We are an independent publisher with one mission: bringing voices from around the globe to readers everywhere. Through our comic series— the African Graphic Novel Series and Panel & Page— we bring illustrated narratives featuring everything from fantasy and history to science and adventure all with an eye on rich storytelling found all around the world.
We just added Pearl of the Sea, a middle-grade graphic novel by the team at Triggerfish Animation Studio in South Africa. To learn more about the team, their work, how the South African coast inspired their story, and how they brought Pearl to life, check out this excerpt from their Q&A. You can read the rest at our site:
Catalyst Press: How long does a graphic novel like this take to produce? I know there were a few other people involved in production as well. Can you tell me a bit about the steps it takes? What comes first as you’re developing it—the visualization of the characters and the panels, or the details of the story? You’re all in film—how similar is this process to developing an animation?
Anthony Silverston (co-writer): How many years do you have? This project did start out first as a film. [co-writer] Raffaella [Delle Donne], came up with the idea of a story about a sea monster while I was still directing on [the animated film] Khumba. At the time, I didn’t have headspace or feel ready to direct another film back-to-back, and raising finance for an animated feature is not easy, so development slowly carried on with me dipping my toe in every now and then. The story did go a little circular for a while, but when I did fully engage, I realized I needed to find a personal hook or angle if I was going to direct it. I realized that, because I had been grappling with my own monsters growing up, I had ended up retreating into my shell, while another person close to me often lashed out with anger and aggression instead. This had prevented the relationship from evolving. A lot of people have a huge fear of showing vulnerability, yet it can prevent one from connecting to others if one is not able to. So, that was what the story became about.
Unfortunately, when we were finally ready to pitch the film, we heard about another Sea Beast movie in development at Netflix and decided to use the story as a test case for a graphic novel instead, as it had been a route we’d been considering at Triggerfish for a while, starting with KARIBA which we had supported through the team’s Kickstarter campaign. [Catalyst Press will be releasing KARIBA globally in June].
I brought on Willem Samuel who had experience creating comics and was finishing up as head of story on our feature film Seal Team, and had a gap before moving on to [the animated series] Mama K’s Team 4… The writing process was different to a film in that I wanted to try and have as little text as possible, because Pearl mostly retreats inwards, so Willem brought a lot of extra layers to the story through his visual storytelling, which was amazing to see. It still felt like we had to storyboard a whole feature film as it involved the same challenges of translating script into visuals, but the layout of the panels could affect the speed at which one reads and how the story comes across.
