One of the more interesting critiques of the new version of The Producers is that it’s shot like it’s on a proscenium stage. The camera is way back, we see the full-height figures, and the actors are projecting to reach the audience in the cheap seats at the back of the balcony. Frame your comic panel like a play, you’ll end up with little bitty characters that you can’t identify unless you make the panels huge. Leaving the Infinite Canvas argument for another day, try this: don’t stage a static play in every panel.

When you bring the camera in closer, all of a sudden you achieve two things: recognition of the characters (which opens up other options; come back tomorrow for more along those lines), and a sense of immediacy. Your readers aren’t looking at an action happening WAY OVER THERE; they’re in the room with the characters. They’re participants.
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If you noticed Jeff Rowland’s initial announcements at Overcompensating regarding changes in how you get your crack Wigu, you saw that there was a super-official announcement forthcoming.

Here it is. Short attention span version:

Jeffrey Rowland, the most talented, handsomest, and strongest member of the Dumbrella alliance has recently announced that his formerly daily comic strip “Wigu” will be updating soon in a monthly format. This American Manga is planned to be released in paper format on a monthly basis, with the online version released a few weeks after the paper version is firmly planted in the hands of its insatiable readers…. Rowland has yet to decide on a printer for this independently published work of mind-boggling genius, but insists that it will be released by February 1 even if he has to hand-print each copy with his own wretched blood on shreds of stolen toilet paper.

In support of Mr Rowland, Fleen will be accepting donations of both blood and toilet paper. Contact us for details on where to send both.

Everyone knows that newspaper comics have been shrinking in size for years.

And pretty much this is half the reason they suck so much. The focus has moved away from complex artwork and complex dialog (because it can’t be reproduced… there’s that legibility thing again!) to simpler artwork and shorter “quippier” dialog. The change in visible real estate has had a huge impact on the art style and art direction of comics made these days. If newspapers were still printed the size they used to be, and comics were still given full widths, do you think the characters in The Boondocks would have such big heads?

So why, really, why?

Why would you want to view comics on a 2.5″ iPod screen? Even animated comics?

This was important enough not to bury as an edit to the original posting.

According to Gabe in today’s Penny Arcade (scroll down to the second item), this year’s Child’s Play raised $590,000 in cash and toys for childrens hospitals around the world.

Damn, it feels good to type those words.

Ryuko Midori of The Green Avenger has added a new dimension to webcomics criticism: sexiness!

Most surprising bit: Ghastly keeps the tie and pipe even when doing a Chippendales routine. Somewhere, J.R. “Bob” Dobbs is slackishly weeping in envy.

Scariest bit: “A rugged, blurry man, Mr. Rosenberg has hair that models would kill for, and a beard that has killed many a man with jealousy. His gaze seems to say, “I know why you stare, and it is because I am so very handsome.” Why has this man not been contracted to model for the covers of romance novels yet? Harlequin must be KICKING themselves.”

I smell a new signature quote. Bravo, Ms Midori, bravo!

Once you’ve mastered the art of Legibility that my cohort is illustrating for you (at great length, no less), you can start to hope to reach the act of sheer magic that is Jenn Manley Lee‘s Dicebox.

The artwork in Dicebox is simply exquisite, and it’s no wonder. Her process could only be described as insane did it not produce such amazing works. Notice that she casually mentions printing bluelines on Bristol. She goes from sketchbook to computer back to paper and then back to computer again! And then takes the time to create customized color palettes for each of her characters and it still on average only takes her 14 hours or so to create a page! No wonder Dicebox was nominated for an Ignatz Award, but it’s really too bad she didn’t win.

The artwork is only half of what makes Dicebox so very very well done. The other half of the story, if you’ll forgive me, is the way she tells the story itself. Each chapter seemingly illustrates only the middle part of the events that take place. Most chapters picks up several days or more after the end of the last chapter. Granted, some of this is merely a device to skip endless pages of sitting in a spaceship travelling around. But there’s still the sense that important moments in the lives of and in the relationship between Griffen and Molly have occurred. These are real people, with real lives that go on whether you’re watching or not. They eat, and bleed and fight and have sex. (so, yeah. Not safe for work.)

