Home made inkwell

Comic Tools reader Amalgamated Biscuit just showed me this terrific inkwell he made:

From his post:

"When my ink runs low I have to fish around at an angle to get enough ink on my nib and I usually end up covering my pen and hands. So I created this inkwell which is just deep and wide enough for my biggest nibs."

Too cool, right? Though I feel it's seriously lacking in a pair of googly eyes. The bottom in-action photo is slightly obscene, which I also feel googly eyes would help. Not help make it less obscene, mind you, just more hilarious.

Thanks to Amalgamated Biscuit for sharing!

Best nib holder I've seen:

Tachikawa Comic Pen Nib Holder - Model 36 - White Grip


No surprise it's from Japan, where drawing with ink tools is still so large an industry that nibs and other inking tools are still made with quality. I have several friends who've switched to this and they just love it. One really cool thing is it accepts crowquil/mapping nibs, which have round, circular bodies like this:
as well as regular nibs, which are concave troughs of metal like this:
Most nib holders can only accept one or the other, and the holders for mapping nibs tend to be thin, exacerbating strain during fine work when using a tool used almost exclusively for fine work. The Tachikawa's thick body reduces wrist strain, and the rubber grip makes it easy to hold. Nibs sit securely in it, but the plastic isn't as rigid as on a Speedball holder, so you don't have to jam nibs in or strain to pry them out again.

Jetpens.com also has a fantastic selection of Japanese cartooning nibs, the best money can buy, unless you go antique hunting. (Fun fact about the two brands of Manga "G" nib: they're literally made across the street from one another. Both factories buy the same steel, mill it on the same machines, and put different brand stamps on them. They're otherwise identical, sort of like Olfa and NT blades, also made in Japan in neighboring factories using practically identical methods. NT's cutters are way better, though.) They also stock the sometimes hard to find Pentel Pocket brush refills at a not-bad-not-amazing price, and sell the brushpen itself at a pretty amazing price.

The Tachikawa is well worth the six bucks, being comfortable and well made, and would be the only nib holder you ever had to buy in your life.

This week's title is a video:

Start at 6:32



Wow, I still have 237 followers? Why? Did you all forget to unsubscribe? Well, either your loyalty or your laziness are to be rewarded, because I'm starting again.

It's funny, you know what the impetus was, the thing that finally broke the intertia? I'm working at an art store now, and some old man came in having had trouble with his nibs, which he is new to using. I was explaining to him what he was doing wrong and how to fix it, and then driving home that night it hit me: I can't really deal with giving advice to strangers who walk in the door, and not my Comic Tools readers, who have truly done for me in the past. And besides, my broken life is finally back together enough that I feel like I can bust out a column about something regularly.

So, Hi! Surprise! And let me start my being back with the advice I have this old man: keep your nib clean while you work, always move it towards the concave belly, and always clean it when you're finished.

And Happy Birthday, Rivkah!

Gerhard. Gare-hard? Jer-ard?

Sean Michael Robinson at The Comics Journal did an exhaustive interview with Gerhard, Dave Sim's background artist on Cerebus. It's a must read for every cartoonist who cares about technique, as the Robinson asks Gerhard about specific pages throughout the comic's decades-long run, with Gerhard talking about everything from his preference to toothbrushes over airbrushes for snow effects to showing photos of the models he built ho help him draw rows of houses on slanted streets.

Gerhard with his models.

Gerhard is one of the best draftsman in the last 50 years of comics, and this interview is one of the richest resources I've ever had a chance to bring to your attention. Read, and watch as a man grows from a talented amateur into a true virtuoso, sharing his secrets with us.

A floor plan to a room in Cerebus.

Jesus, I love how loose Guy Davis' pencils are. I always learn something about keeping freedom in my inking looking at them.

