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Underground > Comic Books >

Simplicity

17:31 / 29.05.02

When asked what he would change in his career if he could change any one thing, Wally Wood replied "I would draw like Charles Schulz."

The question of simplicity in drawing was brought up in another thread long ago. Essentially, I felt that a page I had worked on for 8 hours wouldn't necessarily be any better then a page drawn by a friend with little to no interest in cartooning that is drawn in less than 15 minutes. In fact, more often than not such work was far better than anything I could cook up.

There's something about the equality, the democracy of cartooning. The materials are cheap, and it isn't necessarily beneficial to be a good representative artist, dependent on what type of comic you're drawing. Scott McCloud touches on this in understanding Comics.

As I become more immersed into the comics field, I gain a better understanding of the quality of such comics as Barnaby and Peanuts, strips which have very little in the way of detail but convey exactly what they need to in as direct a way as possible. Even almost unintelligible messes like the cartoon work of James Thurber have an energy and humour that can't be matched by many of the over-rendered darlings of the comics scene.

The reason I'm even thinking about this again is because there's a school of cartooning that takes this further, and I was reminded of this by looking at the pvponline strip. Here you'll find an explanation for how Scott Kurtz draws his comic. It's pretty obvious from looking at the strip, but he admits to using templates of the character to trace over, thereby giving the strip a uniform look. Other examples of strips that always or occasionally rely very little on actual original drawing could include This Modern World, Life is Hell, Red Meat, and potentially Garfield, Nancy, and various other webcomics. The Rubber Stamp method.

I find many of these strips to be quite funny, but I also feel a certain sense of resentment, like they aren't trying hard enough or actually using the medium to their advantage. I'm trying to get over this, just like I got over James Thurber's absolute lack of any drawing (but not cartooning) ability. Anyway, I thought it might make for good fodder for discussion. What's your take on the complexities (or lack thereof) of cartooning?

19:23 / 29.05.02

Here's one of my olderComic Strips that came out some 5 years ago... I eventually changed the format using photoshop generated backgrounds to enhance a simplified brushwork similar to this panel here...

it's a constant balancing act... I've grown very fond of using Photoshop to create more "impressionist" backgrounds, allowing for the stylised porrail of charactors...

Yet there's something to be said for the naturalism of Frank Quietly, Jim Lee, etc... (if they can be called naturalist to beging with)

Murray Hamhandler

02:29 / 30.05.02

I think that modes of expression become more universal with higher levels of abstraction. Qualities of specificity, however, are lost with higher levels of abstraction. I don't think that simplicity is necessarily more or less right than complexity insofar as cartooning is concerned. It depends upon the individual artist's intent, skill, etc. It takes a lot of skill to translate what you want to say w/only a few simple lines like Charles Schulz could. He was, IMO, successful in his intent. It takes very little artistic skill to put together a strip like Red Meat, I'm sure. I think that it is successful, though, in its intent. The difference between these two examples, I think, is that w/skill comes the ability to add layers to your work. Peanuts works on many more levels than Red Meat does. The former will be remembered as a work that exceeded its explicit form, whereas the latter will be remembered (if at all) as a funny gag strip w/absolutely no pretentions towards anything beyond that.

Don't know if that was exactly what you were getting at, but there's my rambling and incoherent response.

02:30 / 30.05.02

I'm currently fascinated by the simplicity of Japanese 'mokomoko' I think the term is. Hello kitty and her obsessively cute and simple kin. Each character has its own story and friends/world it interacts with. Instead of a 'strip' the various stories are played out over merchanise. I'm hopelessly addicted at the moment, especially to these little chessnut people that are so eager to be eaten that they bust out of their carry bags. It's all a bit disturbing really.

The stories are simple, very simple. But the permutations seem endless...

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

02:36 / 30.05.02

Quietly, yes, Lee, no. Jim Lee's work never worked with me, because it was dealing with hyper-fetishized human figures smothed in hatching that covered up just how sloppy the art was. And the man can't tell a story to save his life. A GREAT comics artist is able to lead your eye along the page by how they lay out the figures in the page, the action propells you forward.

