Radiant Comics

To reference or not to reference? That is my question. I’m working on yet another idea for a comic strip. It’s actually and idea that I’ve been working on for a while but I’ve gotten nowhere with. Primarily because of the drawing. That always takes the most time. That and my vision for how the art should be done doesn’t jibe with what I like to do.

I don’t much care for doing “Realistic” drawing or illustration these days. I find it tedious. It’s always the same. Decide what you want to draw, gather resources to help the drawing (photos, live models, computer models), use resources to execute drawing. I find that it is, at best, like putting together a puzzle.

In my younger days I used to enjoy this process but now I don’t. It was a challenge then but now it’s a burden. I was never especially good at illustrative drawing either. I’m not bad at it and do some realistic type work but on a small scale. Developing and drawing a comic strip like that is a much larger scale and I don’t think I have it in me.

So where does that leave me? I’m not sure. I still want to work on developing this strip but I have to clarify my vision of what it will be. That’s what the creative process is all about. Clarifying your vision. It’s a hard thing to do because it means that something has to get done. As everyone knows it’s not easy to get things done. Not doing anything is much easier than doing anything.

I’ve had some interesting ideas on the structure of the story too. Ideas I wish I could pull off. I got them when I was thinking about the new Apple iPad. There are a whole bunch of people coming up with new content for that machine but all I’ve heard of so far is basically repurposed content that already exists. I am thinking more about the structure of how a story is told when a person reads it on an interactive touch screen. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of new things in the years to come on the iPad and other devices like it.

I’m a little jealous of those who are developing new types of story telling for the iPad. It’s beyond my means and abilities to develop a comic for the iPad. That’s the sort of thing it takes a company to do. It’s bigger than the lone artist that I am. Sometimes I wish I were part of a team who could handle such big projects. But alas that is not the path I’m on.

Meanwhile back at my own comic strip I’m still struggling with how I should do it. I actually did do some illustrative and referenced character design already but I’m not sure if I want to gather reference for the whole thing. It’s almost like I know exactly how it will come out if I do it that way and it bores me to know that. That method leaves me less room for creating late in the game than I would like.

Of course I don’t have the method worked out just yet to get me where I want to go. So far I think I know what I don’t want to do but not what I do. I think I’ll do a little painting first anyway.

“Drifting and Dreaming”. That’s the name of this new comic strip that I have come up with. As with many of the things I have to come up with names for I have no idea what this name means (besides being an old song title). Plus the strip isn’t really a strip. Kind of weird, I know, but my work is normally kind of weird. Here is how it came about.

For the last two months or so I’ve been trying to develop another comic strip. A totally different one from “Drifting and Dreaming”. I have gotten virtually nowhere with it and working on that strip was clogging up my creative process. I was running in circles and getting nowhere. It’s frustrating getting nothing done and going nowhere.

The only thing I seemed able to get do was some art cards. Those are little baseball card size drawings or paintings. I think it was because of their very “Unfinished” nature that I was able to complete them. There is little pressure when making something so casual. Then I made some more.

Somewhere in my making of these art cards I stared making some “Cartoon cards”. They are pretty much the same thing except they have a word balloon above a cartoon character’s head. Each character is saying something. The cartoon cards talk to you.

The character’s faces are all drawn in ink right off of the top of my head. Whatever crazy thing comes to mind. No erasing and no real thinking about them before hand. I just see what comes out as I’m drawing. This makes for some odd characters.

After I draw the cards I figure out what the characters are saying. I haven’t always been sure why they are saying what they are. I was just trying to make them say something interesting. I like short form writing and how it can be so clear yet mysterious. The things I make can be a mystery to me too. That keeps me interested.

So this is how I make a “Drifting and Dreaming” strip. I pick three of my art cards. Two of the cartoon card ones for either end and one of the art only ones for the middle. I’m not sure how they are all going to relate and fit together as a cohesive whole but that is what interests me. The fitting together.

I then write “The Middle Story” which is another short piece of text. I look at the middle card as I write the Middle Story and see what strikes my mind. Once again it can be a mystery to me too.

This is a once a week strip since “Four Talking Boxes” will continue to run on weekdays.

It took a turn for the colder around these parts as it’s likely to do in March. I had the coldest bike ride of the three weeks I’ve been riding this year today. Thirty seven degrees Fahrenheit and windy. My finger tips were getting real cold as I rode with my thin gloves on. I can do without too many rides like that.

Lot’s of people that I know got real excited about last weekend’s warm weather and were posting their excitement on Facebook. I did my best not to dampen their enthusiasm by pointing out that end of May weather in the middle of March might not last but I’m not sure if I succeeded one hundred percent. Sometimes I get cynical when I think people are getting over excited about something.

