Here is a charcoal drawing that I made a while ago. I haven’t used charcoal very much since my student days but I revisited it for a couple of drawings. Charcoal can be dark and scary.
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In looking around the internet lately I’ve noticed cartoonists posting demos of them working in a relatively new program called Manga Studio EX. I enjoy a good demo video but, let’s face it, most such videos are dull. Drawing is just not a performance art and watching somebody draw on a computer seems to make it even duller. But it got me contemplating the place of the computer in making comics and comic art.
The use of computers to make comics is nothing new. It’s been going on for at least fifteen years but mostly computers have been used on the production and coloring end of comics. Until lately not a lot of people drew comics on a computer. Brian Bolland immediately springs to mind. His comic book cover illustrations have been made completely via computer for years now. But he was the only one I knew of who did things that way. Now he is far from alone. I keep reading about new people doing all of their drawing and cartooning on the computer.
I think there are two things driving this trend. The Wacom Cintiq and the Manga Studio program. For years artists have been using pressure sensitive tablets from Wacom and other manufacturers in order to draw on the computer. But they are not easy for novices to draw with. The pen is on the tablet but the line comes out on the computer screen. It takes practice to draw when you can’t look at your hand. The Wacom Cintiq is a pressure sensitive tablet that is a computer screen. For about two grand you get a twenty one inch LCD screen that you can draw on with a pressure sensitive pen. Much less of a learning curve than a regular tablet. That smaller learning curve is key.
Photoshop has been the program of choice for artists in general for ages now. Almost all comic book production and coloring is done in it. When you see comic books being printed from “Enhanced pencils” rather than ones that are traditionally inked that just means that someone played with Photoshop sliders to make the pencils look more like inks. Inking is actually pretty hard to do in Photoshop. At least for a novice.
Inking for comic books is usually done with a pointed paintbrush or a old fashioned dip pen dipped in ink. The ink is then applied to the paper. The inker basically re-draws the pencil work in ink adding shadows, light, and giving it its final form. This is something that can be done in Photoshop but the brush and pen tools are not set up by default to do this. They’re set up to manipulate photos. If you want to ink comics in Photoshop you have to fool around with the brush settings and figure out how to do it. It’s a pretty steep learning curve for the novice. There are a lot of bells, whistle , and distractions in Photoshop.
This is where Manga Studio comes in. I’m no expert in the program and have only fiddled around in it a little bit but I can see why so many young artists have embraced it. It doesn’t do anything Photoshop can’t but because it’s specifically made to create comics it takes away the steep learning curve of how to use the tools. There is no figuring out how to make the brush tool mimic an ink line. That’s its default setting. There are also perspective drawing aids that make things easier.
Learning to use a real ink brush or pen takes time and practice. Some inkers are pen people and some are brush people. It’s just what suits you but the novice won’t even know which until he tries one or the other and spends time learning each. I took to a brush but not so much a pen. I’ve seen people pick up a brush and grow frustrated and put it down forever. Manga Studio eliminates that frustration.
A novice can make a perfect thick to thin ink line on the first try. The skill needed to use the tool is minimal. That doesn’t mean the novice will know what he is doing and do a nice job but it does mean he doesn’t have to spend time learning to make the most basic marks with his pen or brush. The program also makes hatching and crosshatching marks that it would take even more time and practice to learn. All this is right out of the box with a minimal learning curve.
Add those things together, a program that makes inking simpler to learn, drawing aids, a computer screen you can draw on, and then throw in how easy it is to correct mistakes on a computer compared to ink on paper and it’s no wonder so many new cartoonists are embracing making comics without pen, paper, and pencil. Besides the initial costs it’s easier to get started.
This all brings me to wonder about the state of original art in the comic world. I and many others collect the original pen and ink art used to make comic books. With digitally created art such work doesn’t exist. Will it in the future? Sure the vast majority of comic art is still ink on paper but for how long? More and more artist who learned to draw on computer and have no idea how to use physical world tools will emerge but will they ever be the majority? I have no idea. We’ll see what the future brings.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
“Moving Pictures” by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen
Here’s a book that took me by surprise in that I had no idea it even existed. I usually keep up on the latest graphic novels and collections that are coming out but somehow I never saw mention of this book until I saw it on the shelf. I don’t know the Immonen’s work very well but it was the fact that this is a historical fiction story that got me to buy it.
