A few words on drama, comedy, and comics

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:39 pm

Comics, known as Sequential Art to those who struggle to make a name for the medium as something other than a dumping ground for commercial excess, is characterized by its use of one of the most important mathematical tools mankind has ever developed:

The use of space to represent time.

Think about it. We use space to represent time constantly in our lives. We use it on the weather forcast (indeed, the 5-day forcast is an informative if banal comic), we use it constantly in science, and even in business. (Ever read a flow chart?)

Now, reading the title of this post, some of you might be wondering what any of this has to do with drama or comedy.

Those of you familiar with the cardinal rule of comedy may already be laughing.

Timing is everything.

Or, if you're making comics, Space is everything.

In Umlaut House, we saw, repeated several hundred times, a collection of four panels. Each time, a joke was set up and delivered. A joke for every comic.

Consider that. Every comic had four panels, and every comic ended with a punchline of some kind. This was not an accident.

Comedy is easier when the timing is already decided. So is drama. The restrictive format divides the story into bite-sized chunks that I can lay out one at a time. While the infinite canvas may free you to do whatever you might want, the finite canvas can provide you with some sturdy beams to lean on. My next comic will also be on a finite canvas.

But it will NOT be exactly four panels. I'm going to change the timing from a steady drumbeat to a much more varied tempo, with the staccatto pops of small panels and the slow notes of half- or full-screen establishing shots. In short, I'm going to mess with the timing of my comics by messing with the space in which I draw them.

When I put it that way, it seems like a fairly big step, and to me it is. But the next comic will still be fairly minimalist, both in words and in artistic complexity. It will not make use of impressionalistic variations in line style. It will not have photographic realism. It will not have multimedia effects, despite their wonderful use in comics like Spiders or Unicorn Jelly.

In short, the next comic will be exactly like Umlaut House in every way, except for the subject matter and the physcial shape of each installment.

And I hope you'll agree, that step's still something of a doozy.

Alfador · Post by **Alfador** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 9:02 am

I'm wondering what that subject matter will be. Sir and Lad? Queer as Pony? Something we haven't seen yet? Or...something we have seen, but had no idea it would be your next comic?

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 9:43 am

I haven't decided yet.

Mind you, this "Family of Fur" thing I've been messing with has some potential...

The_Fox · Post by **The_Fox** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 11:52 am

allan_ecker wrote:I haven't decided yet.

Mind you, this "Family of Fur" thing I've been messing with has some potential...

And my interest is piqued...

- Jarylan "Ears Perked" Vulpine

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:02 pm

Good.

RandomScribe · Post by **RandomScribe** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 3:14 pm

Gah! The curiosity! The overwhelming, tantalizing curiousity!

Maybe you should have been a branding executive.

--RS, whose little brother was just playing the overworld theme from FF7 on the piano in the other room. How geeky-cool is that?

Alfador · Post by **Alfador** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 8:42 am

allan_ecker wrote:I haven't decided yet.

Mind you, this "Family of Fur" thing I've been messing with has some potential...

Will it be anything like Father of the Pride?

DetailBear · Post by **DetailBear** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:04 am

Today's art is interesting in it's lack of colour. But this monitor I'm on at work is giving me a limited grayscale. I'll have to check it out at home.

The male character in the last panel looks very Jack influenced. Around the eye and hair.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:28 am

I really didn't know what to do with the ocular implant, so I ended up drawing what ammounts to a speaker for an eye.

Really, he should have a series of lenses or something...

RandomScribe · Post by **RandomScribe** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 2:36 pm

A speaker for an eye makes the whole world blind.

*wanders off*

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 1:02 pm

Though I haven't seen it yet, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that, were I to do Family of Fur, it would be nothing at all like Father of the Pride. Pride looks like a cross between Grounded for Life and Kevin and Kell, hopefully with at least a pinch of that simultaneous flare for parody and compassion that made Shrek such a winner.

Family of Fur would be much more like a blending of Third Rock from the Sun and Malcom in the Middle, with a little bit of Umlaut House-style gender lunacy and just a whiff of the X-men. The fourth wall would be very, very solid in this one, a very UNumlaut-house trait.

