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Underground > Creation >

Comics trial

18:25 / 18.12.02

I hadn't much of a plan what i wanted to see out of the comics dogme thread when i started it - i figured a manifesto could form a sort of a challenge that would eventually lead to *gasp* some kinds of comics being created.

Some people liked the idea, some hated it - hey, such is life, but it did get me thinking about what Mr six said If you want to do good comics, I urge you to do just that, share it (somehow, I guess uploading it to a website), THEN discussing how what is produced could be polished.

So comics cocks on the table then? Remember folks it isn't size that counts.

Mr Six, LM rosa, since you two have been most vociferous in your criticism of manifestoes over creating comics, and since Mr six already has 3 comics done do you want to start?

This could be like the poetrail of the old days but with comics

Mister Six, whom all the girls

18:32 / 18.12.02

OK, but a few questions:

What medium? All I have is on paper and am waiting until after the holidays for a scanner, online is the best way for our purposes, but I'd be happy to get off my ass and xerox what I have and send it people.

Oh, and... what's vociferous and how am I a poetrail... or something like that.

18:48 / 18.12.02

Vociferous: Making, given to, or marked by noisy and vehement outcry.
Poetrail: My mistyping of Poet-trial or poetrial.

Muy bad.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

18:49 / 18.12.02

I thought I was just typing... maybe I should put on my cotton gloves.

Murray Hamhandler

00:15 / 19.12.02

Will be working like a mule on impulsivelad's Jenny Everywhere story over the holidays. My first actual comics story, it is. Hopefully will get it close to completion before school starts back up. Cock poised over table, waiting for the drop.

The Photographer in Blowup

07:44 / 19.12.02

So we're supposed to stop talking and finally start writing comics? No rules, no manifestos? Just how we want them to be?

Okay, i'm writing something at the moment

When i'm done with it, i'll show it, Sleazenation

By the by, Mister Six, what comics have you written? And this isn't sarcasm, i would really like to know.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:49 / 19.12.02

Jenny Everywhere in 'Name's Not Down'.

An everyday tale of seaside folk, written by yrs truly and drawn by Nelson Evergreen. There's actually another one on the way (10 pages, 6 of which have been drawn already, happier with the script on that one)... soon.

The Photographer in Blowup

11:22 / 19.12.02

Wow, that stuff is pretty good, actually.

Let me know when you finish that 10-page story.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

12:31 / 19.12.02

LM,

I've not been published if that's what you mean, but I've written one dystopian sci-fi comic of 22 pages called 'Dead Babies' which is all done and even on disc.

I've got four short ones, 'My Dad and the TalkingDog' (actually, that WAS published in an indy called CombOver which you can buy in Newbury Comics Cambridge from time to time and premiered at the MOCCA NYC event, which was cool), 'Effin Kids', about kids who get super powers and wreck a city with them, 'Mint' about mercenary E-Bay, and 'Dad Hair' about getting a hair transplant from my Dad (all of which I plan to reelease as one indy called 'Bean' if I get some free time to reletter it).

I've been at work on a rather long comic that is my big old epic called the 'Phantasmatons,' about making the world of imagination real to free us from our current reality.

So... that's what I've got so far.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

12:47 / 19.12.02

flyboy,

Name's not down is fantastic! The line quality is brilliant and it has very fluid motion. I hope it gets good distribution on its release because it deserves it!

13:11 / 19.12.02

Can we flop out our respective comics cocks even if we don't have any art to speak of but we're working like a fiend to try to get a penciller? The story's there but...

Matthew Fluxington

14:06 / 19.12.02

I think Name's Not Down came out very, very well - Nelson's artwork is really amazing, and if there's not big things in this guy's future, then the world is just fucked. The story is very slim - I can't really get a good sense of Flyboy as a writer, and since I know him, I find that disappointing because I have a good sense of his potential. In some way, I get the feeling that the script Flyboy put together was something of a wishlist of things that he wanted to see Nelson draw for him, which is cool. I think he made a great use of Nelson's talents, and made the short more of a showcase for Nelson's talents rather than his own. Very promising. I want more.

Regrettable Juvenilia

16:48 / 19.12.02

Thanks for the kind words, peeps.