The story takes place during World War II in Paris when it was occupied by the Germans. The book jacket claims it’s about the “Disconcerting and dangerous private relationship” between the two lead characters Ila Gardner, a Canadian curator of a Paris museum, and Rolf Hauptmann, a German officer in charge of securing French works of art, but it’s really about Ila Gardner. I didn’t even read the book jacket first so I didn’t realize the two were involved in a physical relationship until late in the book.
Ila’s story is one of confusion, loss, and a person who has lost her way in the world. At the beginning of the story Ila has a friend with her who Ila gives her passport too so that the friend can go back home to Canada but Ila refuses to go. I’m not sure why except maybe there was nothing to go back to Canada for. We are not privy to the characters thoughts and so only have their words to figure things out.
A lot of the story takes place in the office/interrigation room of the German officer Haumptmann as he tries to get Ila to cooperate with him and reveal where certain works of art are. They are not even particularly valuable works but he wants her to tow the line. She is defiant but also doesn’t really want to stick her neck out. Plus she’s a low level curator so she doesn’t really know much about the important stuff.
There are other everyday characters who come in and out of Ila’s life. She interacts with her co-workers and other people who want to conserve and hide France’s art. In hind sight knowing that she’s physically, I hesitate to call it romantically, involved with the German officer I wonder if some of her failures at saving some art was her tipping him off. I don’t know. He could have easily found out on his own and it’s not mentioned.
The artwork in the book is a very high contrast black and white done in a simple shaky lined pen style. Though I liked it and the storytelling was good I wasn’t too fond of the shaky lined part. I just didn’t find it attractive and I’m not sure why they chose to do it that way. Maybe it had something to do with the reoccurring motif of bits of paper blown on the breeze.
Overall I really like this book. I find the time it take place in, WWII, a very interesting time. It was a time when you could find yourself powerful or powerless based on what side you were on, what your choices were, and yet a lot of the time people had no choices. Ila’s story seems to be about the choices or non-choices she’s made. It’s a thoughtful book with no real heroes or villains despite being set in a time where heroes or villains abound.
So if you’re a fan of historical fiction or comics that are about people then check this book out.
One of the odd thoughts that comes into my head is that I always think a writing program is going to help me with my writing. But it never does. Mind you I do like computers for writing. They make things a whole lot easier than pen and paper for me. As a matter of fact I’ve done a lot more writing since buying a computer than ever before. More specifically since buying a laptop five years ago.
I bought my first computer back in 1996. It was a desktop but my computer setup is different than most people’s. Even since art school where I spent much time standing while painting at an easel I’ve preferred to work standing up. I find it less fatiguing than sitting down. As a consequence my easel, drawing table, and even my desktop computer are at standing height.
Standing while I work has served me well. Except when it comes to writing. That’s a whole different ball game and it turns out that I can’t stand and write. At least not at my desktop computer in any kind of regular fashion. I have certainly knocked out plenty of short e-mails and even some longer short stuff before I bought my laptop but never with any consistency.
That was always my goal with writing. To make it a habit. I wanted to get some thoughts and ideas out of my head and down on paper with some sort of regularity. Just for myself. I’ve never had any grand goals for my writing since I tilt at enough windmills with my art but I wanted to write some things down. It’s good exercise. It stretches my brain which otherwise might stagnate with the same old thoughts.
I tried other methods of writing. Small notebooks, big notebooks, index cards, loose leaf paper, unlined paper, and probably other things I can’t think of right now. I still like and use a small notebook but only for notes. I like the act of jotting something down in a small notebook but they’re not for working out ideas in a long form. No, it wasn’t until I got my laptop that my regularity of writing began.
When I first got my laptop I wrote mainly in the design and layout program called Quark. That was only because I was used to it from my job doing design and layout. It’s not really a word processing program but duplicates a lot of the stuff found in one. I think I would also use Simple Text the predecessor to Text Edit which is the simple word processing program found on all Macs. It, once again, isn’t a super powerful word processing program but it did the job. I’ve never used Microsoft Word much. It’s the one everyone uses but I always found it clunky, awkward, and distracting. So I stay away from it.
