Kara Ballenger - Author of graphic novel
Fire Sphere
Kara Ballenger
, author of the recently-published graphic novel
Fire Sphere
, came up with the idea 15 years ago as a middle school student. After she graduated from South Hills School of Business & Technology with an associate degree in graphic design, she became dedicated to the novel while also working at OPP. At OPP Kara works in the print room as a facilities specialist helping to print out walk-in work for architects and clients that want blue prints printed for buildings, which she then files onto the server, Docfinity. Outside of OPP, Kara owns a small business selling her homemade spray paint art. In this interview Kara discusses her novel and how she balances multiple jobs and passions on a daily basis.
Q: What is
Fire Sphere
about?
Kara: It's about a girl name Gabrielle who finds herself waking up in a dark room. She ends up in what's basically like limbo where she sees a series of elevators and a Grim Reaper. He's an Australian surfer Grim Reaper who is quite hilarious. He has no idea who she is, so he takes her to Abaddon, which is the town where they meet this mad scientist who is half of Jekyll and Hyde. Hyde is the head person that will eventually take everyone to all the different realms, so she is super smart and knows everything. The cool thing about her is she literally jumped out of Jekyll's head and became her own person. Gabrielle meets all different kinds of gods and goddesses, befriends them and then they go on adventures. They try to help people out.
Q: What inspired you to write this story?
Kara: My family did. I've always been really good at drawing and my mom, dad, and stepfather have always been really encouraging. They wanted to help me get better at it and they were really supportive. I also didn't want to quit. I wanted to use my art somewhere.
This is a story that includes a lot of diverse cultures and people in it. A lot of comics now just focus on superheroes. These are characters people can relate to. You can have a character that's kind of made for you, you don't have to have supernatural powers. I wanted to do something completely different. There were a lot of people that were saying, “Oh, you're just going to try to do what Marvel is doing with the Avengers.” We're trying to do the actual history behind it, but also have fun with it.
Q: What did you do in preparation for writing
Fire Sphere
?
Kara: Growing up I did a lot of figure drawing. I actually took summer art classes at Penn State when I was little. I'm really self-taught. I did a lot of hand-drawn stuff and expanded on those skills with the classes. I always took art classes in high school, no matter what they were. I was also the vice president of the art club. I couldn't really focus on that as my main source of a career, so I chose graphic design. I took graphic design courses, learned Photoshop, transferred all of my hand-drawn stuff into digital so it could be printed and distributed. I learned all of the basic layouts and how to do different things in Adobe Software.
Q: Did you do any research before writing the novel?
Kara: Yes! We have a bunch of history books. We have ones dealing with all of the different mythologies. We have Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, Native American, Chinese, Japanese, and we have each individual book so we can select different themes and Gods that will be good to represent in the story. We have urban legends too.
Q: Did anyone help you along the way with your novel?
Kara: My friend/co-author and I, Mads Cherluck, have done research and talked to different people from different countries to make sure we get the legends and stories correct. Mads knows a lot of different types of mythology as well. I actually met her online and at a convention. We talked and talked and thought we should try to see how this works. It didn't work from far away, so we thought it would be easier if one of us moved. She moved down here to work on it.
Q: How long did it take you to write this novel?
Kara: I asked my co-author two years ago to help me because I couldn't do it by myself. I needed that extra push. I knew I wanted to do it, but I didn't know where to start. She moved here from Michigan so that we could room together and make the story. We work on it every day. I work at OPP full time and then this is my second job. We go to comic conventions to promote it. It took 2 years to write and edit the story before drawing the pages out. Then, it took about 5 months to sketch, layout and color the pages before sending it to the printers.
Q: Did you ever experience writer's block?
Kara: Oh, yes. The story was set around all of these characters who were in high school, and it grew from that. There are a lot of movies and TV shows it is centered around. I didn't want to do the same old thing everyone is used to. It was a challenge. It took 15 years because I couldn't come up with a beginning, middle, and an end. I knew I had the end and the beginning, but I didn't know all the way through. That's where I needed help.
Q: What was more difficult, writing the story or working on the imagery?
Kara: When I was in high school, I had each page written out like an actual story to help me visualize it. When we went to lay it out in a comic format, we had to make it like a movie script. You basically say what you're going to make your character do in Panel 1, for example. It was difficult because I couldn't really see it anymore in the novel format. We have a script we work off of and then I draw. I'll even draw a couple different sketches and decide which one we like best. We'll save the other sketch for somewhere else if we don't like how it ends up. We're always constantly doing something.
Q: What advice would you give a first-timer about publishing a book?
Kara: If you're doing it by yourself, make sure you have your story and all of your different characters. Make sure you have different expressions and different character designs because you don't want each person to look the same. You also want to have a character bio.