Oh, by the way, I'm selling some clothes on Ebay, if anyone's interested:

Rare Red Swiss Army coat
Green double-breasted jacket
Tailored brown suit

This week on Comic Tools: Futzing with nibs

I'm insomniac tonight, so I'll type this sucker up now:

A few weeks ago MK (Remember MK? Started this blog? Wrote the fantastic comic Americus, illustrated by Jonathan Hill, to be published by First Second later this year, which you can now read in webcomic form? That MK.) wrote me with this:

"Hey Matt. So possibly right under your feet all day at work are these scroll nibs, which are usually used for making filials and jazz for fancy calligraphy. Also, at the very bottom, is a thing called a music nib, used for making musical notation lines, it is made by Brause, not Mitchell, so it won't be in the kit. I got mine from scribblers in the UK after seeing them in someone else's catalogue, and I assumed they must be hackable for cartooning short cuts. Double vision, quicker hatching for bgs that must be covered in them, plaid shirts, checkerboards... the list is not gigantic, but you can get some interesting results. I'm not entirely certain that they are in NY Central, but I believe I saw mitchell caligraphy kits hanging over the doorway to the little room the G nibs are stored in, so if you see them, you could probably come up with some ingenious use for them that I am missing. I've used them for a bit of grass in the new comic already, and it was delightful to use something a little different."

She included this photo:


Indeed we do have these nibs downstairs at New York Central. If you walk straight into the store about halfway, you'll see these cheesy looking beige cardboard bubble packets sitting way up high where the managers sit:


You'll have to ask for someone to help you reach them, unless you're seven feet tall. These are what the packets look like up close, and what they cost:

New York Central got the whole lot of them in a buyout of another closing supplier, so once these are gone, they're gone. Fortunately, for anyone who might want them, they don't seem to sell well. Anyhow I've got them back at home now, and I've been playing around with them. I've narrowed it down to 8 that produce various effects I like, and I've been futzing around with them, like MK did.

My first impressions are that either these types of nib are either all made of unusually crappy and thin steel, or that the tinyness of the individual nibs having to share the space makes them weak, much like too many babies sharing a womb, or that this particular brand may just be crappy. I don't know, but nonetheless I've found some uses for these that might induce me to buy more anyway.

The nibs with evenly spaced, equal-sized points make hatching large areas really, really easy and SOOOOOOO much faster. They also make great speed lines.

The evenly spaced nibs with one point larger than the other make pleasantly dynamic and perfectly spaced pipes, dowels, poles, and rope. If I wanted to to an entire series of knot-tying illustrations, one of these nibs would very possibly save me from insanity.

The nibs with multiple slits cut going to the same point hold extra ink like a lettering nib while remaining flexible like a quill, and so far the best use I've found for these are really fantastic willowy tree limbs that you can draw with the line variation of a brush, but with a line quality that is unmistakably of a nib.


Anyhow, I'm gonna mess around with these some more and then do a proper post on them.

Finally a link: A fantastic interview with Mike Mignola about setting and architecture. One lesson learned: you neither need to like drawing, nor even actually draw, straight lines or perfect perspective in order to draw houses, cities, and other settings in a convincing and lively way. Slanty lines and age are your friends.

See you next week!

This week on Comic Tools: Reader Question

Hey Matt,

I've recently read the Scott Pilgrim comics and become interested in drawing comics. I've always been a hopeless drawer though so i got a book to teach me some basics and it's really helping so far, but it doesn't teach anything about comics. I found your blog very useful but its hard to find somewhere to begin. Are there any books out there you'd recommend to teach basic comic drawing?

Josh.

Short answer:

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud's Making Comics
Jessica Abel and Matt Madden's Drawing Words and Writing Pictures
David Chelsea's Perspective! For Comic Book Artists

Read those and do all the assignments suggested in them, and you'll have just saved yourself 4 years of college. I wish I were more than a hair away from kidding.

Long answer:

To get good at comics you'll have to read a lot of comics, and learn to steal. I don't mean imitate- that's like stealing someone's jewelry by hoisting their house into the back of your pickup and driving off. It doesn't work and you look like a moron doing it. You must learn to steal- and I use that word deliberately- the very best parts of what works about your favorite artists, and throw away the rest. You must learn to avoid taking on the bad habits of artists you like, the way you might avoid contracting AIDS. It's so easy, SO easy, to look at a great artist, imitate (meaning copy totally) their art, including it's weak parts, and then defend those weaknesses for decades as the inspiration you got from a great artist, instead of a cheap, hacky trick that both you and the artist you got it from should be shamed of. Jack Kirby was insanely inventive and kinetic and used blacks like no human being before or since, but he basically drew humans with 2 not very good faces and just slightly more expressions. Dave Sim has an incredible work ethic and is a proficient inker and letterer, but his people are ugly, stiff, and insensitive. Moebius and Frank Quitely are some of the best draughtsmen on the planet, but they draw distracting and freakish baby faces on everyone and sometimes their art can be lifelessly static.