It was back in the late 1990’s that I bought a “Creative” writing program. I can’t even remember which one it was but I wanted to try one out to see if it would help me out in any way. I don’t remember it being very expensive but it must have cost $30-$50 bucks. It was in no way worth the money to me.
It turned out that it helped with the creative process by asking a series of questions about who was the protagonist, the antagonist, what was the plot, where was it going, etc., etc., and so on. Then it stored the answers to those questions on some screen. That’s it. I was already asking myself those questions whenever I started to write something. I was already writing the answers down. I found the program pointless and never did bother to try any other one.
It also didn’t help that I was years away from getting a laptop so I could sit down and write. That’s what really jump started my writing habit. It was February 2005 when I bought this laptop and it’s still going. I started this blog in December 2005 and it’s still going too.
Nowadays I’m always looking at various different “Journal” programs. They allow you to write, attach pictures, add links, keep notes, and do other stuff that I’ve lost track of. Being an artist who uses words in my art plus a cartoonist I would think that one of these journal programs would be right up my alley. I’ve demoed a few of them and I always come to the same conclusion. I have no use for them. They don’t help me in the least. Worse, I find that they confuse me. They’re overkill for me. Trying to organize my thoughts using a multimedia presentation is too much. I like to strip things down to the basics when I’m thinking not add clutter.
I’ve ended up writing all of my blogs and other things in a little freeware program called “Idea Knot”. It doesn’t even do much besides present my writing in a three tiered “Tree View” but somehow the simplicity of that view helps me organized my thoughts. Strangely when using the Finder on my Mac (or even in Windows equivalent) I hate the tree view. I find it too cluttered and confusing for navigating to files yet somehow it clarifies my writing ideas. Weird.
So that’s the intertwined relationship between my writing, my computer, and the programs I run on my computer. Without a laptop I’d still be writing but not as much nor as often. I’m glad I have one. Even if none of the fancy writing programs ever help me much.
So here I am watching some episodes of “Friends” again. As I mentioned in a previous blog I’ve been watching the whole series over again for only the second time ever. Well, the third time if you want to count the time I listened to it while working but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to it that time. I’ve actually finished watching all ten seasons and here is my capsule judgement.
A few episode into season three until, let’s say, halfway into season seven were the peak times for the show. It was at it’s funniest then. The other years/episodes weren’t bad but I didn’t find them as entertaining. And for another broad stroke I’d say that I found the show to be at it’s worst when it was dealing with the big life events that every TV show deals with. If there was a birth or marriage going on, and there were a few, then that event would take over the show and generally bore me. Other people may like that stuff but I like the smaller more imaginative stories.
I also found it a bit hard to make it through the last two or three seasons. Maybe it was just Friends fatigue but those seasons didn’t hold my attention as much as the middle seasons did. It took me four months to watch all the episodes so I don’t know if fatigue was really a factor. It was more likely all the big events that took place in those final seasons.
Now here is the weird thing. After watching all ten seasons and coming up with judgements about them I was pretty sure I wouldn’t want to watch Friends for a long time. It had been a bunch of years between the last time I watched/listened to the whole series so figured they’d go to the back of the cue. Way back. But the next day, for some reason, I was in the mood to watch some “Friends”. So I put on season one episode one.
There was a difference this time. I wasn’t really giving it my full attention. That’s how I “Watch” most TV. I have it on in the background as I work and mainly listen to it or have it on and partly watch it as I surf the web or do a little drawing. I do this mostly with shows or movies I’ve seen before but also with first run shows that really don’t hold my complete attention. With the repeats I might stop and pay more attention at a favorite part or when I need a break. Either way it’s a much less demanding watching experience.
That is – it’s much less demanding on my part. I don’t have to pay close attention. When I actually sat down this summer to watch the whole run of “Friends” the show I wanted to really see it. I wanted to see the jokes as the happened and appreciate the craft and timing of it all. I wanted to see if I really thought it was a good show. In the end I thought it ranged from a pretty good show to a good show.
But after I starting to run season one again in the background I re-evaluated. I then decided it was a more than good show. It was an excellent background show.
Other favorites of mine are not good background shows. “Seinfeld” or my current favorite “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” demand to be watched. They are pure comedy and I have to sit and watch them with my full attention. There are no feel good moments, sappiness, or long story lines to follow in them. Just attempts to make you laugh and I have to be there in the moment to catch the laughs. I see no point to having them on in the background because then I’ll just want to watch them and won’t get anything done.
