Getting an idea.

There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.
~Barry Humphries

You know how we’re all forced to have a day job because making art don’t pay dick? Well I was at my day job (I quit a year ago) having lunch and one of my co-workers asked me how I came up with my ideas. See, when you have a dayjob and people find out you’re creative in some way you’ll get questions like this a lot. People take an interest in your work or at least they pretend to but no one will ever know what the creative process is like until they do it.
My answer to her question was that ideas were the easy part; it’s actually making those ideas into some kind of finished piece that is difficult. I’m serious, ideas are everywhere and at the beginning they’re all equally valid. Every idea you have throughout the course of the day is a book, or a film, or a comic waiting to happen. Every time you make a decision or notice something insignificant you’re forming ideas. These are the building blocks of stories and it’s up to you to craft those building blocks into something that others want to look at.
Now I’m not advocating putting every idea you have into a story and I’m certainly not suggesting that every idea is going to interest an audience but the notion that ideas are rare is certainly false.
There are few creative people that will ever be able to tell you how they come up with ideas and they sure as shit aren’t going to be able to tell you how you should come up with your ideas. That being said, it still seems to be a common question. So, like an idiot, I’m going to try to tackle the question “How do you come up with ideas?”
Part one: The difference between an idea and a story.
Okay, you’re sitting on a beach and a guy walks up to you and asks you directions to a nearby hotel. The guy is noticeably intoxicated. You give him the directions in an unsure way and moments after he walks off you realize you’ve given him the wrong directions.
As you sit there on the beach wondering if you should try to catch him you let your mind wander.
“I wonder where that guy’s going to end up.”
“I hope he gets where he needs to go eventually.”
“why was that guy drunk?”
You sit watching the sunset and you begin to daydream a bit about the whole scenario. You create a series of events in your head about how and why the man was asking directions on the beach.
You decide the guy had been out on the beach drinking because he’d gotten in a fight with his wife. The two of them were on their vacation and staying at a nearby hotel. The fight they had was over a trivial thing like where to have dinner that night. The man had gotten so drunk on the beach that he’d just wandered aimlessly and forgotten which way he’d come from. Some faulty directions from a stranger (you) had caused the man to walk off into the bad part of town and get attacked by a mugger.
You see where I’m going with this? A random occurrence caused you to think a little (and only a little) about a certain series of events. You wondered about the motivations of someone you met and turned those questions into a story without even realizing it.
Part two: a word about Craft
Is the above scenario really a story? No, it isn’t a story but it’s a good building block for a story. This is where craft comes into play… you know our friend craft right? That stuff they talk about in school? That stuff James Kochalka thinks is the enemy?
Craft is your friend, craft is a useful set of experiments that exist to allow you to maximize the potential of your ideas. Some people think that craft is there solely to tell you that you’re a bad artist and that no one will ever love you. Fuck that, you could kick craft’s punk ass and whenever craft gets out of line you can toss it out the window and rely on your gut.
However, craft is a useful tool and it would do everyone good to learn more about making good stories, learning from your predecessors, peers and your mistakes. Relying solely on the strength of your ideas is folly. Have you looked at the internet lately? There’s an idea around every corner, everyone’s got an idea. In the last ten years small press has given rise to blogs and youtube and there’s a means of distribution for anyone with two fingers and a brain anyone with two fingers. Everyone is now publishing every idea they have and every idea had already been used up a hundred years ago.
My point, if I have one at all, is that though an idea is absolutely the first real step in a creative endeavor it isn’t really any more important than the rest of the process.
That being said, let’s generate some ideas.
Next Part three: some writing exercises.

