Radiant Comics

“What’s the point?” That is the question I’ve been asking myself lately. Not about life in general (though I do ask that question about life in general, after all, I tend to be a bit philosophical) but about making comics for the world wide web. I love comics plus I’m an artist and a writer and I make comics. At least I’ve made comics in the past. Not as much in the last five or so years. No one payed me to make comics and I came to the inescapable conclusion that no one was ever going to pay me to make comics. So I stopped making them and concentrated more on my paintings, prints and photos. No one was paying me for those either but I find that easier to take because because in those mediums I end up with a finished something. A physical object. Art. Unless you actually print the comic you just have a stack of original comic pages that no one will ever read. Forever unfinished. A comic isn’t finished until it’s in a format that people can read.

So lately I’ve been thinking about and working on a comic for the web. That’s not so odd. A lot of people are thinking about the same thing. Web comics are supposed to be the future of comics. At least according to what I read on the web. But I keep asking myself, “What’s the point?”.

There are a lot of problems with comics on the web. The biggest being that no one is going to pay me to make one. A few people are making money with comics on the web. Mostly through selling some ads and hawking merchandise but every cartoonist is looking for a way to make the web pay off for them and few succeed. Wow, it’s just like paper comics.

A lot of people now read their favorite newspaper comics on the web but that only helps the already established guys who are already getting paid to syndicate their strips. A little extra gravy for them. A few dedicated comic strip fans search out new comics on the web but the searcher’s numbers are small. Like any other web site comic sites are all about getting people to go there. Hits, baby. That’s why money buying publicity wins. Most of the time. I have neither money nor publicity so how would I get hits? That’s a rhetorical question.

My second problem with making a comic for the web is that the comic strip form dominates and seems to be the best fit for the web. At least for now. I find the strip form very limiting. Especially since gag a day strips are almost the only kind that exist. Even on the web. I don’t want to do a gag a day strip. If I do I’ll just be adding to the vast pile of mediocre strips out there. I’m just too artsy fartsy to be making a gag a day strip. I don’t have that many gags in me. Most don’t.

Another problem is the huge amount of work in making a comic strip. Most web comic guys I’ve seen have their methods streamlined so as to make a strip in the least amount of work possible. I understand this because they are not getting paid but the lack of craftsmanship is what creates the vast pile of mediocrity. It takes time to make a nice strip. I can make better use of my time expressing myself in other mediums. Writing this blog takes a fraction of the time it would take to make a single comic strip. And I can get more ideas across. So I would have to have something original to say that wouldn’t work in any other medium to make a comic strip worth my creative time.

Comic strips are also relentlessly narrative. I like narrative but when I’m making a painting, print, photo, or writing a blog narrative is just one of my choices. With a strip it’s almost the only choice. That cuts down on the creative options and when I am making art on my own it’s all about options. So I have to see if I can explode the strip form and give myself more options. That’s not easy let me tell you.

For a while I’ve been searching for that something to say with a strip. Despite the passing months and many hours crafting many ideas I’m not there yet. I’ve started, spent much time on, and rejected a lot of ideas. I almost finished my first strip but not quite. This one has a chance succeed but unless it can stand beside my other work and be just as interesting to me it will be abandoned too. It’s the first one to be teetering on the edge of completeness and that’s a good sign. All the others were rejected at the color stage when I just couldn’t see myself tying them together into an interesting coherent whole.

Maybe this week I’ll be able to pull it together. Maybe this week I’ll finish the first strip. I’m still not sure yet. I also have to think about presentation and that is a whole other ball of wax. Such is the creative life.

I did finish a couple of prints last week. That’s solid.

I mentioned my set of fortune telling cards a few blogs back. Well I finally made a full color prototype deck of them. I have one thing to say after that experience: Holy cow is it a pain in the ass. Forty eight individual hand crafted cards. I’m not even counting all the work that goes into the concept and illustration stage. Just the printing, cutting, and pasting stage.

Of course I used a computer. They make things a whole lot easier. Except when they don’t. I already had all the cards designed and laid out in an illustration program called Illustrator (clever name no?) but to line them up for printing on my Epson printer I used a design and layout program called InDesign. That’s when things got crazy and baffling. I’m not a novice in these programs but sometimes they do things that I have no explanation for. This is one of those things.

Each card is 2.5 x 4.5 inches. In Illustrator each card was 2.5 x 4.5 inches (no stroke for those in the know). I then use InDesign which is a program that makes it easy to line up and print out all forty eight cards. I should be able to line up all of the cards four to a page, print out the cards, and them flip the paper to print the card backs which are lined up exactly like the fronts. Computers are good at such precision. Except when they’re not.

I made an InDesign template with four 2.5 x 4.5 boxes to place my 2.5 x 4.5 in. Typical stuff. That’s how InDesign works. Make a box or shape and tell it to put a piece of artwork you have already prepared in that box. That’s how all the logos, pictures, and text get into books and magazines these days. The problem was that every time I brought my 2.5 x 4.5 cards into InDesign they measured 2.502 x 4.5. That’s two one thousands of an inch difference and you might think it wouldn’t matter but in the world of computers it messes up all the alignments. I have no explanation for why this occurred but I couldn’t correct it.