Everyone's style is a combination of all the things they're best at, and attempts to either avoid or cover the evidence of everything they suck at. Mike Mignola once confessed to a class I was in that he doesn't draw cars because he hates drawing them and uses lots of shadows because he sucks at perspective. You'll eventually form your style by lazily covering up all the things you suck at; don't add to that all the things your favorite artists suck at.

This counts ten thousand times more if your art is Manga influenced. Every single one of my manga influenced artist friends will back me on this: if you take your cues by imitating your favorite manga, you will spend years of your commercially crippled career painfully stripping your art of the shortcuts that, by sheer necessity of how fast those artists must produce, makes up 1/2 to fully 9/10ths of the art of any given page of manga.

If you ever find yourself thinking "Oh, finally, this art looks like something I can actually draw!", put the book down and never look at it again. If bikes are hard for you, fill a sketchbook with people on every kind of bike you can find reference for. If hands are really tricky for you, never, ever draw a panel without showing both hands of every person in the panel. If shoes are tricky for you, don't do another damned thing until you can draw everything from sneakers to dress shoes convincingly. Learn to draw brick walls that don't look like cinderblock walls. Read a lot of good comics, look at a lot of good art, read a lot of good books, and learn to steal the very best from all of them. And don't imitate.

And now, some links for this week!

Andrew Loomis made the best art instruction books for illustrators and cartoonists ever made, and you can download them in their entirety, for free, online!

For young or beginning artists who want a warm, earnest, supportive place to get input on their work, there's few places better than the Flight Forums. Professionals from the books and others who just hang out are always watching to give advice to all those who seek it.

Why has Alec Longstreth given up on rapidographs and pigma pens? Find out!

Listen to Dean Haspiel.

Remember how I was talking about absorbing the worst shortcuts from people's work? Here's a great example. Ha, "Dreamworks brow."

Next week, another eraser showdown!

The biggest event in Comic Tools likely to happen this year or any other happened last Sunday, with Jim Woodring exhibiting his enormous pen, it's dripping tip gleaming in the light, to over 100 assembled men, women, and children. Woodring found the 25 pound black wooden shaft awkward and difficult to maneuver, and eventually resorted to just working with the tip, which produced much happier results.

Okay, enough dick innuendo. (Heh, in YOU end-o.) Seriously though, you have no idea how much I wanted to photoshop truck balls onto this thing. Or make a super-nerdy comics in-joke by having the tip going through a slice of pizza.

Dick jokes aside, I really, really love that this thing exists. It's actually really fascinating to me that his learning to use this thing wasn't all that different than the process I go through picking up any ordinary pen.

He had two nibs made, a steel prototype, and then a brass-plated, hand-engraved model, seen here:

Beautiful, right? But it turned out that that nib was actually a bit too stiff, and the steel nib was more flexible, so Jim put the better looking nib away in favor of the more practical prototype:

(The brass nib in the bucket of shame. click on this image for Glenn Fleichmann's great flickr set of this event.)

This happens to me all the time, when one nib will just be too damned stiff, and I have to chuck it and move on to another one in the box.

Here you can see Jim making the first lines with the stiffer brass nib, and all the dripping and control problems he was having:

Jim Woodring - Nibbus Maximus from Gavin Lees on Vimeo.

At first he was cautiously getting a feel for what marks it could and could not make, and the frist drawing was pretty shabby looking, which always happens to me while learning a new tool.

But amazingly, not too far into the demonstration, Woodring's inking with the pen from Land of the Giants was virtually indistinguishable from his regular inking. Here he is inking a drawing with the Nibbus Maximus:

And at the end of this video you can see him inking with his regular pen:

The man clearly has a feel for the nib as a broad concept, and when you change the parameters, like size, ink thickness, and flexibility, he just has to take awhile to readjust his technique before he's mastered it as he would any other nib. It's way, way more interesting to watch than I thought it would be, and watching him have to struggle to adapt to the tool gave me insights into how any artist adapts to nib pens.

