A Cybernetic Exchange

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 28

2011-08-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 28

With all of the teaching and crazy fluxuating schedules of the summer, I've been pretty impressed that I've been able to colour these pages as fast as I have. Granted, this last scene has been light on the painted background, but the common goal of almost all comic artists is to get faster at our craft and I'd like to think I'm starting to reach a more reasonable pace.

But seriously, every comic artist always feels like they work too slow. An Indie artist can easily take an entire year to finish 100 pages, and that's on the high end. This year I will finished a little over 50. It's a little depressing when I think about it, so I try not to think about it too hard.

I recently learned how to play Dominion. I'm a huge fan of turn based strategy games, and in particular board games, so Dominion is right up my alley. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I haven't played enough to really understand the nuances of it's strategy like when I play Settlers of Catan. I love competitive Settlers, I've played in a few tournaments and they've been highly enjoyable.

Now that I'm finished nerding up the place, I hope you enjoy this week's page. Starting in September, I'm going to start making some desktop wallpapers and other incentives in exchange for small micro donations. I know that donations often come off as a little trite, but every little bit helps! If I can cut down on some of my teaching hours, I could easily update more, and I thought donations would be a nice way to say, "Hey, if you can or want to help out, awesome. If not, don't worry, the comic is still here for you to enjoy and I still appreciate you reading". Well, because that's how I honestly feel :D

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 26

2011-08-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 26

I don't know how I managed to get all my commissions done, plus teaching, plus this page. I have been sitting in front of this computer for literally 4 days straight. I took a bit of time last night to go for a walk and make some super delicious pizza, but that was mostly for sanity.

I wanted to also announce that Cloudscape Comics has released two new ebooks, Exploded View and 21 Journeys. Each ebook sold gives a portion to every contributing artist, so this is a great, inexpensive way to support Wei and myself. If you get a chance, check them out. I'll probably make a separate blog post so that I can directly link to the download, but that will have to come a little bit later after some other pressing business!

Thanks for reading!

Cloudscape eBooks

2011-08-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Cloudscape Goes Digital! « Cloudscape Comics

We have new eBooks from Cloudscape Comics. Wei and I have stories in both 21 Journeys and Exploded View.

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 22

2011-07-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 22

I'm actually kind of excited. For the first time in a long while I'm really ahead on this comic. Making these pages is a hard process, from the script to thumbnails to pencils to inks and finally painting and lettering. Sometimes I feel like I'll just be slogging along, one page a week, for years. For the last little while I've buckled down, tried to streamline the colouring process (which takes the longest) and really get some pages done. Now I'm ahead!

Of course, next week I'm doing summer camps and most likely won't be able to finish a page, so back to square one >.< Still, it's nice to know that I can get two pages done a week if I put my mind to it, and I'm only 22 pages in. I've mentioned before that I really want to make this my profession (you know, indie comics), so I can promise that, barring extreme emergency, that there will be at least one update a week. If I get good enough to add another one, I think it will be like my birthday all over again!

I've had a couple of requests for more comic related podcasts or video casts, which I would love to do, but it has fallen off the grid with this hyper focused production. Video casts are hard to set up, so I think I might fall back to audio casts (with an overlay so I can put them on youtube, probably) once a month or so. If you have any particular topics you would like to see covered, leave me a comment!

Oh, and thanks for reading! I always appreciate it :)

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 21

2011-06-27T23:22:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 21

I've been spending most of my week editing for the new Cloudscape Digital Magazine and drawing commissions. I've been a complete homebody. I was actually going stir crazy there for a bit until Wei convinced me to go to a cafe with him. Mmmmm, delicious coffee.

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 20

2011-06-22T01:33:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia- The Sojourner, page 20

Oh my god. It's done. These last few pages have been a real killer, but I'm getting through. Yes, normally there's a new page on Tuesdays... and it's only an hour into Wednesday! So that's not too bad, is it? On the plus side, the next page is inked and ready for colouring, so it most definitely won't be late.

Wei went to the Calgary Comic Expo last weekend, having a good time with them comic folks. Thanks to everyone who supported us there, especially the fine folks from the Schuster Awards. They are classy people. Also of note - we now have copies of Lotus Root Children at Dragon Comics in Guelph. Check out their store if you're from the area, they are most awesome. I will be adding a section to Epidigm that will list all of the stores where you can pick up our books. If there aren't any in your area, you can also pick up a copy in our online store or make a request with your local comic store.

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 19

2011-06-14T03:48:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 19

So sorry this is a few hours late, my internet went down... Well, technically, all of Coquitlam had lost internet. It did, however, give me a bit of time to fine tune some colouring. Then I got tired of it and called it a night. I once made a joke that I'm constantly colouring... which seems to have become a self fulfilling prophecy. >.<

Did you know I've been participating in the 30 days project? All my crazy art can be seen on the Cloudscape website or in my deviant art gallery.

Even in Arcadia Update

2011-06-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner Page 18

BEHOLD. The greatest page of Even in Arcadia I have ever drawn. 2 days of pencilling and inking and 3 of painting. NEVER AGAIN.

Serves me right for writing a market scene.

Even in Arcadia -The Sojourner, Page 17

2011-05-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia, the Sojourner page 17

Enjoy!

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 15

2011-05-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

The Sojourner, Page 15

I've been reading Game of Thrones for a bit while making these pages... well I read the book before bed and listen to the audiobook when I'm comicking. I think my political intrigue is shamed by that narrative, it's so good! And addictive! And it has zombies! *that's not even a spoiler, you know from the prologue*

Special note: don't read certain parts of that book before bed, unless you want to lay sleepless and afraid in the dark. O.o

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 14

2011-05-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Sojourner, Page 14

This page totally kicked my ass in terms of how long it took to do, but I really like the look of it. I'm satisfied with a job well done.

Oh, Wei went to TCAF. I'm assuming it was good, but I won't know until he gets back from Montreal on the May 17th. I will probably be updating Days of Leviathan for him this week. For once, it will be on time because I'm better at scheduling than he is ^^;

Enjoy the page! I can't believe we're halfway through the chapter already!

Days of Leviathan - The Worst Prank

2011-05-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

Days of Leviathan - The Worst Prank

New page of Days of Leviathan! Wei's at TCAF this weekend. Go say hi to him!

Happy Fun Comics with Anise, This is a cat. On 3000 copies of the graphic...

2011-05-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

This is a cat.

On 3000 copies of the graphic novel Lotus Root Children.

Steal his bed! Buy a copy!

Happy Fun Comics with Anise, This is a cat. On 3000 copies of the graphic...

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 12

2011-04-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Sojourner, Page 12

I've been attempting to focus on penciling and inking future pages without all of the crazy distractions in my life, and the best way to stop the distractions on the computer is to take up its resources with live streaming. If you're interested there are a number of videos of me doing page 14, which will be posted two weeks from now. Warning, of course, you will be looking ahead in the story so there might be slight spoilers.

Wei will be our representative this year at TCAF in Toronto. When we get closer to the con date, I'll be sure to post all of the important information about where our table is and what we'll have for you to check out. I was thinking of doing an exclusive print of the cover of Even in Arcadia especially for TCAF.

Thanks for reading and supporting my comic. If you didn't know, EiA is on Top Webcomics. I don't usually flash that around, because I always find it annoying when other comics do, but if you are so inclined to vote for us you can do so here.Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 12

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 11

2011-04-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

The Sojourner, Page 11

Come check out the new page!

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 10

2011-04-12T13:23:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 10
New page for your reading pleasure!

Days of Leviathan - This is Precious Stuff

2011-04-08T22:44:00.000-07:00

Days of Leviathan - This is Precious Stuff

New page of Days of Leviathan!

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 9

2011-04-05T15:14:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's a new page!
Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 9

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 8

2011-03-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 8

Yep, that's right, it's another update!

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 7

2011-03-28T16:31:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 7

New comic page!

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 6

2011-03-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

Even in Arcadia - The Sojourner, Page 6

It's a new comic! Come check it out!

Paintings for the 21 Journeys Fundraiser

2011-03-11T18:00:00.001-08:00

It's been a really exciting month, and now we're in the last stretch of our 21 Journeys Fundraiser. We're about 2k away from our goal, with the combined contributions from members and preorders from IndieGoGo, so if you haven't had a chance to pledge to the cause, now's the time! If none of our IndieGoGo perks tickle your fancy, then perhaps one of these fabulous paintings will. They are $40 each, and that includes all shipping to Canada or the United States. The paintings were donated by dedicated Cloudscape members on wooden cradle panels generously provided by Opus Framing and Arts Supplies. Feel free to click on the images to be brought to their respective shop page for purchase information.

Also check out the first batch of work by Colin Upton, Ed Appleby and myself.

Printing Comics, Part 6 - Epidigm Studios

2011-01-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

Printing Comics, Part 6 - Epidigm Studios

You've just invested in $5,000 worth of books. How are you going to sell those suckers?

This is the last video in this series. If you enjoyed it, feel free to leave a comment! Future casts will cover diverse comic topics from writing to conventions to art techniques and community building. Join me every Thursday at 7PM PST/10PM EST on my ustream.

How to Print Comics, Part 5 - Epidigm Studios

2011-01-28T00:53:00.000-08:00

How to Print Comics, Part 5 - Epidigm Studios

Oh man, printers. There are so many emails when dealing with printing a book. SO MANY, PEOPLE.

I just finished my cast on Development Hell over on ustream. I will post the video shortly.

Comics – Learning from Starcraft: Method Basics - Epidigm Studios

2011-01-21T01:59:00.000-08:00

Comics – Learning from Starcraft: Method Basics - Epidigm Studios

Wei and I are huge fans of Day[9] and his daily cast of Starcraft replays and strategies. Much like good little comic artists, we couldn't help but think of how these wonderfully laid out methods could translate to our medium and how they could be used to help artists work through some of their more difficult patches.

In our first video we're looking at why Starcraft and what it has to offer in terms of basic methods. Two things you should draw from this discussion: you should be analysing, and refine, refine, refine your work!

We will be doing weekly casts (sometimes with Wei and sometimes only myself) on comics, storytelling, art and general interest every Thursday at 7Pm PST on my ustream. If you miss it, not to worry, I will be recording and posting all of our videos here for your viewing pleasure. If there is anything in particular you would like to see, or have work that you would like analysed on air, feel free to leave us a comment here or send us an email!

Printing Comics 1: So you want to make a book...

2011-01-13T22:55:00.000-08:00

I made a video about how to print comics! Check it out!
There will be a new cast on comics every Thursday at 7PM PST on my ustream

Epidigm is going to PARTY, January 8 @ Strut Studios

2011-01-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

We're going to be there, this Saturday night! If you're in Vancouver, come dance, drink and love comics and art with us.

We had a long conversation this past week about the whole Gen X, Gen Why situation. I was told I shouldn't consider myself Gen Why because we're this mysterious in between group. I say I'm a chameleon, any generation at any given time, depending on what I want to do.

Holiday Disappearances

2010-12-21T16:53:00.001-08:00

I drew this image while I was tabling at the Waldorf Comic and Zine fair. I decided that it's been far too long since I did a digital painting, so I busted out the tablet and photoshop and went at it.

So, here's a present!

Wei and I are going to disappear for a bit, holidays and all. After Christmas we'll be out of town, but we will be back and ready to upload comics for the first week of January!

2010 has been an awesome year, for both Epidigm and Cloudscape. We got so much done this go around, and there's some really good opportunities facing us in 2011. I think this will be the first New Years where Wei and I won't feel totally depressed about being giant failure slackers. Not only did we get some good work done, but we now have a few books, some good conventions under our belt and been accepted to distribute Lotus Root Children. I would also like to think a few more people out there know who we are than this time last year :)

Here's to 2011, my peeps. See you on the flip side.

Epidigm at the Waldorf, December 19

2010-12-17T16:54:00.000-08:00

The Waldorf decided to put on a comic festival in honour of Dame Darcy coming to town. If you live in Vancouver, love comics or performance or a little bit of both, come stop by! The Waldorf is on 1489 East Hastings, between Commercial and Clarke.

Wei and I will be there along with Cloudscape, Jonathon Dalton and all my other favourite Vancouver comic people!

Here, have a youtube video! Dame Darcy - Golden Shoes

A Late Night Update

2010-12-09T01:22:00.001-08:00

Wei has asked me to send a shout out to all the Days of Leviathan readers. He has the new page, but it still needs a few touch ups. He would rather have a late, good page than an on time crappy one. He's expecting to update on Saturday. I think it has a little to do with his final projects piling up as well, so I think giving him a little break might be the kind thing to do :)

In my world, I'm dealing with intense frustration with amazon.ca. As many of our readers will know, we live in the wonderful city of Vancouver BC. As Canadians, we don't really have the option of selling our books on amazon.com, so we're left with our rather decrepit Canadian version. Amazon.com has this wonderful feature for self publishers: the Advantage program. You can sign up, list your books and they take 55% off the top. Pretty much the same as any warehouse or distributor. It's pretty sweet. Alas, we do not have this in Canada. You have to apply as a vendor and hope that someone at amazon will eventually get around to looking at your application. It's dire, and frankly, kind of insulting.

I'm sure many won't understand, but in Canada we have always had a cultural issue with living next to the United States. We love our brothers and sisters to the south, but find it so frustrating that we're overrun with American content. It's just another example that Amazon will list all of the books by big American publishers working in Canada while strangling independent Canadian content with an outdating and weak vendor service. I sometimes feel like crying at the frustration, if it's not being blocked on the internet, it's dealing with border harassment to go to conventions. I just want to make comics, I just want to sell books and I want the opportunity to share my content with a continent that seems so unfairly balanced.

To think, we're really nice about it. We're not really like many other countries where America forces it's way in, we just try to make friends. I hate being nice about something and then being taken advantage of, but then my Canadian manners stop me from getting all righteous about it all the time.

I hope hope hope Amazon will actually take the time to look at our application. They say they list products by demand, but then didn't ask me for any product details. We have 3000 books from our Xeric grant. In my dreams I will sell them all, but I could be happy with selling a few. With Amazon. Come on guys, work with the people who actually want to work with you.

Here's a recipe for Spiced Brownies, specifically for the cold winter nights!

The egg alternative at the bottom of the recipe works really well in baking. I've used those exact measurements in cakes, cornbread and muffins. It might make the brownies a little more dense (or fluffy, if you use too much baking powder), but the chemistry is sound. It's doesn't make the recipe vegan, because of the Ganache and butter and all, but Tomato is less pissed when people don't eat eggs ;)

Julian Assange was arrested, eh? The whole mess is so terrible and obvious. Anyone who knows me know of my propensity for freedom of information. I kind of want to volunteer to help wikileaks in some way, because they are going to do great things for us.

Tomato Chicken! Pg 22

2010-11-23T12:43:00.001-08:00

Page 22!

I think I'm going to eat a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. It combines the goodness of melted cheese with the irresistibility of grilled. Not to mention it fills my heart with a happiness that can only be obtained by that magic combination.

Intro to Graphic Novels, Class 3

2010-11-17T13:01:00.001-08:00

Originally posted on Epidigm

Class 3: Character Design

Storytelling is comprised of three main elements: a setting, a plot and some characters. In this lesson we will go over a working methodology for creating compelling and original characters for your own stories or for a collaborative project. Creating characters is a great treat, and often the favourite exercise of writers everywhere. There are many ways to examine, develop and refine characters, but designing them is a completely different subject. Before one goes down the path of character design, we must first understand the foundation of the practice: design.

Design is about developing a working method to suit a function or need, as each instance of your design method will be different. For example, you may be a character designer, but designing a character for a comic or a video game or a novel are three very different instances. The goal is to create one method that can serve all three best. Your method is what makes you an artist, not your skill, perceived talent or even ideas (we're post modern, remember? All ideas are derrivative anyways). What defines one artist to the next is how they work through the method of taking an idea and translating into their visual (or audio, or performance, or whatever) form.

In this lesson, I will provide a simple framework that is commonly used and you can build upon it yourself. This is where the whole "there are no rules in art" comes in. For every suggestion, the opposite, the negation or something slightly different will work as well. Never say to yourself "I have this great idea, but it doesn't fit the framework I learned in that graphic novels class". That's bullocks. Frameworks are supposed to help drive, define and ground ideas, not limit their existence. Be flexible, and allow your method to grow and evolve. Self reflect on your method, write these reflections down and be observant. Like we briefly discussed in the first class, being an artist is not just a profession, it's a state of mind.

So, without further adieu, the character design framework.

1. Identify and understand your design problem.

why are you making this character?

what are the restrictions you're working in? Media, deadline, target age group, function, etc, are all restrictions.

Your design problem may be simple or complex, they are as different as snowflakes. Do be honest with yourself, and don't make something more complicated than it needs to be.

2. Analyse the problem and break it down into simpler elements

Your problem is you need to make a protagonist for a graphic novel (of an undetermined genre), break it down into:

The character functions visually, therefore has to be visually appealing

The character will be seen and heard (through speach bubbles), and therefore has to display their personality visually and through dialogue.

The characters will be in a long form story, and therefore has to have a complex personality that can be slowly examined

The character will be in print and therefore must translate well into that medium, both aesthetically and conceptually (this is why I think 3D rendered comics tend to look strange, they don't fulfill this need).

At this point it's time to do some idea making, which will be covered later in this lesson. Remember how I said there are all sorts of exercises for examining, developing and refining a character? Now's the time to use them. The framework assumes that at this point you've done some brainstorming and are then ready to:

3. Choose the best idea. This needs to solve all parts of the original design problem you identified in step 1.

4. Draw the Character. You should have already been sketching, trying out different things and playing around in step 2. Now it's time to do a technical drawing of the character - the good copy. Draw your character from many angles, with different costume if necessary, and get a good feel for who they are.

5. Evaluate the results. Ask others what they think. Get them to try and guess who the character is to see if your were able to accurately depict their personality visually. Talk to people you trust and who are thoughtful, not to people who will want to spare your feelings. This is not the time to get squeemish, you need a really good character.

6. Rework the design if necessary. A very simple, yet important step. I often have students who skip this step because they are simply "ready to move on". While that might be an accurate feeling for more completed work (like trying to resist the urge to go back and redraw the first 10 pages of your comic because you're drawing has improved - that's a "move on" moment), during the design process a small moment of relflection and reworking is necessary. Grab the red pen and make the changes that need to be made.

Now the process is finished and you should have a pretty good foundation for a character. In the next lesson we move into the hard part: making the actual comic.

Step 2: Expanded

The design problem in our class is simple. We need to come up with a character (or a few characters) that can be the cast of our comics. All of the above expansions that I outlined in step two still apply. While comics have a literary component, they are visual as well. The visual design of our character is going to be as important as their literary content.

When at this step of the design process, ideas are king. We want to have many of them and have the freedom to develop them in different ways. I have some exercise suggestions, but there are many more available online, in books and from other artists. Feel free to add these to your library of idea generating methods.

Observation. The goldmine of ideas. Wei and myself come up with great characters by just observing people in public, on transit or in cafes and letting our imaginations run wild.

Brainstorm with others. Get into the mode where nothing is unacceptable and no idea is too wild and just run with it. It's amazing how differently two people think, and putting them together can yield fantastic results.

Locate reference materials. Pictures, clippings, movies, television, books, magazines. Everything is reference. It's not just visual either, characters in other novels can start as the foundation for something new.

Use word play and mind mapping. Automatic writing is fantastic. We're in idea mode, turn off your critical brain and let things flow. You can scrutinize later.

Fantasize about your characters. Day dream scenerios, think of how they would speak. You can even turn them into temporary imaginary friends. Anything to get the ideas going.

Look for symbolism and myth. Archetypes can make very solid character foundations.

Sketching your character: you need to get that pencil moving. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, stays in your head. That's a terrible place for ideas. Write and draw on the same pages, don't pre-organise yourself in the idea stage. Story ideas don't need to start in a word processor on the computer and characters don't need to start hand drawn (why not try some collage?). Here are some things to think about with the visuality of your character:

Shapes. Play with them, they are powerful tools. Their counterparts are scale and proportions, so play with those as well.

Expression exercises. Try the 25 Expression Challenge, a popular meme on Deviant Art. I use it all the time.

The five dot exercise: Get someone to draw five random dots on a piece of paper. You then choose two of the dots to be hands, two to be feet and one to be the head of your character. Now you have to draw your character in those contraints (you can get some great, twisted positions).

Add and subtract elements from a sketch. Either physically with an eraser, or by redrawing.

