xBlog: The original visual thinking weblog » Comics

Old cartoonist, new tricks

Matt Morasky — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:30:10 +0000

For those of us who have enjoyed Lloyd Dangle’s disaffected “Troubletown” strip over the years, the next step in his career is rather interesting — and reflective of the growing popularity of visual recording.

Oops, looks like I gave away the ending… also, some slightly NSFW alt-weeklyish writing appears at the beginning of this Pacific Northwest Inlander article.

Building character(s)

W. Scott Matthews — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:52:05 +0000

At XPLANE|STL’s public Visual Thinking School on April 7 we thought the time had come for a little character building. Specifically, cartoon characters and how just a few pen strokes can convey emotion and tell a story. We were inspired by Ivan Brunetti’s YouTube trailer for his new book “Cartooning,” below, and decided to do a few related drawing exercises.

WARM-UP

Everyone took dry erase marker in hand as I read through the following sequence, one line at a time. Remember — no one knew what was coming next.

A little girl has just woken up, dizzy, cold and crying.
She had a nightmare that she threw up…
all over her cat…
and the cat died…
and now the cat’s ghost haunts her.

What can I say, I like dark humor.

For the main exercise we took Brunetti’s video exercise linked above and changed it slightly. We had 14 people so we paired up into seven groups to create a few Wordless Stories.

PART 1 (30 minutes)

Think of a character, any character.
Now think of a location, some place or setting for your character.
Take four index cards and draw a four-panel strip of your character without using words.
Draw the character in the location that you chose facing a challenge.

PART 2 (20 minutes)

Go back to the beginning of the sequence and draw 2 more panels to make the motivation behind the character’s action more clear.
Then go to the end of the sequence and draw 2 more panels to show some consequence of the action depicted.

One of the characters.

A full panel. Click to view larger.

Rapid creation (and beer — VTS runs 4-6 p.m.) always leads to very lively and unexpected results. Visit our VTS Flickr Set to see more examples.

FINALE

After going round the room and reviewing each other’s work, we sat back and enjoyed Matthias Hoegg’s beautiful animated short, “Thursday.” We marveled at how much story and emotion he was able to create without using a single word.

Bored? Try Doodling To Keep The Brain On Task

Bill Keaggy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:40:27 +0000

“>

Mister Retro: Permanent Press Image Filter

Bill Keaggy — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:47:44 +0000

“Vintage offset printing and ink effects for any design, photograph, type treatment or image in Photoshop.

Realizing that printing technology has left printed work without the texture, soul, or the spirit of vintage printing, Mister Retro created Permanent Press!

Take any design, photograph, type treatment, or image and transport to another time and aesthetic with our powerful and easy-to-use plug-in GUI interface. We spent thousands of hours developing this one of a kind plug-in sure to bring your work to the next level.”

Halftone How-To

Bill Keaggy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:37:45 +0000

Dan Zettwoch: “I reckon I’m a little bit too young to have used actual store bought halftone paper, like the legendary (and out of business) Zip-a-Tone, which was clear plastic adhesive sheets with black dots printed on them in a variety of spacings. For a while though, I made my own “poor man’s Zip-a-Tone” out of laserjet transparencies and paste them right on my inked art with glue-sticks (see above). This was punk but messy and time-consuming to I moved to “thinking man’s Zip-a-Tone” which involves a computer (“rich man’s Zip-a-Tone?”). Here’s my process…”

Dan Zettwoch: IN MY WHEELHOUSE

Bill Keaggy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:30:20 +0000

“If there was ever an illustration with my name on it, it was this one I did for the Riverfront Times talking about this upcoming event at the St. Louis History Museum. James Eads + Ulysses S. Grant + Civil War Ironclad battleships = LET’S GO!!!”

Grassroots Comics

Bill Keaggy — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:10:36 +0000

“World Comics is a non-profit organization in Finland and India that promotes the use of local comics as a means for social change. Grassroots Comics: A Development Communication Tool (PDF) is a free, downloadable manual for other non-governmental organizations about developing comics with community activists for use in their campaigns. See examples of grassroots comics in India and Africa, as well as videos and posters from grassroots comics workshops.”

Navigating Comics

Bill Keaggy — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:14:56 +0000

“I’m very happy to announce that I have a new essay online: Navigating Comics: Reading Strategies of Page Layouts. This paper reports the findings of an experiment I conducted looking at how people navigate through comic pages. The big finding: people don’t just mimic text going left-to-right and down.”

Fold-Ins, Past and Present

Bill Keaggy — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:29:15 +0000

“Al Jaffee’s fold-ins for Mad magazine, from the 1960s to the present, in interactive form.” And here’s the full article: A Veteran Mad Man Remains in the Fold.

markerbored

Bill Keaggy — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:55:23 +0000

“We’re roommates. We make call-and-response baroque scenes on a dry erase board. They usually have nerdy characters from nerdy things in them. We’re Pat Barrett and Todd McArthur.” (Thanks Drawn!)