have to have something playing in the background. I cannot work in silence. So when I’m drawing I always have a podcast going, or a movie, or a TV series I’m streaming and it’s just there for the background noise. I barely even register that it’s there but it’s to keep my mind busy while I’m doing the art. It helps me to kind of go into auto pilot.
I kind of go into a bit of a fugue when I’m doing the art so that I can just get it done and really not think about it. The more the art is instinctive the more I like how it comes out. It comes out stronger I think when I’m not over thinking it. If I’m sitting there in the silence I’m thinking too much about what I’m doing. I’m second guessing myself, “Does that line look right? Could I do that better?” It’s just much better when it’s all instinctive. I try to just cut loose and not over think it.
UTF: Okay, and now I’ve always wondered when you have a career that does both the art and the writing on their own do you still follow the traditional, say, comic book line of reason? Do you start off with a script? Or do you just go on by the seat of your pants?
Larime Taylor: I write scripts, I do. First I start with an outline of the entire story arc, so if I have the idea for the first story arc. I’ll map out how many issues I think I’ll need and then what each issue is basically about and then I go from there. I actually do write the scripts. The actual scripts themselves are fairly bare bones because I am my own artist, so I don’t overly describe the panels. I just very-basic-what’s-going-on-in-the-panels, because I work a lot from photos but I take my own. So I do a lot of the actual decision making of the visuals when I’m shooting and I have friends show up to model the characters for me. Basically it’s just so that I have people to stand in the poses I need because I’m in a wheelchair, I’m disabled, I can’t model my own hand. I can’t stand a certain way in a mirror and look at what my body does. So I have my friends model it for me and take pictures of it.
I basically treat it kind of like I’m shooting a film; you know I write the script and it’s my shooting script and then I get my friends together and I shoot as many scenes as I can and then I take those home and use those to break down my layouts and figure out what each panel is going to look like specifically, and so a lot of the visuals come in the photography process. I really don’t go into too much description in the script stage except to keep track of placement … because this character is speaking first, they should be on the left. That character should be on the right. Things like that. Yeah, I make those kinds of notes so that I don’t shoot an entire scene, get home, and then realize that I have it all backwards as far as who’s talking. So I’ll make those kinds of notes but I don’t make too much in the way of descriptive notes and I let it kind of flow out of the photographs and let them help me figure out how to visually tell the story.
I’m becoming a bit more visually creative now than I used to be. When I was doing the first issue it was just about getting an issue done and proving that I can do it to myself. Now that I’ve got a couple of issues under my belt I’m really starting to play a bit more with the visuals. I’m giving myself a few more notes for the photography stage. I am starting to try to think more about how I want to frame things and ways I can use the visuals to tell the story as well. I’m more of a writer than an artist at this point so I’m having to really push myself as an artist. That’s basically my process.
UTF: That sounds great. I guess I would just have one main question to ask at this point. For someone that goes into a local comic shop and they might see this on the store shelf, what would be your pitch to them to say: “you need to buy this comic!” To make a case more or less that this this is something that would definitely be worth buying on a monthly basis or bi-monthly basis, depending on how the scheduling of the book pans out?
Larime Taylor: It’s going to be a monthly ongoing, so it’ll be every month. Right now we’re shooting for the third Wednesday of every month. I would say that if they’re looking for something that is not at all what they’ve got on the shelf right now. It’s very different. It is a female driven cast. It is a lot about the dialogue and the characters and the psychology rather than lots of action and very little words. One of the things that I don’t like about current comics is a lot of books you can read them in two minutes and you’re done. My book is a very dense read. It takes some time to read it. I try to put as much content as I can per page. Issue 1, for example, is actually bonus-sized issue. There’s 36 pages of sequential story on the first issue plus another 5 pages of bonus material in the back. So you’re getting 41 pages of stuff in the first issue alone. So I’m hoping that it’s a book that you’re getting more bang for your buck.
I want to take the time to thank Mr. Larime Taylor for the opportunity to speak with him. It was an honor to meet and chat about this fascinating new property.
But what did you guys think of the interview? Sound off with your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below!
Larime Taylor: Basically Terry Moore summed it up best and he gave me a great blurb for it, which was, he described it as “Strangers in Paradise meets Dexter.” It’s basically about a young woman who is going away for college, moving away from home, and is trying to get away from something that she did right before she went away. All of her life she’s had these urges and compulsions and she’s always resisted them up until this summer that she graduated high school and she finally gave in and killed someone. So now she’s struggling with those urges and trying not to become a serial killer. She’s fighting against those base instincts that she’s always had from her earliest memories.
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