Come on by to see the Show.

The WiiFlash Interactive Comic based on the work of Johnny Lee, Gerbster, and the great community on WiiFlash is up and working on the 3rd Floor of the MCAD Gallery. My Senior Graduation Exhibition will be up between now and Saturday, December 13th.

Please stop on by and check it out.

I will be updating my blog with all file and instruction in the next week but because sleep deprivation is not conducive to cohesive descriptions I will keep my posts short until some rest can be found. Tell me, have you seen any?

Update to Comic Heads

A few days ago I wrote an article for the Comic Heads blog discussing tools and resources for online networking.
You can check it out here.

Planning, its a good thing.

Today... well I suppose yesterday at this point, was the first day of the 2008 MCBA Fall Con at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Its a good show, lots of creators and a comfortable community. It was great with the exception of the fact that I lacked books to hand out and sell. So no money or contacts for Ali.
Now here I sit, 2am looking down at the pile of beautiful printed comic books.
Only to realize that I have no stapler.
Life is a cruel mistress.

First Comic Head's Meeting

Just a quick announcement for anyone in the Minneapolis area.

Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Comic Head's Meeting: Ideas and Inspiration
Sunday September, 14 ( TODAY! ) 1 p.m.
Auditorium 140

Homesick

I finally have finished a new comic this summer.
And I'm sorry I still haven't finished cleaning up my senior project. I'm still having a hard time looking at it.
There are things I really want to change.
But anyway.
May I present...

Homesick

I can't wait to get home and spend time on the coast with my family.

Senior Project 3 - kissing

I had some difficulty drawing the kissing, but it came out really well, even if it took me a while.
I'm uploading my favorites as I finish inking because it keeps me motivated.
I have only four left then I can relax.
Deadlines are a... very frustrating.

senior project 1

I'm so exhausted. There is no time to sleep and I'm looking forward to going and eating some pizza in an hour. Until then, I ink.

Here are two of my pages for my senior project. They are missing lettering and I think I want to add some gray wash to the second page but they are really coming along. I'm enjoying myself.
...
now if I could only get some sleep.

Talks Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

A talk by Sir Ken Robinson on schools and the new direction public education needs to go is amazing. Robinson is a great speaker with just the right amount of wit. This talk was given in 2006 but I just found it and I think its amazing. One thing he said that really struck me as an artist was, "if your not prepared to be wrong you will never do anything original." This is very true, yet is something that public schooling trains out of us. Probably one of my most challenging daily trials is to push through my own fear of mistakes to create something new. What would the possibilities be if our schooling fostered creativity instead of squashing it. What sort of art would that new generation create? What kinds of new inventions?

Check out the video

My last blog post was about the new 3D gaming tools that are being created. That fascinated me, I would like to see more of these kind of innovations created in the future. I've especially been interested in the possibilities these kinds of technologies offer to comics. Would it be possible to create a 3D comic? Something that looked like an image on paper but as you moved around new objects or characters would be revealed. Could this be a new way to involve readers in a story?

I wish I had more to update with.
I've begun conversation with a woman who has connections in Ireland and begun planning to visit there to continue my storytelling research. This is of course a bit of forward planning because I can't leave until Summer 2009 but I like to know what I'm doing, even if the plans change completely between now and then.
I'm still working on the beginnings of my senior project as well as a 14 page story for Comic 3. I'll be uploading the sketches to my website soon.

Speaking of websites, I think mines in need of an overhaul. I need a full on identity and a layout that doesn't act odd every few page loads. It looks cool but I've decided that it isn't as practical as I would like it to be. I'll also be adding more PHP for fast updating and perhaps move my blog fully on to my server.

I miss Twin Cities Babylon. I really want to start it up again. Soon Babylon. Soon.

As anyone who actually reads this might have noticed, Twin Cities Babylon had to be put on hold till the end of this hellish semester. I've noticed I don't do well during semester on anything other than school work, which is as it should be I suppose.

I've begun work on my senior project and its looking awesome, I'm loving my process book. I've finally settled on a workable piece that can show off my talents and that I will enjoy doing but that I don't have so much investment in that it will take years to complete, which is what my other ideas were turning into.
While trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my senior project I stumbled upon a few more exceptional ideas that I plan on investing in in the years to follow my graduation. The research will involve travel, which I'm really looking forward too. In anticipation of this I have begun researching grants that can help me afford my endeavor. Grants are a bitch to find. Well, not grants in general, put a search into Google for grants and you'll get pages and pages of hits and most of those only lead to more lists, more memberships, and more reasons to let go of more money but so far very few have had what I need.
There is a neat storytelling grant that might work from Northlands Storytelling Network
And a comic and cartoonist grant besides the Xeric grant which only covers self publishing costs, not research or travel.
I've also decided I'll try for the Fullbright but there are so many applications every year that I doubt my chances.