Many have pointed out that new Seattle transplant Scott Kurtz was at the event (as seen in the below photo), and I thought I'd take this opportunity to say what spectacular resources the podcast Webcomics Weekly (which he co-hosts) and accompanying book How to Make Webcomics (which he co-wrote) are. My good friend Erika Moen helped make herself a successful independent artist and businesswoman based on concepts she learned from these resources, and anyone who has a webcomic, are is looking to start a webcomic, would do well to buy the book and start listening to the podcast from episode 1.

Two additional things Woodring posted on his blog that I thought were cool, a guide to how nibs were made in the old days:

(Click to see larger.)

And this drawing of a frog being hit by lightning:

(Click to see larger.)

I notice that Wooding is wearing the exact same shirt and suit that he was wearing when I met him at an art opening, and I wonder if he's like me, with only one nice outfit that he just uses over and over at any vaguely fancy event.

In unrelated news, Dark Horse posted this really fantastic back and forth illustrated dialogue between editor Scott Allie and artist Guy Davis on the latest BPRD cover. It's a perfect example of an editor doing their job right, taking an okay idea and molding it into a great one, making the artist look good, and strengthening the narrative impact of the imagery.

Below, a special treat for you: A progression from Guy's thumbnails, to his pencils, to his inks from one of my favorite pages in that issue. Click to see it in all it's glory:

See you next week!

This week on Comic Tools: Take care of your wrist!

Robin Bougie is one of the nicest men I have ever met in comics. Much like the also famously sweet Scott McCloud, he's spends most of his time as a creator helping other creators, publishing their work, using his own prominence to bring good work to light, and talking openly about his experiences as a creator. For years now he's had problems with his drawing hand, as has his wife Rebecca. This is the second time he's posted this video of injury-preventing hand stretches:



When he first posted it I was drawing a lot of comics myself, and getting terrible wrist pain. These stretches helped me a lot. From his post:

Do these stretches before you start, and once an hour, every hour, while drawing. Please don't fuck your shit up like we did. If you're a writer and typing a lot, it couldn't hurt you to do the same.

Think of yourself like an athlete, and for them stretching before they take part in their sport is absolutely VITAL in order to prevent injury. We, as artists, absolutely have to start thinking this way as well -- especially if we're in our thirties or older when our bodies aren't willing to put up with the crap we put them through.

I'm having a lot more trouble staying pain free because I started doing these stretches stuff AFTER I strained my arm, and I know now that it's much better to be preventative and begin doing them before you do permanent damage. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE!

More information about RSI here:
http://www.bupa.co.uk/health-information/directory/r/repetitive-strain-syndrome-rsi

Your wrist is no less a comic tool than your pen, unless you intend to learn to draw somehow without it. Take care of it. Don't hold El Corazon over crocodile-filled water with your wrist.

By the way, unless you have a really high tolerance for fucked-up, disturbing sexual imagery, do NOT click to see the other entries in his journal. Don't say you weren't warned.

Oh, and I really liked this comment to the youtube video:

"This has helped me quite a bit. For those that loose faith in humanity...visit Youtube every now and again. The fact that people take time out of their lives to help people like this is a testament to humanity"

I actually mainly watch youtube videos by people who have taken time and effort to teach others, but it's still odd to me to see someone associate youtube with MORE faith in humanity. Probably because any video, of any thing, will eventually get a comment calling the poster a fag or questioning their skills. This comment made me think that maybe I should focus more on the fact that I've gotten an amazingly thorough education on a few subjects on Youtube, and less on guys in their parent's basement looking for things to call faggy while their tiny penises heal from over masturbating.

Also, in perhaps the biggest Comic Tool news of all time, Jim Woodring will be demonstrating his enormous, 7 foot nib pen. Here's video of the nib:



He's using it in public for the very first time today, and I'll post video of that when it becomes available. I have no idea how the hell this thing is supposed to work, but you can bet I'm drooling to find out and see what he can do with it.

See you all next week!

Reader Question:

Hi,
I'm following your comics tools blog lately and I want to know if there is a post on Paper/Bristol Board.
I want to buy bristol board at Blue Line Pro but I'm not sure if I should take 2ply or 3ply. It's a 10$ difference. I'm from germany and we don't distinguish by ply we only do by weight.

Could you give me advice?

Thank you so far

Jannick

Bristol is a fast-dying form of commercial grade paper that is still used by many cartoonists and illustrators, although not nearly as much as it used to be, the result of which has been a steep and ever worsening decline in variety and quality, as it's no longer profitable for mills to manufacture for anything less than astronomical prices.

