Creating two tonalities that you can then use as blending layer to make work in color
Its not that my technique is magic, but like, so often students will have read piles of manga (and can recite the entire plot off the top of their heads) but have never sat down and looked at how it is working on a technical level. So they can draw the figures just fine, but they often end up flat. And they are very weak at filling the negative space, so I show them how to throw on a pattern in the background.
I love Understanding Comics, but I will never be able to understand who he intended the ideal reader of the book to be. It is SO heady. I use it as a lecture but have to take it apart bit by bit. Mostly to kill time until the studentās comics are up and running. They learn so much more by just DOING rather than discussing how they might do. It also teaches them (somewhat) that the decent thing that exists in front of us is a million times better than the perfect thing that only exists inside their heads.
people like me who read books but were never into comics as a kid then got interested in āgraphic novelsā and didnāt have an intuitive understanding of the form reading Archie or Batman would have provided
Yeah and one of the tough parts of the book is that makes A LOT more sense when it was made in the mid 90s. But for kids in my class and of course ME, there never was a time when we werenāt reading comics. I like to think of it as another language really. And like all languages, I picked it up from having it spoken to me .
Yeah fair enough. Itās a mix of very in the weeds theory and then long bits of chit chat, if Iām remembering it right. Figure Drawing For All Itās Worth has some chunky prose in it but itās easier to jump around to the bits you need for reference.
Hell yeah! When explaining learning how to draw to friends I emphasize that itās mostly self guided through doing the work. Iāve learned best when I just grab something off the shelf that has an example of what Iām trying to do. I figured art teachers probably see it that way too.
On the subject of comics about comics, Iām not sure if Akira Toriyamaās Hetappi manga course has ever been translated to English, but it taught me everything I ever needed to know at age 11. I think itās the only guide Iāll ever need. I still mentally refer to it and feel bad whenever I break its rules, haha.
Never knew this existed, but also found it in English and it aināt bad
Some of the lessons would be a kill shot on my Manga loving students. I am very happy that my upper level class is now bringing their favorite books into class to crib notes from.
Going to be turning some of these into readings for next semester. Just so that the student can see that many of the things I say about the process arenāt just MY isolated point of view
So, I just finished writing a novel that Iāve been serializing on my personal blog and patreon over a year now.
Itās a little hard to describe, itās in an uncomfortable position between fantasy and science fiction, and can be seen as kind of an isekai (Iām resistant to that label, but here we are). An average person spends thousands of years on a strange planet, pursuing different lives and different identities.
Itās long (115,701 words if Patreonās word count is to be believed (Around 1.7 Neuromancers in length), itās weird, and it has explicit scenes of sex and violence. It is very much not very everyone. I would also say that it I think the back half is much better than the first half. Iām going to be revising the whole thing to make it more cohesive (though Iām going to need to spend at least a week away from it).
Anyway, if you have interest itās posted on both my blog (google sign-in required) and patreon completely for free. Again it is ESRB rated as Adults Only, so be prepared.
I canāt say if itās great, but I donāt hate it. Yet. Give it a month.
Hereās a final project I made for my Art History and Culture class. Really fun to make. Here are some words to set the scene:
While rummaging through the trash heaps of Central Indiana, archaeologists discovered a death mask today that brings a new understanding to what life was like circa 2025. This person was buried surrounded by plastic angels in a cardboard box, wrapped in aluminum foil and, under that layer, a smiling shopping bag with each mustache hair lovingly placed with metal wiring. The death mask is one of many artworks emblematic of the end of the Enlightened period signified by a brutal shift towards authoritarianism in the United States, its significant negative impacts on the common people, and the magical thinking that could be common at the time.
I made a zine about the poetics of video games with 3 super awesome guest contributors. Itās been a long while since I put one out & I forgot how gratifying it was to put out a periodical I made with my own hands (& a computer) entirely on my own terms.
(Download a free copy if you feel so inclined at followthesea.net ) <3
It aināt much but I got Dijkstraās algorithm working in Unity for grid based path finding. Took me a solid 20+ hours to figure it out but I got there in the end.
