Comic Genesis Forums

Micro_Fur wrote:LOL *CHOMP* Where I work the ends justify the means:
Work it harder, make it better, move it faster, make it stronger; hour after hour our work is never over.

Micro_fur - We are all slaves to The Machine.

I thought it went like this:

Work it harder
Make it better
Do it faster
Makes us stronger
More than ever
Hour after
Our work is
Never over.

On top of every little mistake I make again, Alfy? I just adaped it to make it fit more how work goes on on the ship.

Micro_fur - Adaptation leads to acusations of plagarism.

Doink wrote:Well, in other news, I've found an artist to work with: Kittah from the DMFA forum. As much as I'm apprehensive about communication and all, I'm convinced that having an experienced artist help me with the comic will ultimately lead to a better product.

Woot! Collaboration is always a good thing. However, I still admonish you to keep up your own drawing, if for no other reason than to keep your writing closer to the middle of McCloud's Big Triangle.

I've never written a truly collaborative work, but I've always imagined the best writer/artist team would be one where both writer and artist dabble in one another's fields to keep grounded.

allan_ecker wrote:Woot! Collaboration is always a good thing. However, I still admonish you to keep up your own drawing, if for no other reason than to keep your writing closer to the middle of McCloud's Big Triangle.

I've never written a truly collaborative work, but I've always imagined the best writer/artist team would be one where both writer and artist dabble in one another's fields to keep grounded.

I have to admit, the Triangle really didn't make much sense to me, even after reading what was under it.

Okay, Scott, bless his little comic-addled heart, has done a weak job of explaining his tool here.

His explanation in Understanding Comics is much better.

Here's a re-hash:

We'll start with only purely representational art, that is, art in which every stroke of the pen is meant to convey something physical: the curve of a nose, the shadow in a room, etcetera.

Take this and arrange it on a line, from that which is most like reality and that which is most cartoonish and simplified, and you have the base of the picture plane Scott means to draw.

To show forms of art in which there are lines and shapes meant for purposes OTHER than representation, we move UP. Since the idea of a purely abstract image that is like a photograph and one that is like a cartoon is a pretty meaningless distinction, he's decided that this axis of his "graph" of images narrows to a point, at which there is no meaning whatsoever to ANY line or shape in an image.

At this point, Scott notes that really, there is a level of simplification beyond cartooning, where the visible and the invisible are represented together by something that doesn't look anything at ALL like the thing represented:

The printed word.

So, on the bottom line of this picture triangle, Scott lets us go out even further, and find words. With a little bit of abstract thought, you can imagine words themselves moving up towards design and meaninglessness. Like the following:


Starship. Grace and Mass. Cherry-toast longway.


That was meaningless words. Very near the apex of his big triangle. Most of this jibberish is near the base, although the various effusive words and throw-away phrases represent departures from the very base. His unification of words and pictures on the same graph leads to some interesting thoughts. Like that really sophistochated, complex writing might really have a hard time "connecting" to highly realistic artwork, unless carefully anchored, where as simple, direct language and cartoony artwork might work so well together that the artist might have to worry that the wrong ideas get expressed before he or she became consciously aware of it!

I'm a TOTAL McCloud acolyte, so you'll have to forgive me if I tend to rave about him. Oh and DO read his marvelous comic I can't stop thinking as well as the delicious Zot!

Micro_Fur wrote:On top of every little mistake I make again, Alfy? I just adaped it to make it fit more how work goes on on the ship.

Micro_fur - Adaptation leads to acusations of plagarism.

My apologies. I'm just a nitpicker to the core. ;P

A thought just occured to me. If I follow the backlog method that Allan had proposed, I would miss out on the opportunity to comment on events in the real world, do holiday related stories, or respond to fan mail in the strip. While this is no problem for Allan, as Umlaut House One and Two both take place in a future outside out timeline, Schooled! will indeed take place in a f***ed up version of New Hampshire, 2006. If I want the strip to go as planned, I'm afraid I can't rely entirely on the backlog method.

Doink wrote:...Schooled! will indeed take place in a f***ed up version of New Hampshire, 2006. If I want the strip to go as planned, I'm afraid I can't rely entirely on the backlog method.

New Hampshire? Is that where you live? I'm in Western Mass myself, about a half hour from Keene.

Doink wrote:A thought just occured to me. If I follow the backlog method that Allan had proposed, I would miss out on the opportunity to comment on events in the real world, do holiday related stories, or respond to fan mail in the strip.

Not so! The backlog needent prevent seasonal or topical humor. You can do "inserts" if your comic can handle having continuity broken for a joke on current events, and for holidays you can always work with a comic strip in one hand and a calender in the other; keep track of what date a comic is going to air on, and you can morph smoothly into holiday storylines when appropriate. What's more, by tracking the dates, you won't risk starting a seasonal story arc and then not finishing it in a punctual manner. (Jackie's Fridge, for example, was killed at least in part by Halloween lasting well into February.)

This is me, still advocating a juicy backlog.

Zaylas The Bard wrote:

Doink wrote:...Schooled! will indeed take place in a f***ed up version of New Hampshire, 2006. If I want the strip to go as planned, I'm afraid I can't rely entirely on the backlog method.

New Hampshire? Is that where you live? I'm in Western Mass myself, about a half hour from Keene.

No, I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. I just chose New Hampshire at random. That, and it's close to Anthrocon, which the group will go to eventually.

allan_ecker wrote:Jackie's Fridge, for example, was killed at least in part by Halloween lasting well into February.

In Dansk Folly it's over a year long but we won't hold it against it because the archives are completely broken so no one will notice anyway.
Hmm, I should get onto Wyatt about that.