Shift elements, reshape, skew, squash, stretch, etc.

Character Design Exercise

We're going to create a character for our graphic novel project that we will start in the next class. You may follow this process or a different process for other characters, but for now we'll try out a pre described method to see how the process works.

Our design problem: we need to create a visual, drawn character for a graphic novel that will serve as our protagonist. We need to finish this in roughly a week.

We break it down into the following elements:

Our character is visual and needs to be visually appealing

Our character will be drawn repeatedly, and can therefore not be too complicated

Our character will be the protagonist, so they need strong desires and conflicts and a concise history.

Brainstorming: start with a mindmap, starting with the character's role in the middle: protagonist. Begin associating words and writing them down. Think with your senses as well as your imagination, and don't censor yourself. When you are finished, it's time to refine the mind map. Circle the words that stand out to you, that describe a character you would be interested in. Don't worry if other will be interested at this point, if you're not then there's no point in choosing it.

Create the physical character, with words and sketches:

General physical description

Body type

Proportions

Material make-up (is your character flesh, robotics, alien, or anything else?)

Gender

Surface texture

Colour

Facial Structure

Movement (how does your character physically carry themselves?)

Create a character history. A character's life never begins at the beginning of your story, and the most believable characters will act in ways that expose their past experiences. Character histories are important, but don't need to be complicated. Look for elements that will create desires and conflicts, the essence of any plot. You need to describe the following:

Your character's personality

a quick timeline of your character's past, present and future.

Lastly we're going to do two things - the 25 expression challenge for your character. Don't be discourages if you don't finish them all, just try as many as you can. Don't pick expressions that you think will suit your character, pick them at random.

Then we are going to start thinking about character motivation. I want you to three short paragraphs. Each will a single event from the character's life told from three different perspectives:

Telling the story to a stranger. How does your character want to be perceived? How much information are they going to reveal?

Telling the story to a close friend. How will they confide in them?

Telling the story to themselves. What would they never tell to anyone else.

After this, you should have a character that's good to go for a final, good copy drawing! Feel free to post your work, sketches, mind maps, writings and finished drawings. I'd like to see how other people design their characters!

Tomato Chicken! Pg 13

2010-10-22T13:07:00.001-07:00

Here is page 13!

This story for Tomato Chicken is 24 pages long and when it is completed, I will update recipes once a week until the next story is done. Most likely those updates will happen on Wednesdays.

I hope you're enjoying the comic so far! Wei will be at the Blim Community Market on October 31 to display all of the Epidigm comics, including the hand bound Tomato Chicken. If you live in Vancouver, it's a great opportunity to pick up some of our books without having to pay for the shipping! If you don't, but you still want to pick up a copy of something, you may visit our online store.

I've been working steadily on mostly boring paperwork and distribution type stuff, occasionally drawing some concept sketches and characters for a fantasy story. I feel dead slow when it comes to making comics, especially compared to Wei, but I'm getting a lot more done this year than last!

The next update for Tomato Chicken will be next Tuesday! See you all then!

Epidigm @ Blim Community Market, Oct 31

2010-10-22T00:54:00.004-07:00

In an effort to try and get more involved with events around Vancouver, that aren't necessarily comic conventions, I've procured a table at the Blim Community Market on October 31 from 11 am-5 pm. I'm very much looking forward to it because Blim is an awesome place run by awesome people and I've loved a lot of stuff they've done in the past.

I also saw, without really knowing before, that Inkstuds is having an event there this Saturday to launch their new book. Will I be there two weekends in a row? Stay tuned to find out!

The Blim Community Market will be held at the Chinese Cultural Centre at 50 E Pender in Downtown Vancouver. Wei will be there with the new Xeric printing of Lotus Root Children, Tomato Chicken, Anatta, prints and our new art cards. You can even pick up the set of sushi postcards, four cards for $4. They're quintessentially Vancouver.

Come by and say hi! If you already have a copy of LRC, Wei will be happy to sign it for you if you bring it!

Day 158: Bailey Giordano Pg 10

2010-08-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is the last page I'm putting on the interwebs until the website is done in 2-3 weeks. I also have to make a buffer, mostly because I've learned it's the lifeblood of a comic. Especially during convention season.

Without further adieu, the 10th page of The Liberation of Bailey Giordano.

Guacamole Eggs Benedict: The Comic

2010-08-23T15:57:00.001-07:00

I've been particularly obsessed with cooking for the last few weeks, and I got this crazy idea to turn one of my made up recipes into a comic. I made this recipe because I was looking to empty my vegetable cupboard and make a vegetarian alternative to eggs benedict. The recipe was so successful that I thought I would share with the whole internet! It's a really easy recipe, the longest part is roasting the corn, which you can start beforehand or make a batch of at anytime and mix it into the guacamole later. Roasting the corn carmelizes the sugar in it and brings out a wonderful smoky sweet flavour.

It was fun to make. I have a narrative to go with the young girl and her baby chick, but I have no idea when I'm going to get around to it.

Enjoy!

Vegetarian Asparagus Vichyssoise

2010-08-22T15:45:00.005-07:00

I don't know why I suddenly feel like sharing recipes, pehaps it's because I'm taking a lot of responsibility for my diet recently. I've been trying to eat as little meat as possible, and when I do I lean towards fish. I made this fantastic soup on Thursday and it's been feeding me all weekend!

Vichyssoise is my favourite soup, both to eat and to read about. It has a fantastic history, along with the history of potatoes in Western Europe. Vichyssoise is specifically a cold leek and potato soup, it's made with simple ingredients and is meant to be eaten with cream.

I'm not a vegan, so I still eat dairy products. This recipe, however, could easily have the dairy removed and eaten with a mint and soft tofu topping.

Ingredients:

3 tbsp Butter (or oil of choice. French recipes love butter)
3 large leeks, white and pale green parts thinly sliced and washed
4 potatoes (I used a mixture of yukon gold and red skinned potatoes), cubed into small pieces
6 cups vegetable stock (traditionally this soup is made with chicken stock)
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 tbsp finely chopped mint

Preparation

Melt butter in a soup pot or deep pan over medium high heat. Add leeks and saute for a minute or two to make fragrant. Add potatoes and continue to saute for 5 minutes. Add vegetable stock. Bring the soup to a boil and reduce to medium heat. Simmer vegetables until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Add asparagus and continue simmering until it is cooked through (about 5 minutes, depending on how thick the stalks are).

Transfer soup to blender in batches and blend until smooth. I have an immersion blender that works amazingly and cuts down the mess by a lot. Be careful with the immersion blender, because the soup will still be hot and you don't want any spat back at you.

Mix the chopped mint with heavy cream and a pinch of salt. Beat the cream until it becomes thick.

You may eat the vichyssoise hot, but it's mean to be chilled. Either way, ladel soup into individual bowls and top with a spoon or two of cream. I love this soup with butter rolls. I can't eat a lot of gluten, so I don't eat French bread with Vichyssoise, though I hear it's to die for.

I modified this recipe from the original over at Epicurious. That website has the best recipes I've found on the internet, and a great iPhone App as well.

On a final note, I'm three quarters of the way through making a short, cute comic about the last recipe I posted. I'll link it when I'm finished!

Eggs on Toast with Tomato Guacamole

2010-08-19T18:51:00.002-07:00

I made up this recipe the other morning and it was too good for me not to share. I was down to a few things in my fridge, and this meal materialized from the ingredients I could gather.

I was also looking for a good vegetarian alternative to Eggs Benedict. Also, something that wasn't as bad as the hollandaise sauce, but just as creamy.

Ingredients:

Tomato Guacamole
1 large, ripe tomato - sliced
2 ripe avacados - pited and sliced
3 crushed garlic cloves or 1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 white onion - finely chopped
2 tbsp lime juice
1 cup frozen corn - roasted in the oven for 20 minutes
1 tbsp olive oil
pinch of salt and pepper
tobasco sauce to taste

Soft poached eggs (2 per person)
Toasted and buttered bread (2 per person)

Preparation

Preheat your oven to 400F. Toss frozen corn with olive oil and spread in a thin layer over a baking pan. Roast in oven for 20-30 minutes or until browned.

I used a small food processor to make my guacamole, but you can get the same result by finely chopping all the ingredients and then mashing the avacado in last with the back of a fork. Mix finely chopped onion, tomato, garlic, lime juice, salt, pepper and tobasco sauce until combined. Mash in avacado with a fork. Stir in corn when it's finished roasting.

Spread a layer of guacamole over the toast and top with a soft poached egg. I really liked breaking my egg and then eating the whole mess with a fork and knife. It was super delicious.

I should totally turn this recipe into a comic :D

Anatta: Chapter Three, Page 12

2010-05-11T03:20:00.001-07:00

Finally, an new page of Anatta! We've finished writing the next two chapters and Wei is in full focus after Portland. We're working Anatta back into our schedule, which is turning out to be a lot of fun. It's like reconnecting with an old friend.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 41

2010-05-02T01:25:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

I feel horrible for abandoning my Girls and Monsters comic, but I'm really not feeling it right now. The story is finished, the pages are thumbnailed, the characters are designed and 3 pages are roughly penciled, but the passion has left. I think I'm just really afraid of the monsters. I liked designing them, and drawing them was fun, but they take so much work.

The greatest thing about writing this down in a blog is that it doesn't seem so scary after I put it in words. After I get the ball rolling with Bailey Giordano and I need a break, I might take a look at that penciling again.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 40

2010-05-01T01:02:00.001-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

I've started playing around with a few traditional mediums in attempt to find a feel for The Liberation of Bailey Giordano. I really like pencil crayons, but they don't really look so hot online. I had posted the practice page before, and found that they not only mistranslate digitally, but I need practice in rendering backgrounds. Perhaps I'm just having a colouring book type phase.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 39

2010-04-30T00:02:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

I finished inking and trying out some colouring in pencil crayon on this page. I really like how it turned out in print and in hard copy, but the digital version leaves a lot to be desired. The background isn't quite right, but it was fun to do. I like using tradition media, it's so physical.

The actual comic will most likely be black and white. Not just for time, but also because I want to practice making black and white comics with depth.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 38

2010-04-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

I've been finding it difficult to keep up with writing everyday, not necessarily from a lack of content, but more for a lack of time. When I stopped going to school I thought I woul have this extra time to focus on different projects, but that time has collapsed into the maintenance of my everyday life. Plus, I'm such a night owl, so it means there is little incentive for me to get up before 11am anymore.
Nonetheless, I promised myself that I would complete this task, and getting over my schedule conflicts and procrastination is one of the difficult hurdles I must surmount. I know that I can get a lot of things done in my life, but when my responsibilities take on a certain mundane quality, I tend to abandon them.
I know I'm not the only procrastinator out there, so I've put together a bunch of techniques that I use to try to get over my procrastination and really focus.

I intigrate everything into my day to day life. I know many articles and books on being self employed tell you to separate your work and home life, either through time or by creating a dedicated space, but I find this simply doesn't work for being a self employed artist. I do my art everywhere in the house, and at anytime. I find combining drawing with watching my favourite TV show, for instance, will help me get the drawing done much faster than separating those two times. I also change my drawing location frequently as not to feel too office-like and surrealishly bored. I became an artist to escape the office, not transfer it to my home.

I do things in transit. Even though I have a car, I choose to take transit. This is very site specific, because Vancouver has a relatively decent transit system. It's not cheap, but it's some quiet alone time to blog on my iPhone, sketch ideas or write scripts. If I'm really tired, I can turn it into alive drawing session and totally creep out the rest of the passengers.

I'm trying to cut down on friends. This is hard for me, because I'm a very social person with a large group of friends and family. Unfortunately, I have to forgo serious friend time for serious comicking time. I'm sure at some point I may be able to have more friend time, but this whole first year business is making me a hermit.

I turn off the wireless. The Internet is great for finding reference pictures and getting inspired, but more often than not it's a total distraction. Twitter, facebook, blogs and even news cut into my time constantly, so I will turn the Internet off on my computer. I use my phone when I wake up and while in transit to do email and my social networking, but I can't let it distract me when I'm drawing or digital painting.

When I fail at not procrastinating, I don't beat myself up, I just try harder next time. Feeling guilty or down about not sticking to my goals or rules just makes the problem bigger. Especially with procrastination where the mentality tends to be "Well, I'm already so far behind, no use doing it now." It's totally worthwhile to complete a project, even if you're behind. When you're setting your own deadlines there are few people who care about you missing them more than you.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 37

2010-04-28T00:53:00.002-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

The Great Comic Shout Out!

I thought I would spend a little time giving props to those who spend their days supporting me. I'm a bold critic, and I will not hesitate to publicly critique the work of people I know. I know that my work is not me as a person, and any criticism of it does not reflect upon anything, but the art itself. I can be a good person and make art with problems in it that need to be fixed. Otherwise, I try not to take anything too personally.

With that in mind, I present the work of my friends, and I present it with a critical eye. Each person does something amazing, and each person has room to push themselves a little further. I try to read everything that my friends do, because it's an important part of showing my support.

I promise not to be too biased, and luckily the barrier of the internet shields me from most of their wrath should I point out their flaws.

A Mad Tea Party and Lords of Death and Life by Jonathon Dalton. It seems I've been beaten to this by autobiographical comic artist Miriam Libicki with her TCAF questionnaire in the National Post, but I think Dalton is one of the most unappreciated artists on the internet. He has an extensive archive with fantastic short and long stories alike. He works hard, teaches 12 year old brats and still has time to help manage the Cloudscape collective.Dalton's art style is bright and bubbly, with stiff lines and classic comic expressions. I think that because his style doesn't fit into an already established category, but kind of teeters between manga and not-so-manga, many readers might be quick to write him off. If, however, you take a few minutes to read through some of his short stories, Dalton comes off as a master of sequence and storytelling. Within a few pages he is able to convey complete character personalities, complex situations and relevant issues. Lords of Death and Life is a particular treat, exposing an audience to the intricacies of ancient Mayan culture.

Next on my list is, in fact, Miriam Libicki and her autobiographical comic Jobnik! I feel that I have had a similar relationship to my education in conceptual art and how I broke from it to make comics afterwards, so Libicki's illustrated essays really hit home for me. Jobnik! Is her experiences working with the Israeli military, and I'm so fascinated by her use of a similar method to express completely different concepts. Libicki has significantly developed as an artist since beginning her graphic novel and instead of focusing and being embroiled in any early flaws, she just keeps pushing her work further. I'm in admiration of her dedication and have no problem recommending her on the basis of her interesting subject matter.

I think I might have a secret crush on Bottomless Pop (aka Brian Fukushima). I have yet to read the Job Goblin comic, but I'm in love with Salt for Sore Eyes, which appears to be a collection of sketchbook drawings and daily strips. It's unapologetically unexplained and the purpose is left up to the reader to be determined. I can't tell if it's laziness or just the hatred of explaining one's art, but I'm in awe of the format of his webcomics. He simply puts them on a page and lets you do the scrolling. The amount of content is amazing, and you can't help but feel like you've walked away with a piece of his life. The only thing better than Fukushima's approach to his readers is the unbelievable quality of his art. Ranging from simply cartoony to surrealistically complex, the art always suits the subject.The other aspect of my secret crush is the fact that Fukushima is a whiskey drinker. There's nothing better than a fellow comicker who can share a bottle.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 36

2010-04-27T18:01:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I inked this while chilling at fellow cloudscapie Jeff Ellis' house. We geeked out and watched Sarah Connor while drawing and drinking some fine whiskey. No better Friday night in my opinion.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 35

2010-04-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Money makes the world go 'round.

There's an interesting situation that happens with artists as they're starting out, or at least it's something interesting that happened to me and a few people I know. I decided I wanted to become an artist. Then I decided something rather shocking: that I would like to be remunerated for the art I was making. This caused a whole host of problems. How much should I ask for my art? Where could I sell it? Lastly, how do I deal with all of the money in and money out business?

Luckily I have recently been offered the position as Treasurer on the Cloudscape Comics board. First order of business – put all of the financial books in order and work out a plan to make the organisation sustainable. There's some really valuable things that I've learned, and a few documents I have planned out to help the finances reveal themselves to me. Sharing this information with the fabulous internet helps me to solidify my own understanding, and hopefully it will help us poor artists with the often obtuse accounting side to our businesses.

Let's look at this issue from a fresh point of view. I am a business. My product is my art and I am the only investor in the company. I have two incredibly important documents that need to be maintained and updated. The first is the Balance Sheet, the big picture of how everything is going financially. Here I take everything into account: inventory, equipment, money I have put in, sales, etc. In my balance sheet I have assets (equipment, inventory, cash), liabilities (loans, accounts payable) and Shareholder equity (the money I have put in, technically, as I am the only shareholder in my ad hoc business). As indicated by the name, a balance sheet must balance out. The equation that needs to balance is this:

Assets = Liability + Shareholder Equity

As an example, this is what a balance sheet of my current “comic business”, in so far that we print books and sell them at conventions, etc. This is just an example and is not the actual numbers of what we put into epidigm.

- *Accounts Receivable – money that is owed to us. Outstanding invoices that people need to pay.
- ** Accounts Payable – money that we owe and must pay off.
- *** Money that we have made. This money either went into cash or into the printing of new books.

This balance sheet should be updated at a regular period. My “business” is small, I would probably update this every 4-6 months or so. The question is, where do I get these numbers from?

I get the numbers from the second document, my General Ledger. The GL is a list of all of the transactions made. When I say all, I mean ALL. Everything from the ordering of new books, to the promise of someone to pay me back later. There is a very complex way to design your general ledger, and there are many examples online, so I will leave that for your own research. The point is that all the numbers need to be recorded in order to properly understand if your business is working. If it is, great! If not, then something needs to be adjusted.

I have yet to learn about a few other key documents, like profit statements, etc. It's strange to walk into the realm of accounting, but it's a basic skill that all artists working for themselves should spend a bit of time working with. It helps to shed light on different issues that need to be addressed, or can tell you whether or not you can really afford printing that new book. It will also help to separate your personal finances with the finances of your art business, so you know what you need to do to make your art self sustainable. Or that it simply isn't sustainable and you have to be prepared to take a loss to keep doing what you love.

I'm still in the early basics of accounting and dealing with finances. I have done budgeting before, but that's a whole different issue. Feel free to correct me if my understanding of something is off, I'm definitely not a perfect accountant by far. I'm just at the point where I've identified what I need to help me get started and the minimum amount of paperwork I need to do to keep everything in line.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 34

2010-04-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Wah! That Artist is Better than Me!!

If there has been one theme to tie up my life for the last two weeks, it has been insecurity. Not only my own, but that of others that I spend my time with as well. Our actions, thoughts, reactions and ideologies made from these insecurities do funny things. They can warp a person from a reasonable, loving person and change the temperature of a room of people in the blink of an eye. I have been fascinated, watching people skirt that fine line between amicable communication and annoyed insecurity and I find myself in a strange position. I'm a pretty open person, I wear my insecurities (and most other emotions) on my sleeve. I try to be honest about what I'm thinking and why I'm thinking it and I use this honesty to try to make connections with other people and relate to them.

Well, of course, not everyone is like this. I'm finding myself more often trying to assume the motivations and moods of others, and find my own insecurity in this guessing game. I don't know how to appropriately conduct myself if a person can react like an exploding bomb one second, or a calm creature of happiness and sociability the next. With this particular entry in my blog I want to discuss insecurity in art, and different methods I try to deal with it as an artist.

If this doesn't happen to you as an artist, you're a damn dirty liar. Nothing feels crappier than working your ass off, practising, making comics and feeling like you're on a great roll until you find some other artist on the internet who clearly better and more intelligent at making art than you are. This has happened to me many times before, and figuring out my jealousy towards other artists has been an important process in understanding my own insecurities.

Wei does something amazing every time he comes across another artist he feels is better than him. He gets totally pumped, and is able to focus more. I'm very much the opposite, I become depressed and usually don't want to look at my drawings. My goal is to get to the point where I am challenged by other people's success, not discouraged. It's a little bit self help mixed with positive thinking and a particular artistic ideology, and I've been putting it to the test. So far it seems to be working and I become excited to rise to the challenges that other artists pose.

Changing my mindset is not an easy process. It takes constant work and determination, and to do that I had to admit that being discouraged by another artist was actually a problem. One of the things I've started to do is fan art. Nothing makes me happier than a successful homage. I don't just try to do fanart with characters or plot points or specific settings, I try to find the essence of the work and pay tribute to it. For instance, I don't think I could make fan art of Jeff Smith's Bone without using sequence. A huge part of the success of that comic is in it's panel transitions and simple page layouts. I would want to push that and work at it in my own emulation.