Flux is pretty bang on the mark about the way NND was written - it's the first comic strip I've done, and it came out very much as a series of tableaus with the story sort of squished in between them. The extra couple of pages in 'Damn Fine Hostile Takeover (Part 1)' (and the lessons learned from the first one) make quite a bit of difference - funnily enough Nelson and I were just chatting about this the other day, and we both agree that there's more of a sense of narrative with this one - it's got more room to breathe. The characters also become a bit more define. Anyway, it should be in the bag before too long, and then there might be a bit of a wait for the next one (Nelson has to feed the fish, I have writer's block), which people will hate cos part 1 sort of ends on a cliffhanger...

11:10 / 20.12.02

This is the first time I've had a chance to read 'Names Not Down' all the way through.. fantastic stuff, obviously! "Club Twart" indeed..

Particularly love that last page, which I've just taken the liberty of setting as my desktop wallpaper.. that dude in the white suit on the left hand side deserves his own comic! He looks like a cross between Chairman Maominstoat and Disco Stu! And those big balloons on the ceiling are very Paul Pope methinks ..er, in a good way, rather than a plagiarism way..

Thankfully I can't show you any of my comics, cos they're not scanned, but I'm approx 6 pages away from finishing Burn Prom Queen # 2, featuring three 7 page stories which don't make an enormous amount of sense, but do feature lots of my favourite things.. like ruined cityscapes and rock n' roll and explosions and sinister Lovecraftian overtones..

Mister Six, whom all the girls

14:04 / 20.12.02

My favorite things.

So how are we going to share in the instances where we canna get them online?

04:51 / 21.12.02

I guess you have to find a way to get them online. And I'd like to see some of that Burn Prom Queen! I'm working on several comic projects now and hopefully I'll have a lot of stuf to show off early next year.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

03:34 / 24.12.02

Well, my weekly web comic is now a bouncing four weeks (a whole month!) old. Actually it's not until next week's strip (which I just finished coloring today) that I really freed myself up stylistically and crow quill wise. Not to mention, I started ruling out the lettering. I have nowhere near the sense of line depth that is displayed in the delicious NND. I just like drawing the goofy pictures and, you know, telling drawed stories in addition to the wrote ones I do.

Fire away.

I haven't the foggiest notion how to write links in these things. I tried but it doesn't seem to work. Here's the address. My humblest apologies.

http://www.benjaminbirdie.com/genrecity.html

04:57 / 24.12.02

I think it's pretty cool and it's got lots of style but it ended (even though I know it didn't really end) right when it was getting good. This one page a week thing is gonna kill me!!!

Um, at least you've got me interested.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

09:34 / 24.12.02

Well, there's much much more going on (and set to go on). Believe me, though, the one page a week thing is killing me just as much. I've got this story planned out to at least hundred pages, which is TWO YEARS! At least! I did take the wait into consideration, though, and you can find some other fun stuff to tide you over in the site proper (just lop off the "genrecity.html"). Thanks for the input!

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

11:18 / 24.12.02

Okay. I had a revelation, like the Damascus thing. And this is just for you ImpulsiveLad. Two installments of Genre City a week and I'm going to cut the fiction down to one piece every two weeks. Actually, it's for the both of us. All my Genre City stories are just itching at me to get out. It's time I shifted my focus towards them. I figure it's the right move for everyone.

Thoughts?

21:28 / 24.12.02

YAY!

14:56 / 03.01.03

Jenny Everywhere in "My Bloody Valentine"

Deftly scripted by Sax, with... competent art by myself. This has been posted before and evryone was very nice about my contribution, but I well know that there are many things I need to improve. A certain stiffness to the flow, fussy inking, some crappy facial expressions.... get stuck in, basically.

Slab Marlowe in "The Big Slab"

Big rocks with mouths in noir pastiche. "All my own work", as they say. Not too displeased with this one, although I think it could have done with another page for pacing's sake. The inking gets progressively worse as you go through it, cos i was rushing. (unnecessarily, as it turned out)

Finally, there's "A Day in the Life of a Slab", 28 pages of scatalogical stylistic "experiment". Download the zip file from my yahoo group, if you can be bothered. I also self-published this story a couple of months ago, pm or email me if you'd like a copy.

And that's it. so far.

15:49 / 03.01.03

I don't have much to add about "Name's Not Down"; my admiration for Nelson's work remains undimmed, and Flux nailed about the only valid criticism I could come up with.