Like I’ve said before I listen to a lot of TV and movies while working. My friend Dave, who does the same, and I even discuss the fact that we have a category movies that we call “Movies that are good to work to”. Usually these are dialogue based movies that are easily followed by listening but also include long rambling movies. “Jackie Brown” is one of Dave’s favorites.
“Made” comes to mind for me because that was a movie that came alive for me as a background movie. It was a movie that I didn’t even like much when I first saw it. But it was on cable TV while I worked and I got to hear it. It peaked the interest of my ear. I ended up always catching bits and pieces of it on cable until it became a favorite. It’s a very well written movie with lots of interesting twists, turns and dialogue. A great movie to work to.
“A Bridge Too Far” is another favorite of mine to work to. It’s a movie about World War II that’s generally considered a failure/flop because it’s long and rambling but that is exactly what makes it a great movie to work to. The boring parts are considerably less boring when I don’t pay attention to them and there is always some new turn in the convoluted plot coming up to peak my interest for a moment.
Ultimately I’ve determined that’s what “Friends” is for me. A great show to work to. The producer of the show describes it as a show about “A time in your life when everything’s possible”. I have to agree that is one of the strengths of the show. And that comes through even just as it plays in the background. And it could be possible that idea comes through even better when I don’t pay attention to the boring parts.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
“The Irredeemable Ant-Man” by Robert Kirkman, Phil Hester, and Cory Walker
For my second pull off of the pile of Marvel trade paperbacks that I was given by a friend I decided to go with a Kirkman written book. I read and like both “Invincible” and “The Walking Dead” which are both Kirkman written books so I thought there would be a good chance I’d like this one too. And I did like it.
Kirkman has a different take than the Ant-man I’ve read stories before. There is a whole new guy in the shrinking suit. Eric O’Grady is a low level S.H.E.L.D. operative. He works watching a surveillance monitor and is bored with his job. Through a series of funny and serious circumstances he ends up in possession of the Ant-Man suit and on the run living life as a super hero.
The twist is that Eric is not a very nice guy. He’s billed as “The World’s Most Unlikable Super Hero” but he’s actually pretty likable. He’s just not trustworthy and can’t be counted on to do the right thing. His idea of being a super hero includes lying, stealing things if it’s convenient, mooching off anyone he can, and spying on women as they shower.
There is a lot of comedy in this book and it’s perspective is from that of an ordinary person in the Marvel Universe. Even if that person works for a spy agency and has a super powered ant suit. There are also references to all sorts of big crossover events going on in the Marvel Universe but from an outsider’s point of view.
The art in the book is nice. It gets the job done but I can’t say that it’s spectacular. Most of it is by Phil Hester with an issue or two by Cory Walker. They both do a good job with the off beat story and handle the comic moments well.
“The Irredeemable Ant-Man” is a solid and fun book that has a different take on a superhero. If you’re looking for an antidote to all the bleak and serious stories that populate a lot of comics these days check it out.
This is one of my series of comic book covers to comics that don’t exist. It’s ink on 11″x17″ paper.
I write reviews of comic books here every week. I do it for fun. But do you know what I don’t find fun? Writing bad reviews. I don’t write many of them because I’m picky about what I buy and often when I read something that I don’t like I want to forget about it. I have no interest in spending time thinking and writing about something that I didn’t like. Most of my bad reviews would go like this anyway, “I read a little bit of so-and-so and thought is wasn’t any good so I stopped reading and will never, ever, finish reading it”. That’s about the worst review possible for me but it isn’t very entertaining to read over and over.
Mediocre comics are also hard to write about. I just finished reading “Captain Britain – Hell Comes to Birmingham” and I decided not to review it. It’s not bad, some of the art is good (especially the splash page in issue 6) but overall I found the comic confusing and the writing stilted at times. I really don’t have many thoughts about it. To me it just sat there and didn’t come to life.
As I was reading the book I was reminded of a phrase I used to hear back when I worked in the offices of Marvel Comics. Someone would say “Remember, every comic is someone’s favorite comic”. I can’t even remember who used to say it or in what exact context but I remember it being said. I always thought it was a sweeping statement without much truth to it. I bet there are plenty of comics out there that are no one’s favorite.