I think it's okay to admit we get insecure and we get jealous. There's no rule that says artists have to do all of this on their own, and I'm particularly fond of doing it with other people.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 33

2010-04-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

When I asked Wei how he went from writing his scripts to making the fantastic comics that he seems to pump out like a Guang Dong textile factory, one of the suggestions he made was to draw large illustrations with your characters and settings to get a feel for the comic and style. While being stupidly sick today, I drew and inked this. I know it might seem inefficient to draw an illustration for a 12 page comic, but I'm having a lot of trouble with certain aspects (like the monsters and the backgrounds) and doing this illustration really helped me figure some things out. In particular it helped me gain some confidence in drawing the main characters and inking in the style that the comic will eventually be.

My problem is this: I tend to get easily distracted. I will probably do one more illustration for this comic and then there's no more excuses. It's time to get down and dirty and just do it. No more procrastinating because making comics is oh so hard.

Cry me a river.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 32

2010-04-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I'm avoiding all aspects of working and sleeping multiple hours in a row. I'm also alone for the weekend and very sad, it's hard being away from someone who you spend every day with for years. I hope I can get better enough tomorrow to actually do something, because this time alone could be used very efficiently.
I'm sorry to disappoint, I know I suck. I'm crossing my fingers for no more illnesses during my inaugural year at trying to be successful, because I have a feeling it will hamper my style.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 31

2010-04-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I'm pretty sick right now with the cold of doom returned, so I'm not much up to writing on my computer for extended periods of time. I didn't spend much time this year being sick because teaching 120 kids a weeks tends to give one a kickass immune system, but this cold seems to be going around like wildfire. I think I'm responsible for at least half of my kids getting it. Now I just need to find kid zero and glare at him/her evilly for putting me behind blogging schedule.

So, instead of focusing on regular work, which seemed almost impossible to do in my altered state of mind, I did some Final Fantasy fanart. I haven't really been a big fanart drawing person until I had to produce more drawings for this blog. I spent the whole day playing FFX-2, so I was inspired to make a group shot of some Summoners and their Summons. It was fun to ink something for a change.

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 30

2010-04-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Not So 9 to 5 is a blog chronicling my first year trying to be a successful independent comic artist. Hopefully some of my experiences will help others in some way as well. If you are new to the blog, why not start from the beginning or check out the category archives?

Sometimes I wish I was a Hermit...

My potential success at something I really love is solely determined by the amount of time and effort I put into my art. Being social and doing social things is part of being human, I find that if I spend too much time alone I get a little kooky, but doing these social things does slow down the art process quite extensively. I remember reading a fantastic book on the independent comic movement in the 1960s, and one theme that came up over and over again was these artists working their asses off for very little pay and very little exposure. Of course, pretty much all of them expressed that it was a defining moment in their life, and that they're hard work was key to developing their current caliber as artists. Art Spiegelman was particularly articulate in this document, speaking of how he was emotionally and physically invested in what he was doing with little regard for what successful outcome may pass. This was poignant for me, he was making comics because that's what he was driven to do, and the stress and frustration of doing them shaped the rest of his life.

I like my friends, but sometimes I wish they were all comic artists so they could understand why I would want to ignore them for weeks at a time. A drawing or a project can envelop you and not let you go until it's reached it's natural conclusion. At the same time, projects push you away with their tedious grunt work and indulging in social activity can help create a terrible system of procrastination that can eventually become insurmountable. Wei tends to get enveloped in his projects, while I go for short bursts and then get distracted during the tedious bits. Wei is more in tune with being his hermit self while I might end up pulling my hair out.

The discussion of this particular issue - the allocation of time and resources - is far from over. It's the subtle balance that all artists work with and try to maintain in their practice. It's nice to know that I'm not alone in my frustration and worry.

Speaking of procrastination, it's time to stop blogging and start drawing.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 29

2010-04-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Not So 9 to 5 is my blog about the day to day trials of trying to become a successful independent comic artist. The blog is mirrored here, and the original can be read along with my comics and other ideas at epidigm.net

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

This is the rough pencils for page one and part of page three of my dubiously working titled "Monsters + Little Girls". Also, you know, rough scans too. I didn't want to pull it out of my sketchbook just yet. Right now I'm envisioning it black and white, perhaps with a few tones. I'm not going to ink wash it like my illustrious comic making partner, nor will I digital paint it. I may add colour/tone with markers, but we'll see how I feel about that later on.

As it is only between 10 and 12 pages long, I will most likely be self printing/book binding, which gives me an opportunity to do something interesting with the book design. I'm thinking of something apt for a story about a little girl who is tortured by monsters in her wallpaper and is looking for any sort of relief. Suggestions?

I also got to spend some time alone in a cafe this evening in New West. My dinner date cancelled, so I took the opportunity to eat and draw. If there's one thing I love about being a comic artist it's that my job is completely portable, I can do it anywhere. I use it as an opportunity to change my scenery as much as possible. You know, keep it interesting, keep myself out in the world. You never know what's going to be the next inspiration, so an artist is the antithetical of the isolated recluse, not matter how much people try to push that stereotype. You can't be an artist in a basement.

Any how, this is the short three panel sketch I worked on between pages and eating and coffee. Pretty good for being so busy, I think.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 28

2010-04-19T00:39:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Not So 9 to 5 is my blog about the day to day trials of trying to become a successful independent comic artist. The blog is mirrored here, and the original can be read along with my comics and other ideas at epidigm.net

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I spent a good chunk of my day preparing for the nice weather, so cross Monday off as a general cleanup day. On the plus side, I get to draw my comic outside in the sun tomorrow.
I did manage to do this quick piece of Final Fantasy X-2 fanart. My 10 year old brother donated his PS2 to me, so I can play my console games again. Unfortunately all of them are at my mom's house, except for X-2. The mechanics of that game are awesome, but the story and dress spheres are so ridiculous. I thought I would take that to the next level. Not to mention, everyone loves desserts!

I will definitely have one, if not two page sketches to post tomorrow!

Not So 9 to 5: Day 27

2010-04-18T00:22:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Not So 9 to 5 is my blog about the day to day trials of trying to become a successful independent comic artist. The blog is mirrored here, and the original can be read along with my comics and other ideas at epidigm.net

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I did this series of drawings originally to highlight a point I was going to write a rant about. I wanted to prove that you could take pretty manga girls with big eyes, add some random "surrealist" element and it will give the illusion of being substantive. It's smoke and mirrors, and I found the whole process absolutely fascinating. The rant has yet to come, I want to write it so that it isn't a bitch fest about stupid art, but actually makes a coherent point based on critical theory and analysis. I like the drawings, they look interesting, but believe me when I say they are totally substanceless.

I could make a comic about it, but sometimes my essay writing skills need some exercise.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 26

2010-04-17T23:57:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Not So 9 to 5 is my blog about the day to day trials of trying to become a successful independent comic artist. The blog is mirrored here, and the original can be read along with my comics and other ideas at epidigm.net

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

It's starting to get nice and warm out. I'm looking forward to doing some outdoor sketching. I've been procrastinating on getting started with my life and now the guilt is starting to set in. I think I should get up early and draw comics.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 25

2010-04-16T03:04:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

The Great Comic Shout Out!

I am a great proponent of multi-fauceted learning, in that a person can develop their artistic skills in many different ways. One of those ways is to read other comics. I'm sure television writers watch other television shows and film producers watch a lot of movies. I know for a fact that visual artists go see other visual art, it's actually pretty much a requirement for being in the super elite visual art club.

Reading comics is entertaining, I know that I find myself quite happy to be spending as much time as possible doing it, but as a comic artist I take my consumption of comics as a particular responsibility. It's not enough to simply read them, I also look at how they're drawn, what techniques the artist is using while denotatively and connotatively deconstructing their larger meaning.

I do get a lot of criticism for this. I've been told I'm not much fun to see any Michael Bay films with. I get the "Why can't you just enjoy it, why do you have to analyse everything?" bit from more than one close friend. I usually just let people complain and keep on going with my analysis, it's what I do and my friends know it. I must point out, though, that this mentality assumes one major point: that analysing something is not enjoyable. I say, au contraire my dear friends, I quite enjoy analysing things and am very entertained by the process.

As such, I will not simply present you with a list of every comic I like to read, but I will allow the depths of my reasoning to become more apparent by categorizing and providing a short critique of each comic. Due to this, I expect the Great Comic Shout Out to be a multi-installment discussion. For this first attempt, I will look at one of my favourite storytelling styles and send mad props to the people who make the best of the best.

You Won't Be the Same When You Get Back: The Adventure Comic

My favourite adventure comic on the web is the Abominable Charles Christopher by Karl Kerschl. At first it doesn't play itself as standard adventure, which really drew my attention. It was cute animals that relied on fully developed personalities and humour, and Kerschl's use of panel transitions keeps the humour away from too family-role cliche. One of my favourite aspects of this comic is its unapologetically disjointed flow, Kerschl seems to draw whatever he wants whenever he wants to. I would say the comic doesn't start to feel very "adventurey" until a good chunk of strips in, but when it does we know that the daft Charles Christopher is not going to be the same... well, whatever he is... when he's done. I'm keeping my eye on the way the adventure aspects of this story unfold. As with any ongoing webcomic, Kerschl has an opportunity to push that initial quirkiness of his comic right to it's epic end or succumb to what is expected.

High School meets the War of Independence in The Dreamer by Lora Innes. I'm pretty sure it's because Bea is one of the few teenage characters in a narrative that I like that I can call this a regular read in my repertoire. Sure, her motives are slightly trite and her concerns quite immature. I'm not that far away from being a teenager to actually believe that teenagers don't think that way. The nice thing is that this particular teenager tends to take actions that make sense, and that's a rare thing to see. Teenagers tend to be the plot device that allows the adults to be unnecessarily dramatic, and Innes avoids this by simply ignoring most of the adults in Bea's "real" life.

The only way that you don't know about Bone by Jeff Smith is if you've been under a rock for the last 6 years (or are potentially of the intelligence of a rat creature). It's classic adventure storytelling, but in a way that doesn't try to justify itself. The three Bone cousins are lost and everyone else is too busy with the end of the world to help them find their way back. I included this in this list not only for it's shear awesomeness, but also because Jeff Smith is a god to all independent comic artists. He stuck with it, made something good and honest, and won big. I wonder if he over analyses Michael Bay films as well...

The Adventure Comics I'm still wating for:

This is a list of webcomics that I'm reading, but am waiting for that extra something to put the into the great category. I hate the truism that a webcomic's chance of being successful is directly proportional to the length of time it's stays active. I hate it because it happens all the time, because it's great for amateurs and because I end up reading through hundreds of pages and get nothing satisfying out of it. Regardless, I'm reading these comics and they are either too young or have yet to really impress me to make the top list.

The Meek by Der-Shing Helmer, it's a little too young to say. Granted, I haven't read any of the sketch thumbs, so I could be missing out on a HUGELY awesome secret.

The Phoenix Requiem by Sarah Ellerton. I think Ellerton might be one of the hardest working people I internet know, and her comics are beautiful. The Phoenix Requiem keeps falling short for me, however, and her new painting style feels so off for the story.

There is more that I read, but these are the comics I keep up with regularly enough to talk about with any certainty. Do tell me about your great adventure comic finds, especially those that are independent. If you feel like getting all analytical on them, you know you won't hear any complaining from me.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 24

2010-04-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

Just a few random sketches for you guys. I'm going to have a pretty busy weekend because one of my best friends is moving to Montreal next week for pretty much ever. I would like to spend a little time partying down instead of drawing, you understand right? Sometimes I'm not so sure if I do -_-

Not So 9 to 5: Day 23

2010-04-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Mind Mapping: The road through my brain is fraught with perils.

Mind mapping is a great process for creating things and coming up with solid, reasonable ideas. It's like sketching, but with words. Most people are taught mind mapping at an early age, and I wonder how many people abandon it as they get older. It feels sometimes like there is a push for the “light bulb” idea rather than one that is worked through an understood process. I know what the breakthrough idea feels like, and it's a truly wonderful feeling, but I don't rely on its occurrence to propel me through important ideas, like the concepts and characters for stories.

I find one truth about comics is this: people will forgive bad art for a good, understandable story. Fantastic art, on the other hand, is poorly wasted on a bad story. I, as a reader (and that may not be typical at all), will stop reading a comic if the story sucks, no matter how beautiful it is. I will even stop reading a comic if the story is relatively predictable, or pulling from already existing stories without conscious reference. I keep the reference exception because I have a healthy respect for art and popular culture that is intelligently aware of where it comes from.

Therefore, I feel it necessary to spend as much time practising my writing and reading skills as my drawing skills. I do love working with other writers, it's one of my favourite collaborative processes, but I also like to write my own comics. Thus, the mind mapping. I used to use it all the time for coming up with visual arts projects of any medium I desired, and it translated really well to the early process of writing stories. If you are unfamiliar with mind mappings, it's one part word association, two parts concept association, two parts idea flow and a dash of messy organisation. The point is to get yourself thinking and creating important associations, and to avoid censorship of your ideas. Let them go where they go.

I do two types of mind mapping: crazy general mapping and a more specific mapping for characters and world ideas. My first example with this post is mapping for the general idea of Fantasy and what it means to me. It was really useful because I was able to identify what major aspects of the Fantasy genre I wasn't fond of and was able to think of interesting ways to circumvent them. This was going to help me create a unique story that was aware of it's own genre. The second example is more specific to the story itself, the characters and groups of individuals. This was helpful in regards to solidifying who the characters were and how they relate to each other. It also created an opportunity to think about specific plot points and important scenes. I could start visualizing what the comic looked like.

I don't use mind mapping every time I create a story, but when the story is stagnating or I'm having trouble getting the whole picture of my idea. How you use it will be up to you, it's an incredibly personal experience and can't be broken down into a series of steps. I can, however, share some tips that I have realised after using this method for a while.

Be brave and use many pieces of paper and sacrifice organisation for just getting ideas out. The process of putting ideas down feels great and helps create more ideas. The process of going over what you wrote afterwards will be different and hopeful quite fun and enlightening.

Don't censor yourself, you never know what will be useful.

Make jumps in logic that might not make sense to other people. This is for you, you don't have to prove your point.

Nothing is stupid, no idea is too outrageous.

Don't be afraid to analyse and don't be afraid of being silly. It's the best part of this exercise.

Write down different types of words and phrases: feelings, smells, textures, materials, dialogue, try to get a multi-sensory experience. It makes for great story making if you get this out now!

Happy mind mapping! I hope it helps.

A Little More on Collectivization

While I was writing that entry on collectivization, I forgot to mention that Wei is currently working on a really interesting collab with two other artists, Jonathon Dalton and Cat Tang. Jonathon is doing world development and colouring the eventual comic, Wei is doing the more specific story, characters and inking, and Cat is scripting and pencilling. I like that the comic is integrated between these three artists in both writing and drawing, and that they are each relying on each other for good ideas and content generation. I wanted to mention it because it;s a great structure that others may want to use, and it directly relates to my desire to have more comic artists work in collaboration.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 22

2010-04-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Collectivization: It isn't just for hippies anymore.

Every Thursday I teach a group of elementary school students a drawing and cartooning class. It's a lunch hour session, so I go quick and dirty with the comic theory. During our first class one of the rather loquacious boys presented me with a huge and mysterious red folder. To my pleasant surprise, it was full of comics. Over 70 pages of comics actually. This student explained to me that, together with three other friends, he had been putting together this book of short 3-5 page comics. It was like the mini kid version of the comic collective I hold dear to my heart, Cloudscape. I was eager to take their red book of treasures and plunder it with my comic loving eye balls.

I noticed an amazing thing, the comics were actually good. I've seen 10 years olds make a lot of comics in my time, and 99.9% of them are pretty crappy. I spend a little time with these 10 year olds, give them a few lessons and tell them to work through their crappiness. My motto is actually "Don't worry, your first comic will be crap. Make it anyways, because that's how you get better." Clearly, these kids with the good comics were the example of sticking with it until you figured it out. I had to ask the kid comic collective representative in my class, how did you work together and how did you make these comics not suck? His answer was like a 20 year old art school student speaking through a ten year old. He told me that they read each other's comics, told each other what they liked and didn't like, and then made more comics with that in mind. Yes, dear readers, these kids weredrawing, distributing and peer reviewing with each other with no prompting from us silly adults. They are now my heroes. They wanted to get better, so they sucked up their potential embarassment and worked together.

This brings me to my more adult related diatribe. Peer review and collective comic making is good for you and you should do more of it. We live in a highly individualistic culture, of this I have no doubt. It's easier to create consumers when you divide and conquer. The unwitting victim of this mentality is the arts, and in particular those arts that straddle fine art and popular culture. The arts where people can potentially become celebrities. Celebrities are single entities and icons to be consumed, they are not necessarily identified with a movement, a group of artists or often even an artistic method. My point being: there's a lot of push away from collectivization and group comic making, even certain kinds of unstructured collaboration (by this I mean not the tradition artist-writer collab). Nonetheless, a rich community of comic artists exists and more often than not they like to get together.

My wish is to push this already existing community more towards the group collaboration methods than separating people into individual practices. My reasoning for this is as follows: if you look at the over arching discussion of art history, or even history in general, we conceptualize our understanding of our past in trends or movements, with individuals exemplefying those movements. Movements aren't created by individuals, but by groups of people that are making socially and historically important art. The individuals that epitomize the movement are not necessarily celebrities in their time, but worked diligently within these movements to bring them to a height or discourse not seen by the majority of cases. Movements create a system that encourages artists to aggressively compete, review, critique and analyse each other's works. This competition, when viewed from the lofty height of the future, can be made cohesive and understandable.

However, in order for these movements to work, people need to communicate with each other in a relatively serious way. In a way that takes comics for comic's sake, not to boost one's ego, seem superior or act like a general douche. The only goal here, from a historical point of view, is good art. No one cares about the rich, celebrities fade into obscurity, but ideas are what creates the backbone of history. Those who articulate these ideas in the most comprehensive and valuable way will be awarded the coveted footnote in remembrance.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 21

2010-04-12T01:27:00.000-07:00

Rat Creatures! I read some Bone and I fell in love with them. I just had to draw some of my favourite expressions. The ones I didn't include? The hissing expression and the little baby rat creature. No spoilers! I haven't finished reading it yet. Shout out to Jeff Smith for being one of the most awesome comic artists alive.

I did a design for myself today as well. This is a little girl who is tortured by monsters in her wallpaper. I'm looking forward to making the comic.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 20

2010-04-11T01:26:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas
I did some sketching and inking, and a whole lot of working. Working with kids, working with installation art and working with food. Tomorrow? More work. Then I shall work on non-comic things no more!

Until then, I hope you enjoy these few drawings and look forward to some new comics as much as I do.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 19

2010-04-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

Here's a sexy comic page for you all! If you don't like those sort of things, don't say I didn't warn you!

Today I have lymph nodes the size of golf balls. I hate when my illnesses come back like bad horror movie villians. It's so inconvenient.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 18

2010-04-09T23:44:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

You know that character in Fringe, the one that Dunham goes to see in the bowling alley? They should cut him, he's one of the few bad things about that show.

Here's a small sequence I did of Bailey doing some different facial expressions. It was fun, but time consuming.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 17

2010-04-08T23:42:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

Just some quick sketches. For the next few days I won't be able to post too much because I have to finish my last project of the semester. When that is over, I will be able to devote myself entirely to teaching, drawing and blogging for you fine people!

Not So 9 to 5: Day 16

2010-04-07T22:23:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I made some thumbnails for a short story I was initially going to collaborate with Chloe on. We probably still will, but she's busy with conventions this month. As such, I have some much needed preplanning time and an opportunity to practice drawing comic pages.

Things I've learned from Perspective drawing

I'm not going to lie, perspective is hard. It's like computer machine language - most programmers have an idea of what it is and can discuss some general properties of how computers use it, but ask them to write something in it and they will probably punch you. In the face.

The comic artist's relationship to perspective is the same. We didn't have to invent it, and we don't have to understand all of it, but we use the tips and tricks that have filtered down from its conception to create some pretty great drawings. When drawing comics, I find that there are some rules that have more priority than others. I thought I would share these rather random thoughts with you. Of course, this lists assumes you know basic perspective and it's terms. You know, things like horizon line, eye level, vanishing point, etc.