Maximuscoolman · Post by **Maximuscoolman** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 3:21 pm

No offense but I'm going to have to see more "Family of Fur" stuff to be impressed, at the moment it's looking like a reality TV show.
"Let's see how the public react when we put a family of anthropomorphic animals in their street"

At the moment, I'm still supporting Unit Zero

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 3:42 pm

"Reality Show", huh?

That is EXACTLY what Family of Fur would be.

If these were ordinary people before they got furrified...

As for Unit Zero, you can definitely expect to see, uh, SOME more of it soon. I've already got the next chapter storyboarded, so it's just a matter of Photoshoping it into reality. I think I'll do Unit Zero in chunks, one chapter at a time.

If you like Unit Zero, you'll probably LOVE Remember Man, once I can figure out how to draw a human woman crying, and I mean really CRYING. Like, Mary at the foot of the cross crying.

I wanna give The Stack, a try, a comic that works -backwards, with the last panel appearing first.

Sections with The Masked Retriever (name of current avatar) discussing my current artistic motivations will likely act as bookends between comics and or sections of comics.

Queer as Pony will likely be produced in one breif run, with something like ten to twenty full-color pages.

I've decided to do ALL the ideas, just, as I get around to them. For now, sit tight and watch TMR give ya the lowdown.

I'll try not to bore.

Too much.

Cyril_Dran · Post by **Cyril_Dran** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 6:02 pm

I arise from the dead.. finally settled in at college..

I'm glad to see you're giving everything airtime.. I hate to see wasted creativity. In any event, I'm glad to be online and see all of your furry faces... or, non furry, if any of you share my sentiment of acceptance without compliance, and don't happen to be furry...

I believe I speak for everyone that anything you throw our way is fine, as long as it has that Allan Ecker touch ^_^.

Just keep the site going and you'll keep at least me coming.

Kesh · Post by **Kesh** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 10:28 pm

This should be interesting. It's kinda like free-writing, only with art.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 11:03 pm

Hopefully, each section will at least seem meaningful on its own. The current comic, what will be designated as the first "Beating a Dead Comic Bookend", took me just a few hours in total and gave me a healthy buffer I can use to finish the color finale of Umlaut House.

(Incidentially, since Beating a Dead Comic focuses largely on the reasoning behind my decisions, most of you loyal forumites are going to get a bit shafted as far as truly "new" ideas and material are concerned. Maybe I'll post a few more sketches here to even things up a bit...)

Alfador · Post by **Alfador** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 2:49 pm

allan_ecker wrote:I wanna give The Stack, a try, a comic that works -backwards, with the last panel appearing first.

Nerd Pun!! NERRRRD PUUUUUN!!!

Maximuscoolman · Post by **Maximuscoolman** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 3:09 pm

Alfador wrote:
allan_ecker wrote:I wanna give The Stack, a try, a comic that works -backwards, with the last panel appearing first.
Nerd Pun!! NERRRRD PUUUUUN!!!

Aha, now I get why it's called The Stack; didn't really think about it before.
Man, how did I get a B in computing?

DetailBear · Post by **DetailBear** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 4:39 pm

maximuscoolman wrote:Aha, now I get why it's called The Stack; didn't really think about it before.
Man, how did I get a B in computing?

Don't beat up on yourself too much. That hardware nerdiness or assembler nerdiness more than software nerdiness.

Now if it had been called <h1>Into Trouble</h1> (Heading Into Trouble) or was about Connie, Katherine and Nathan and was called "&". (Con-Cat-N-Nate)

Randyg · Post by **Randyg** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 5:19 pm

DetailBear wrote:Don't beat up on yourself too much. That hardware nerdiness or assembler nerdiness more than software nerdiness.

Now if it had been called <h1>Into Trouble</h1> (Heading Into Trouble) or was about Connie, Katherine and Nathan and was called "&". (Con-Cat-N-Nate)

bad! bad! *gets out his bad-pun-maker spanking paddle*

Watch out, or I'll make that into a lisp cons joke. :)

--Randy