Page 2 out of 4. You can tell I was inexperienced here by how random the panel border rules are and how much the camera moves around. From the side, to the left, from above, toads view... a mess, really, heh. I wanted to be EXCITING with the camerawork. Much like a film director I know now that if the scene is low-key, then the camera-work should be low-key.
You may notice the comic-tone work ends when he leaves the city and this watercolor thing starts in its place. There is a reason for this to be explained soon enough. Keep reading and keep communicating!
-Helm
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Page 1 of 4. This is quite old. Sorry for delay between it and last post, it took me ages to translate, as you can see.
-Helm
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Alright. And now for something a little different. I have uploaded a video capture of my working on the above image:
You may download it directly (~50 megabytes) by clicking.
If the video doesn't play, it may be you're lacking the codec I used.
It is the Techsmith SC codec, which you may get from here.
It is tiny, just a simple exe installation and then run the video again, it'll work.
If that all sounds like too much hassle, you may instead watch the video on Vimeo, here.
But at the expense of definition, size and quality. Such is life.
It took about 2 hours to draw the image, it has been condensed at 10 minutes by being sped up. The music is the track First Narrows by Loscil, from the same-titled album. The program I'm using is Manga Studio EX 4.0 which I'm truly sorry Techsmith, I stole from you. If I ever become well-off I swear I'll buy it for real.
I like time-lapse videos of people drawing because it pleasantly removes the period the artist employs between thinking of a concept and actually rendering it on the paper. It also removes minor backtracking errors or undos (you can catch a big undo where I use the spraycan on the big rock and the remember "oh wait, it'll be a tattoo, you can't use this sort of grain!") so the end result is wonderfully automatic. In the future with our chemically augmentated reflexes and brain power, this will be how we will draw. We shall think it and behold, there it shall be.
So, about the piece. My friend Blazej Dzikowski has decided to get a second tattoo. I usually don't accept offers to do tattoo drawings. It is, as I'm certain readers who also draw will testify, something of a regular occurrence to be asked by people that barely know you to draw them something inane like a big Sepiroth from Final Fantasy rocking out on the electric guitar to get tattoed on their lower back. Shallow judgments aside (for all I know Sepiroth might mean a lot to them! Also, their lower back!) I am primarily not keen on the implied responsibility involved into making something another person will carry on their skin for a long time. However I do not have a lot of friends like Blazej so I asked about the details of the piece.
It's that Moon Tarot card. Here's some reference we dug up: 1, 2, 3. The prevalent themes are of course the naturalistic environment, the high tide water (along with the variable crustacean), the two towers (signifying distant judging civilization or perhaps bygone subservience?) and the dog and wolf, the one housebroken and trained, the other fundamentally wild, giving into their instinctual urges. When Blazej explained to me what the image means to him I told him I'd try to do a rendition, because most of all I felt I could understand the point of it (or to be exact I could understand his understanding of it and how it differed from my own complentary one). The one on top of the post is the initial version. His concerns over readability and relative sizes of the forms led me to alter the image in the following way:
As this would wrap around his arm. I think the distant dual towers also probably capture the underlying meaning of the card better than the fancier pillars of the first version. He seems happy with this image and I'm happy that he's happy, it's a fitting gift for him, just now a father. Responsibility coupled remembrance of internal desire, yes.
Best to you, Dominika and the child.
-Helm
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Page 4 out of 4.
No catharsis.
Let us now employ the Holistotron. Steel yourselves, humans.
Ids and superegos and fragile here and nows mediating between wound and aspiration. When are you outside, when are you inside? When is when, where is where? Humans with limited scope, short-sighted and myopic, probably for the best. The psychoarchitecture we surround ourselves with remembers everything but never tells anything but lies. Common houses we use and abuse and we expect them to extend the courtesy of privacy but there is nothing a human makes that doesn't become a human too. A growing resentment for what a city in its bare essence is, it shows in everything we do in these large grey buildings. We are not meant to stack, there is a hybris there, we are meant to stay to ground lest some think they are above some others. The existential 'penthouse suite' never amounted to anything more than to a scope of further, richer, cubically expounded despair.
And from broken, armless crosses, locusts.
-Helm
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Page 3 out of 4.
This is Theofilos.
Again, not much to say until we're done. Which will be in a few days.
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Page 2 of 4.
Heh, not much to say about this now. When it's all complete perhaps.
On other news, Greek denizens that desire to buy the book can now go to the Vavel, Solaris, Tilt or Comicon bookstores to get theirs. I'm working on finalizing an arrangement with catchthesoap for non-Athens and/or international shipping too. I've got about 10 orders pending and I'm sorry to dally, within the next week it'll be set up and explained here.
-Helm
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This is the first page out of 4.
It was made for the last year's Vavel festival (if memory serves). It is another experiment in 'comics as artifacts' and as such it's difficult for me to convey the full impression to you on the internet. You'll understand what I'm talking about when I've posted the whole thing.
This page echoes the Son of Regional Dimensions and really, this sort of gentle reminder of an attempt at continuity is as much as I think I'll ever be interested in the form. Watch a tv show for more of that. My mind skips around from idea to idea too much to settle on a recurring cast of characters. But my newest comic will be a long-running one so I'm trying to think of ways to tie smaller stories together holistically.
On other news, tomorrow I go around Athens to drop off copies of the book at the comic stores and also to meet up with a friend that runs this distro, called Catch the Soap which will help me tremendously in shipping outside of Athens and/or Greece. So if you've placed an order with me don't worry, soon steps will be taken that will circumvent my laziness to go to the post office. Check out the distro if you're interested in good music, also, as that is its primary function. I'll post a post about ordering again once the situation is finalized.
Expect updates every 3-4 days as usual until this comic is done. Then we shall go back. BACK IN TIME. To when a younger Helm -2 thought it more honest to not attempt to communicate though his comics in any sort of standard storytelling, but rather focus on cryptic self-expression as an end in itself. You know... the teenage diary sort of thing! The very first comics I really made!
(They were pretty bad)
(I still like them)
-Helm
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