The horizon line, or eye level, is one of the most important considerations in drawing a panel.
This is where you will get the dynamic "camera" angles, and this is the viewpoint of your reader. Eye level is not that of your characters in the frame, but of the audience. I like to relate eye level to how you want to make your reader (or viewer) feel, and often use two very well known fantasy movie series as an example: The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.Harry Potter likes to bring the viewers into the scene from a high viewpoint, with eye level being almost bird's eye view, while The Lord of the Rings does the opposite, starting it's shots from Hobbit level, or looking up at its scenes. Harry Potter wants to help you feel fantastical, whimsical and in awe. LOTR wants you to feel the repression of many of it's monuments, in particular those of Mordor and Isengard. This is the beauty of cinematography, and it can absolutely be translated into comics.

This is not to say that you must maintain a specific eye level, or treat all of your scenes with the same regard. It's a tool to impress a feeling on the narrative, in combination with panel size and flow.

Perspective is not just for backgrounds
Unless you want to create a cut out feel, placing a character on a background rendered in perspective will probably not match up. Especially if that character is in line with the perspective, or on a 3/4 angle. Figures need to make sense with the vanishing points just like any other object in the scene. I like to draw the placement of my characters as simple shapes in perspective and then fill out the details.

Characters drawn in a crowd scene will also have to be drawn in perspective. Height, location and relationship to other figures have a particular perspective method to drawing them. This method will definitely help to fix up problems or give the image the extra depth it needs to drive the story.

Don't laze out on perspective, it will get easier.
At first, it's a lot of extra and often messy drawing, but in the end it pays off. Stick with doing proper perspective - at least a horizon line with vanishing points, and in a little bit of time you will be able to feel the perspective of a drawing without having to do all the preplanning.

Just like drawing people, drawing scenes, backgrounds, etc, requires practice from life. For the longest time I was having trouble with certain aspects of 2 point perspective. Then, while I was drawing an interior space for a drawing class, I realised I was always putting my vanishing points to close and it was warping the shapes. Quick, comicky perspective is a combination of technical understanding and compositional feel. Even comics that use very flat or simple backgrounds still use the principles of basic perspective with their eye level and choice of 1, 2 or 3 point perspective.

Get a good book on perspective for reference
The book that I have is Perspective Made Easy by Ernest R. Norling. It was written in the 1960s and is simple to follow. The chapters are well categorized and the language is easy to read. It also has excellent and clean drawings to work from and chapter exercises to practice with.

My inspiration for this blog post was opening up that book again for some quick reference and thinking that perspective is the dirty subject people don't really talk about. As soon as I brought it up at my Cloudscape meeting, Jonathon immediately started relating that he had this great trick for 2 point and that he should write a tutorial on it. I say we should bug him about it, because I want to see it too. Everyone has their tricks for perspective, and their priorities. If we share, we can make the whole messy ordeal easier for each other.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 15

2010-04-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today's Comics, Sketches and Ideas
I finished my triptych project for digital photography tonight. Triptychs are supposed to be a series of three paintings (in this case photographs) used in particular ways, usually for sequence or juxtaposition. Being a comic artist in a digital photography class, I decided to put my skills to use. This narrative came out of viewing this particular comic one night while browsing a few comic groups on DeviantArt. I have been really inspired by these dark comic love tragedies recently. Like, the absurd Romeo and Juliet (as if it was wasn't absurd before, it's like Shakespeare's inside joke to make fun of emo teenagers).

I totally hacked the lighting on this one, it's a combination of a kitchen track light, reflected light from the fridge and a desk lamp jimmied to a kitchen chair. Screw studio lighting, I like to see what I can get with unconventional materials and equipment. It can be so anti consumer.

I apologize for my random bantering, I'm in a strange, excited mood tonight.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 14

2010-04-06T03:19:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Scripting - This is how I roll
It's daunting to write a script for something you will end up putting in visual sequence. It's equally daunting to try to describe that process in an articulate manner for others to understand how it's done. In this particular post I am going to be posting a lot of sketches and first drafts, a lot of rough, in process art that is really not meant to be consumed by any audience. This is the raw and unfiltered, the unprofessional before it is packaged into something comprehensible and challenging. It's notes to oneself, doubt about particular initial ideas and working through what you want to do and what comes off as horribly cliche. I hope all of this documentation is helpful, but it's also important to critique it as a work in process. An artist opening up their process for review is a delicate and sensitive topic, one that deserves honesty and integrity in discussions.

That being said, crap is crap and it should not be tolerated from a professional artist. It needs to be headed off at the pass and euthanized. As I said, honesty is very important. That doesn't mean you have to like everything... in fact, it's better if you don't.

Today I'm going to look at two related stories that I worked on for a number of weeks (including initial doodles and scraps, more like a few months). The first is Leloran Anima, a fantasy story that was initially conceptualized as a GURPS game I made to play with my young brother and sister to introduce them to tabletop role playing games. I felt that they spent a lot of time competing with each other, and the games they had at their disposal were encouraging this behaviour, so I created something cooperative that I thought would speak to them. Leloran Anima takes place in a world that is just industrializing and dealing with shifts within traditional monarchy systems. There are four main characters, the most important being the youngest daughter of a prominent royal family that is overthrown by their people. I wanted to challenge the traditional good vs. evil convention in fantasy and bring some social maturity that tends to predominate science fiction stories.

Writing Leloran Anima

So, the first thing I wrote to get the ball rolling was the character's personalities and conflicts between them. This made sense, because the world was so involved that I needed something to ground my ideas before I jumped on a general plot. The story is very character driven, so outlining who these people are became of utmost importance. The foundation of the plot and the secondary characters came out of this exercise, and further changes were to shift the narrative in a direction that I felt was important.

There are usually two ways of writing fiction (or anything really) - additive and subtractive. Additive writing is when you start out with an outline and fill it in. Subtractive writing is where you write down all the ideas in your head and pare it down to an outline. I tend to be an additive writer. It drove my university professors nuts, because in lower division classes we would have to hand in outlines for our proposed papers and mine had enormous amounts of content. Eventually, I would take the nugget of the idea out of this content and structure into something that flowed well and got my point across. It was unconventional, but I haven't received less than a B+ on a paper, so it definitely works for me. I took this same approach with Leloran Anima; I started out with the thick description of the plot, a linear discussion of what the story looked like, and then pared it down to an act by act outline.

While writing this, I became immediately aware that even with the emphasis on the characters rather than the world, the story was still too involved as a first attempt. Writers have to be careful about falling into this trap - we live in our heads and sometimes these heads come up with concepts that are too involved to accurately gauge whether they will engage us for the amount of time it will take to write them. We can also start to think that these are precious parts of ourselves, and then we don't want to share them with others. At this point you have to stop and remind yourself as to why you're a comic artist to begin with. It's not to make our precious little comics in our basement where we get to sit and admire them in isolation. We make this art for other people to read, to engage with them and an old tradition of passing on ideas, truths and understandings from person to person through a medium. You are not your art and your art is not you. It's a process that you have no control over once it leaves your brain and reaches the page.

What was my solution to this problem of scale? I broke it down. Nothing breaks down a huge project like a smaller short story, a vignette or a prequel. I went with prequel. I took two of the characters whom I knew were going to be involved prior to the beginning of the main narrative and decided to write the story about how they met.

Writing Airship Arc Winds

Airship Arc Winds came to me while I was teaching comic books to 9-12 year olds. I was watching them approach their pages and stories with the tips and tricks I had taught them and was inspired by their lack of doubt. They're so used to being told to jump into the water without knowing how to swim that they don't even think twice about it. They don't care that they're not the best at drawing, or that no one will like the story because they are working under the authority of someone who will make them do it anyways - the teacher. I took their lack of hesitation and pushed them to look for the great things they were doing and push those, rather than dwell on the mistakes. I decided I could do the same with myself. I picked up a piece of scrap paper and wrote the first ten pages of Airship Arc Winds and the outline for the whole story in about 4 hours. I had thumbnails in another 30 minutes, and was finished pencilling the first ten pages two weeks later. It was amazing, and then it fizzled out. I became confused, the longer I worked with stale ideas I didn't write down, the more I forgot the essence of them. Keeping a story in your head doesn't work, just like keeping a memory, it begins to be twisted and recontextualized as time passes on.

So, I needed to revisit what I was doing. I wanted to keep it loose, and I wanted to maintain the voices of the characters, so I dictated my first spoken script. I did this with dictation software on my computer and a microphone. It worked amazingly and, once I got over having any punctuation, the story flowed nicely. I was able to go from scene to scene with little difficulty, and the visuals in my mind were on the computer with me simply speaking them aloud.

Nonetheless, I didn't feel passionate about the project for a bit. So I put it aside. Now that I look back at the amount of content, I realise this was a mistake. I already have the ground work, all that needs to happen is the drawing. Really, when you're scripting, that can be the hardest part. Like I said in an earlier entry, it's hard to tell when you're critiquing your work and when you're being a self conscious pansy. In this instance, I was being a self conscious pansy and I should really continue to draw it. Perhaps I will continue with page 11 tomorrow.

So, those are the major scripts for a relatively big project. This project was made by me, with little or no collaboration with Wei. In the near future I will discuss writing, drawing and making comics in collaboration, because that's a whole different monster.

Until then, I hope this was as enlightening for you to read as it was for me to write.

Anatta: Chapter Three, Page 11

2010-04-05T12:14:00.002-07:00

Anatta Ch3 Pg11 by ~AniseShaw and ~ThreeEyesWorm

Here's a new page for your reading pleasure! Did I mention I love red heads?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 13

2010-04-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

This is Bailey. She's my character for my latest comic idea. You remember these thumbnails? This is the female character in that sequence.

I have a few more perspectives to draw her from, and I would like to do a facial expression sheet (those are always super helpful, you can find the template here). The Essential Expressions sheet started out as a challenge on DeviantArt and has since become essential in my character repertoire. I don't usually do all 25, just a select few that are important to the character's personality. Plus, I like to do the drunk one. Everyone has a different drunk face, I find it hilarious when people misread me as being drunk. I'm not a light weight at all.

After I get the hang of this character, on to the next female protagonist! Chalice is her name, and she's pretty spunky.

The next entry of my blog is, of course, Monday. I will chat there about some comicky topic, probably scripting or marketing. One of the two.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 12

2010-04-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today's Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I finished painting the a new page of Anatta, finally. Wei has finished his grant applications, his Zuda applications and in 20 days his pitch packages will be done as well. Making this comic without my drawing partner is a little difficult, but we'll get back into it.

On Fridays and Saturdays (probably Sunday as well) I will just post sketches and comics, because I'd rather encourage myself to draw during these times. I will save the writing for the weekdays. Being out and about really helps to get my mind going.

Would it be useful to post parts of scripts? I know I've talked a bit about writing scripts for comics and translating them into thumbnails and pages, but would breaking down my scripts and discuss how I write them be useful? Just asking the question makes me aware that the answer is pretty much yes, I just have to write it properly!

Not So 9 to 5: Day 11

2010-04-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I'm so looking forward to finishing the silly classes I have to take to finish my degree. Just another week, and I don't have to put together pointless digital photographs or create installation projects on ideas that I'm not really interested in.

Don't get me wrong, I love thinking in other mediums. I love to solve those conceptual puzzles. At this point, however, I really just want to draw and push that one medium to wherever I can take it. Going to art school is great, but it's 4 years where you have to put aside what you really want to do and see if you can pick it up again when you're done.

Self Doubt and Critique: How do I know when my work sucks?

A really difficult grey area, I think for anyone, is where critique ends and useless self doubt begins. This is the zone where critical regard meets material play and professional confidence meets personal self esteem. Some people are worse at self doubt than others. Wei can be particularly bad when he's submitting something for reviews, grants or contests. So how do you draw the line between critique and self doubt, and how do you know when this process is failing your art?

One of these methods is really useful. Critique is how we challenge ourselves and tighten up our work. It the process of questioning what we do and why we do it, so that the finished artwork can properly express the intent of the artist while being true to narrative, character and form. Authenticity comes through the process of critique. Without any reflection, art is simply a useless paradigm. Perhaps an exercise in self gratification and attention seeking.

Self doubt is that little voice inside telling you that you need to live up to some standard that you're not acheiving. It is the unresolvable negativity that plagues even the most light hearted. It's insatiable because it's absurd. Perhaps it's the way we torture ourselves to justify our fears. If we make big and scary in our minds, eventually it will become big and scary. I have seen some very talented artists systematically dismantle brilliant pieces of art in a frenzy of self doubt. It's not good enough, it's not interesting enough, no one will care or no one will like it.

How can one possibly tell the difference? When in that grey area of criticism and self doubt, when does it become useless?

I like to bring it back to the questions. I don't discuss my concepts, I ask questions about them. How is this work operating? How does it flow? Does this character have enough personality to warrant a story? What can I do to engage a reader in this idea? Can I tell this story from a different perspective? These are the questions of critique. Questions that need to be answered in the fundamental formulation of a work.

Is this interesting? Will people like it? Is it marketable? Does this fit in with what I have done in the past? I attest, these are valuable questions, but not necessarily while in the process of making art. It's better to get it done that to question the foundations of why it is being done to begin with. It's being done because you are doing it, and working within an initial drive is an important thing to do. I feel like these are questions of self doubt, questions that seek to affirm a normative position. Great art is culturally and historically sensitive, but it doesn't necessarily seek to "fit in". With comics I think this is especially apt, because it often feels like the community is in a continual self confidence crisis.

Comics stand on the border between art and entertainment. We were born of a drawing practice - a technique used as a preliminary drafting tool for larger, more important fine art works. We have also embraced narrative and sequence, the grandfathers of modern entertainment and popular culture. Because of this history, I think it is all the more important for comic artists to delineate between critique and self doubt. Entertainment strives to fit in, to feed it's self confidence issues with abstract monetary and popularity values. At the same time, art strives for constant reassessment and critique, often leaving it in a vortex of discourse with little relevance. Being in the middle of these two heavy weights is a daunting position, but one that affords a lot of opportunity. We simply have to learn to navigate the grey areas.

When I'm unsure, I bring it back to the questions. I try to put my ideas, feelings and concerns about what I'm doing into an interrogative format. When the question seems absurd, or too obsessed with my own self image I know I can push through it. It's just useless self doubt, and if I give into it the doubt might kill my ability to do any art.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 10

2010-03-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today's Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I went into ABC Country Restaurant for the first time in my life. It was so amazingly kitsch! It's like the decorations my mom used to put in our kitchen when I was a kid. The birds and the fake thatch made into little brooms with ribbons. Real down home like.

The conversations I could over hear were really dull, though. A lot of inane chatter about things I've heard from everywhere else before. Some of the old couples were interesting though.

So, while they chatted, I drew Rosetta from Harvest Moon. Good times were had by all.

Man Up, or how I don't care about that

I suddenly have an image of Sue from Glee in my head proclaiming "Offensive". You know, the man up part.

I witnessed quite a disturbing thing this morning. I was walking to the bakery where I normally get coffee on Wednesday morning when a truck struck a cyclist across the street. It was insane, I don't even know if the cyclist made it through the day, and I've been scowering the news ever since to see if he's okay. Nonetheless, I was shaken, this man was obviously very hurt and there was very little I could do about it.

I would like to think I'm a pretty empathetic person, and often I can be emotional about things. In this instance I was thinking this poor person, he woke up this morning thinking he needed to get to work and probably wondering a number of things I can only assume were not that he should prepare to be hit by a truck. Now he might not be alive anymore.

His tragedy seems to have become my self reflection. I think this is necessary when faced with something as uncomprehendible as life and death. Gilles Deleuze discusses this as "the event", the moment in our life that is so unknowable that we spend every waking moment distracting ourselves from its inevitability. How I interpret Deleuze in my own existential understanding is that my distractions need to be fulfilling and responsible to the life I have. To put it simply, I don't feel like wasting away in an office until I'm in my fifties because I need a house, a car, an HDTV, a computer and whatever other kinds of junk people are buying nowadays. I've watched both my parents live those lives and had to participate in their sadness, lonliness and crippling dissatisfaction. None of this would be a problem if they didn't whole heartedly believe that these feelings were wrong and that they were not the path to their happiness. So, they have filled their lives with stuff and hoped that it would give them some momentary sense of satisfaction. My father even said to me the other day, upon hearing that my sister is going to have a baby in September, that his life was fading into meaninglessness and that the birth of the new generation makes him feel almost renewed.

Doing this, what I've been doing every day, gives me so much satisfaction. I have wanted to make comics and draw for as long as I can remember and I can't believe I have been able to surmount all the external barriers to focus on it as my profession. Sure, I'm not making a living off of it, but as long as I don't care about major material wealth and am willing to work my few hours a week as a teacher, I have no problems with it. I am so happy I got to spend the afternoon in a cafe drawing thumbnails and practicing character sketching.

The only barriers I'm left with are internal. So when I say I will man up, I mean to myself. Not to what one should do, or to a system that doesn't take so many important things into account. Man up, people. It's great when you actually do.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 8 & 9

2010-03-31T00:53:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today's Comics, Sketches and Ideas
I hate to make excuses, but I hate being sick more. I slept, a ton and really felt the weight of being self motivated in conflict with needing to rest. When your home is also your workplace, it can be really hard to put work (or often domesticity) to the side for more important things. Like making comics or not being sick anymore.

Luckily, I'm talented with the art of immersing myself in distraction. I played a whole ton of Harvest Moon: Rune Factory on my DS. That led to making fan art. Oh fan art, the bane and boom of the internet. It might even lead into a short fan comic, because that's the way I roll now a days.

Finally, after some virtual farming and a nice, long soak in my bathtub, I returned to the computer ready to work. I'm finished the base colours and a bit of the shading for Chapter 3, Page 11 of Anatta, which should be updated on Thursday. I UStreamed it and the recording is available for watching. Warning - it's long and I gave up on V and started watching Battlestar Galactica with Wei while I was doing it. So you get to hear some good scifi in the background with Wei being a total nerd.

Anatta: Chapter 3, Page 11 UStream

Fan Art and You: A Case For and Against Fan Derrived Art

Whether you like it or not, fan art exists. Not only does it exist, but it's a significant vehicle to internet popularity. Whenever I post a piece of fan art I get a good number of favourites on Deviantart in a very short period of time. I'm pretty sure these people aren't really looking at much beyond the fact that they are also fans, which is draw back I will talk about in a bit.

Fan art is a condition of post modernism, culture has a different relationship to art and popular media than even 10 years ago. The internet has been the great proliferator of post modern methods, so much so that these subcultures are often taken for granted. We don't simply relate to mediums as receivers, we want to have a conversation. We want to create within the rules laid out by writers, scripters, television show directors, video game creators, you name it and people want to work in it. I see a vibrant culture of self expression, and one where artists and would be artists have a realm to practice and challenge themselves with already established methods.

Fan art also creates a practice where artists can push themes from popular media to their natural or absurd conclusions. I find that works such as these help to highlight underlying themes that may have been downplayed because production companies may have thought them to be unpopular.

Where there is benefit, there is also detriment. It can be easy to fall into the fan art trap. Working within someone else's method can become a crutch when developing your own ideas and process seems too big to conquer. I find that the majority of fan art fans (oh so many layers of insignificance) can be fickle. People consume fan art because it is a self gratifying act, as soon as you stop gratifying what these particular fans want, they will move on. While this is true of most fans in general, I think it is increasingly problematic with fan art fans because the fan art an artist does can vary wildly from their original work.

This is a very interesting topic that I think I will come back to again in the future, especially as I make more fan art. What do you think?

Not So 9 to 5: Day 6 & 7

2010-03-28T23:11:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today's Comics, Sketches and Ideas

I spent this weekend being lazy and sick. I've been very lucky this year, I didn't get sick at all, not a flu or anything. Finally, the bugs have caught up with my kick ass immune system and given me strep throat. I'm pretty tired and it's been hard to concentrate. As such, I've condensed these two days into a single post and I'm only really going to discuss my drawings. No topic based post, sorry. I have a really interesting one for tomorrow though.

<-- I did some thumbnailing, as you can see. Very rough and very focused on flow. I put all of the speach bubbles in to try and guide the reader through the drawings. I didn't want any of the important figures to go unnoticed.

The story is about sex. It's a warning to anyone who might be a little prudish about these kinds of things. It's not explicit, but there is a discussion about sexual happenings. It's not a happy story, it's just a short 5 pager to vent some frustrations of my own. I think at the end of the day I will write a longer story about sex and the perspectives that I've experienced and talked about with others. Men and Women. At this point, I have most of my stories from women because hetero men talk with me about sexual experiences in a different way. Almost as if they're trying to measure me up. It's just the gender and sexual difference I think.