Bristol is made by laminating thin sheets together with glue, creating thicker sheets, as opposed to producing a thicker sheet from the get-go. This is what the ply of bristol refers to; 1 ply is a single sheet thickness, 2 ply is two sheets glued together, and so on.

I see no particular reason to get more than 2 ply bristol. Because of the gluing process, thicker bristol isn't less prone to buckling than thicker bristol, unlike with other kinds of paper, although is is more resistant to denting. Which would matter if you were using your art as a car door. In my experience all it does is add weight to your portfolio.

This week on Comic Tools: Preparation Links

Sarah Glidden shows us how she made her wonderful watercolor comic pages. Of particular interest to me was her use of a glaze of color under SOME, but not ALL parts of the images. I've seen cartoonists like Lucy Knisley use washes of color, usually yellow, over the whole image, but the way Sarah uses it is interesting, because she uses it to compartmentalize different parts of the ground from each other.

On this example page, she uses a yellow wash to separate the foreground from the midground and background, and blue to make a background sink deeper into shadow. You can't always see these glazes of undercolor in the final panels, yet this subtle technique makes her painted panels organized and easier to read.

Friend of Comic Tools, Jason Little, wrote this fantastic post about his artwork and writing process leading up to his fantastic latest book from Dark Horse, Motel Art Improvement Service. There's so much to love about this post, like his accounting about how the story started as a misguided diatribe about the health insurance industry, or how he originally wanted to serialize the story in a series of regular comic books. He was talked out of both ideas, and the result is better for it. It's the comics equivalent of a wife saying to her husband, "You're not going out looking like THAT, are you?!"

I must say though, I love this panel from when he was contemplating doing the book in only two colors of ink to save printing costs. It shows what a master of print Jason is, that if you don't have an eye that looks for such things, you don't immediately notice this panel has only two colors. It looks so lush.


Aaron Renier talks about his process writing and drawing Walker Bean in this Newsarama interview. I have seen art from this book, and it makes me shake with jealousy just thinking about it, it's so good.

Friend of Comic Tools Chris Schweizer posts artwork frequently to his blog, and it reveals that he one one of the ballsiest inkers and loosest pencillers I have ever seen in my life. Seriously, his pencils are often less resolved that a game of connect the dots. I don't know how he does it. Here, he posts one of his most detailed penciled panels (still absurdly under rendered), and here he shows off some gorgeous setting sketches for a story. The amazing thing is, that panel isn't even his finished inks- for his comics,he renders what look like finished inks in marker, then scans them in, prints them in blue, and inks in brush over that. But I've seen him ink drawings straight from pencils that loose that looked no less finished, to my eye. Insane.

Here we have a great example of everything I stand against in art teaching, in this excerpt from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way:



See how easy it is? Just draw a stick figure, then add cylinders, then fill it in with years of painstaking anatomical study and direct life drawing knowledge, not to mention expert knowledge of lighting, drapery, and character design. Jesus Christ, why don't they just show you a white sheet of paper and say "Just add characters here with a pencil! Pause the tape while you practice doing that."

My thanks to my good friend Emily Felger for sending me a new keyboard.

This week on Comic Tools: Eraser Shields

In the course of penciling comics, sometimes you end up with little distracting lines that you want to get rid of, but they're so close to lines you want to keep that erasing one might accidentally erase the other. It's a common problem when drawing fiddly, intricate things like faces, or as I've chosen for this example, skulls.


My usual solution to this problem is to form a point on my kneaded rubber eraser and use it to erase only the lines I want gone. If you do this, make sure your point isn't long and floppy like this, or you won't be able to press on it hard enough to erase.

Make the angle of the tip as obtuse as you can, and the tip will hold up to much harder erasing before losing its shape.


However some artists, like my girlfriend, press their pencil into the paper like a marine trying to stab through body armor, and kneaded rubber erasers aren't enough. Here's her eraser, worn to a blunted nubble:

How is she to erase single lines with this, without erasing everything around them? That is where eraser shields come in. An eraser shield is just a paper-thin piece of steel slightly larger than a credit card, with holes of various shapes and sizes cut in it. You cunningly select and position the holes to mask off the lines you want gone, like so,

And then erase them.