How to make comics

tools:
Obviously you like to draw right? I mean, you DO like to draw? If you don’t like to draw then screw you… do not make comics. Comics involve drawing and you should get something from the process of making them. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing better than having a finished product, finishing up a nice crisp page/strip/book and sitting back with a satisfied almost post-coital grin on your face but there’s a lot to be said for the actual deed itself you understand? Don’t make me drag out the sex metaphor any more than I have to.
So when you start out you’re going to need some stuff to draw with. It doesn’t matter what you draw with just as long as it makes a mark. There are a million “how-to make funny doodles” books out there and they all basically say “use what works for you.”
That’s kind of a cop out though right… I mean who buys a book so they can learn that they need to figure it out for themselves?
Pencil:
With few exceptions the pencil mark is not the mark that people will see. Cartoonists use a pencil to build a cohesive underdrawing and to figure stuff out on the page. These pencil marks will eventually be inked over and erased therefore the type of pencil to use is largely unimportant. Keep in mind that you’re going to need to erase the marks left by said pencil so you won’t want something too dark, don’t use soft lead, don’t, for christ’s sake, use charcoal or grease pencil.
Graphite pencils come in a range from soft to hard lead. Soft lead is smudgy and darker while hard lead is light and often hard to see. Since we don’t want to see pencil marks on the finished page I say the harder the better… uh, you know what I mean. You can tell the hardness of a pencil by looking at the end down where the eraser usually is. Those jive-ass yellow pencils we used in grade school were marked 2, the hard leads will have a number and an H, 2H, 4H, etc. the higher the number the harder the lead. Soft lead is marked with a B.
Eraser:
Do yourself a favor and get a decent eraser, it will save you much heart-ache and ripped pages. Those pink pearl monstrosities are for the birds. Either a kneaded rubber eraser like the ones I stole from the art-room in high school or the harder white plastic erasers. Magic rub is the brand name I prefer, I think Mars also makes some which, in my opinion, are of slightly less quality.
Paper:
This I can’t really help you with. Everyone has their preference and everyone like different things about the paper they use. A lot of cartoonists today work on paper like they’re going to be hanging that shit in louvre. If your intent is to have people see the finished pages then by all means get a good quality illustration board and really work on that mother. If you’re going to be scanning the page in and printing it out in a book then the page only has to look good long enough to scan it. For a novice I’d recommend just working on bond paper like you have in your printer. For someone a little farther along I’d recommend some kind of cheap bristol that comes in pads. Bristol is a cardstock paper that is sturdy but still affordable there are different variances of smoothness and weight. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what would work best for you. Try out a bunch of different brands and weights, you’ll figure it out. I use cheap, smooth, 11X14 Bristol board from Strathmore.
Ink:
Again, this is a tough one. Ink comes in a variety of types and flavors. You’ll want to find a good black India ink that doesn’t bleed out too much. I hear Dr. Marten’s super black is good as well as Windsor and Newton (the one with the dragon on the side I think) I usually just use cheap Sumi ink and let it evaporate a little. Note that sumi ink is non-water resistant so if you’re going to watercolor over the ink then you’ll be screwed… when I need a waterproof ink I use koh-i-noor rapidograph ink.
Pen and brush:
Generally people use a brush or dip pens to draw with. I like to switch it up and use different tools for different jobs. I usually use a big ol’ drawing nib (I can’t tell you the brand or anything because it’s so worn that I can’t read the side of it) I also tend to just beat the hell out of my pens until they are completely useless… I drew a bunch of pages not too long ago with a nib that was split apart like a piece of firewood. Just because I’m a lazy bastard when it comes to tools doesn’t mean you should be… take care of your stuff and when it does go bad, throw it out and get new stuff.
Anyway there are a few different kinds of nib, go for the kind with smaller points that can spread out a little and offer you some line density. A crowquill nib is a special, smaller, pen nib that fits into a different size barrel than the others. I think Hunt 102 is the standard. They take a little more finesse than the kind I normally use but if you can get it they give excellent lines. I’ve only recently been able to draw anything with a crowquill.
Brushes are another story. A brush gives a good line weight but can be tricky to master. Every cartoonist nerd out there swears by the Windsor and Newton series 7 sable brush… they are more expensive than your first child though. Many cartoonists I’ve talked to just buy cheap knock off synthetic brushes and throw them out after a few pages… this is also really expensive. Let’s face it, inking with a brush is for rich yuppy assholes… just kidding, brushes are great but they do put a damper on the pocket book if you want to be able to work consistently.
go to your local art supply store or here, buy some cheap material and start drawing.
More later.

how to make comics

Introduction.

So I’ve been laboring over this for a while, wracking my brain as to how I should start out. Should I go full on Scott McCloud and start defining terms and building taxonomy, or maybe go for the freewheeling “this is just my personal process” sort of thing? The problem is that comics are a broad topic in art history and I’m not entirely qualified to cover every aspect of the form. I’ve got my personal tastes and method, I have a specific type of pen and ink I prefer and to be honest with everyone… I really don’t read a lot of comics nowadays anyway.

So why in god’s name do I feel qualified to impart my “wisdom” onto the masses? Why am I doing this? Why am I here? Lest I get bogged down in some existential funk and decide to just give up my answer to these questions is “well, I’m doing my best and hopefully it will do some good.”

In other words take all this with a grain of salt… a big grain, like that non-iodized sea salt, that should do you well. These are my opinions and I’m not writing a guide book to the ultimate successful comic strip. I’m jabbering away on a weblog and seeing what sticks. If you, the aspiring cartoonist, find my advice does not work for you or you have a different working method then by all means have at it. Do good work and let me know where I went wrong.

An aspiring cartoonist will notice the slew of action adventure “comic book” movies in theatres lately. You’ll notice the abundant collection of thick little Manga books in Borders. You’ll notice everywhere you turn someone is trying to convince you that comics are a viable and interesting art form. These are not reasons to become a cartoonist though, sorry. No one decides to become a painter because painting is considered “viable and interesting.” People make art because they enjoy it, they have a little encouragement along the way and they realized they can express themselves in unique ways. It’s my hope to impart what passes for wisdom in making comics and add a few inspirational tidbits along the way. Later in the week I’ll get into the meat of making a comic and examine the unique structural elements of comics. In the meantime here is a brief reading list for aspiring cartoonist and would-be ink pushers. This is just a beginning… I’ll have more books and resources for you later when we really start to get into it.

Comics and Sequential art by Will Eisner

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Making Comics by Scott McCloud

How to read nancy by Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden (pdf)

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Story by Robert McKee