I thought "Genre City" was pretty stylish, with a lot of effective details. The taxi ride into the city as introduction for the reader worked well. The second page is cool in a record cover sort of way - the design-y flatness of the style works well here. There's a satisfying solidity and angularity to the character design (particularly the mobster or whatever with the big hair), but sometimes it seems out of step with the comparitive looseness of the way you show the action. It's also thrown off sometimes by small details that would be pretty easy to remedy, like the cab driver's eyes when he's seen in profile, especially on page five. I had a little trouble reading some things, for instance when the bald mobster slaps the cigarette out of the other guy's mouth, the movement was pretty awkward. On page 3 I can't tell who the old guy is supposed to be. This in itself is not a major problem, I know there's a lot more stuff to come (this is why not knowing why the bald mobster is quitting doesn't bother me) but I could't actually tell where he was supposed to be in relation to the rest of the action. Story-wise, I enjoyed the dialogue during the interrogation, and am generally intrigued. Liked the lettering too - little things like the "y'know" on page 1.

15:54 / 03.01.03

oh, and by the way, if any uk 'lithers have stuff they'd like to post but no scanner I'd be happy to do that for you if you send me copies of your stuff.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

19:28 / 03.01.03

MC, huge thanks for the criticism. GC is definitely an ongoing learning process for me and feedback is crucial. Sow Cow is actually supposed to just be throwing the gun, if we''re talking about the page I think we are. In the next panel, I know it's hard to tell, but Triple Lutz is exhaling of his own volition (you can see his fingernails wayyy down at the bottom).

Movement is definitely something I've been working on. I've got definitive ideas for where things ought to go and the way I want to tell the story, but my hand needs to catch up to my ambitions. For example, I think Page 7 worked well from a storytelling/movement standpoint, but I've got a lot to work on in terms of fluidity. Right now I'm trying to work within those limitations. I figure by the end of Plan B the constant work flow will have managed to remedy the situation.

I'm really glad you mentioned solidity, as that's one thing I'm always jealous of. I'll never be able to draw, say, a total gorgeous 3-d Quitely-esque pose, so I always worry that my characers will come off as slight. The inking definitely helps. It was one thing I noticed in Slab Marlowe. Those were some solid looking rocks.

Oh, and we'll be learning who the old guy is soon enough.

Check out Tuesday's strip. It starts a slightly new leg of the story (rotating characters, one big plot) and it's, like, my most favorite thing I've ever done.

Slab Marlowe is really fantastic. Although you mentioned it was rushed, I could hardly tell. Really great line-work. Brush, I'm guessing? And funny. Rocks spitting cigarettes into the mouths of snakes is always a fantastic idea. I'm going to go download the other Slab story post-haste.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

19:39 / 03.01.03

I read it, also equally great. I've always loved that, er, style? Of dialogue. If you cleaned up the places where the boxes run over the back ground (if that's at all possible), I'd say it was damn near perfect.

12:27 / 05.01.03

"My Bloody Valentine" is bloody great!

Um, as in, it looks rilly cool and made me laugh five times.. which is pretty good going..

08:39 / 06.01.03

Thanks a lot guys!

Remember that credit for your five chuckles must go to Sax.

Benjamin - I was thinking the same about page 7 (of GC), it does carry the story well. Moriarty said something to me after seeing the long slab story about how he was interested in the idea of abandoning rendering to concentrate on plot and pacing. Obviously that's not what you're doing there but I guess working with a fairly restricted set of images brings the other aspects into focus.

Also I have to admit that I didn't realise "The Sow Cow" and "Triple Lutz" were the characters' names! Think that says more about me than you. Looking forward to tomorrow's installment.

"Slab Marlowe" was indeed done with a brush, this is something I'm still getting to grips with (haven't started using a full range of brush sizes yet), but i find it a very satisfying process. I know what you mean about the overlaps in the other slab story; if I'd used Photoshop or something nice to make the comic it wouldn't be a problem, but the whole thing was done at work where my only tools are Paint and Word, hence the clunkiness. I left it as it was because to me at least the mode of its production was quite important.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

10:22 / 06.01.03

I wouldn't say I'm abandoning rendering altogether (and neither did you, of course) but it's definitely helped to put it a bit lower on the list of priorities in favor of storytelling. And thankfully my style allows me to get a way with it a bit more than I should.

As far as names go, I was actually toying with some Andersonian (and now I suppose Almadovarian) on screen character names just to clear things up as opposed to oblique in panel references (i.e. I figured Sow Cow's hands motioning towards himself and Triple would read better than they probably do).