This is a comic that could survive on just the artwork or just the story. But together, they are just sublime.

But the most important and stunning discovery I made at Chouinard, one that has been shared by every artist, cartoonist, painter in history … was the ability to live by the single line — that single honest delineation of the artist’s intent. No shading, no multiple lines, no cross-hatching, no subterfuge. Just that line…. That is rule 1 of all great drawing. There is no rule 2.
— Chuck Jones, Chuck Amuck

There is nothing you should pay more attention to than line. How thick? How thin? Long continuous swoops, little sketchy bits, how black to make it? All of these are important, and any of them can serve the artistic vision, but keep in mind that your line will probably affect the overall look and feel of your strip than anything else. Pick a line and commit to it, keeping in mind that all those characteristics of your line are working for you or against you.

If the line is overly sketchy, disconnected, or too light, it causes a sort of cognitive dissonance. Something deep down in our brains (probably something to do with hunting antelope on the open veldt) keys in on breaks from regular patterns. Sketchy, incomplete lines make your brain stop and go, “Wha?” If that’s what you wanted to accomplish within your story structure, great. Check out Alex Robinson’s Tricked for a good example of this; no, it’s not a webcomic. Read it anyway. But if the line isn’t intended to convey that “Wha?” moment, it just makes things tough on the eyes.
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Go to a place where they sell magazines, and pick up Wired for January 2006 (issue 14.01, with the cyborg Einstein on the cover).

Flip to page 50 (or just click here).

Revel in the Rowland.

That is all.

Update: Jeff’s fame spreads to MSNBC, with links to both the toon and the TopatoCo boutique.

So your New Year’s resolution is to start a webcomic. Congratulations! Be sure to send a link, and we’ll take a look. But before you get started, there’s something that you ought to pay attention to if you want anybody to read it: you have to make it easy to read. Just like legible handwriting used to be the gatekeeper for reading prose, legible art is the gatekeeper for a comic project.

There are lots of elements to an art style, all of which are outside the scope of what we’re going to be discussing here; go read Comics and Sequential Art or Understanding Comics if you want to work on the mechanics and fundamentals (in fact, everybody reading this should go read them anyway). We also won’t be looking at color (I’ve been reliably informed that my sense of color is such that I shouldn’t be allowed to dress myself), or strip design where the art isn’t a main focus. If your goal is to be the next Ryan North, you’ll have other stuff to work on.

We will discuss certain design choices that make it easy for your reader to tell what’s happening on the screen. Along the way, we’ll have some examples from current and past strips; we will make no judgment if the strip is good or bad. The only question is, does that particular panel demonstrate some characteristic that makes it easy to scan visually?
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One of the more interesting works of journalism being produced these days is the Arcata Eye Cop Log. It’s always a good read, and it produces at least one chuckle every week. But when you purchase the books, and read them in one big sitting… the schadenfreude and sheer volume of human stupidity just piles up and exponentiates and you find yourself laughing at almost everything – even stuff like “2:27 p.m. Child Welfare Services relayed toxicology tests on a newborn baby to APD. Methamphetamine was detected in the infant’s urine.”. It’s tragic – but in situ it becomes hilarious.

Stephen Heintz‘s Acid Zen Wonder Paint is much the same way. Taken individually, you might only laugh at one or two panels. But as you start to work your way through the archives, you build up to a state of hysteria. The jokes are inane, absent, juvenile and sometimes bizarrely cruel. Did I mention juvenile?

But as you read through the comics and as you read the comments, it starts to melt your brain and you remember what it was like to wander out of your dorm room at 3 am after finishing that paper you should have started three weeks ago and finding a couple of guys in the tv lounge who had spent the whole night smoking pot and you start having the funniest conversation of your life.

Since AZWP is really only worth reading in batches, it’s probably good news that he’s going to update twice a day – at least for this first week of the new year.