But that remembered phrase got me thinking about this volume of Captain Britain and if it could be someone’s favorite. And who they would be? Like I said, it’s not a bad comic, I found it mediocre and it held no interest for me. But it might for someone else. But who? I’m sure there are people who like it but being a favorite is a different story.
Most of the world is filled with mediocrity. The law of averages says so. I prefer reading stuff that I think is really good but not everyone does. And still I have some mediocre comics that are favorites but they mainly com from my youth. Most people have a soft spot for things from their younger days when everything was fresh and new. It matters what age you see or read things at if they are to become favorites. If you start watching the TV show “Family Matters” at age ten it will be a favorite. If you were 23 when it debuted then it won’t be. Mediocrity can become really good if you’re too young to have ever seen something that’s actually really good.
It’s that way with comic books too. I was ten years old in 1976 so I grew up on mid to late 1970’s Marvel comics. A lot of people consider that a mediocre era of comics but most of the people I’ve heard or read state that opinion were around 20 in 1976. They had aged out of most mainstream comics then. There were probably a lot of mediocre comics in 1976, just like there are a lot of mediocre comics today and at any other time, but if you are ten and it’s all new to you they’re not mediocre. Hence, every comic fan I know has favorite comics from their childhood that are not very good but still a favorite of theirs.
But what about this Captain Britain volume? Y’see, comics back in the 1970’s were written with ten year olds in mind. And more ten year olds bought them then they do today. There were plenty of adults reading them back then but, I think, not in as large a proportion as today. There are even ratings on Marvel comics these days and this Captain Britain book is rated T+. That means it’s for teens and older. Ten year olds aren’t supposed to be buying this book. I doubt many of them read it.
A quick check of the internet lets me know that this series was cancelled back in 2009. That means it didn’t sell enough copies. I also see that there are passionate fans of it on the message boards lamenting its loss. But what about ten years from now? Will any of those fans remember it as a favorite or just a pretty good comic that they liked for a while? That’s the question that came to mind while reading.
If my notion that it takes a young person who has not read a lot of comics before to grow up and fondly remember a particular mediocre comic book as a favorite is true them there are a lot of comics that will be no one’s favorite comic book. Literally. But I could be wrong and in that case I wonder who’s favorite comic is this volume of Captain Britain? I have no idea.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
“Moon Knight – The Bottom” by Charlie Huston and David Finch
A friend of mind dropped off a bunch of Marvel trade paperbacks for me back in August. A lot of stuff I usually don’t read so it gives me a chance to catch up on what Marvel has been offering over the last few years.
First up is this Moon Knight book from back in 2006. I was a Moon Knight fan as a kid and really liked the book during the Moench/Sienkiewicz run in the early 80’s. I don’t think I’ve read many stories featuring Moon Knight since then. I remember there being a revival of him in the mid 90’s that I never read but other than that I don’t think I’ve even noticed him.
I’ve never been a fan of origin stories. They’re all the same to me. First the person wasn’t a super hero, then something happened, and then he was a superhero. I’m just waiting around for the person to become a super hero so the story can begin. There’s a reason Stan Lee used to make his origin stories only eight pages long. Today they make them six issues long.
“Moon Knight – The Bottom” is a ‘Rebirth” story. Basically that’s an origin story told all over again. At the beginning of the story Moon Knight, in his civilian identity as Marc Spector, is washed up, injured, and no longer in the fight. It takes until issue six until he’s fully Moon Knight again. I found everything in between to be mumbo jumbo. But it’s that way with me and most origin stories.
Finch’s art work is highly illustrative and pretty to look at but hard to follow. I found his storytelling confusing a lot of the time. He likes to use a lot of close-ups and overlapping panels and I couldn’t always tell what the heck was going on. There were a lot of nice pin-up shots though.
This volume was a miss for me. I didn’t like the story or the storytelling. It’s nice to flip through and look at some pretty pictures but that’s about it for me. I hope some of the other Marvel TPBs are better than this because I don’t really like writing bad reviews.
This is a page from one of my Inkbooks (number 11 page 34). That’s where my images that I use in my paintings, drawings, and prints come from. It all starts with me drawing little drawing in ink just seeing what I can get out of my head.