The fun thing I got to do this weekend was see my first movie in the Cinema with my young brother and sister. We went and saw How to Train your Dragon and it was a very cute and endearing movie. When we went back to their house afterwards, I taught my sister how to draw dragons out of simple lines and shapes. This was my exampe picture. I didn't want her to feel intimidated by drawing something as strange and mystical looking as a dragon, so I explained that you can base a dragon around a simple line and fill it out into something quite nice without too much effort. I like my chubby dragon, so I practiced some ink brush and watercolour work on it.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 5

2010-03-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Oh, How I Feel Unbelievably Guilty...

When there's a day that I don't get anything done. There are certain instances when events pile up and plans go longer than planned, thus creating a vortex in which no comics or drawings are made. It's quite easy to tell myself that these days happen and that it's really up to me to make sure that they don't out number the productive days. Sometimes these kinds of day pile up, and they can do it without me really realising it. This blogging project has been really successful for me this first week because there is nothing that slips through. I have this goal, and I'm going to fight to attain it.

At first I was lost, what was I going to write about today? My day? That sounds pretty boring. I did my annual shopping trip, and now I don't want to see the inside of a mall for another 365 days. Boring. I bought shit. Boring. I used it when I got home. Boring.

It was existentially a big waste of 16 hours. It's these lost days that make it painful to be mortal, because I have nothing to contribute or reflect on with these days.

Nonetheless, there were some interesting observations from today. Even if I don't draw, I try to keep myself in the mindset of idea making, understanding things and deconstructing happenings of interest for further incorporation into comic projects. At the end of the day, I write about life, so I need to understand life. I need to think about and understand what is going on around me, so I can weave compelling and understandable representations.

Rewatching for Inspiration

I first watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles about a year ago. I was hankering for some good scifi, but there was little available on TV. I enjoyed the Terminator movies, but I felt like the show might have been a little fan-boyish. I was desperate enough to overlook that tragedy in marketing and give the show a chance. By the end of the first season, a meager 9 episodes, not only was I in love, but Wei along with me. The narrative was filled with ironic poetry, the characters were complex and the tone and pacing of the whole show was soft, dark and beyond anything I expected. The show was not afraid to work through complex and ambiguous themes, and I respected it for treating me like an intelligent viewer.

Yesterday Wei decided to rewatch a few episodes for some inspiration. I'm hooked all over again, but this time I'm looking for the process. How did they write this show? How did they decide when to move inwards and when to allow the actions of the characters play themselves out? The conversations between the characters are always important, but not always to move the plot forward. When do they decide to push the plot or allow the characters to wander in their personalities and how they work with each other?

These are questions that can culminate in the second watching of a piece of television narrative. I have been known to watch episodes several times over for entertainment and analysis. Now comes the eternal question of application. I think some of the best methods for analysis is recreation. Perhaps I will write in the voice of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and see if I can get myself into the poetry of those writers. To treat my characters with such authenticity, and to come at my narrative with such passion, that would be such a feat.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 4

2010-03-25T23:42:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today’s Comics, Sketches and Ideas

Oh my! It's an actual comic! Which means this whole idea of writing about my experiences everyday is already starting to pay off. At least in a honeymoon kind of way. I was walking out of my house this morning and I realized that I put on a different perfume and that my scent was suddenly strange to me. These words kind of popped into my head, so I put them on paper. Translating them into pictures was a bit of an ordeal, but it was a fun one. I needed to warm up to that process, because I'm really rusty at it and have been avoiding making comics because of it.

Pacing, Panelling and Other Things I Suck At

I'm completely brain dead today. Wednesdays tend to be my rush around like a rabbit day and Thursdays my stare at the wall and watch the paint dry day. It was hard to come up with something cohesive to write about and I don't particularly feel like imparting knowledge. Essentially, if I do only that, I'm kind of being conceited, especially as someone professing to be an amateur.

So, other than my strange hatred of drawing chairs I have a propencity toward doing terrible panelling. An associated result is that my pacing in my comics suffer as well. As to not assume who might be reading, panelling is the thought behind arranging panels on the page in a particular way and pacing is the narrative speed with which you direct your readers. Both utilize panel position, size, shape, border and a host of other techniques to get different results. Long story short, I'm bad at it, and I get frustrated with it really easily.

So, mostly for this article, I forced Wei to tell me about his process so that I might inspire myself and share it with others. I don't know if you've read the comics that Wei has written, but their pacing, panelling and overall layout is top notch. He has a real eye for these things, and he's worked very hard to get them just the way he wants them. I don't just say this because I live with him, cook him food and give him sexy time a few times a week either. I'm totally okay with, and have often told him that his work is lacking, that he needs to fix something up and that his dialogue tends to be stiff and ESL-ish. I cornered him at dim sum today, pulled out my pencil and notebook and stared him down like an eager and rather attractive student that wanted to glean all his information and then make inappropriate passes at him afterwards. So, he spilled the beans.

I asked him about his early comic process. This involves mostly scripting, concept work, thumbnails and rough pages. I wanted to know how he went from having an idea, to having a script and how he the transforms that script into thumbnails. My particular speed bump tends to be where I need to turn my script into thumbnails, because I don't write with comic pacing in mind. I try to visualize what I have written and I become arrested, I become bogged down and my pages get stiff. After describing this to him, he gave me a few pointers and when through what he does step by step.

At the beginning, write down ideas as they come, don't push an organisation on it yet. Draw characters and scenes as illustrations. Be loose and have fun.

Start to put your script together. It doesn't matter how you do this, just do it. While you're writing the script, you should be drawing as well. Concept drawings for characters, locations, and anything else that might be important. Wei likes to make full on illustrations, and you can see some for his new comic here, here, and here. He did all of these while scripting for this comic

While making thumbnails, Wei draws all of the panels into several pages before he begins filling in the content. While doing this, he tries to visualize what part of the script goes there, and adjusts everything as it's needed. At this point I gathered it was important to be flexible with both the thumbnails and the script.

Next he fills in a small amount of content into each thumbnail, with dialogue bubbles, and adjusts as necessary. He quickly went over what each type of panel would do, but I think it's more valuable to read a book on it than just relate what he said. There are some good ones out there that can help a lot with understanding the theory of pacing and panelling. I've already read a lot of them, so I was more interested in how he applied that theory.

With his new comic he's decided to make half sized pencil pages. Eventually he will draw the pages on 11x17" bristol, but for now he's pre-penciling on 8.5x11" sketchbook paper. I'm pretty supportive of this extra step, it helps him learn to draw the characters consistently and iron out issues that don't show up in the thumbnails. It adds a huge amount of extra work, but I think if he only does it with a couple of comics his drawing will become good enough to cut this step all together.

It was a really inspiring discussion, and if I wasn't so brain dead (and now a little toshed on Irish whiskey), I would be scripting and drawing right now. Look out for some of the results tomorrow. In the meantime, I stumbled across this pretty comprehensive list of books on panelling and pacing on DeviantArt. Check it out if you want more of the theory behind panelling.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 3

2010-03-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today's Comics, Sketches and Ideas

My project that was due today for digital photography was a photomanipulation and FX project. I used to mess around with photoshop and photography a lot when I was in highschool, and now that I have a tablet it's a million times easier.

I made this little doodad in a couple of hours, and it still needs some work. For the purposes of this project, I think it's done. I'm not so fond of doing photomanips so much anymore, so I don`t feel like wasting too much time on it.

This second image is made up of my own photography, I wanted to play with colour, linearity and perspective. It totally freaks me out when the image of clarity is upside down. Nonetheless, I have very little interest in the class, so I tend to rush my projects. I am so ready to move on to more important things, like focusing on my own practice of making comics and writing about my experiences. I'm tired of taking classes simply because I have to. O.o

The Artist's Daily Needs

I spend at least 5 days a week with students between the ages of 6 and 19 trying to impart upon them why they would be interested in art and how they can get better at it. Art isn't always seen as an essential skill like math or languages, and as a teacher there is this constant defense as to why art is important. I get the whole "it's psychologically good for children to express themselves creatively", but art is not only about self expression, and artists that indulge in purely self expressive practices tend to come off as irrelevant. Art, in particular visual art, is about seeing things in different ways. My version of the artist is not a person who has a different outlook on life, but can switch through and understand almost all outlooks on life. We see a paradigm, delve into it, explore it, visualize it and move on to the next. Art is a valuable practice because it helps to create emancipated individuals who can see and work within and outside of the systems that other people may take for granted, or not even know that they're a part of. This is not an easy thing to do, and it takes practice and daily upkeep. Not only on the skill level (being able to represent something through drawing, for instance), but also on the methodological level. Methodology is the study of one's own process and how an artist goes about creating a piece of art. This method is always just as important, if not more important than the finished piece.

We, however, live with a socio-economic culture that often resists these tendencies, thus the daily upkeep of staying within the artist mindset. I don't want to discuss this because I think this is the way all artists should operate, the world would be completely boring if that were a reality. I want to discuss this to provide a small picture into what I do, so that others perhaps may compare, disagree, agree, find it interesting or simply not care. For me, it is also a good exercise to go over these things so that I may better know myself and my motivations. If someone is feeling blocked, frustrated or unconfident, perhaps using elements of my framework my help. I know I have pulled from other artists in times of stress and uncertainty, and I have always become a stronger artist for it.

For the sake of clarity, I have separated my process into two categories. The first one is about technical skills, the second is about idea making or methodology.

Keeping Up with the Joneses: Technical Skill and How to Get Better

I try to draw something everyday. I think of my hands as plants and drawing as water: the longer I go without drawing, the weaker and deader my hands become. At some point it becomes painful to pick up the pencil again, and my goal is to avoid that at all costs

I draw from life. Once a week, like it's crack. It's an exercise in endurance, if I can draw a model for 3 hours, a comic page is NOTHING!

When I'm bored, not interested or forced to watch a bad movie, I draw. Sometimes my friends have terrible taste, but their lack of pop culture style is just another drawing opportunity.

I surround myself with people who draw. That way they won't heckle me for drawing when I should be socialising.

I play with materials. There is nothing wrong with playing around, doodling, messing about or exploring different materials. This is the best part of being an artist and it's getting a resurgence in one of my art classes. Thankfully, because they were getting far too serious for my liking.

I indulge in other art and craft practices - painting, sculpting, knitting, collage and photography. There's always a new way to look at and represent the world and the peope in it.

LOOK AROUND! Keeping my face in a sketchbook is not always helpful. I need to be observing all the time and drawing what I see.

Figuring Out How it All Works: Coming up with Methods and Ideas

Look around and get out of your box! Most experiences that might have been unbearably cheesey, or totally not interesting to me, have become great observational and idea making opportunities. I went to Vegas last September, which happens to be a giant shopping mall. My least favourite thing in the whole world. I still loved it because I spent four days watching what happens in the world's biggest shopping mall and came home with a wealth of drawing material.

Listen. This is especially important for comics, as we create art around stories and narratives. There are a million interesting happenings out there, often from the most unlikely of people.

Shake up your process: if you normally follow a script, thumbnail, pencil, ink progression, create something that defies that. Do your scripts in many different ways. I like to type scripts, dictate them, mind maps them, and all sorts of other ways so that each story is never the same.

What I Would Like to do More of:
There are lots of things that I avoid or simply don't do that is more of a hinderance to my art making than a help. I hate thumbnailing and writing cinemagraphically, and it would be really helpful to get from the script to the drawing. Also, I hate drawing chairs, so I should probably get over that and start practicing.

I think the thing that I need to work on the most is realising when an idea is in development hell and to move on from it. I tend to stick with an idea, banging my head against it and getting nowhere. There's something sad about abandoning an idea after so much work, but I have experienced a lot of conversations with older artists who have happenstanced on their old ideas only to have their interest and work be reignited. Therefore, I never throw anything out.

As I mentioned before, discussing and learning of other people's way of making art is a great strategy for growth as an artist. Feel free to share your thoughts about how you work and what you think about it.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 2

2010-03-23T13:47:00.001-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

Today's comics, Sketches and Ideas

Wei insisted that we draw interior spaces last night in lieu of life drawing at Capilano University. Capilano is the place to go for short poses, because the life drawing is tailored to the animation students.

While we were at dinner, I drew the inside of the cafe from where I was sitting. I changed the perspective to one point (I was a little more to the side than this picture makes it seem) and I refused to draw the chairs. I hate drawing chairs.

The Guts of the Online Persona

If there's one thing that makes me feel like I might succeed at this whole crazy idea, it's that I can stay up until 3 am messing around on the Internet. Oh, sure, teenagers do that all the time, but I'm not messing around in the way that they are. I don't post unintelligable comments on YouTube or spend hours going through album after album of inane party pictures on facebook. If you post drunk photos, I'm most likely not looking at them. Nein, I am writing critiques for my fellow artists on Deviant Art, or reading the new reviews over at the Webcomic Overlook. Or, better yet, reading webcomics. Possibly your webcomic.

In my opinion, being online hold a significant community responsibility. Not just for my benefit, but also for the benefit of the community as a whole. Comics aren't as popular as I would like them to be, and until they are I think comic artist's need to stick together. I was having this conversation with Steve LeCouilliard, Jeff Ellis and Wei the other day in regards to print comics, and I think it equally applies online. Webcomics are a niche, and we need to help each other if we want to make this a viable option for people to choose as their job. So I read webcomics, I donate to kickstarter, I'll post links and push webcomics to my students. I got a great ledger sized photocopy of Starslip Crisis at the 2009 Emerald City Comic Con that I still teach to my 6-9 year olds, just to show them that the strip comic is not dead, it just moved from the newspaper to online. I've done the same with the postcards of Josue Menjivar's Everyday Things.

The online community is a place of give and take, and when you're small you need to be prepared to give a lot more than you're going to receive. I learned early on that if you're here to get famous, GTFO because you're going to be crushed into a million tiny unsuccessful pieces. This is the place for what one of my favourite Dexter characters, Sgt. Batista, calls La Passion. The internet is the outlet for it, and people may or may not listen.

There are many other personal benefits that one can gain from being involved in community, especially by reading other webcomics, but I will have to write that article another time. For now, it's all about examining motivations and making sure that the internet comic life is for you. From the minute I read my first webcomic (Megatokyo) when I was 14, I knew that this was for me. I was just blown away by the idea that you could make a few pages a week and people might actually come back and read them. I love the internet.

Not So 9 to 5: Day 1

2010-03-22T19:29:00.002-07:00

The Inaugural Year of an Independent Comic Artist

An Introduction to the Madness of Self Employment

This is an exercise intended to start on my 25^th birthday, i.e. Today, as a general guide, journal and meandering melange of thoughts about the madness of attempting to be an independent comic artist. For fair disclosure, I have made comics before. As I tell my young drawing students, I have been drawing as an interest for about 10 years and seriously for about 5. I have done years of life drawing and object study and I have completed my degree in Visual Arts. This will, however, be the first year that I dive head first into a chosen profession and truly define myself by such. I will not be attending University classes, and other than my part time job as a community instructor (which I need to eat), my professional time will be dedicated to comics.

So here we are. You and me, hopefully embarking on a successful journey of comics self employment. Since we will be doing it together, as in me writing about it and you hopefully reading and participating as much as you wish, I think it would only be apt to describe what this whole endeavour entails. I will be working towards making great comics for print and the internet, self published. I won't be working on anything to submit to publishers, nor for submission to websites like Zuda. I will be submitting a blog entry every day with snippets of ideas, thoughts, sketches, and rough comic pages. Finished work will be put on Epidigm, most likely with Anatta or another comic.

The benefits for me are obvious, this will be an excellent document to watch my progress and push me to continue working for the sake of it. I'm hoping to direct this project to also be beneficial for readers; I want to discuss methods of comic make, printing, web hosting, communities and other practical issues, plus posting step by step lessons that I provide my students in my teaching job. As someone who firmly believes that process is far more valuable to study (as opposed to only final products), I hope that an intimate look into my developing process will help someone else, and perhaps convince people that becoming a comic artist is a viable option for them. I always hate to hear of individuals who give up on their artistic dreams because the perception of the discipline is that it's unsustainable and one can't support themselves on it. I hope that the journey of my risks, successes and failures will illuminate the decisions others will have to make for themselves.

Who is Anise Shaw?

I am. My real name is Vanessa Kelly. I chose Anise Shaw as a pseudonym because I fear ten year old children's proficiency with Google. The last thing I want is for a student to google my name, find my violent and/or sexually themed comic that deals with gender/social/political issues and cost me my teaching job. I was sensitive to this early on because my name was dragged through the mud in University (student politics stuff, another story for another time), so Anise Shaw stuck. If you ever meet me at a convention feel free to call me either Vanessa or Anise, I respond to both.

I was born and currently live in Vancouver, Canada, and am thus Canadian. I think that I might be one of those polite ones, and I definitely love my public health care. I tend to be politically involved and take great interest in federal happenings in my country. My family has been Canadian for as many generations as I know now, everyone who emigrated from their home countries have long since passed away. I have three siblings, divorced parents, two cats and a heterosexual life partner. I'm frank, outgoing, and tend to over share. I have a blurred idea of the public and the private and will probably tell you more about myself and the things I do than you care to know.

Lastly, I am a little weird. My Mom likes to call me a 'bleeding heart liberal', but I don't think that's it. It's more like everything is up for analysis and criticism, even myself. I'll try not to be too arts and social science-y, but no promises on a complete ban of social critique. I see more value in living poor, creative and critical than rich, with a 9 to 5 job and unquestioning. I might be the perfect candidate for self employment, because I have grown to despise every office job I have ever held.

I like sweet foods, cheese, exotic teas, and drinking whiskey. I hate shopping, malls and anything associated with them.

I know how to drive, own a car, but I take the bus instead (even if it takes longer). Don't be surprised if many entries are written on buses, being in transit is the best time to write.

Today's Sketches, Comics and Ideas

Ideas

Something I immediately labelled Café Vancouver: a possible anthology idea. Stories by different artists that take place in a fictional café in Vancouver. Very slice of life, the characters, plot and time frame would be completely up to the contributing artists. I would even like to draw a floor plan and describe the type of café and menu that would be available. I would like to do a story of how the café would be used in a post apocalyptic situation, where the space has been co opted and re-purposed.

Sketches

Exploded View: A Cloudscape Anthology now available for online purchase

2010-03-16T13:33:00.002-07:00

Cloudscape Comics » The Cloudscape Shop

The fourth (and best, in my opinion) Anthology from Cloudscape is now available to purchase online. Wei, Jonathon and Chloe all have fantastic stories featured in this book along with 25 different artists.

The theme of this anthology is Science Fiction. I was surprised and delighted to find that the stories ranged from hard-science to romance to comedy and back again. I've become a big fan of short story anthologies over the years, I like to have that sampling of moods, characters, plots and in this instance drawing styles as well.

The 250 page black and white book is selling for $10.95 and features a cover design by Camilla d'Errico.

Check it out!

Just Undo It: Conceptual Devices

2010-03-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

Just Undo It — Conceptual Devices

I just love good design in the morning! Here are a variety of tutorials for taking a regular hoodie and transforming it into a variety of useful things. My particular favourite is the computer sleeve:

Throwing down some Street Photography

2010-03-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

In the Elevator by ~AniseShaw on deviantART

He Turned Out to be Famous by ~AniseShaw on deviantART

Photography: Finding an Audience

2010-03-03T12:28:00.001-08:00

Finding an Audience: Working with the Professionals

The idea of the curator or the director as an integral part of an art work is a new and novel idea. In my opinion. I think it is a combination of things that has given rise to this particular circumstance. One is the proliferation of popular culture as the primary basis for visual interpretation, and the other is the creation of open ended, rather obtuse and fully experiential art works. The curator, therefore, has become this intermediary between an artist, who is making process-based art, and audience who is very concerned with “getting it”. The director is the translator, mediating and explaining the experience for an audience that, especially if they are perceived to be outside of the art world, do not have the critical basis for understanding highly conceptual and contemporary artwork.