So I cut my losses and redesigned the cards directly in InDesign and imported just the artwork. Now all the type and little parts were out of Illustrator and into the design program. Everything lined up perfectly and it was a go for printing. Forty eight cards, four cards per page, twelve sheets of double sided matte paper, and twenty four print dialogue boxes latter they were all printed.

Now I had to cut and laminate them. Even thought the paper I was using was fairly thick it would stain or wear out easily without some sort of coating. I decided to try some self stick laminating paper because I didn’t want to by a laminating machine or use a wet spray on coating. It’s basically a clear contact paper and it was a little frustrating to use. Especially at first. Out of the twelve sheets front and back that I had to laminate I wrecked one (the first one) and had to redo eight cards because of air bubbles. Getting that laminate to lay flat isn’t always easy. So that’s three additional sheets I had to do. Twenty five percent failure rate isn’t very good. But I got ’em done.

The final step was rounding the corners. Most decks of cards have round corners so that is what I was going for. Of course I had to cut mine by hand. Forty eight times four is one hundred and ninety two cuts. My X-acto blade got a workout. The corners certainly don’t look machined but over all not bad.

And now I’m one more step closer to being able to tell the future.

Todays blog is not about rampant consumerism but about unrampant consumerism. It’s about things that have been on my “to buy” list for years but never get bought. None of the items on it are important enough to rise to the top of my “to buy” list and new things are always added to the list that rise above these and get purchased. I don’t know if anyone else has a list like this but I do. All that these items have in common is being stuck in limbo on my list as others come and go. They do have staying power if nothing else.

PSP – A Play Station Portable. This item would almost fill two spots for me. I like hand held video games and want a portable photo album for my snap shot collection. As a handheld I chose the Nintendo DS over this years ago because the DS was much cheaper and had some good games that I wanted. The PSP sure is cool but it just doesn’t have the games. It can display photos nicely but I don’t know if it has the software (I suspect not) to handle my collection of 8000 photos all organized and labeled by person, time, and event. Plus I’d have to get a big memory card to store all the photos on which would drive up the price of the PSP even more. I’m still waiting for a full screen iPod for this purpose but Apple is not exactly racing that full screen iPod to market so the so the PSP languishes on my list.

A mountain bike. I love bike riding. I hop on my road bike three times a week and enjoy the exercise and the ride. So a mountain bike seems real cool. It looks like fun going down trails and riding through the woods. Everybody on TV always rides mountain bikes. Except that they are really expensive. You can drop a grand on one in the blink of an eye. And that’s not even a good one. Ouch. And then you have to drive somewhere to find a trail to mountain bike on. With my road bike I just go out my front door. There are plenty of roads. Not so with trails. So the mountain bike sits on the list never to be bought. But I still think it’s cool. I can imagine myself zooming through trails. Zooooommm…

Zoot Suit – C’mon who doesn’t want a Zoot Suit? Long, baggy, snazzy, and garish they are quintessential cool. If only I had a place to wear one too. It’s not like I’m a hipper than thou twenty two year old clubber. Halloween might be my only excuse to get one of these. And I might this year. They’re one of the cheaper things on this list. It’s gotta be bright green too.

Self healing cutting mat – I’ve been meaning to resurface my drawing table for about four years now. This is what I would put down on it. I had one of these on my old table and it is a great surface. Better than the dirty old Borco I have now. Except that the Borco is still in pretty good shape. I like the self healing cutting mat better but not enough to spend money ($80) on it. There are always other art supplies to buy. So it stays on the list. Still wanted but in no way a priority.

11×17 inch scanner – My Epson 8.5×11 scanner from 1996 is my oldest piece of computer equipment. It cost a fortune ($1300) when I got it but a 11×17 scanner was way to expensive ($3000-4000) for me to ever get. It’s been a work horse for me as I scan things almost every day and it’s been running great for over ten years. But a lot of my work that I scan in is 11×17. This means I have to scan things in two pieces and stitch them together. It obviously can be done and I have been doing it but it would be nice not to. A decent 11×17 scanner is now about $1100 and though that is more doable than $3000 it is still a ton o’ dough. One of the questions I ask myself before buying a new piece of computer equipment is, “What new thing will I be able to do with this?”. If the answer is “nothing” that the equipment moves down the list. The 11×17 scanner offers me great convenience but I can scan as fine without it. Just slower. So it sits on the list.

Flash 300-350 – These are comics I bought in High School (early 80’s) but got rid of years ago. They are drawn by Infantino and feature “The Trial of the Flash”. They are not even especially good comics but I’ve grown nostalgic for them over the years. I not even sure why. I just want to read them again. I’ll probably even be disappointed when I do. They’re not considered a hight point in the world of Flash comics and they’ve never been, and probably never will be, collected or reprinted in any way. They are not very expensive but they are hard to find because nobody wants them. Plus that’s a lot of issues to track down. I always get other better comics ahead of them. Every now and then I check out Ebay where individual issues can always be found but not a full run. So there they sit on my list.