Basically, you have to do the planning first. I would suggest doing your characters, then do your story, then do your page layout, and if you want an extra person to help you, make sure they follow that. It's your idea and they're coming into it.
I would start with that and then write the whole volume out. From there, go page by page by page. Don't do it in a different order. We did that. Work from beginning to end of the volume and make sure you know the different programs really well. If you're hand drawing it, make sure you have everything inked well, and know what type of scanner you're going to use.
Q: Will there be more graphic novels to follow, possibly sequels to
Fire Sphere
or new stories?
Kara: We have estimated more than 60 volumes for it. It's a pretty long story. We don't want it to go super fast. This one is the first one, so it has 112 pages in it. Volume 2 will have a little bit more because this one is just introducing everything.
Q: How long do you think it will take you to write the next novel?
Kara: Well, we're trying to do two a year, which is a lot easier to do. It took us 5 months to make the first one. We released it in April and the next one is going to be in December for Christmas. What I'm learning now is spray paint, which I'm trying to incorporate into this. I've been doing spray paint art and having planets in it and it looks really, really cool. I really want to see if I can scan those in at some point and make it a background.
Q: You own a small business that includes spray paint art, graphic design and novel making - can you talk about how it started?
Kara: It's called
Fire Sphere Designs and it's the name of the graphic novel because it's what we do the most. I decided to make the company because you have to have a tax ID number for conventions. We really wanted to sell it at conventions and you can't do that without one.
I started the business last year and we were able to do all types of conventions. We also do fan art. That brings in the people. If people already know something, like Superman, we draw that and that brings people over to your table. That's when we start talking to people about the novel. Both of us have a different style. I actually taught her how to do a lot of my characters. She wasn't used to drawing in that way yet. It took her a few months. We did this entire book and it doesn't look like one person did it, which is good. That's also how we have our digital art set up. Hers looks different than mine so people will ask who did what. That's when we tell them if they like both of our styles they should check out this book we both worked on.
Q: What inspired you to get into spray paint art?
Kara: I wanted to learn something different. I'm not very good at regular painting. Regular painting doesn't have an eraser. With digital art you have erasers and you can use Photoshop and make it look different. I can do that type of painting and spray paint, but for some reason I was never able to do acrylics. I always wanted to try doing spray paint because of all of those videos of people in New York City and it looked really, really interesting. The backgrounds kind of match what we're doing in Fire Sphere.
I actually started doing it a few weeks ago. It’s going pretty well because Culture Crawl, a mini art exhibit on Calder Way, asked if I could have some of my spray paint art there. I didn't know it was that good yet. A lot of people want to learn it, so I'm thinking about having a class on weekends for people who want to learn how to do it. It's a lot of fun.
Q: Is there anything particularly challenging about being an artist of many forms?
Kara: Not really! I actually think it's different and interesting. A lot of artists just focus on one style, and that's it. I like coming up with different styles. When I was making Fire Sphere, I used Anime and Asian Cartoons. I also liked 90s cartoons, so I pushed those two together to make my own type of characters. That goes with the different pastel and other different pencil and crayons. I even make my digital art look like oil paint. I incorporate different styles that I did with fine art and put it in the digital. I don't really have challenges with it. I usually just do it. Sometimes I just randomly do other ones. I do sharpie art, which is just cross hatching with sharpies. I also melt crayons onto canvas so it looks waxy. I kind of try to see what else you can do and incorporate all of it into the book.
Q: How do you balance your job at OPP and your small business?
Kara: I work around it because I work here full time from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Then, I usually have an hour and a half break when I get home to sit and relax, then I start working on the book. With spray paint right now, when I run out I work on the book.
When I work on spray paint it can’t be extremely hot outside. I have to look at the forecast to see what the weather is going to be like for the day. Temperature is the deciding factor of spray paint because it could make the paint runny or the can could explode. Working with oil paint can be dangerous because it’s very flammable, so you need to do it in a controlled environment. Also, you can’t spray paint in the rain either.
We finished this book in April and I wanted to have a month off of not working on it. Now, we're starting to sketch out the pages again for the second volume. It should be ready by December.
If you are interested, you can order Kara's graphic novel at
www.firesphere.net
or find it at Webster's Bookstore Café, Comic Swap, Emporium Market in the Nittany Mall, and Jake's Card Shop in Bellefonte.
Upcoming Events:
·
Culture Crawl in State College on July 8
th
·
Steel City Con in Monroeville August 10-12 and December 7-9
·
Additional Culture Crawl events throughout the year
For more about Fire Sphere, follow Kara on Facebook at Fire Sphere Dezigns and on Instagram as @firespheredezigns.
Purchase or request paintings from Kara on the Facebook and Instagram pages!
Be on the lookout for
Fire Sphere Vol. 2
coming in December!