Photography is no different. It has a complex and critical history in 1960s conceptual photography. The question, I think, that often comes up with curators and directors, is how to proliferate their medium of choice to viewers that are trained in understanding and deconstructing popular culture. Popular culture comes prepackaged most the time, and, while it might encourage certain kinds of thought, it doesn't necessarily encourage critical deconstruction of its form, message or visuality. Unlike 1990s installation art, popular culture comes closed, with the privileged viewpoint that discourages any discourse about its responsibility to its medium and philosophical musings about where to position it in relationship to history, understanding and existentialism. Now photography is not installation art as it does have a privileged viewpoint. That viewpoint is the frame chosen by the photographer. However, if you look at the history of conceptual photography in Vancouver, this privileged viewpoint is in flux. From the highly elaborate and completely constructed images of Jeff Wall, to the documentary and re-creation of historical moments by Stan Douglas, In Vancouver conceptual photography can be anything from highly polished advertising-like images to completely de-skilled snapshots galleries. Thus the role of the curator and the director in Vancouver has been to identify which art movement we are witnessing, and to help us to situate it in to its art historical context.

My criticism with the artist curator relationship has always been this: if one's art needs to be explained by another person (or perhaps yourself, in an artist's statement) in their gallery with a wall of text, what's the point of putting it into visual form in the first place? In a way, I am sad that we were given a textbook for this class without any actual images in it. It proliferates this idea that with every great piece of art comes a great essay, and what seems to be lost in the message is that these essays become part of the piece, fundamentally. We're in an art context where visuality and explanation are merged. Deconstruction is encouraged, but the right deconstruction is encouraged by the curator. I find the curator-audience relationship fundamentally contradictory to the philosophies espoused by this open ended art practice, especially in art practice that is based in process rather than product. The artist thus becomes the irrational, emotional producer of images and the curator becomes the intelligent, logical interpreter, a professional that will help to guide the audience. As an artist who's critical of this relationship, I must find a form to negotiate working within a gallery setting and being able to shift the perception away from this constant explanation. Luckily, simply abandoning the gallery is not difficult, because this explanation based culture has very much marginalized its visual art practice from the consuming mainstream.

A Response to Section 3 of The Education of a Photographer, edited by Charles H. Traub, Steven Heller and Adam B. Bell

Illusion of Cyberwar will destroy your Internet Freedoms

2010-03-02T00:25:00.001-08:00

Wired's Ryan Singel articulates the danger posed by the hype of an impending Cyberwar or Cybergeddon has on net neutrality and your internet anonymity. Are we really at a point where we are so scared that we are willing to allow the government into every aspect of our lives?

Many people see net neutrality as a fringe issue. If you are one of these people, I ask you, what do you post on the internet in a giving day? What do you say, what values do you espouse, what pictures do you post and what criticisms do you level? Do you want to share this with your government and their corporate contractors that may or may not be controlled by the citizens of your country?

It's a fantastic article. Check it out.

Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet | Threat Level | Wired.com

Anatta Chapter Three, Page 10

2010-02-17T12:18:00.000-08:00

Anatta Ch3 Pg10 by ~AniseShaw on deviantART and Epidigm

The next page is up! I'm getting into Anatta and some other illustration that I will post here in the near future. Until then, I need more coffee!

Anatta: Chapter Three, Page 9

2010-02-11T13:07:00.002-08:00

The new page! I feel like I can totally update this comic on time, I've decided to focus entirely on Anatta, because it deserves it. I'm still doing the sketch comic for Airship Arc Winds, but it won't be as pretty.

New Photography Entries

2010-02-11T12:52:00.000-08:00

I had to do a lighting project recently for my digital photography class. Even though I find the class less than satisfying, I'm still posting the pictures for people to see. Please leave me a critique if you wish, I would greatly appreciate any discussion

In the Studio by ~AniseShaw on deviantART

A Head by ~AniseShaw on deviantART

On the Quay by ~AniseShaw on deviantART

In Response to your Digital Photography Class...

2010-02-03T18:22:00.002-08:00

I wrote this short diatribe for a reading response in IAT 244, Digital Photography at SFU. I must admit I'm finding the class less than stimulating and I feel that it's because there is no incentive from the professors to create an environment of artistic exploration. The assignments are dry and pointless, the critique unispired and formalistic and the methodology a dated form of modernist values. There's more to photography than a beautiful shot and there's more to art than technical proficiency.

Considering the Photographer

I think it's important to put into context my position in writing this journal exercise on our readings for class. I have read such essays before, over and over again with initial fervour and dedication of a new student and eventually with the tired repetition of a graduate who is grasping for something of a sea change. Writing on artists is an interesting practice, but I would like to make the point that it's not necessary in the understanding of art, history and the situation of visual practice in society.
Behind every photograph is someone who took it. This is true. However, by the time it reaches the viewer, the person behind the frame is the person looking at it. A viewer is positioned behind a static viewpoint that they have to negotiate through their own understanding, and not that of the artist. In fact, I would go so far to say that any discussion of the artist in a personal tone is pure celebrity used to inflate the importance of their mediation of the technology and brand them as an asset in an art market.
The methodologies of these artists, discussed in these various essays, could be useful to an aspiring photographer. Coming to understand that the use and relationship with the camera is diverse and there is no right way to use it as a medium is a priceless lesson, but I wonder at it's impact in a class that stresses the compartmentalization of technical skills. In the bullet proof format of power point, the logical categorization of what would be considered the “foundational skills” in photography fit with this section of readings like two mismatched puzzle pieces. With an assignment focused entirely on exploring a technique, rather than a concept, there is no praxis to be gleaned from the methodological contemplations of Purcell, Arbus or Model. Their work was not about their use or circumvention of photographic technique, but rather an exploration of the photographic frame, it's use as document (or lack thereof) and the quintessential nature of how we view society. Or, at least in this case, how Model and others saw society in New York during a very specific period in history.
As a photographer, there is a need to consider myself. I need to consider my paradigms and assumptions, look at what I'm interested in looking at, documenting and why. There is also an interesting subtext brought with the popular use of Photoshop. The photograph is no longer about the truth (if it ever was), as the truth is twisted through the pastiche and hyper reality of photo manipulation. So what is the changed role of the photographer? It feels not like the romantic icon of a person physically snapping the shutter and trying to gleam moments of honesty, integrity or interest in the in between that has been perpetuated with post modern dark room conceptual photography. The photographer now is the manipulator. The frame of the photograph is not a window to what was, but the realm of interactive negotiation in the viewer over what elements are to be believed, which are transparent and when it simply doesn't matter any more.

I wish I was Maddox, because then this would be the most expensive $1800 Acer ever made.

2010-01-03T15:40:00.002-08:00

I'm not going to lie, sometimes I wish I was incredibly polemic. People love polemic people - look at all the fucked up people watching Glen Beck, and people pick up the outrage of polemic discussion and run with it. I know when I get all riled up about some things - like the bullshit 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, for instance - I'm more likely to write an emotional and hateful letter to my idiot of an MP and MLA.

As some people might already know, I've been in an epic war with Acer in the last few weeks over my Acer Aspire 8930G. Yes, that's this laptop here. The model is about 1 year old, so the price I paid for it was quite a bit higher, at the $1,800 mark. I bought it in October 2008, and on Christmas day the motherboard randomly imploded.

Normally, I'm the kind of person that sucks it up and pays for the repair. I did that when my TravelMate 8100 lost it's hard drive and my HP had a busted DC adapter. But this is an $1,800 laptop less than 3 months out of waranty, and this isn't a fucking hard drive, its a motherboard. I treated this computer like my God and the motherboard broke. What the hell?

When my computer broke, I was pretty devastated. In the last year it became part of my life. I thought I would give Acer a call and see if they would honour my customer loyalty to them and extend my waranty to cover this repair. Now, this is where Acer fucked things up royally.

I have FIVE Acer computers in my home, and anyone who knows me personally knows I have recommended their computers as the ones to buy. I got the Acer customer support number from their completely unnavigatable website and gave it a ring.

Automated system. Pretty normal. The creepy robot woman asked me if I was calling about the same problem I had before. I was like, "what? I've never called before!" Whatever, I said no and it moved on. Then she wanted my SNID, which is the serial number of the computer. I gave it to her. Then the bitch told me that my computer was out of waranty and hung up. I tried to get through that automated system every way possible and every time she hung up on me. I couldn't even talk to anyone!

What the fuck, Acer? You can't hire your outsourced South Asian employees to answer questions for computers with no waranty? They sell it, and then they want you to buy insurance on their own products. When you don't have the insurance anymore, they don't want to talk to you! Not only that, but by selling you a waranty they are saying that they have no faith in their own products. "Buy this, it's great! But not that great, because it might break and be our fault. Pay more money because we can't build a computer right the first time!"

Now I'm playing email tag with a bunch of stupid idiots that either a) won't answer my questions or b) don't understand enough to answer my questions. I've asked them repeatedly to call me so that I can get the issue solved and my questions answered in like 2 hours instead of 2 fucking weeks.

Acer customer service is shit. Combined with their apparently new strategy of making shitty hardware, they don't deserve new customers. Buy something else, I don't know what yet, but Acer has a business model of sell and ignore.

I'd love to hear about people's shitty computer stories. These stupid computer companies are creating a business model that is great for them in the short term, and shitty for their customers. Our outrage can make it so that it is the most costly business model for them in the long run, and hit them in the only place they understand - the WALLET.

Fuck you Acer, you lost a 10 year customer. You would have made thousands of dollars from my business over the next 10 years, and now you will make nothing. Eat it.

For all of you that are interested, I have my email conversation with Acer attached here. It's quite lengthy and still happening, but perhaps you can see what you're in for if you decide to risk Acer Customer Service.

To whom it may concern;
I own an Acer Aspire 8930G Notebook that is less than 2 years old. Today, without any prior malfunction, the laptop turned off and will no longer charge the battery. The battery indicator light does not turn on and there is a distinct clicking sound coming from the plug input/battery port when the computer is plugged in.
I have tested the power adapter and there is no problem with it. I have even tested the laptop with different outlets in my home to make sure it wasn't a power issue on my end.
The computer has not been dropped, mishandled or had any foreign substances spilled on it. It has been working more than perfectly up until now.
Your prompt reply with this issue will be greatly appreciated. Any help that you can provide will be helpful in getting my laptop fixed in a timely manner.

Cheers,
Vanessa

Response (Abin_GWSI661) 12/26/2009 03:50 AM

Dear Vanessa,
Thank you for contacting Acer America. I’ll be happy to assist you.

As per your mail, I understand that you need to replace battery.

While going through your system record in our database, we came to know that your system is out of warranty.
If you need to purchase new battery, you may please go through the following link << http://ping.fm/jrDu5 >>, << http://ping.fm/SQgpR >> or you may please call 800-826-0279, 800-317-9989.
For further clarifications, please feel free to visit our web site http://ping.fm/SqZAg.

Have a great day!

Respectfully,
Acer America
Online Technical Support

**** Question: Who the fuck is MundoCorp and why is Acer Technical Support sending me there?

This is where I called the number they provided. It didn't work. So I scoured the internet for other numbers, and they didn't work. Good job, support, for giving me shit that doesn't work.

Customer (Vanessa) 12/29/2009 07:21 PM

Hello again,

I have spent the last few hours trying to navigate the maze that is Acer customer support. In addition to several listed phone numbers that are out of date, and website links on the acer Canada website that lead to non existing urls, I have been kicked off of the phone support system all afternoon. All I want to do is fix my laptop and have itdone promptly and with little hassle. I would like to talk to a REAL person on the phone about what I can do to continue to use my TOP of the line acer notebook, of which I was one of the first people in Vancouver to purchase.

I have been a long term acer customer. After my first notebook broke (an HP) 10 years ago, I bought my first aver notebook. Now, my household currenly owns 5 acer notebooks and has up until now been satisfied. When I wen to buy a netbook in September, I chose to buy the more expensive Acer option because I couldn't imagine putting my trust in another brand. The hardware this company makes is usually very good.

The first time I have a major problem in 10 YEARS and there is no one available to help me. To say that I'm disappointed is an understatement. I expect someone at Acer to respond to my concerns promptly so that I can get my laptop fixed and get back to work on it.

My phone number is 604-***-****. I look forward to talking to a representative soon.

Response (Sumesh_GWSI673) 12/29/2009 11:23 PM

Dear Vanessa,

Thank you for contacting Acer America. I'll be happy to assist you with this issue.

I understand from your mail that your system has an issue with system.

I have verified your serial number and found that your system is out of Warranty.

Vanessa, if you are ready with sending system for repair with $199 please confirm with us and we would be in a better position to help you.

Please contact us back with the response and we would be in a better position to help you.

For further clarifications please feel free to visit our web site http://ping.fm/pZ3Tj

Have a great day!

Respectfully,
Acer America
Online Technical Support

At this point, I had my computer looked at by a local technician. He diagnosed the problem as a blown capacitor on my motherboard, which Acer had been telling me was a battery problem and was trying to get me to buy a new battery.

Customer (Vanessa) 12/30/2009 02:47 AM

Hello again,

There seems to be some confusion in this thread about what is actually wrong with my computer. I don't know what an "issue with system" is, but the problem with my Acer notebook is that there is a blown capacitor on the motherboard.

At this point I want to know what Acer is willing to do to keep my long term business. If the person reading this thread can not offer me anything that will help restore my trust in your company than I suggest that you send it to someone who does. I know that tech support is not an easy job, and that it is often thankless, so please do us both a favour and have someone who can actually help me contact me.

My Aspire 8930G is a top of the line laptop that I paid full price for. 3 months out of warranty and the motherboard breaks? That is not acceptable. I want Acer to work with me to extend my warranty and get my system fixed. I am happy to pay for this extended warranty, but I am not willing to pay an unguaranteed $199 USD, plus shipping (will that even cover a replacement motherboard, if needed, or is that just for labour?) to fix a computer that might break again in less than a year, and that shouldn't be having problems to begin with.

What guarantees will Acer give me on this repair? If I get it fixed at my local repair shop, I know I can bring it back if there is an issue with the repair and have it fixed for free. Will
Acer provide the same guarantee, or will I have to send it back for another $199USD?

Lastly, why is it so difficult to talk to someone on the phone about this? I could have had this issue solved days ago with a quick phone conversation! I am an incredibly unsatisfied long-term customer and I want Acer to address this in the fairest way possible. It's just good business practice.

I look forward to your immediate reply.

Sincerely,
Vanessa

Response (Mary LincyKM) 12/30/2009 05:36 AM

Dear Vanessa,

Thank you for contacting Acer America.

Having reviewed your e-mail I understand that you are facing an issue with the mother board.

Vanessa, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience experienced.

As the system is out of warranty, as per Acer policy we are unable to pull the system for in warranty service.

The cost of out of warranty repair is $199.

NOTE : you will have to pay one way shipping.

If you are ready to send the system for repair, please inform us and we will do the needful.

For further clarifications please feel free to visit our web site http://ping.fm/ZGA6W

Have a great day!

Respectfully,
Acer America
Online Technical Support

Customer (Vanessa) 01/03/2010 04:10 PM

Hello again,

Well, at least someone can extend a completely useless apology and work to make sure that I don't get any help at all. Not a single one of my questions was answered from my previous communication. How about I break it down for you?

1. Does the repair cost include parts, or is it just service? What are my quote guarantees? Will Acer honour the $199, or can it raise the cost once they have the computer?

2. What guarantee does the repair have? What if I get the computer back from your service and it still doesn't work? If a part is replaced, will that part have a one year waranty? If the repair is not successful and I have to return the computer for further repairs, will I have to pay another $199 plus s/h?

I'm sorry, but after doing some research, Acer does not have a very good track record for fixing a computer the first time. Considering I don't have my computer under waranty, I don't want to pay $199 every time I receive a broken computer back.

3. What is Acer going to do to restore my confidence in them as a company? Right now I am not going to be buy another Acer computer, and additionally recommending that everyone I know do the same. Unless Acer does something, they are going to lose a ton of customers.

I look forward to your quick and COMPREHENSIBLE reply,
Vanessa

Concept Art for Airship Arc Winds

2010-01-03T01:13:00.004-08:00

Hello people out there on the intarwebs! I've finally set up my ping fm so that I can update previously neglected corners of my internet personality, like blogger and livejournal. I would love to have the time to update each individually with customized content, but I only have two hands and 24 hours in a day.

I'm still getting a feel for the features provided for me on this platform, so if I have missing images or HTML where I shouldn't, please bare with my stupid technical issues. I have terrible luck with these things and always end up doing some back tracking. If you only review my stuff once and a while, you probably won't notice anything wrong. That's cool.

I feel like I've been a busy beaver with the drawing for Airship Arc Winds. At least I used to be before I went on Christmas holidays. Now I lost the groove. Here are the images from said groove, hopefully I will it up again soon.

I'm looking forward to making the Airship Arc Winds website this week, brief stints of web design definitely sustains my addiction for random coding.

Without further interruption, here is the concept art I have diligently been working on!

I hope you enjoy! Until next time!

-Anise

Webcomics Wednesday: Flipside

2009-04-07T01:09:00.011-07:00

Flipside by Brian Foulke
Fantasy/Drama

Technical: 8/10
Writing: 6/10
Originality: 7/10
Impact: 6/10

While I was still in highschool, I stumbled across the first incarnation of Flipside, a manga-style graphic novel by Brian Foulke. Back then, the comic had an amateur charm and I, in all my teenage glory, was in awe of Foulke's ability to draw page after page, with characters I enjoyed.
This part of the comic has been retitled 'Book 0' and since I fell out of reading webcomics, he's began a new incarnation of Flipside.
Much like the incarnation of the comic, I've come back to Flipside with a new perspective as well. I have been delightfully surprised by the new version, it's technical advancements and character development. At times I have also been disappointed by plot lines seemingly contrived from thin air and a rather awkward beginning.
The new flipside began with the energy of one of my favourite comic characters, Maytag. I was excited to see her new conceptualization, buy found her initial speach quite trite and heavy handed. Luckily, Maytag quickly becomes the cornerstone of the series. Her ability to talk down a situation is impressive, and her humanizing of a situation brings an interesting twist to the fantasy genre.
Flipside is an online comic that effectively broaches philosophy, sex and gender issues. Much like 'book 0', the supporting characters leave a bit to be desired. Crest in particular is quite a two dimensional character and I was relieved when the story line moved away from his girl troubles and cliché dislike of the knights.
In a world where webcomics spring up like weeds, it becomes difficult to know what is worth your time and what isn't. Flipside is a top 10 webcomic on TWC and a long time favourite of mine. If you enjoy a good fantasy story, but are also looking for something a little different than a weak Tolkien rip-off epic adventure, flipside is a good place to start in the webcomic world.

Anatta Commentary: Chapter One, Part I

2009-03-23T00:53:00.004-07:00

Anise: Well, hello out there to our Anatta readers. I'm Anise Shaw, the colourist and co-writer for the webcomic Anatta and we're going to do a collaborative commentary for our first chapter. What we would like to touch on is our process, different ideas we've had, how we've worked together and the challenges we've had.

threeeyesworm: And I am Wei Li (threeeyeswurm), drawer and co-writer for Anatta. I guess we will start with page 1.

Anise: Page 1 was probably the most difficult page we've done, it was very stressful.

threeeyesworm: yea it was and it was stressful on many different levels. I mean it was the page we set the style, the panel, the characters and the general entrence into the world of Anatta. So, a lot of fundamentals of the comic was dealt with here. But the most of the stress was from collaborating together. Afterall, it was the first time Anise and I actually worked together on one image.

Anise: It was interesting to hash out our different roles and what we needed each other to do in order to make a successful comic page.

I remember when we came up with the idea to do a weekly webcomic, were we not showering and getting ready for the day?

threeeyesworm: Oh yea! that's true! Haha it was pretty random and I remember it was because both of us felt kinda lost in exactly what we wanted to do with comics...

Anise: and we had this idea for this science fiction comic that seemed so grand, yet we were frustrated with how we were going to get it out. Wei had just submitted his last short story to a few publishers and we were worried that we didn't have enough experience to get published

I had done webcomics before, and I have great admiration for the medium, so I thought it was an option

threeeyesworm: yea, i remember I worked so hard and spent so much time on drawing and redrawing (like 4 times!) the comic that I submitted... When Anise suggested just turning the science fiction idea that I wanted to make a comic of into a webcomic, I was like fuck it what the heck. Let's just do it. Yes it was grand and seemingly larger than life, but in the end... we just had to do it. Oh yea and I remember learning from my past mistake of not writing a script out first. Thus Anatta was born as the first comic that I wrote a script for.

Anise: The script writing was hard for us too, because Wei is a very solitary creator and I was wanting to get in on how the story was going to progress. Chapter one was conceived mostly by Wei and I did a lot of the post editing. For Chapter two I had to ask Wei to write a script out specifically for me for chapter two so I could do a real edit and discuss the plot more in depth.