You have to be careful about checking your placement, though,

lest you remove lines you in fact want to keep:

They really ought to make these in clear flexible plastic for better positioning. It wouldn't be too difficult to make one out of acetate, though. Any material that was thin and stiff enough would work.

Anyway, here's the cleaned pencils,


And heres the skull all inked up:


Sorry I haven't been getting to comments yet, my keyboard is broken and my spacebar has been dead all week. I've been inserting every space by copying and pasting, writing this. I have a friend with a new one, though, so hopefully that'll be sorted out soon.

See you next week!

Eraser shields: Not for dueling pencil knights.

(Also, not actually the subject of this post.)

I'm ready to start posting every week again. I know, it's been awhile. A lot's happened. I moved in with my girlfriend. I got a full-time job in New York Central Art Supply's paper department. I was removed from the book I've worked on, or worked to be able to work on, for the last four and a half years. I did a shitload of anatomy research, the results of which you'll be seeing in the future on this blog. I started a new project with a friend of mine, which I'll be discussing much more freely than my previous project as I work on it.

I'll talk about my removal from the book I was working on in more detail another time. All I'll say for now is that it wasn't acrimonious, but it was very sad and disappointing for all parties. Basically, I hadn't turned in any work in a long time, and because of my new job, no work was forthcoming any time soon. First Second said they needed the book done by such-and-such time, I said I could not do it by then, and so they were forced to let me go. I think it's important for people to share their failures as well as successes, particularly ones that are learning experiences, so believe me, I WILL go into more detail about this later. But at the moment the circumstances of my being let go aren't totally over with, or even solidified in terms of what will happen legally, and it's still pretty goddamned painful to talk about, so you'll excuse me if I refuse to answer any questions on the subject for now.

But it, in combination with a major move, is the main reason I've been offline so long, and not really been in the spirit of blogging about comics.

Anyhow, I'll be resuming tools posts next week with a post about the eraser shield. And I'll be catching up responding to a backlog of reader comments during the week.

Still alive, healthy, have job, no longer in imminent danger of homelessness.

Still getting my shit together, another good month till I start the blog back up, I think. I actually want to be ready to do it every week, on time when I start again.

Thanks to all those who expressed concern.

-Matt

MONSTER WINSOR AND NEWTON BRUSH SALE RIGHT NOW!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!! ENDS APRIL 2ND!

http://www.aswexpress.com/discount-art-supplies/online/703/art-supplies/6

So reader Beau won the contest, which I was hoping would be a time killer to fill a week I knew I'd miss, but then I went and missed another week. Beau, please email me at contact(at)matthew-bernier.com to claim your price, this beautiful archival-quality poster-sized print of my postcard design for Patton Oswalt, printed on Arches hot-press watercolor paper and signed by me.
I'm assuming there probably isn't a great deal of demand for them since beau was really the only person who felt like making two lists to get one, but if anyone else wants such a poster, they can write me at the same address. They are $25 plus shipping.

A few folks asked how I was doing- I've recovered from my terrible viral resurgence, and I'm back on my feet. Thanks to everyone who asked.

I have entries coming finally (I spent the last week sending out interview questions to various people I'd been procrastinating about writing), but for this week I have a bunch of neat links:

Remember Sean Murphy, the dude I presented at SCAD with? The harsh Onion's comics reviewer liked the first entry of his new comic with Grant Morrison, Joe the Barbarian, and having seen it in stores, I have to say I do, too! Sean's a crazy-talented inker.

The great Jillian Tamaki, talking about aping artistic styles.

Mark Siegel of First Second books isn't just a great editor, he's a great cartoonist! And he's putting his new book out as a webcomic! It's called Sailor Twain and you should read it.

James Gurney talks about the antiquated but still extremely useful comics tool, the proportion wheel.

SCAD student and friend of Comic Tools Blog Falynn draws fucking amazing apocalypse trucks.

And Hope Larson is doing a cool educational experiment:

"If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that I'm working on a short comic and posting the process art on Flickr. When it's complete I'll compile the whole thing–script, thumbnails, roughs, inks–into a short comic for print and web. The idea isn't to make a comics how-to, but to show how much work goes into something as basic as a 10-page short story.

It's nerve-wracking to show work to the world when it's vulnerable and new, but that's the whole point. Once I make it through the roughs I'll enlist someone to play editor, make his/her notes public, and address those notes in the final art."

Contest!