Yes, my list of things I never seem to buy. There you go.

Man, making a painting is a lot of work. To further clarify: making a large oil painting is a lot of work. I do a lot of things. Drawing, paintings large and small, photos, and prints. Each takes its own amount of work but it’s the large oil (30×40 inches on up) that easily soaks up the most time. Before this week I haven’t painted a large one in a over year so I almost forgot what it was like.

A couple of years ago I tired of the larger works. I’d been doing them for a decade and a half as my primary painting outlet and I wanted to work with smaller images mare quickly. Smaller canvases don’t have the impact bigger ones do but I wanted to compensate for that with more images. Speed was inportant. I started doing small 8×10 inch canvases in acrylic. I’ve done plenty of those smaller canvases over the last two years. Maybe a hundred of them. I’m now tired of how little time they take; compared to the big oils at least. The small ones don’t really go that fast. They’re not sketches.

This week I’ve gone back to painting a big oil. Hour after hour of laying down paint. The craft of it can clear the mind in a way other things can’t. My way of painting is very methodical and the finished work slowly reveals itself almost like it’s inevitable. It’s an interesting experience again. But it’s a lot of work.

I move in and out of concentration fairly easily. It’s a way of keeping my mind limber and when doing preliminary work on a painting it’s essential so that I can see new things. When doing smaller works I also move in and out of concentration because dynamic changes are always happening in small stuff. Things are easy to change.

In the larger works things have to be worked out in advance to a much higher degree. As the scale changes it makes it harder to fix mistakes so planning is a must. When I get to the final painting much of the art is done and much of the craft is left to do. It then takes a fatiguing amount of concentration. I had forgotten this.

I also mix almost all of my colors that I will need and have them all laid out on my palette. This means the clock is ticking. Oil paint takes a long time to dry when it is in huge lumps but leaving it there for days isn’t a good idea. A skin will develop and ruin the paint with chunks. That will still take a couple of days so its not like acrylic paint which will dry in hours. But when a large oil takes anywhere from 50-100 hours to paint you have to keep moving. Days go by.

It takes a lot of work. It’s much more tiring than the same amount of time doing numerous small pieces. I had forgotten that. Now I remember.

I just stocked up on some art supplies last week. Paper, pens, paint, and brushes came through my door on Thursday. One of the things I purchased was a new technical pen. For those who don’t know what that is it’s a pen that was created to make technical drawings. It makes a single width line in ink. It doesn’t do variations in line weight. No thick to thin like most drawing tools. You can fill it with any ink you want and it comes in various sizes. I originally bought a set of 5 pens but over the years I came to only use one size. It is a fairly thick lined one at 1 mm but it works for me on most occasions.

Technical pens are not used as much as they once were. Most technical drawings are done on a computer now. In the world of cartooning, where I saw them used quite often, they have been replaced by thin black hard lined markers. Many younger cartoonists I know have never used a technical pen as they have always had easy access to these markers. I use those markers but I still like technical pens.

I had to replace my technical pen because it just plain wore out. I’ve been using it since about 1991 so it had a long and useful life. Each technical pen costs roughly twenty dollars, so they are not cheap, but a fine line marker costs about two dollars and doesn’t last nearly fifteen years. Even factoring in buying ink to refill the technical pen it’s way cheaper than markers.

I am glad to have a nice new functioning tech pen again. It draws smooth and silky as opposed to my rough old one which clogged up constantly. But I am a little sad. After all, the old one was my tech pen for so many years. It got me thinking about how we can grow attached to little things and be sad at their passing. There may be a thousand other pens just like mine but mine is mine and that makes it unique. It takes time to grow a fondness for an inanimate object. This new tech pen doesn’t seem like mine yet (it’s even a different brand) and if I were to lose it today it would be no big deal. Except I’d be out twenty bucks.

I felt the same sadness when I had to buy new drawing triangles. A triangle is another piece of drawing equipment that isn’t used much anymore. You use it in conjunction with a T-square to draw lines at right angles. And other angles too. It was a few years ago that I had to replace my triangles. They were the triangles that I bought as a freshmen in college. They put in nearly twenty years of service. But finally they were too nicked up to be of use. The new triangles don’t have nearly as much charm as the old ones.

That’s another thing, the new versions of all these nearly obsolete drawing tools are made much crappier than they used to be. The new tech pen seems to work fine but the company logo that’s printed on it looks like it was put on by a ten year old. The new triangles are flimsier then my old ones and just try and find a good French curve. All the curves at the store I was in had burrs and imperfections along the edges that are supposed to cleanly guide your pen. Madness.

So hold on to the things that are yours and treat them right. Old things don’t get better made with time.