Now we have actually typed out scripts, which is really nice.

threeeyesworm: So, page 1 was quite hard for the both of us but especially hard for Anise because I thought it would be a great idea to go over the page with an ink wash... which is why page 1 seems more... gray than the other pages... Anise can umm bitch more about this than I can.

Anise: yeah, for sure. It took me a million years to get rid of that wash, I had to do it with a small, hard eraser in photoshop. It took me several hours just to prep the page for colouring

Wei had never done a colour comic before, so he was used to cross hatching to create depth.

threeeyesworm: This also created problems for later... as you shall see (and some have pointed out).

threeeyesworm: Another difficulty I had with page 1 in terms of the writing is having faith in the readers to understand the technology of mind switching without any exposition... I was worried that just jumping straight into the world would have been confusing for the readers.

Anise: I really love the juxtaposition in this page...

threeeyesworm: So far however, having faith in the readers seems to have worked out well. No one complained about page 1.

Anise: it was a great opening to our comic.

threeeyesworm: let's move on to page 2... I recall Anise HATED painting this page. She stalled so much on it.

Anise: stalled, I call it procrastination. I would like to point out that phrenology picture in the second panel, which is awesome. And of course, Gerald Lee, who has a much larger role in Chapter two.

threeeyesworm: Yea I really hope people would make that connection when they read chapter 2

Anise: Lastly, the mindscan picture is credited totally to Wei, he created a great representation in that.

threeeyesworm: aww thanks.

Anise: I sure didn't have the patience for that by the time I coloured this page...

On to page 2!

threeeyesworm: Yea, I nitpicked so much in terms of the coloring for page 2. Remember that Anise?

Anise: Yeah, I had to lay out some serious boundaries.

We were really trying to come into our own with these first pages

threeeyesworm: But then again, I nitpicked about my drawings too... the background scene took especially long.. because I wanted to draw an realistic picture that hinted at Vancouver East Side...

Anise: If anyone has been there, they will get the references right away, especially harbour centre in the background there.

threeeyesworm: You know... now that I look at it... I am quite happy with page 2... The posters and graffiti were a bitch to draw but totally worth it

Just hope people pay attention to those details!

Anise: with those colours, how could you not?

threeeyesworm: Lol. Onto page 3?

Anise: but our furry joke! We understand internet subcultures, hurray!

threeeyesworm: hahahaha

Anise: Also, Chad. Great dialogue for that guy.

he's such a wannabe.

threeeyesworm: Yea... Some people find him to be too stereotypical "black", someone actually said it could be offensive... but what they don't know is that Chad's last name is actually Bukowski. He's polish.

Anise: very much not black. Identity is a slippery issue in the Anatta world, and racial identity has shifted as well.

threeeyesworm: Yea, so I find it ironic and actually satisfying to have someone think he was offensive hehehe

So, Page 3 is actually one of my personal favorites and I am quite happy with it aside from some perspective issues.

Anise: That's so technical and boring though. I love Alex's movements and the ad for the mind exchange party.

Plus, BBQ duck, so tasty.

threeeyesworm: Oh! thanks for pointing that out! The location is suppose to be Vancouver China town.

Anise: a very historic place in our city... full of good and bad history.

threeeyesworm: And yes, I do look forward to exploring the idea of mind exchange party in one of our short stories.

Anise: Yeah, I'm on it, I'm on it. Procrastinator, remember?

threeeyesworm: -_- That doesn't justify anything.

Anise: I know, that's the point

threeeyesworm: Now that our readers know of it. I will tell them to bitch at you about it.

Anise: good, then the guilt will overwhelm the feeling to procrastinate

threeeyesworm: Anything else to add before moving onto page 4?

Anise: I kind of want to segway into some of the concepts so far, especially in our storytelling. Technical aspects are interested, but mostly for people that make webcomics.

threeeyesworm: fire away

Anise: I think juxtaposition is a very important concept we've folded into the comic, especially ironic or illuminating juxtaposition. I know that one of Wei's great influences was the Watchmen, the great graphic novel of great juxtaposition.

threeeyesworm: Yes. And I am always trying to find ways to out-juxtapose the Watchmen. I declare a juxtaposition duel on Alan Moore... :|

Anise: I remember getting all Alan Moore on you with this page, because you wanted to add the clicking sound when she hung up the phone.

I'm not a huge fan of sound effects, they are quite cheesy.

threeeyesworm: Me neither... but I had a moment of weakness in terms of, again, having faith in the audience.

Anise: It take a lot of the cinemagraphic elements out of a comic when sounds are represented as words.

Anise: I know I feel like I've broken out of the illusion of the story when I read western comics with sound effects. I really love to read Japanese comics because I generally can't understand the sound effects, and katakana often looks like it is part of the picture or panel

threeeyesworm: it's true. I found it very rare that sound effects add anything, content wise, to a comic. A good picture should allow the reader to subconsciously hear the sounds themselves. Afterall, we are not counting on the readers to read the dialogue outloud. What we are counting on is that they will place different voices into the characters themselves when reading the words. It's the same with sounds from surroundings. In comics we are counting on the readers to place the sounds from surrounding objects themselves.

Anise: Unfortunately, writing out a sound gives it another level of representation that is so abstract, so we've pretty much agreed to leave them out.

Page 4 has to be my favourite page of this Chapter.

threeeyesworm: Now that I look at it, I wish I hadn't cross hatch it. But then that would have meant Anise had to do a lot more work in terms of coloring.

Anise: I wouldn't have minded too much, it's really only three colours.

blended, of course.

I love how Wei represented the switch, it's so visceral.

threeeyesworm: It will be the only time I show this though. Although I do think it's enough.

Maybe we can do something with this representation in one of the short stories

Anise: Ha! I was just going to say that! I actually have a story where the switching process is looked at closer and all the strange, psychological events that could probably happen.

So you never told me why you put Alex in a fat dude's body.

threeeyesworm: ...... It explains later in the comic....

Anise: I know that part, but where did the initial idea come from?

threeeyesworm: Nah, at first I just thought it would be funny and physically interesting as an experience. Haha

Anise: quite painful...

threeeyesworm: I wish I had went more into the experience in terms of the huge physical changes, hormonally, the feeling of being out of shape... the sudden surge in cholesterol, high blood pressure, the feeling of clogged arteries... but I didn't want to be too explosition-y. Maybe will dive in more details in a short story.

Anise: I couldn't imagine suddenly being hundreds of pounds heavier. That would be such a shock. Alex does have a significant moment of pain here that I think expresses her distress, especially considering she wasn't expecting it.

I'm so glad we changed the way we do speach bubbles now, they look much cleaner when done on the computer

threeeyesworm: Yea haha I should really go back and fix those

Brilliant coloring with the TV lighting by the way. That was all you Anise.

Anise: I spent a bit of time looking at people in only television light, and it's quite a bit more dramatic than this. I am so fascinated by how my senses are confused by shifting coloured lights, the mood of everything becomes so muddled.

threeeyesworm: It really fits the confusion experienced by Alex

Anise: It's definitely a lot of information to take in at once. I love the way Alex rags Chad out here. I really want the hierarchy of their relationship to be delved into further, especially because Chad is so.... characteristic.

We were a bit worried with these next few pages, because we weren't sure how the audience was going to take the body shift.

Would they understand it? Would they be totally confused?

threeeyesworm: It worked quite well at the end actually. No one was confused it seems.

Anise: Wei's original idea way back in the day had the technology operate quite differently. He initially wanted people's physical looks to shift along with the mind and I spent a long time trying to convince him that is was more interested, but narratively more difficult to have the physical appearances remain unchanged.

threeeyesworm: Ah yes. Overcoming the narrative challenge was quite satisfying.

Anise: It really gives us a deeper connection with our audience, I find. The more stock we put in them to be active, intelligent readers the more rewarding it is to receive the feedback we have.

I think it also engages people more with the story, giving them a sense of ownership over the interpretation. I know that happens with me when I read or watch something that challenges me to understand it.

I'm not a big fan of passive observation.

Anise: The whole note thing left by Xiao Ming in page 6 was a big bone of contention for me. I really didn't like the idea initially, it felt too gimicky to me in the telling.

threeeyesworm: Yea I wish I hadn't done that either. I think I lost some of our readers in that transition as well. Some people didn't get that the person who was originally in the fat male body was a girl frim China. Although the page turned out well, I should have thought of another way to deliver this content.

Anise: it might have been okay to let people know later when we introduced the detectives, perhaps a more intriguing investigation?

threeeyesworm: Well, can't really do much about it now. Got to move on. :

Anise: it's okay, we learn from our mistakes.

Most first episodes are quite awkward, Battlestar Galactica being the only notable exception that comes to mind.

threeeyesworm: In terms of visual representation, I am most unsatisfied with page 8... If I could rewrite chapter 1, I would have redone page 8 as well. It's just not interesting enough and fits the dialogue mediocrely. Not to mention the coloring that Anise was suppose to go back and finish. -_-

Anise: Yeah, I was totally sick.

plus, two blue pages in one chapter.

threeeyesworm: Yea, we should finish that before printing.

Anise: definitely. Our print version will have many goodies and high quality art not available on the net.

Anise: So, it's getting quite late and we're going to call it a night for now. We'll be back for part two of our commentary tomorrow.

Anatta Commentary: Colouring Page 5

2009-01-19T14:26:00.016-08:00

Anatta is a webcomic by Wei Li and Anise Shaw. It updates every Monday and Friday and can be viewed here.

So we meet again, good Anatta readers. I want to put up some WIP images of my colouring of page 5 to show everyone how I go about it. Hopefully I can also convince Wei at some point to write a commentary on how he draws each individual page.

To start off, I have a number of materials I use on a regular basis. I have, of course, my wonderful computer. It's a laptop, Acer 8930 with the biggest monitor I have ever seen on a portable computer ever. It's wonderful for drawing, not so wonderful for carrying around. I also use a copy of Photoshop CS3 (on Windows Vista, you can't convert me yet, Mac!) and my Wacom Bamboo tablet. I highly recommend the Bamboo, especially if you've never used a tablet before. It's inexpensive, easy to use and a good size for drawing.

This tutorial expects that you have prior knowledge on how to use photoshop, and specifically CS3. I won't have time to explain the basics, but I will use photoshop terminology so you can easily look it up in an online manual or tutorial.

Okay, so let's go step by step in the colouring process of Anatta.

Step 1: Clean up Wei's line art and get it ready for painting.

So the first thing I do is turn off the visibility of all of the superfluous layer (text and speach bubbles) so I can work only with the layer I want. First I make a copy of the lineart layer and name it "base colour". I put this layer under the original layer, which I have named "lineart".

Next, I turn the visibility of the lineart layer off and work only on the base colour layer. I go to image > adjustments > brightness/contrast and turn up the contrast several times until I have almost no grey left. I have to pull the slider up to 100 several times to do this. This will make the lineart look stark, but not to worry because we're not going to use this layer as line art, it will be base colour! After the contrast, I go back to image > adjustments > threshold and adjust the threshold of the layer to 99. This number is relatively important for what I'm going to do next.

Now, I have a special filter that I have downloaded for CS3. It is called BPelt flatting and can be found under the filters menu. With only my base colour layer visible, I go to filter > BPelt > multi-fill and hit okay. Next, I go to filter > BPelt > flatten. This is what results:

I know, it looks totally funky! You may be wondering "What the hell? Why would you want it to look like that?" Well, let me assure you, it will all make sense in a moment.

Now it's time to go back to our original line art layer. Let's make this one visible again. Due to the line art layer being on top of the base colour layer, the funky colours will disappear when the line art layer becomes visible. Now we're going to transform the line art layer into lines only, with no white space.

Select the line art layer and then click on the "channels" tab beside the "layers" tab that you are currently on. We're going to press the "load channel as selection" button at the bottom. It looks like this:

After hitting this button, all of the white area in the layer will be selected. Hit ctrl + x to cut the selected area and you will be left with your lines plus transparency where all the white space used to be. The colours will come through the lineart.

Now let's go back to the layers tab, make sure the line art layer is still selected and lock the transparency of the layer (the button is at the top of the layers tab). Choose a big, hard, round paintbrush and set your foreground colour to black. Now paint all over the line art layer (you will notice with the transparency locked, the only things that get painted on are the lines and the black paintbrush makes them much darker). You can actually change your line art to any colour you wish with this technique. I choose black because that's the style of our comic, but in the past I have used a coal grey, browns or even darker colours of the base colours a la Alpha Shade.

Now it's time to move on... This is the page I have right now, before step two...

Step 2: Base Colours

On the base colour layer, select the paint bucket tool (hotkey g). Remember how we made all those funky colours with the BPelt filter? Well, instead of having to fill in our line art, we just grab the colour we want and paint bucket it in. This save me about 1-2 hours of painting, and when I found the filter on Questionable Content, I nearly fell to my knees to that the great God of Webcomic creation that this tool existed. I still have to use the regular paint brush to fill in some areas, mostly because the filter is a bit picky about cross hatching. Our comic has quite a bit of it, but if yours doesn't then this filter will make things even faster for you. With Questionable Content, the artist uses the filter to do cell shading as well, while I save my shading for the painting stage. Either way works well, depending on what you're going for.

So, after about 20 minutes of paint bucket plus a little bit of paint brushing, this is what I have:

The base colours are finished, and now it's time to move onto the shading.

Step 3: Giving the image depth

This step requires quite a bit of knowledge about colour theory, lighting and digital painting. I'm not really an encyclopedia (although my friends like to think that I am), so I will not impart the depth of my knowledge on these subjects here. Suffice to say, spend some time looking at other paintings and tutorials, read a few books on colour theory and really pay attention to the world around you and you will see your rendering of shadow and light improve.

I will tell you all one really useful piece of information though: shading and highlight are NOT simply lighter and darker versions of the base colour. Light has its own colour, and that colour will reflect at different intensities depending on the material it is reflecting off of. Shadow is the opposite colour of the light on the colour wheel. In everyday light, sunlight, lamp light, etc, light and shadow are relatively desaturated. Saturated light can be found in the setting sunlight, light coming from televisions, neon lights, and others like this.

Anatta Commentary: All I want to do is Draw!

2009-01-12T12:04:00.007-08:00

Anatta is a webcomic by Wei Li and Anise Shaw. It can be viewed here and updates every Monday and Friday.

I am a huge fan of the webcomic community, both in terms of the work it produces and the ideology it inherently espouses. To be a successful webcomic, one may have to be adept at more than simply drawing a good comic, one also has to be a marketer, promoter, convention booth slave, t-shirt designer and internet sales guru. I am, of course, defining the success of a webcomic as having enough momentum that the author(s) of said webcomic can work on it full time with relative economic stability.

This is a falacy, essentially. One can be successful at their work without attaining popularity or economic stability, but as someone who wants to avoid the forever "day job", that place of employment that I go to in order to finance my other, more important aspirations, the other definitions of success taste bittersweet.

So, with Anatta, Wei and I have plans. We are producing our new pages as fast as we can, with a fervour that only a new project can inspire. I've also started writing some short stories that will take place in the Anatta world, but will not encompass the characters or major plot arc of the main comic. I haven't decided if they will be written or drawn, but I'm leaning more towards a simple strip style comic.

Our first issue will encompase 22 pages, and when it's complete we will be seeking out reviews, link exchanges and on demand printing. In webcomics, it's all about gaining and keeping the momentum, and being able to identify what your readers are looking to gain from your marketing attempts.

One of my favourite examples of this being done successfully is with Errant Story by Michael Poe. His integration of ways his readers can help him out financially is both sincere and economically sound. He's not looking to exploit his readers as "consumers", but to have them as active participants in the financial wellbeing of the comic. It's a very symbiotic relationship.

I don't want my readers to feel that I'm in it for the money, because if I was I wouldn't really be doing a webcomic. I'm bypassing the publishing process because I feel that it's a broken system, one that is far more worried about its bottom line than its impact on popular culture.

Until next time... Anise is gone!

Anatta Commentary: So You Want to Make a Webcomic?

2009-01-05T18:19:00.008-08:00

Anatta is a webcomic by Wei Li and Anise Shaw. It can be viewed here and updates every Monday and Friday.

So here's the big thing, I'm pretty much done with my bachelor's degree and faced with the looming years of the rest of my life. I'm not the only one in my house in this boat, my partner is also facing the same existential conflict and to an almost greater degree. Wei has a degree in Business Administration specializing in Marketing, but he really doesn't want to work in business. He's an artist at heart, but was too turned off of the poor life to get the BFA.

So, he wants to draw and I want to put my education in Visual Arts to good use at something that I enjoy doing. Seeing that it's so much easier to tackle big problems in numbers, Wei and I put our head together to decide what we were going to do.

We have been doing comics for a long time. Wei has made several short stories and is incredibly dedicated to getting projects done. I was part of the major wave of webcomics between 1999-2003 with a stupid little ditty I made while I was in highschool, but I have a problem with procrastination. I, however, do have more experience with narrative and the technicalities of making a webcomic. Wei looked at me one day and said, "Let's make a comic together" and I replied almost immediately, "We should make a webcomic."

The world of comic book publishing is an annoyingly closed one, even with the popularity of comics rising so quickly. It may be a few years before publishing companies have enough confidence and monetary reserve to take bigger risks on new comic artists, and unfortunately Wei and I don't really want to wait that long.

So, we decided to make a webcomic with a story we had been discussing for about 8 months. I initially wanted to write it, but I'm a procrasinator, so Wei did all the initial writing and I polished it for him. He finished the first page in November and I got started with colouring.

We were initially hoping to have 10 pages up on January 1, plus 2-4 in reserve. We over estimated our ability greatly, especially our ability to work together. It took us almost a month to fully iron out the kinks of working together, what my job is and what Wei's job is and how we can both do them as to not hinder each other.

I remember when Wei finished the first page. He had spent several days trying to ink it just right, and then he went over his lineart with grayscale markers. He was so proud of it, and he held it up with with such joy to show me the beginning of our greatest project yet.

"What the hell is that?" I asked immediately.
"What is what?" He replied, with an almost innocent disappointment in his voice.
"That marker? Do you want this coloured or not?"
Wei looked down, puzzled, "What's wrong with the marker?"

It took me almost an hour to explain that greying in the lineart was pointless, because he was trying to define form that was really the job of the colour. I also tried to explain that grey desaturates all colours and that it will take me hours to get the colour laid in properly.

So, we began going back and forth, me trying to find a colouring technique that both fit the story and Wei's style of drawing. Wei has had a difficult time getting used to making simple, flat lineart, especially after years of trying to define form with greyscale and crosshatching.

On January 1, we launched with 6 pages and 6 in reserve, uncoloured. I look forward to working on this project, I really think that most of the difficult snags of working together have been solved.

Until next time, Anise is out!

I am Bipolar (iambipolar.ca)

2008-12-05T11:51:00.005-08:00

I am Bipolar

Questions of an existential nature fill my mind as my awareness continues to perpetually fuel the inquiry into the disassociation and unreal feelings of my surroundings. Do I exist? What does it mean to exist? Where do I exist? Is this all a fabrication of mind? Am I my mind? What is mind? Who am I? Most of the time the questioning is not even linguistically formulated, but is simply a process of thoughtless analytical observation where my awareness silently questions my experience through experiencing the experience itself, by becoming vividly aware of the contents of my consciousness and watching them play out in an endless cycle of disassociation that is felt throughout my body and mind. (Random Scribbles 2008 July 20)

Iambipolar.ca is a Canadian website created as a resource for those who are diagnosed or believe that they have bipolar disorder or some variation of the mood disorder. The website offers a variety of resources to its visitors, including articles, videos, podcasts, suggested readings, a blog tree and a forum. It is not immediately clear who runs the website, but from the manner in which many editorial paragraphs are written I have deduced that the website is created and maintained by one or several individuals out of personal interest and a desire to fulfill a perceived responsibility to network and communicate with other individuals afflicted with the same disorder. Their front page greets visitor with a short introduction:

Welcome to I Am Bipolar!

I Am Bipolar is an online resource for family, friends and people who are dealing with Bipolar Disorder. Here you will find news, videos, articles, book reviews, a forum and many other resources to help you cope with a difficult and sometimes confusing mental illness. You will also find my bipolar blog called Random Scribbles where I'll be writing my about my experience with bipolar disorder, books that I've read and other random thoughts that cross my mind (I am Bipolar 2008 October 21).