Text and Word Balloons

The text element of the comic medium must be taken into account when developing a good story. Whether the artist decides to create a story entirely with text or not using any text at all, the decision must be a conscious artistic choice.

In word balloons the type of text used can change the way the words are interpreted. Someone saying, “no you can’t” in a normal font has a very different impact from, “NO YOU CAN’T” or even “no you can’t”. These changes in type face and size impact how readers interpret the words being used. This gives the readers a greater sense of the character’s emotions, their personality, and the theme of the story.



Will Eisner, had an especially good instinct for the combination of textual and visual elements. Whenever he incorporated text it always matched the story he was working on.
In the Spirit, Eisner really introduced the idea of dynamic text and titles. In every issue of the Spirit the title of the comic would be incorporated into the body of the first page. It would become an element of the storytelling rather than a simple description that is observed in most comics.

When I'm working on my own comics, I admit that I have a tendency to take the easy road and use computer text, its generally faster and as most of my work is rendered on a computer with a Wacom tablet its faster than printing it out. However, I always do feel a keen sense of disappointment when I look at the finished product. The text element of a visual story must match up to the images that make up the majority of the storytelling or something becomes lost. It is the goal of comic artists to take into account all aspects of their storytelling craft and ensure that no one element will draw to much attention as to pull the audience out of the fantasy that the artist has created.

Here are some interesting pages on text and word balloons in comics.
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~mfram/Pages/3036-sound.html
http://comixtalk.com/comic_theory_101_loopy_framing

Ozy and Millie

So its been many a week since I've last updated. I've been on a great adventure and a guest to discover new discoveries... I also drove through Montana in a little over a day.
So I've been traversing the mighty US of A in a little car filled to the brim with boxes, a tv, and piles of beautiful, must have junk to put into my new apartment. Sadly, I won't be able to move into my new apartment until August and everything doesn't have a place in the current abode so for now its sitting in a pile in the middle of the living room.

Since I returned I have spent quite a few hours reconnecting with the internet and catching up on my favorite web comics as well as reading a few new ones.

Ozy and Millie by D.C. Simpson, is probably one of my favorite web comics. I just started reading it but its been around for quite some time. I'm still going through the archives.

As far as art goes this one is top notch. The artist really does a great job and knows his style well. Its of the anthro style but the fact that they're all animals doesn't distract and the characters are so loveable I don't care at all.
I absolutely adore the political commentary and discussion about social and cultural stupidity as well.
Its also making me what to refer to all annoying politicians as Poo-heads.
In short, I'm in love. Millie also reminds me of myself at a young age so that could be part of it as well. ^_^

Computer vs Traditional

So, I have spent all week sitting in front of my computer cleaning up the pages for my comic final (a few sample pages are available in the last post). And I truly never expected it to be this tedius.

Some people complain that computer work is cheating, that its faster and easier than traditional. This is an argument I'm going to have to disagree with.

True that the undo button is something that I take full advantage of and is something not available in drawing and painting, but I have found that the amount of time it takes to make something look really good, to look really clean and not pixelated or computerized can take just as much time as any traditional media.

Penciling this comic took me about five hours per page. Versus pencil and paper this is a bit faster than the average time of ten hours. However, the clean-up process and the refining of line that is the computerized version of inking is not so quick. For me this process takes almost twice as long per page than any form of finishing, painting, inking, anything.

I would like some feedback if anyone reads this. What is your preference of media? Do you find the computer to be faster or slower than traditional medias and where do you like to use it and where do you not?

Life and Death - a comic

Life and Death

In my last post I was complaining about having problems figuring out how to show a spirit. Here is my solution. I'm not sure its the best solution but its the only one I could come up with.

The story goes that a dying woman in labor as she passes from this world, meets the spirit of her daughter as she is born. They have a loving meeting and then the woman dies and her daughter is born. This was drawn on a Wacom tablet in Adobe Photoshop. The way I work is that I draw my pencils into the computer then print it off in blue-line on a large scale printer on 11x17 Bristol, ink the pages by hand then scan them back in for final edits and shrinking the pages down for publication. It may be a weird way to work but it works for me.
Anyway. The blue color of the daughter spirit is pretty much a reminder to myself that I want to ink her in blue ink to separate her figure from that of her mother. When i print it the page will all be the same blue-line color.

The only major problem I am having with this page is that on the second panel the spirit of the daughter accidentally came out looking sort of like an image of the Buddha. This wasn't my intention.