Diary comic: Restaurant Interruption

This one is so brief and so silly I couldn’t resist posting it. However, it also marks my first use of two exciting new techniques. I painted (albeit poorly) the ink-wash background of this page on a separate piece of watercolor paper and scanned it in. Coloring it only took a second, Alison Bechdel style. Also, I inked the thickist lines on the page with my new favorite tool — a cut piece of bamboo I bought at an art store in Boston this weeekend. For art nerds, it has the uniform line of a marker except with live ink! It seemed to hold about as much as a Crow Quill nib does.

P.S.: Vote on the below post!

Comics Update

Though I haven’t written about them in a while, comics remains a very big part of my life. Here are some bullet points about concerning comics, myself, and the intersection of both.

• I’m almost through with a new mini comic called “The Black Squirrels of Washington, D.C.” which is in black and white and fits on both sides of an 8.5 by 11 piece of paper. This is the first time I’m actively designing a comic in InDesign and actually spending a good ammount on time on the drawings (the image above is an example). I’ll give it away free and make it available here.
• While I haven’t yet read this, one of my favorite illustrators, Jillian Tamaki, has a new graphic novel called SKIM that she did with her cousin, Mariko Tamaki. It has been reaping awards, but in an almost textbook example of comics not being understood, it is often called a children’s book. Worse yet, the book recieved a Governor’s General Literary Award in Canada, but only Mariko, the writer, was awarded. Check out this star-studed open letter of protest.
• Publications about comics are notoriously lame. Either you’re very high brow like the Comics Journal, or rediculously low brow like Wizard, but never in the middle. Now there’s Comics Foundry, which I’m proud to report is really good. It is interesting, funny, and has great puns. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.
• Jesse Reklaw is another great comics artist worth watching. His weekly syndicated comic, Slow Wave, illustrates his readers’ dreams, and his unbelievably quickly updated comics diary is really interesting and amusing.
• Recently I went to the Small Press Expo, or SPX, in Bethesda, where I met a lot of people I’d heard of, including the artists mentioned above. I also bought a lot of minis and saw great panels on topics like collaboration and indie publishing. Alt comix rulz!
• Several major comics opportunities loom on the horizon for me, not least amongst them the Center for Cartoon Studies, of which I’ve written about previously. I’m going there this weekend for their portfolio day and to decide if I will apply for next fall. Wish me luck; more updates to come.

Illustration Alive and Well on Threadless

As I’ve written about before, illustration is no longer incontrovertibly linked to design. In this world of stock photos and cheap digital cameras, being able to draw is no longer a requirement. But is illustration going down the crapper? In some arenas, illustration is not only the best format, it is essential to design.

Take for instance Threadless. This post-internet-bubble startup t-shirt company sells only t-shirts that online participants vote for and choose. What ends up for sale ranges from the stereotypically emo, to the visually punny, to the ambiguous and perhaps deep. And believe me, it’s not a piece of cake to the approval of your peers; take a look at one of my high school attempts. People can be pretty harsh. But what do all of the t-shirts being sold have in common? They are excellent illustrations! The design is meticulous and often very aesthetically pleasing. As the website continues to grow, they do more (such as interviews) to emphasize the role design and illustration plays in their products. I just wish they would do more $10 sales.

Back At Home: Organizing Comics

So, I’m back home, and I finally did what I’ve wanted to do for a really long time, organize all of my comics. Several times I thought I had finished, only to realize that some were still noticeably absent, forcing me to tear through my room looking for another magazine box. In all, there were about 35 titles, from seven magazine boxes.

Also, I loved seeing all the covers again. I’m always shocked I have so much Green Lantern. (That’s the huge pile). My Dad grew up helping at his dad’s newspaper stand, reading all the comics for free. He was talking about one today he couldn’t remember the name of, featuring a little girl “who always had to wear polka dots.” Anyone have any clue? Anyway, my scanner at home is pretty good, so I thought I’d post some of my favorite covers. Click on any for a bigger view.

“Luke Cage, Hero For Hire” was a Marvel comic at the height of blaxploitation. It’s really hilarious and self-aware. Also, I love how characters talk to each other on old covers. Pretty good. Whatever happened to Luke Cage? Looks pretty intense here.

War Machine is kind of like Marvel’s version of Steel. Instead of being the main hero (in this case Iron Man), a black man uses a metal suit to enhance himself. What’s cool about this issue is that Jim Rhodes is using the War Machine armor on behalf of his “Worldwatch,” which is basically an NGO that exposes human rights violations. Pretty tight.