The “Star Wars” movies are something that make me cynical. Well, it’s really the enthusiasm and excitement so many people I know have for those movies that makes me cynical. Somehow, among people of a certain age, “Star Wars” was some sort of transcendental religious experience. I don’t get it. To me it’s just a movie with spaceships and ray guns.

At least “Star Trek” I understand. It’s trying to be something a little more than the average TV show. The “Star Trek” makers want to make the world a better place by offering a little insight and uplift. I can understand the people who want to dress up and live in the “Star Trek” world. It’s a better world than ours and they would prefer to live there.

“Star Wars” on the other hand, no matter how good it actually is, is just another kids’ movie. I think that’s the fact that makes so many of the original “Star Wars” fans angry at the newest three movies. There is nothing transcendental about them. They are just kids’ movies and bad ones at that.

Kids born into the “Star Wars” era see nothing wrong with the last three movies. They are just another thing to be a fan of and buy toys about. I find that an interesting split. And it proves that they really are kids’ movies. That and the millions of “Star Wars” toys.

We’re well into the NFL’s off season these days. For almost three weeks the NFL networks filled their broadcast days with the draft combine. Three weeks of guys running football drills while coaches and scouts all watched then. And the NFL Network’s talking heads analyzed it all. More boring TV you could not find.

The NFL draft is on a Thursday night this year instead of the usual Saturday afternoon. That insures I won’t watch it because the only reason to watch was for the socializing. A few friends and I would get together and hang out on a spring afternoon with the draft on as an excuse. A little football oasis. Now it’s another boring TV show to be ignore on a Thursday night.

I’ve been playing an XBox 360 game lately. When my XBox 360 broke I pulled out the old Nintendo 64 just so I could play 1080º Snowboarding again. That inspired me to try a new snowboarding game: Stoked – Big Air Edition. I’ve been enjoying Stoked but I’m not sure if it’s better than 1080º. Stoked has more of an emphasis on tricks rather than racing which was 1080º’s forte. I prefer racing. Stoked has some good racing but 1080º’s was so well tuned it’s hard to beat.

I’ve been eating tangerines lately. Besides the fact that they taste good I’ve also been eating them because they have pits. Because they have pits I have to slow down and have a seat when I eat one. They have actually helped me relax a little more. I didn’t plan for that to happen when I bought some tangerines but I’ve embraced that it has. I now see extra value in pitted fruit.

I’ve also changed the way I eat apples just to slow down and relax a bit. I started off but just cutting them into slices but somehow that wasn’t enough. Now I cut them into slices and before I eat each slice I cut off the skin and eat that first. Then I eat the meat of the apple slice. It makes me slow down and relax during my day. It’s a bit meditative. Think I’ll have an apple. Later.

It’s a sweet sunny day out as I write this. More like a late May day than the ides of March day it is. I’ve had my bike out and have been riding for a couple of weeks. Even before the weather was as nice as it is now. I usually try to get on the roads buy mid March. By then I am really sick of riding the stationary bike. Pedaling a bike to nowhere really dull. It tests my resolve to keep active and exercise.

The key to getting on the road in late winter is dressing warmly. That and having no ice on the roads. Driving a bicycle on ice is not a fun task. It’s easier to cycle when it’s cold out in March than it is in November. First off the rides are shorter. In March I’m just starting out again and I’m at my stage one ride as opposed to my stage four ride when I’m at my peak. Less time in the cold obviously makes it easier to ride

Second is the psychological factor. In November I’m always wondering when the snow will be coming and when it will be too cold to ride. I pull the bike out and think, “Is it still warm enough to ride today?”. That takes an unexpected amount of energy. Usually when it drops down into the 30’s F is when it’s too cold but the wind can kill you too.

One thing I did last year to keep going in the cold was shorten my ride a little. I moved back from a stage four to a stage three. That cut out the biggest hill from my ride but also motivated me to keep riding despite the cold. That big hill would melt my resolve to continue cycling outside because the cold and wind really sap my strength. Moving the route back to stage three was better than the boredom stationary bike. More exercise too.

Last year I bought some new thermals for riding in. They helped. My old ones were getting quite tattered and not offering as much warmth as they once did. The new ones were that thinner type they have nowadays compared to my old thicker waffle like ones but they work just as well. I still like the look of those old ones though. They look rugged rather than sleek.

The one thing that really helps in the cold is a windbreaker. I don’t know how many years I rode out in the cold without one but it was many. Every year I would say to myself, “I should really get a windbreaker” but somehow I never did. When the wind would cut through my many layers, and you need a lot of them without a windbreaker, it would be really frigid. I didn’t ride as late in the year as I do now because of it.

It was a few years ago I saw that Amazon.com had a sale on windbreakers. I must admit that one of the reasons I never bought a windbreaker is that I never saw one in a store. I didn’t look especially hard but a thin plastic windbreaker with no lining is not a common item. The ones on Amazon were college windbreakers and were only about ten bucks. I ordered one of the University of Tennessee. I’ve never been there and have no affiliation with the school but their team color is bright orange and so was the windbreaker. Bright colors are good when riding.

