Ludovic Debeurme doesn’t have a script or an idea of the full storyline before he starts to work on a book. Rather, he starts with visuals and characters and allows for digressions.This way of work helps him to make connections that he otherwise wouldn’t have made.
If you read last week’s post, you know that my goal for THIS week was to have created a website, connected it to my domain, and made a game plan for content. Haha. Well I can’t say I didn’t learn anything…
We’re Matt and Jessica’s interns, 21-year-old tenderfoots, and we’re embarking on a summer-long study of social media for cartoonists… not just how to use it, but how to use it effectively to launch or boost a career. Each week we’ll share our progress, our theories, and our discoveries in navigating the vast sea of this World Wide Web.
Hilary Allison came in one day beaming because she’d cracked the Nib-Holding Industrial Complex’s iron grip on her student budget, and I encouraged her to throw a post together about it for you, dear readers. This is what she came up with.
One of the most frustrating things about comics is the incredible slowness with which they are produced, as compared to the swiftness with which they are read. So for quite a while, Matt and I have been admiring (and envious) of those who can draw comics quickly directly in ink, skipping the laborious penciling process, and in some cases even skipping thumbnailing!
In December of 2006, I had a very interesting email exchange with Jim Valentino, one of the original partners, who served as the company’s publisher from 1999 to 2004. Valentino is the owner of Shadowline, one of the primary Image studios, the author of ShadowHawk, and one of the original Image partners. He has deep roots in self-publishing and independent comics that have clearly influenced his attitude towards publishing at Image.
Recently, I was a guest at a comics teaching conference in Finland. As far as I know, it was the very first of its kind; attendees and presenters all taught not reading comics, but making comics. I’ve never had the chance before to compare teaching methods and philosophies with such a diverse (and large) group of peers. It was eye-opening (and I wish there had been some such conference before I finished DWWP!). It was so full of valuable information, in fact, that I’m going to divide this report into several parts, and run the next parts over the next week.
This ambitious activity combines life drawing with cartooning by having students draw live models directly into narrative scenarios in sequeqnce on a single sheet of paper. A major goal is to see how the spontaneity and expressiveness of life drawing might be harnessed into the service of comics—comics teachers observe all the time students who don’t have the skills yet to draw from their head, or who are too caught up in a particular drawing style, yet when they draw a human figure from observation they can produce lovely, confident drawings.
I feel very strongly that I have a responsibility, in fact, to young artists trying to break into the business. So, when I am putting together an anthology, I now make a point of including someone whose work hasn’t been published before (or, at least, not in any kind of significant way). It’s a karma thing.
Comics are a character-driven medium, so if a character looks and acts exactly the same as all the others—superheroes wearing spandex, alternative types exuding negativity—then something is gravely wrong. Wrong and boring. As someone else put it: “we need to do violence to the cliché, create havoc with the tried, the tired and tested”.