Carmine Infantino was able to do it, even though I didn't care for his figurework either (too angluar). Kirby was the master...you literally can't not read the page, and it flows in such a way that reading a Kirby page is effortless. I gave up reading the X-Men under Lee and Portacio when I couldn't figure out who the women were (they all had the same face) and I couldn't tell if I had read the entire page or not.

Over-inking is the death of a comic, but works for a sigular art peice very well. Lee made GREAT posters and covers, but his stories just fall apart upon reading.

Another example, Brian Bolland is thought of as have incredibly complex and detailed drawings, but if you look at the actual drawing themselves, they are simple...the inking is done in a complex way, but each panel has a single idea, and usually one or two characters so he can concentrate on them. Perez is another artist thought of as being very detail oriented, but his figures are deceptively simple.

09:00 / 30.05.02

off topic:
I still love that pic PATricky.
All I need is the glowing letters and the purple runners and that is[i]so me[/i].

09:58 / 30.05.02

actually, some of my favourite artists are the ones that have reduced everything down to really simple lines. andi watson is a good example. since he simplified his artwork, he manages to impress far more range of emotions. a good example is a phone conversation in dumped which you could get the gist of just by looking at the expressions. he's brilliant at it, to the point of making me envious, because he makes it look so easy.

another good example of this would be jaime hernandez (who tends to look much better in b/w than in colour, i think).

11:45 / 30.05.02

I quite agree with this from Arthur: "I don't think that simplicity is necessarily more or less right than complexity insofar as cartooning is concerned"

I don't think detail, or the comparitive nautralism of Quitely (say) contradicts the general idea that cartooning is a (more or less, depending on who's doing it) sophisticated shorthand for reality. This is as true of Quitely, or Philip Bond, or Kirby, as Schulz or whatever. The first three mentioned here, as well as having an understanding of anatomy, pictorial space and all that business, are all master stylists. That thing about how everyone has the same mouths/ chins in Quitely's work - as I see it that's one of his shorthands, a way he knows he can construct a face that will be understood by the reader as such.
Effective simplicity arises from a condensing of form and content, rather than laziness. The chosen motifs may be less time consuming to produce, but immense time and effort have been invested to arrive at that motif in the first place.

All of the artists mentioned as examples of complexity illustrate other peoples' scripts (OK there are exception in Kirby's case.. oh, and Perez.. never mind), the examples of simplicity are more like "auteurs", producing the whole thing themselves. Setting up a distinction between "pure" and "illustrative" cartooning is a whole other thread, but in relation to this topic, do people think that the method of simplifying things almost to the status of icons is more suited to cartoonists who do it all? Something about the relationship between content, form and design... "Jimmy Corrigan" could not have been scripted and drawn by two separate individuals.
Sorry, I'll have to pin down what I'm trying to say and come back later.

14:13 / 02.06.02

"It's the same reason why I don't like George Perez's stuff. There was a brief period when I did, but...it looks like he sits down and spends 8 hours making a beautiful page, then another 45 minutes making it ugly. "Fuck, I forgot to render Wanda's teeth! I'd better put in every fucking tooth! And in this close-up, you can see the veins in her eye!""

-Erik Larsen

There are still a great many detail oriented comic artists that I love, like Cainiff. I just find it really interesting how just about anyone can make a good cartoon. That may sound like sacrilige, especially to the crowd over at Shaneglines, but while I can appreciate technical skill immensely, I can also appreciate the loose, manic energy of something sloppy as well. Thurber and some Manga, for instance. Anyone with back issues of the Comics Journal will no doubt remember the big Kochalka/Woodring debate on art vs. craft.

I'm divided, because I draw in both camps. My cartoon diaries are drwan very quickly, with little attention to detail so as to allow me to play with the form, in panel composition and subtle gestures. My other comic work is so much more slick, but I lose alot of the energy and fun that goes into the the diaries. In a contest between the two, my heart would choose the diaries, and my head would choose the rest.

Related to the mini-comics discussion, the zine crowd really digs the diaries, and they all pass over the other stuff. Most of the zine crowd don't read regular comics, or don't read comics at all, so I'm wondering if a high level of craftsmanship to the detriment of energy of modern comics is part of what puts people off (there are, of course, people who have found the balance between craft and that energy).