I want to be seen when I’m on my bike. I want every car on the road to take notice of me. I don’t want to be run over because some driver didn’t see me as I blended in with the background. No blending thank you. When not wearing the windbreaker I have on a bright green Orlando Thunder football jersey. They’re a team that only existed briefly in the World League of American Football from 1991 to 1992. No one remembers them but they had cool and unique jerseys. After it gets too warm for a jersey I wear a bright green T-shirt.

I never got into wearing cycling clothes. It’s probably because I’m cheap. That and I possess the typical artist’s distain for joining groups. I don’t know why that’s a common trait for artists but it is. I have also found that a lot of cycling outfits look like some sort of SS officer rec uniforms. They’re a little too fascist for my taste. That could just be sour grapes though.

Any way you cut it I’m glad to be off the stationary bike and back out onto the road. Not only is it a better form of exercise but it’s a lot more fun too. Zooming down a hill is always a good time.

I just finished reading a book called “French Milk” by Lucy Knisley. It’s a diary comic about her six week stay in Paris, France in 2006 during the winter in which she turns 22. For those of you unfamiliar with diary comics they are just what you’d think they are. A diary done in comic book/strip form. There aren’t very many of them but I’ve always found the form to be interesting.

A diary comic is different than an autobiographical comic (another rather small genre). An autobiographical comic takes parts of the cartoonist’s life and tells a story out of them. The story may be small and contain trivial events but there is a definite attempt at some sort of normal storytelling structure. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Autobiographical comics ask the question, “How do I make my life into a story?”.

A diary comic has less structure, much like an actual diary. It accounts the events of the day and records details that are not important to any overall story structure. It records the things of everyday life that quickly fade into memory. Where and what you had to eat, what the weather was like, what things you bought, what people you met, and any stray feelings that might go through you. Knisley added the overall story structure of going to Paris to “French Milk” but that wasn’t really the point of the book.

I’ve always found the point of diary comics to be about making something out of nothing. I see that on two levels. First, making a diary comic is about trying to make the cartoonist’s life into something. Her life may not be interesting and she may not even be trying to present it as interesting but in writing it down and making a comic out of it she is trying to make it into something. Not even necessarily something specific (well, besides a comic) but just something. Diary comics ask the question, “How do I make my life into something?”.

The second level of something out of nothing is a little more literal. Comics are very hard to make and to make them in your spare time, as most diary comic cartoonists do, is even harder. It’s hard to come up with something to make a comic about so a diary comic cartoonist comes to the conclusion that she’ll make a comic about her life. That’s how it can start. A cartoonist just wants to make a comic. To make something out of nothing, without thinking up some dumb commercial story that she won’t be able to sell commercially anyway. She says, “I’ll make it about me and my life. That will get me started”. And get her started it does. But diary comics are deceptively hard to do.

The writing of a diary comic isn’t particularly tough. I think that’s why cartoonists choose to do diary comics. It seems easy at first. Examine your life for little incidents and try to make something out of them. Usually the writing is straight forward and descriptive. There are no characters, plots, and motivations to invent. No vast amount of time doing character design. It all seems straight forward and generally is.

The deceptively hard to do part comes with the drawing. Drawing comics is always more time consuming and, I’d argue, harder than writing them. But diary comics are harder to draw for a different reason. They are harder to draw because they are not going to be an artist’s best drawing. The point of a diary comic is to do them and not to make them beautiful.

An cartoonist making a diary comic is not going to labor over a page in her spare time for two weeks like she might with some fictional story because the nature of writing about her everyday life is that it keeps on going. An artist has to accept that she has to get some drawing done about the day and move on to the next day. And the next. And the next. There is no time to get the drawing perfect. They just have to be gotten done. That’s tough to do. Most artists would prefer to present their very best, prettiest drawing which diary comics will never be. They’re a compromise from line one.

All comics done on a deadline are a compromise to some extent but diary comics are a little different. They are mostly done without pay and the subject is the everyday mundane. That tends to make the drawing utilitarian and it usually takes spontaneity to make it all work. It’s that spontaneity balanced with wanting your best drawing that’s so hard. You have to suppress the desire to redraw until it’s perfect because getting it done is far more important. It’s about making something out of nothing.

Most of “French Milk” is drawn in this off the cuff diary comic kind of way but on occasion Knisley shows us a few sketches she made during any given day and those sketches are generally nicer than the rest of her drawing in this book. That’s the nature of diary comics. They will never be the artist’s best drawing. That’s tough to accept. One of the reasons I’ve never made a diary comic.

Anyway, I did like “French Milk”. It was a nice attempt to make something out of nothing.