Authorship killed The Family Circus For Me
I will never look at Snoopy the same way again. Or Calvin and Hobbes, or even Garfield. They have all been ruined for me. Not ruined, but rather changed. Disfigured, you could say.
Art
The art of webcomics
Bunch of Great Videos Having Something To Do With Comics
NEW**Interview with Jeff Smith, creator of Bone.
- Interview with Dan Clowes, creator of Eightball.
- Two videos from Kris Straub on drawing Starslip Crisis: short one and long one.
- Evan Dorkin’s pilot for the never made cartoon series Welcome to Eltingville. This gets fandom so right it’s funny and uncomfortable to watch!
- Alison Bechdel working on a graphic novel. Bechdel uses a digital camera on herself to create references for what she draws. Interesting technique. (There’s a link to a better version of the video in the comments)
- Adam Hughes sketching at a convention.
- Raina Telegemeier, creator of Smile, is going to be huge this year when her graphic novel adaptation of the young-adult prose novel The Babysitter’s Club comes out. You can catch an interview with her from March here.
- A documentary on Chris Ware from last year. (There are features on other comic artists here but they may all be in french – not sure. Okay at least the one with Art Spiegelman is in english.) More recently Tom Spurgeon caught this Chicago tv station’s report on Chris Ware. (The link to the video is on that page – there’s a 10 second commercial on the video before the report starts)
- And nothing to do with comics is the trailer for PAC MAN: The Movie. Very funny.
News-O-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong-The-Witch-Is-Dead
I liked Tweep, Philip likes A Softer World and Gilead likes No Room For Bushido.
Drawn! blog points out that Dylan Meconis has posted drawings of the entire Battlestar Galatica cast, drawn as if they were on The Simpsons. And coincidently Fleen just wrote about Meconis’ latest webcomic Family Man.
Watch Adam Hughes draw. Nice video.
New webcomics collective emerging: Gangbunch which includes Tauhid and several others.
Notwebcomics dept: a video of Kochalka’s Monkey Vs Robot.
Joey + Joe Podcast
I finally got a chance to listen to the podcast of Joey Manley and Joe Zabel chatting about webcomics. A little bit about Zabel’s Introvert/Extrovert article, serialization, pacing and different genres of stories. Interesting stuff (about 30 minutes long) from two knowledgeable, opinionated guys.
Tuesday Round Up of Webcomic News
Tym Godek has a review of the journal webcomic Surely Functional by Greg Kornbluh & Ramsey Ford.
T Campbell needs you to take the Clickwheel Users Survey. Clickwheel is the iPod comics service.
Paul Gadzikowski used to do a journal comic – who knew?
Jon Rosenberg notes that the horrible murder-cannibal guy that just got arrested . Nobody tell Jack Thompson, okay?
A little late but the Flight blog has some photos from the recent APE convention in SF, CA.
Computer Arts has a nice tutorial on using Adobe Illustrator CS2 to ink and color a traditional comic-style drawing. (They’ve actually got a lot of tutorials on the site.)
Just indulge me for a minute here: a new Jeremy t-shirt! I’ve always loved Jon Morris’ little Frankenstein-like character.
Chris Ware’s comic work for the New York Times magazine is over – check it all out here.
Friday News Follies
In webcomics, The Pulse continues to give webcomics a platform to pitch themselves. The latest plugs are for Tom Floyd’s Captain Spectre, and Scott Christian Sava’s The Dreamland Chronicles. I don’t have Pulse editor Jen Contino’s contact info handy (but I’m sure it’s available at the site somewhere) but basically these are plugs written by the webcomic creators and I understand if you’re interested all you have to do is contact her. This seems like a great way to get some free advertising.
In newspaper comics are all basically webcomic now, we get differing reactions from big-shot newspaper cartoonists to the "sabbatical" prompted by the recent leave of absence by Boondocks cartoonist Aaron MacGruder.
Also of interest, Jonathan Barli is trying to save and scan historical newspaper comic strips. A lot of good stuff at this site already.
In good advice from amazing artists, Steve Hamaker posted a step-by-step guide to coloring Bone (part 1 and part 2). Also if you missed it, here’s an interview with Jeff Smith, the creator of Bone (links from the Drawn! blog).
In life lessons, Keri Smith spells out how to feel miserable as an artist. I’ve unfortunately done most of those myself at one time or another.
Sort of related: This is cute? inspiring? Sort of both I guess: The Best Advice I Ever Got, by Penelope Dullaghan.
And last, in get your nerd on, shades of the Toonbot! Jared Tarbell is a programmer-artist who write computer programs to create graphic images. He posts his amazingly complex art at his website titled, appropriately enough, Complexification.
I believe all code is dead unless executing within the computer. For this reason I distribute the source code of my programs in modifiable form to encourage life and spread love. Opening one’s code is a beneficial practice for both the programmer and the community. I appreciate modifications and extensions of these algorithms.
Monday News Update
Is anyone else really happy that Sluggy Freelance has finally moved on from its Oceans Unmoving storyline? That's the first time Pete Abrams has completely lost me with the strip. I kind of like the new shockjock characters too.
MILESTONES
- I missed this, but Stephen Crowley has ended his Loxie & Zoot series about a nudist colony. For fans of these characters though, there'll be another series, The Bare Pit, featuring some of the same characters. Crowley is also the creator of the superheroics series, Magellan.
- Tom Spurgeon notes that Jeff Mallett's Frazz is nearing the five year anniversary mark. Frazz is reportedly in about 150 newspapers.
MARKETING: Martiza Campos notes the recent First and Last post on CRFH!!! on her livejournal. One other interesting tidbit from that thread is Campos note that she picked up a 1000 extra readers from her most recent Keenspot box. Even for a relatively big strip like CRFH!!! I think that's a fairly large number and it shows how powerful the Keenspot network is.
CRAFT: H.S. Kim, creator of Kung Fool X and Kill Harry has a page full of art criticism and some video tutorials on drawing – definitely worth checking out.
NOT WEBCOMICS: Tom Truszkowski of Station V3 is talking about record-collecting and drew some sketches of his characters with 45s.
ARTnatomy: Great Art Tool
This flash-driven site is designed to help explore human anatomy from a fine arts perspective. Very useful looking from a a quick run-through of it.
Continue Reading
Livin’ For the Webcomics
Yirmumah tackles the most important issue facing America today: the next American Idol. (I’m rooting for crazy grey-haired guy too)
And apparently, the nasty feud between west coast toonist Boxjam and east coast toonist Case Yorke has ended. Peace out y’all!
And lots more webcomics news after the jump!
Working With A Wacom
K. Thor Jensen has a slight change of heart towards the WACOM and digitally-drawn art. In the comments there some discussion of what’s the best software to use with a WACOM. I’ve only used Photoshop with it myself so far – anyone want to make a pitch for why I (or anyone) should spend the money for another piece of software? Continue Reading
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