I'm suffering my annual resurgence of a mono-like virus I picked up a few years back, and don't have it in me to put a post together, but I didn't want to just call in sick, so I'm holding a fun little contest.

You may remember my post about lettering, where I showed many of the most common mistakes I see in amateur lettering, and gave a general philosophy about how artists can approach this intimidating subject.

This last week it was announced that the Twilight graphic novel was going to print, and that they'd be making 350,000 copies for their initial print run, an insane number for a comic. As it turns out, Stephenie Meyer cares even less about how her books are adapted into comic form than she does about how they're adapted into film, or for that matter the quality of her writing. Stephenie could certainly pay for quality, if she wanted, but instead chose first-time comic book artist Young Kim (who, it's reported rather vaguely, has a "fine arts" background) for the job. Kim's too-shitty-to-be-called-generic, obviously hastily produced hackwork is hysterical, confusing, and infuriating. It's hard to see how such a terrible artist was chosen to helm a GN with one of the largest print runs I've ever heard of. Maybe Meyer saw in Kim a kindred spirit with absolutely no pride in her work? Meyer has stated that she was involved in every page of the book, and feels very happy with it. But the artwork actually wasn't what caught my eye first. The lettering in this book is literally- and I use that word mindfully- literally the worst published lettering I have ever seen. If I'd known lettering could look this bad, I'd have requested that Meyer actually piss in my face instead.

Here's where we get to the contest. In my post I covered nine distinct types of mistake one can make in lettering. I counted eight major types of mistake in this lettering, and four of them were ones I didn't think of when making my post. Here is a single page from the new book:


The first person who can tell me what those types of mistake were, and which ones I did not cover in my post, will win a signed print of my poster for Patton Oswalt:

Leave your answers in the comments. I'll let you know when I have a winner.

Have a good week everyone!

This week: SCAD Atlanta students will destroy us all.

I assume most of you will recognize this episode of the Simpsons:

Basically, SCAD Atlanta is a training ground/hardened military facility for a sixties-era mad terrorist, probably Chris Schweizer.

How else do you explain the decor of the place, space-industrial in gaudy colors and exposed metal (And I'm pretty sure this is a transporter facility)?

The place has custom-designed recycling bins that match the building! This is the oppressive conformity indicative of a cruel dictator who cannot stand opposition even in his garbage disposal.

Look at this cafeteria, large enough to feed a small army, with the SCAD logo covering an entire wall, chanting a visual reminder of loyalty unto death.


Look at this relaxation area, straight out of a James bond film:


These pod chairs are robotically enhanced:


You enter one,


Pull the sensory isolation shield around you,

and then invert yourself, immersing yourself into a technological relaxation bubble no doubt filled with ultrasonic subliminal brainwashing messages. Mere students don't require devices like this to relax- only agents of horror, soldiers that have done things which stretch even morally bleached minds to their breaking point, require such mechanically-assisted relaxation to find peace.


There is a small "theater" which is clearly a single-stage to orbit escape pod for the facility's higher ranking officials, should something go awry:


Surrounded by smaller single-man escape pods:

Make no mistake, SCAD Atlanta students will destroy us all.

(SCAD Atlanta's building was originally a huge federal building, following which it was rennovated to the tune of $40 million by a dot-com that promptly went bankrupt upon completion, and now SCAD has a long term lease and the benefit of facilities that were supposed to be for the man-children of a failed Google. I say Man-children because I have never seen a building LESS decorated by women in my entire life. I've been to strip clubs with a more feminine touch.)

Actually, SCAD Atlanta students ARE coming to destroy us all, with their art.

Way back in October I was invited to be one of SCAD Atlanta's two guest speakers, along with Sean Murphy. We both gave a talk about our careers, two lessons with students, and did portfolio reviews. Tim O'Shea did a fan-fucking-tastic job covering it all, in an article that manages to quote myself and several others at length while never taking any of us out of context or ruining a nuanced idea. In fact, as Sean pointed out, Tim made us all seem smarter than we are, if anything.

Tim's article covers pretty much everything about what happened except stuff that was in my internal monologue. The two main themes in my head were

a: I absolutely do not deserve to be a co-equal guest artist discussing my "career" alongside a veteran artist who's been at this more than 3 times as long as I have,

b: I was so, SO glad that the lessons, which were basically "The best of Comic Tools, LIVE!" worked out.