This is kind of a departure from the two above comics with Black superheroes. Fables operates that all fairy tale characters had to leave their homelands because of a terrible emperor taking over and as a result…they all live in NYC secretly. It’s pretty great, and the covers are always amazing. Here’s the North Wind. I mean, this illustration and type treatment are pretty hard to beat.

Anyway, do any of them look particularly interesting? If anyone wants, I’ll scan in the whole thing.

Illustration on Wikipedia

So, I’ve been thinking about illustration a lot recently. Personally, a lot of my thoughts about illustration revolve around how I’m not capable of doing it and how jealous I am of people who are. It was best articulated for me by the Chair of the graphic design program at AU, who explained the difference between the traditional track and photo track in the graphic design major (I decided to minor anyway). Basically, if you don’t have the years of structured drawing skills, you do the next best thing—photography. However, illustration’s role in Design (as opposed to design) has definitely changed from an either/or kind of situation. This is well analyzed over in an article on Design Observer.

But even more recently, a Phillip Greenspun donated $20,000 to Wikipedia expressly for the purpose of paying illustrators for top notch accompanying illustrations. According to the proposal, Greenspun touts many advantages of illustration found in the above DO post: “What can take pages of text to explain may be understood in a single picture. A visual representation can inspire understanding of a novel concept far more quickly than the textual equivalent.” Sounds great.

But wait a minute, isn’t Wikipedia free from monetary compensation? Who’s to say that words are less valuable? (illustrations will go at $40 a pop.) I wasn’t sure myself, until I read this blog post by Greenspun himself, saying, “To me, paying an illustrator is like paying a typesetter or someone else who assist in preparing a manuscript.” In fact, it’s like paying the programmers who keep Wikipedia up and looking great. And how will it work? According to the post:

1) author sketches in pencil, scans, and uploads to a queue, (2) illustrator somewhere in the world downloads the pencil sketch, reworks competently, and uploads to an approval queue (email notification to the author), (3) author reviews to make sure that the professionally drawn illustration is consistent with the pencil sketch, (4) illustrator gets paid and drawing goes live on Wikipedia, with hyperlink credit to a page where all of the illustrator’s contributions are shown and that has contact information for that illustration.

I think this is a really positive and interesting development for the design community and the internet. As opposed to new technologies that limit creativity and streamline information into one soulless format — Amazon’s Kindle only allows black and only has one typeface — Wikipedia is opening a new market for a timeless skill. A skill of which I am still very jealous of people who possess it.

An illustration for MORE Magazine by Jillian Tamaki, a great illustrator I just discovered. Check out her sketchblog and website.

NRA Pamphlet/Zine

So Wonkette recently discovered what they are calling a secret NRA graphic novel, but it is actually closer to a pamphlet or zine with really good illustrations. As you can see above, it’s called Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century. Click here to download the PDF. I’m not sure how secret it is any more or if it ever was, but from a design perspective, I’m pretty impressed.

Design is certainly alive in the activism tradition, but here’s an angle I don’t usually see. The NRA puts together some pretty good propaganda. Below is my favorite illustration, from an article about how New Orleans citzens had to surrender to their weapons to the National Guard while people mobbed and looted. (I don’t know much about this particular point, but it does seem problematic.)

The colors, thick borders and extensive hatching ironically remind me of protest artist Mike Flugennock. However, I think that this is artistically better. Being that there’s no publishing information or accreditation, it’s hard to find who did the illustrations, but they are pretty engaging. Since I’m an InDesign man, I decided to take a look at some of my favorite spreads in the PDF.

This large commanding illustration is a great visual element, and I like the grid structure they have established, but I’m not sure the lines separating columns are necessary, especially since they run up to the top of the page above the picture. Whoops.

Despite the comical nature of an angry lobster and pig, this is pretty well constructed. As an aside, I know plenty of girls who could be that girl in the illustration. The spread is consistent with the overall system of the pamphlet but still visually interesting and enticing. The illustration on the right is the perfect size for the page—it’s a great element to break up the full page of text. I think it’s kind of unnecessary to say the title, “Freedom In Peril” on the top of every page, but it looks fine.

Though every section/article starts off with the left page dominated by a large illustration, I think this spread works particularly well. It evokes a feeling out of “Grand Theft Auto” (the headline type) and “Road to Perdition” (rifles out of the old car) at the same time, which is very effective for what they are trying to do here. The hand-drawn, cross-like quotation symbols are a nice touch.

All in all, this is very ridiculous, but also very interesting.