Within this paper, I will examine the variety of networking opportunities created for people who find an interest in bipolar disorder, be they individuals who have it, their families or individuals looking to educate themselves on the disorder. Through the blogs and forums I will make an extensive examination of how people relate to the disorder, their understanding of how it operates within society and how they relate, through the internet medium, with other people with the disorder. I will first discuss bipolar disorder and analyse the foundations of the website, what it purports to provide and how it operates for its visitors.

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of affective mood disorders bipolar disorder is a spectrum disorder that is characterised by periods of mania and depression (Wikipedia 2008 October 21). The disorder has a long history of recognition in a variety of forms, and it's psychiatric definitions have greatly changed to finally arrive at its contemporary diagnosis. Bipolar disorder is no longer seen as a cycling disorder, where depression and mania alternate, but rather a single episode of either within a specific time period. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association categorizes four subtypes to the affective mood disorder. Bipolar type 1 and Bipolar type 2 are both characterized as having manic and major depressive episodes, where Bipolar type 2 has a less intense hypomanic trait. Type 2 also displays no mixed episodes and at least one major depressive episode. Cyclothymia is the third subtype that contains hypomanic episodes and depression that does not meet the criteria for major depressive episodes. There is one last category, Bipolar Not Otherwise Specified (NOS), which is a catch all category for individuals suffering from mania and depression, but do not fit in the first three categories.

Bipolar Spectrum disorder has a genetic component, and is currently believed to be influenced by a single nucleotide polymorphism (Baum 2008). Due to the varying symptoms observed in identical twins, the theory of stochastic neurobiological effects being a major factor has favour over a genetic causation theory.

Entering the iambiolar.ca Website

Iambipolar.ca begins it impression on a visitor simply with its name. The phrase I am Bipolar connotes an identification with those who have the disorder and immediately positions itself as more than an informational site. As an emotional, subjective and identifying phrase, I am Bipolar brings a sense of bio responsibility to creating a fragment of ones identity as bipolar. Questions of who a person is and how they are identified are on the surface as one navigate further into the website. Through the access of information this website highlights what Rose describes as a neurochemical individuality [that] becomes a field of choice, prudence and responsibility. One of the major themes of the website is the experimentation and contestation that is packaged with that neurochemical identity (Rose 2007: 40).

The typeset for the website title is handwritten and scratchy, bring both a sense of individuality and non-conformity with a touch of the “insane”. Only those who are unwilling or unable to follow the rules write outside the lines. There are only two other images on the front page: a post-it looking image, complete with a thumbtac, inviting visitors to enter the forums to communicate and network with other bipolar sufferers and a small picture of the human brain with different areas of it highlighted in a variety of colours. This pictoral “map” of the brain is reminiscent of early scientific maps used to categorize the brain into sections that control different aspects of the body, personality and all abstract aspects of life. Juxtaposed with the opening statement, the connotation is that bipolar disorder, its effects and its relationship with the person are conceptualised through this abstract and scientifically objective form called the human brain, and that the brain can be split up into readily identifiable and understandable areas.

As the website prompts one to visit the forums quite prominently, that was the first area of the website I ventured into.

Iambipolar.ca Forums

The iambipolar.ca forums are frequented by 111 registered users and a number of guests. Most of the registered members who have listed their location in their profile are from different areas of Canada (I am Bipolar Forums 2008 October 21). There are six subforums titled General Discussions on Bipolar Disorder, Treatment Options, Personal Stories, Diagnosing Bipolar Disorder, Family and Friends (helping someone with Bipolar) and Jokes, Humorous Stories, Etc. The most topics are posted in the General Discussions subforum and it also has the most number of posts.

Within the General Discussion subforum there are many threads of introduction, articles of interest and quick and interesting discussions. One of the leading threads that caught my eye immediately was titled “best type of work?” (I am Bipolar Forums 2008 May 5). In the thread, the original poster (OP) asks a general question to other members of the forum:

Have there been any studies or articles published on what type of careers tend to fit people with bipolar (I am bipolar Forums 2008 May 5)?

The answers vary from personal accounts to different books read by individuals that helped to shape their decisions on their work and careers. Many members were quick to point to creative and low-stress jobs, as people with bipolar have a perception of being quite creative (almost to the point of genius during manic and hypomanic periods), and unable to deal with stress during low periods. There is very little discussion talking about medication and it's ability to mediate problems with work, except to say that it does very little to stabilize some of the major symptoms of the disorder. One member discussed their previous work history and how they eventually came to choose their career path:

Before diagnosis following an incredibly prolonged mania three years ago I worked in a fairly uncreative marketing position for a high tech company... I was never fully happy in the role but stuck with it as it seemed the best possibility out there at the time. For seven years attendance was definitely an issue for me. I didn't know I was bipolar, so didn't know the reason, but I would often just not be able to go into work and it was frustrating to say the least to try and explain what was going on to my employer when I didn't have a clue myself. In hindsight, all my manias and depressions directly affected my work performance. I just didn't know it at the time.
Post-diagnosis and during recovery I thought it best to look for a career that I could control better. My major motivation here was to reduce the amount of stress I'd have when faced with yet another situation of not being able to go to work or to perform at my regular level, and avoid also having to explain the reason why to a future employer. In my last job I went on short-term disability following a manic episode and the response from my boss and colleagues was completely negative. Then the insurance company rejected my claim based on a technicality ... I decided I should work for myself, and in something far more creative than what I had previously been embarking on.
While working for yourself includes a huge amount of stress, it's at least stress that seems manageable to me. I'd rather feel guilty to myself and myself only when I'm unable to perform at work than have to answer to a boss and a group of colleagues that may and most likely not understand. Most people in my experience just don't get bipolar... I can't say I love every minute of it, but I love a big part of it. I love the freedom and the challenge and the room for creativity. I'm figuring I'll start loving it fully once I get through the "start-up" phase of owning and operating a business. (I am Bipolar Forums 2008 May 22)

The sentiment of being misunderstood in the workplace, being unable to keep a consistent schedule and the negative influence an uncreative job has on a bipolar person was repeated by most members replying to the thread. There was an undercurrent of difficulty and isolation, but also extreme individuality. The bipolar individual can not be tamed and will not fit into the regular mould. For some members this was the crutch of their difficulty, while for others they saw it as a mark of pride and the difficulty lay with hegemonic conceptions of their disorder.

One short, concise reply came from an individual that dissented with the idea that profession was chosen by one's mental disorder:

My feeling is that one's diagnosis should not influence one's choice of occupation, except to the extent that shift work is probably not healthy for us. Practically speaking, one's career is probably already chosen long before the diagnosis, given the typical 8 year lag between onset and correct diagnosis, by which time most are in their late 20s. (I am Bipolar Forums 2008 August 27)

The argument that one must live by the rules of their disorder, or that bipolar is an overriding personality disposition that must take priority over other decisions fell moot on this particular poster. Their one precondition, of course, was mitigation of some of the more undesirable physical side effects, like insomnia.

Within this thread, another member discussed their job and how they felt it encompassed a return of the experiences they had with mental illness in the form of positive information, empathy and counselling for other people seeking help with a variety of psychiatric disorders. This person works as a peer support counsellor at her local hospital and describes their experience:

Here is one job where living with a mental illness is a benefit... I find that there are a lot of common experiences...feelings...emotions and fears that can be mutulally shared. I offer hope by example... I offer whatever positive examples I have experienced. I try to play down the negative side of the illness and show the postive side of the illness. I also [offer] whatever coping skills I have to help manage symptoms. (I am Bipolar Forums 2008 September 4)

In the Diagnosing Bipolar Disorder subforum the administrator of the forum describes Bipolar disorder as a managment disorder that includes medication, therapy, eating healthy, proper sleep patterns and learning what in one's life will act as a trigger for different episodes (I am Bipolar Forums 2007 October 30). This sets the tone for the subforum, as discussion about medication and pharmacology are expanded to include genetic factors, environmental factors and the difficulty in getting diagnosed. With anti-depressants being one of the highest prescribed medication in the United States, the forum members skeptically view the pharmacology industry and their motivatons in providing bipolar medication. The administrator comments in this subforum, and their blog, that the medication for bipolar disorder is not 100% effective and should never be perceived as a miracle drug (I am Bipolar Forums 2007 October 30; Random Scribbles 2008 August 17).

The I am Bipolar Forums engage its members in conversation on a variety of related topics to their disorder. As one member comments:

This definitely is the most supportive and informative site I've found. (And Canadian! Yay!) It has really been a great help for me to come here and read that other people are going through similar situations as me. I feel less like a victim and more empowered to improve myself (I am Bipolar Forums 2008 July 9).

Through this peer networking there is a desire to remove some of the vunerabilities associated with mood affective and psychiatric disorders. The expression of hiding oneself from coworkers, friends and society due to this disorder is common, with a subsequent expression that the anonymity of the internet allows a forum for these discussions to happen with the fear of ostricisation removed from the equation. Through this networking portion of the website these individuals have located and further developed a safe social space for themselves that is both socially engaging and informational.

Blogs

Iambipolar.ca offers a page with a link tree to other blogs written by individuals with bipolar disorder. They range from individual accounts of living life with an affective mood disorder to advocate journalism on pharmaceuticals and psychiatry. The main blog of the website is Random Scribbles, written by the site author.

Random Scribbles takes a name with an unfinished, draft and automatic art (such as that utilized by the Surrealist art movement in the 1930s) connotation and captures an element of the subconscious nature of bipolar disorder – many afflicted with the disease feel it's beyond their immediate control and is an intricate part of who they are as a person.

The latest entry posted was entitled To Tell or Not to Tell and examined bipolar disorder, secrecy and the event of telling those around one of the affective mood disorder that one has been diagnosed with. As in the forums, the author of Random Scribbles points quickly to the workplace relationship with mental disorders. They highlight how confiding in a employer and/or coworkers about ones disorder can have one of three effects: A negative reaction where the employer and coworkers begin to treat the person afflicted differently, by thinking they can't do anything for themselves or actively discriminating against them out of fear or misinformation. A neutral reaction where the employer or coworker seem to think the disorder has very little to do with their employment (the author then points out, while not an outward act of negativity, this can be negative as people with bipolar disorder often need special consideration when it comes to mood episodes, stress and attendance). Lastly, a positive reaction where the employer and coworkers empathize with the afflicted individual and take care to help them have a healthy work environment to minimize their episodal triggers (Random Scribbles 2008 August 17).

The author laces this article with their philosophical and personal perspective:

It is unfortunate that revealing bipolar disorder needs to be considered so carefully, but until it is accepted in the mainstream as just another aspect in the spectrum of being human then it will remain hidden in the shadows of daily life. The reality for reaching this mainstream acceptance is kind of a catch 22 though because in order for bipolar disorder to become mainstream and accepted, people suffering from it need to speak out, but by speaking out you potentially face being persecuted for the natural biological functioning of your brain because it does not function exactly like the brains of the majority. (I am Bipolar Forums 2008 August 17)

There is a real sense of fear in this article, brining to light the authors view of the marginalised nature of mental disorders like Bipolar. Throughout the blog, the author's articles are spotted with a sense of isolation and fear, as well as caution. As the author builds a website to bridge this isolation, they can not help but discuss the existing rift between what is perceived as our contemporary hegemonic society and the negotiation of people with bipolar within it:

It sometimes seems like the world isn’t made for us. Like we don’t fit the mold of what a human being should be. Employers don’t want workers who will suffer uncontrollable bouts of depression or mania and exhibit associated behaviors. Friends don’t want the unpredictability of friends who one moment are filled with energy and excitement and the next moment won’t leave their house or talk to anyone because they are so depressed. They want consistency. They want reliability. They want to know that who you are now is who you will be tomorrow and 6 months from now (Random Scribbles 2008 July 20)

Conclusion

Biopolar Spectrum Disorder is a neurological disease that effects an indeterminable amount of people, it is a disorder that is often misdiagnosed and inaccurately medicated. The most common confusion is diagnosing individuals with bipolar with a depression disorder, as the American Psychiatric Institute identifies that most people seek help when they are in a depressive period and tend not to see manic (and especially hypomanic) periods as a serious threat to their mental wellness. This affective mood disorder, as with most similar disorders, is open to constant contestation; within diagnosis criteria as well as the classification as a disorder. Bipolar has many myths and preconceptions that come with it, including the idea that the greatest creative genius in the Western world has come from persons suffering from the disorder and so, by extension, all those who go through manic episodes must also have the potential for equally creative persuits.

There is a negotiation that individuals with bipolar disorder go through with their identity, their mental disease and the perception of that disease. These human dramas, understandings and relationships are played out in several different ways on the iambipolar.ca website. Through the blogs and forums, individuals with similar issues and common neurological and biological interests meet each other through the anonymity of the internet. They tell their stories, critique articles on their disorder in the media and try to find a sociological common ground for their circumstances. Simultaneously, they highlight their differences and enjoy the freedom of their individuality, not only within themselves in relation to other members, but also in the social order of individuals with bipolar and all those who do not have and continue on with “normal” actions in society. Individuals see their fitting a social mould as a reliable, working and emotionally stable citizen as both a difficulty and an undesirable path to embark on. Many revel in their “fringe” lifestyles, while others want nothing more than empathy and understanding, while still other yearn for a sense of normality and happiness. There is a consensus that the affective disorder is generally misunderstood and misportrayed in popular culture and media and they discuss the variety of ways they view and live with the disorder.

Bipolar disorder is a highly contested disorder, leaving those who have it with contested identities. Due to their contested neurological individuality, and the experimentation and negotiation happening with the definition, effects and understanding of the said neurological disorder, these members get together to exist within this contestation and to relate to others that allow them to feel part of a larger, and less vunerable social group. This group's primary purported purpose is to inform, but the relationship delves deeper into a biosocial sphere created by the participating members.

References:

Baum, A.E., et al. (2008). A genome-wide association study implicates diacylglycerol kinase eta (DGKH) and several other genes in the etiology of bipolar disorder Molecular Psychiatry, 13(2), 197-207.

I am Bipolar. “Welcome to I am Bipolar!” Canada: Retrieved October 20, 2008 (http://iambipolar.ca/).

I am Bipolar. “To Tell or Not to Tell.” Canada: Retrieved October 20, 2008 (http://iambipolar.ca/blog/?p=51).

I am Bipolar. “Consistency is Key.” Canada: Retrieved October 20, 2008 (http://iambipolar.ca/blog/?p=52).

I am Bipolar. “Pervasive Emptiness.” Canada: Retrieved October 20, 2008 (http://iambipolar.ca/blog/?p=50).

I am Bipolar Forums. “Hi Everyone.” Canada: Retrieved October 20, 2008 (http://iambipolar.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?id=71).

I am Bipolar Forums. “Best type of work?” Canada: Retrieved October 20, 2008 (http://iambipolar.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?id=58).

Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wikipedia. “Bipolar Disorder.” Retrieved October 20, 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder).

Existentialism and Garfield

2008-10-21T01:18:00.008-07:00

I came across this wonderful piece of detournement while researching a paper on bipolar disorder and online communities. It made my day, so I'm passing it on in hopes that it will make yours as well.

Garfield Minus Garfield - Dan Walsh highlights some strange happenings when you take Garfield out of the Garfield comic strip.

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

I will post my paper on bipolar and internet communities in the near future. For now, sleep!

Pleasantly Disengaged

2008-02-14T11:43:00.005-08:00

Referendums, elections, coruption, graduation and art play little tunes in my intestines, as my reproductive system refuses to work again. This is the moment to disengage, embrace melancholia in my femine genius and produce a body of work that will help age me like a fine wine. Apathy has become a baneful word, the frustration of all doers everywhere, especially people who would like to be one's representative, but find a lack of quantity to justify their excessive actions. There is necessity in apathy, as humans we live, die and try to come to terms with both events in the middle.

Now apathy is desired. Don't worry about your fiscal health, your disengagement will be satisfied through your material goods. I use my melancholy to deal with a rather obsessive form of stress, and a brain that deals in constant activity to the great dismay of my lack of ability to control my emotions.

Disengage from the art assumptions, but not from the political rhetoric. Rhetoric is portrayed as a negative, something the world could do without. Rhetoric is simply a system of convincing, something that humans must do because as of yet we are not telepathically linked. We are experiential in our understanding, and rhetoric is a tool to convey that understanding in the most appealing way possible. The rhetoric of the student society at my university is to out me as a conspiritorial participant, my very nature bringing negative connotations to whatever I touch. I have disengaged, because I am too personal. I'm authoritarian, I believe things must be a certain way because it is right. My path to disengagement is healthy for an authoritarian, a necessary step in the quest for empathy, or whatever the goal of life happens to be.

Apathy is the disease of capitalism, the free world doesn't care that it's free, it simply wants to be righteous.

Everyday Copyright Woes

2008-01-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

Imagine this: You just got an iPod Video from the greatest parents in the world and you are really excited about how it's going to change the way you watch video, listen to music, work out, travel, and everything else you had to do with that brick of a 90's discman you had forever. You plug that pretty piece of shiny new technology into your computer via the USB port and start synchronizing with your newly downloaded version of iTunes. You start inserting CDs and copying the information to your library: Old school stuff first, like 2Pac, maybe some Smashing Pumpkins, whatever your fancy. Then you get to the fantastic exit CD of the Gorillaz, push it into the CD/DVD drive and get ready to upload.

Then you get an error. The CD is copy protected and you're SOL. Now, you have a couple of options of course: you can buy the whole CD (or your few favourite tracks) on iTunes to put it on the iPod. You're mad all of a sudden, you already bought the CD, you paid good money to the record company and now they want you to buy it again to use your iPod. Why the hell should you have to do that?

Then you remember that you live in Vancouver, Canada. The DMCA doesn't apply here and circumventing copy protection (or DRM) is not illegal here. You bust out the sharpie, draw you line and you're good to go. Gorillaz on the new iPod sweetness.

A couple of days later you pick up the Vancouver Sun and read that some MP in Alberta named Jim Prentice wants to introduce a copyright bill in Canada that would be strickingly similar to the American DMCA. You read more about this on the internet and get the impression that this is not something that the Canadian music industry wants, but more the American corporate special interests that seem to have their hands in Canadian politics. You feel that Canada is a different place than America, we have different values and we think that having to buy a song, CD or DVD more than once in order to use it on the hundreds of dollars worth of equipment you've bought is way too anti-consumer. But what can you do?

Realise that the best form of democracy and advocacy is still organisation. Protest, petition writing, and contacting your provincial and federal representatives are the avenues that individuals have to make change. When enough of us get together, we can't be ignored, because a politican can't be anything without the people.

Here's where you can start, know the issue:

Fair Copyright for Canada
Michael Geist - Tech Law Blogger
Digital Copyright Canada

And of course, contact the government! All mail sent to parliament is free, no stamp necessary!

Find your member of Parliament
Write the Prime Minister of Canada
Write Jim Prentice

Lastly, join the effort and join the facebook group here!

Say no to the CDMCA!

The first ever Comic Pie!

2007-12-17T14:57:00.000-08:00

It's done. I've finally finished printing and binding the first Comic Pie, a compilation of students' work from my Cartooning and Animation class for 9-12 years olds.

They chose the title "Comic Pie" after some convoluted stream of consciousness discussion about teamwork and multiple comics (ingredients) being mixed into one. I think I will keep it for my future compilations with this class. I'll print one per season (as the class runs that often) and probably look into joint projects with the library art gallery and local businesses to get it distributed to other children besides those who contributed to it. I would love for children to be able to borrow it from the library and become inspired to make their own and print their own books from home. The world needs way more independent comics and zines floating around!

I do have some lessons learned from this run, it being the first and all. For anyone thinking of making a class publication may find these tips helpful as well.

Size and scale are key. Pre-plan what size the book will be, how many pages and what kind of binding.
For anything over 75 pages, use a gum or coil binding, staple or codex binding is slightly more more time than it's worth.
Allocate the page maximum as a calculation divisible by four (especially if using folios, because they save quite a bit of paper). For example, if there are 10 kids in the class, they can each have 4 (or 8) pages in the book, totalling 40 (80) pages bound and 10 folios (4 images per page of paper).
Title pages are cute, but use up space and paper that can be better allocated to content
No "The End" pages, waste of paper
Set up the assignment with margins to ensure that no content gets cut off during copying (a 1/2-1/4 inch margin on all four sides is pretty good).
With comics, everything should be inkined or it might not show up during copying
The originals should be large and then shrunk, getting 9-12 years old to write in tiny spaces is a bad idea.

These are some things that I noticed about the process. Regardless of difficulties, everything turned out really well!