I actually learned several new things from the students during my tools lesson, which I'll be passing along soon (I'm still gathering materials for that), and the students really responded well to the anatomy lesson. It was a lot like this blog, actually: I was mostly teaching stuff, but then they had info I didn't know, and now we'll all be able to have this information.

Regarding a: seriously, this was awkward for me. It's really stretching it to say I've had a "career" in comics at all, frankly. Sean's been a published, deadline-meeting workhorse for like 7 years now. I'm not even through my first book, and I'm WAYYYY over deadline with that. I tried to deal with my inadequacy by taking it-head on, and being as honest as possible. I ended up being a good counterpoint to Sean, as an Indie artist who has made some serious mistakes early on, but with the perspective of an indy artist, which is that I can just move on, keep working, and my peers and even my editors will help steer me back on course. This was in sharp contrast to Sean's sector of the industry, which is much more cut throat. Some of my smaller screw ups could, if made by Sean, have cost him his career in the industry forever, no joke. I don't think I deserved to be speaking next to him, but the two of us did serve to emphasize what a varied industry comics can be, and that was good for the students.

Here's Sean and me speaking:


Here's Sean doing his inking tutorial, which I sadly had to miss:

And here's me doing portfolio reviews:


Jesus, the portfolio reviews.

Everyone drawing below the industry top 5%: watch the fuck out. SCAD Atlanta is not like it's retarded cousin SCAD Savannah. As iron sharpens iron, so these artists sharpen each other. This is a school that turns down applicants. This is a school that gives failing grades to unpublishable- emphasis on PUBLISHABLE- work. This is a school that listens to it's teachers, fosters a culture of greatness, and turns out the best students I have ever seen. Several students I met were currently working on books for ONI while still in school. Others had gigs lined up, or were in the process of it. I saw exactly 2 students who weren't ready to work at a totally pro level right then.

Most of them were better than me.

That's not to say there wasn't any one of them I couldn't give a good critique to- everybody has weaknesses. But basically everyone was working close to or at a level indistinguishable from the top 30% of actual pro work. It was a huge change from SVA's huge percentage of mediocrity and borderline-retarded losers being strung along with passing grades for their tuition money. Much is demanded of SCAD students, and as people always do, the students rise to high expectations, enforced with stern grading.

SCAD Atlanta is retarded, RETARDED expensive, but if you can afford it, they are a genuinely great school, with a director and teachers who really have a vision and set of ethics for the place. It was an honor to have been chosen to speak at such a place.

(I'd like to give a special shout-out to Falynn, who toured me around the campus so I could take photos without getting lost and accidentally stumbling into the school's fusion reactor. Here is her livejournal, where you can see her lovely watercolors.)

If SCAD Atlanta ever invites you as a guest, accept. I was fed like Caligula every single day. I'm serious- one night my dinner tab was eighty something, and they didn't flinch. I was put up in a great hotel room. I wanted for nothing, and felt very obligated to give them my all in my presentations. HOSPITALITY, spelled in capital letters, is the legal middle name of everyone there.

I got in a little tourism while I was in Atlanta, which, for the record, is the least pleasant city I have ever been in. New Yorkers, if you want to know what Atlanta is like, imagine if every street in Manhattan were I-95. Now imagine the entire city is like the east side from 23rd to 50th street, but with 5 out of every 6 businesses removed from the street and replaced with parking or windowless concrete walls. Now imagine it's a zombie apocalypse, and you can cover the whole distance from 23rd to 50th and encounter only 4 people. Basically, imagine white plains at night, as an entire city.

BUT, their aquarium has whale sharks, and that redeems their entire shitty awful nightmare city:


I also went to the Coke museum, which is sort of sad but also sort of cool. They have a room where you can drink Coca Cola products from all over the world, and these were my favorites:



Notably absent was Mexican Coke, which I'm sure they didn't include because if they did nobody would drink the shitty American Coke.

SCAD did me one last great favor, by flying me out to Austin, where I was able to help my girlfriend move out of her apartment and to New York city. That was one of the most important weeks of my life, and it gains importance the farther I go into this relationship. I'll always be grateful to them for making that possible for me. My special thanks go out to Shawn Crystal and Chris Schweizer, who made this happen and treated me so very, very well. Blessings be upon you and your families.

I don't know what next week's lesson will be yet! We shall see...