So… the most obvious person to pick apart when looking at changes in art is Jeph Jacques over at Questionable Content. He has even said, in one of his sidebar messages, that when he starts feeling too comfortable for the style, it’s time to change it up. And I’ve had friends who promise themselves that they’re going to take a pause in reading the archives when the style changes, and they’re not so lucky in finding exactly where the style changes.

I won’t attempt that feat, but I thought we’d look at the evolution of Jeph’s art. Starting from Tuesday’s strip, which Jeph was particularly proud of, we’ll go back six hundred strips and then forward one hundred each to be back at Tuesday’s strip. Hee, we’re time traveling!

Warning, fond mockery below! (more…)

First dates for Scott McCloud’s Making Comics Tour announced; we at Fleen will do our best to cover various stops by McCloud and family.

Interesting bit o’ writing (on the main page now, it’ll be here in a week or so) from Scott Kurtz over at PvP; he’s talking about his treatment of his character, Jade (and by extension, his wife, Angela). I find it interesting that as Kurtz tells us he’s looking to write Jade differently, he’s also drawing her differently.

Her facial expressions are more subtle and varied than we’ve seen in the past, and seem to give her a wider range of emotional depth. Compare the last time Jade had a major role in a storyline to recent strips. Heck, compare the fourth panel of that last strip to the others on the same day to get a good idea of ‘old Jade eyes’ vs. ‘new Jade eyes’. Opening up those pupils just a little bit really has a lot of impact.

I have a plugin for Firefox called StumbleUpon. I have indicated comics as one of my interests, and usually all that yeilds is pages of people singing Calvin and Hobbes’ praises by posting, hosting, and memorializing their favorite strips.

But recently StumbleUpon has shown me a project by David Gauntlett called A Drawing A Day. (David admits it’s more like a drawing every other day.) He draws to improve his own drawing, but also to make a website with pens.

It’s interesting to watch his progress. There is one series of drawings, drawn on 12/8/05, track the changes he makes — the strokes become more sure, he becomes more comfortable with the shape of her lips, more comfortable with the shape of the eyes. It a becomes a likeness, but is not his best work. People are uncomfortable to draw, as our features are often defined by shadow as much as shape.
However, David becomes very skilled at still life — check the difference between an early view of the London Eye and one drawn six months later.
So … it got me to thinking about changes in skills of webcomic artists. Tune in tomorrow.

From the depths of Bulgaria (where one is reminded that vampires are biting danger!) to musings over the Forces Sweetheart, things are never quite right for the residents of Tackleford Metropolitan Borough. That, naturally, is why right-thinking folk love Scary Go Round so damn much, and why they should all be perusing John Allison’s fourth collection of SGR strips, The Retribution Index.

Some things you should note as you peruse:

• This book features Allison switching back and forth from his Illustrator mode to his hand-drawn mode; both are beautiful to behold.
• Reading SGR in large doses reminds one that Allison never forgets anything; note the nunnery that is suggested to Amy, which rather than merely being a throwaway gag, becomes a plot point more than a year later.
• This book does not include the story “Oldbourne”, which starts in the archives here; this is a great shame because “Oldbourne” featured my favoritest SGR moment of all time: I trod on Lego! The expressions on Shelley in this strip are a marvel and make me smile every time I think of them; I only hope there are enough smiles left for me in the rest of the book.
• Don’t worry, there are actually plenty of smiles! Especially considering this book covers a period of time when Esther was becoming a more prominent character. Esther’s growth from walk-on extra to mysterious background player to full cast member has been wonderful to behold.
• This book also does not include Allison’s year-end music reviews, or a two-week guest stint that featured some beauteous work; however, this allows plotlines to resolve more quickly, so that’s all right.
• There are some odd printing artifacts on certain pages, where blacks are not entirely opaque. This is actually pretty interesting, as it allows the reader a peek behind the scenes to see what the character models look like in all their layers.
• Finally, as an extra-special bonus, each chapter is introduced and commented upon by Shelley Winters, who is a small friend to all of us. There are trials and tribulations for Shelley in the book, but all is well in the end.

To summarize, this is a pretty wonderful book, and I think that you would enjoy it very much! So please be certain to purchase and read TRI at the first opportunity, and watch out for devil bears.

So if being a Rocket Pirate isn’t exactly your thing, why not lend your artistic talent to Jason Salsbury; who is apperently looking for an artist.

Jason Writes:
Been really busy. Sorry for the lack of news updates. Got big plans coming.

Enjoy….

Keep your dog off my lawn

Jason

By way of a more detailed explanation, Scott Kurtz writes:
My buddy Jason, who writes the comic strip The Pet Professional is looking to start up a whole new comic strip. He’s looking for an artist and if you’re interested you should email him at loganpvp@gmail.com

Jason is a super writer, so if you’ve got the goods in the art department, drop him a line!

So I tested out ol’ T-Rex’s new lingo at work, and now my co-workers think I’m slightly retarded. So in other words, it worked like a charm. On a sad note, I will be out of town this coming Thursday and Friday. Why, you ask? Because I’m turning twenty-drunk and plan to be gettin’ into all kinds of altered states-of-mind. Don’t fret though my web comic fiends, for I will be posting on Friday. With what? Hell I don’t know, why don’t you tell me since I will be in a voluntary coma by then.

At Questionable Content Jeph Jacques is working on Secret Things, but he should know that if you want something to be secret you don’t post it in your LiveJournal.

One of the Secret Things is a cast poster. The picture has excellent movement — your eye is drawn to study every one of the cast members, starting with Raven making moves on Sven to Jimbo horrifying Pizza Girl. The character are spaced perhaps too regularly, but over all the poster does a good job of putting everyone in one place, hanging out and interacting. It’s like having a Giant Panel of QC to hang on your wall.

I want to hold caption contests.

The LJ says that it’ll probably be put up for preorders Friday and the first printing will probably be 8/21. Look for it. It’s good wall bling.

Getting back to the Wapsi Square book review (down there somewheres), there’s some new reveals on Tina over at Wapsi Square this week. Note the different text color? Hmmmm. Very hmmmm.

Also, today’s Achewood features a description of a coffee machine that would make people who like that sort of thing go into anacoffylactic shock. Seriously, a fully-articulated syrup nozzle? I don’t even drink coffee, and that’s sounding cool.

Webster’s dictionary is rather useless if you look up the word “literature.” It goes off mostly in generalities about the culture surrounding literature, the only useful part being: writings in prose or verse; especially : writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.

It becomes a question like “What is Art?” What is Literature?

Maus is being taught in university classrooms as literature.  If the definition if literature is dealing with words written in prose, how do we deal with works like Maus and Persepolis? It is a certain style and pacing?

This particular musing comes from my viewing of kris dresen’s Grace, in which is she combining her forceful use of sequential art as well as dialogue to create a story which could be literature. Her pictures portray longing, thoughtfulness, desire; universal concepts all– but does that make them art? Or literature?

Graphic novels and webcomics seem to be at a juncture where they don’t seem to be art because they are telling a concrete story and they don’t seem to be literature because the story is driven by pictures. While the popular webcomics seem to be mostly gag-a-day and long drawn out storylines, is there room for finite creations? For people who create works just to convey human experience?

What is literature? And are webcomics literature as well?