Technodrama

This is the comic I made for this year's festival. I don't know how big the screens you guys are using so it might be that the text is difficult to read, or you have to pan around horizontally... I really hope not. This is a byproduct of the format I used for this page. I uh, I printed this on A1 size (84x59cm). Keep in mind most comics are printed A4 or smaller. Sadly I didn't take a picture of it in the show as I 1) don't carry a photographic camera with me and 2) don't hang around my exhibit due to shame that I'm still trying to eradicate.

Also I guess this would be needed so you get both the macro and the micro view of the piece as the people in the show did. Pay attention to overarching elements in this thumbnail, they help with understanding the comic.

And yes, about understanding the comic. Hm, this is my most recent work and it's riding on this wave of post-analysis I've been indulging in lots on this blog so everything and I mean everything in this comic is calculated to support a thesis on instinct, determinism, id/superego clash etc etc the things we've been discussing here for the last 5 months. As such I have a very lucid idea about what I've done but not so much if I've accomplished it in the eyes of other readers. Now I could preempt you and tell you what it's about and so on but I'd rather if you'd feel compelled to read it carefully and make up your own mind. I just say these things to urge you to trust me that it's not just a 'whacky' collection of events, it will reward patient and exploratory readings.

On the technical level this page is an exploration of the digital way to make comics, as it was made at 1200 dpi in A3 size (that's a lot of pixels) completely in Manga Studio 3 Ex within the course of 13 days or so, about 3-4 hours of work a day. The work I'd otherwise put into 4-5 pages of comics went into this single page. The reason I went this way was because I wanted to make a comic that felt like a plot of a whole 2 hour movie in a single page. Sorta like a trailer. Condensed storytelling. I wanted to see if it was possible. It is. Successful? You tell me. Just keep in mind that there could be like, heh, 10 pages of comics between each panel.

The theme of the show was the number '13' (and obviously, bad luck). The format of the comic uses 13 panels, and the top part of the page as far as layout goes is the exact 180 degree rotation of the bottom part. The theme is very vaguely bad-luck-ish but that's as far as I tried to stick to it. I don't think '13' makes for good stories, personally, so I decided to veer off-path just as much as I needed to tell a good story. I am content with this to the degree that while I was preparing it on a piece of paper I brainstormed a lot of little quirks and ideas I wanted to put in it and after I was done I counted and realized about 80% of them made it in and not in a disruptive way. It felt 'right' to put that sort of effort in a single piece of art.

There are some bits of text here that do not translate very well. There is a 'gag' in the naming of the characters (especially the name of the father) which is also pertinent to the storyline but you'd have to have done some sort of Hellenistic studies I guess to get it. I'll just spoil that little bit because most of you have not read about ancient Greek drama theater. All the characters in this comic are named after marginally related characters in ancient Greek dramatic theater. All that is, besides the father figure. To draw a useful parallel to Shakespearian drama: imagine this comic where everybody's named stuff like Tristian and Benvolio and Martius but there's one dude inexplicably named Burt. Completely outside of the drama paradigm. I wonder why... hmm.

There's also a few other plays on words that do not translate, but nothing that spoils the story, I think. It's just a shame you heathens can't read Greek.

Also, here's the variation page that was put up right next to the main page. It reads "Variation for Impatient Readers". It's a joke about how people really just skim over the text in the comics presented in these festivals. On that panel that I didn't have a clean background to leave I just threw in an upside-down Manos Antaras as his severe stare seemed to fit the stark emptiness.

There is a surrealist painter involved in the original comic. First one to note in the comments who he is and how he's exploited cruelly by me, gets my admiration. Obviously, besides this, I welcome all communication and well-meaning critique as this is very new and it would be very applicable for me right now to better my art.

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Currency Gives A Second Chance

Well this is the last page from the newspaper comics, for real now! I will probably do my most recent 24hr comic nex--- wait wait! READER PARTICIPATION TIME:

Dear reader and human, would you rather I post next:

• My most recent 24hr comic (5 pages) chronicling my dire highschool existence, failing at school, getting in a band, DENYING MY NATURE and throwing up

• My very first 'serious' comic (2 pages) completely incomprehensible to anyone that isn't me, made in two feverish nights that I still somehow feel begrudingly nice about

• An illustrated recounting of a dream (5 pages) where I meet my id/superego meld and I am very distraught with the secrets he tells me

Please write in and let me know. In lack of votes I will default to posting horrible doodles nobody cares about as punishment! (not really.)


About the comic itself, it's one of the few color comics I've done, and completely in photoshop for that matter. There's a bit of a blunder with one caption (see if you can guess which) that misleads the eye instead of helping it along to the next desired panel and I certainly rushed the last panel (deadline). I think the idea is humourous still, even if I do say so myself. This blog is constantly about me saying so myself and I'm sorry, but it ain't like anybody else will ever write my biography, so... you know.

-Helm

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Worse things than being late!

I did a 24hr comic this weekend, which is to say, it's not 24 pages but it's a full story done at the best of my ability in a span of 24 hours. It came out 5 pages. It'll be a while before it arrives on this blog but hey, I made it! Expect the next full page within the next couple of days.


You like to read a lot, don't you?

-Helm
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Robotboy

This is pretty much my favorite page from the newspaper batch. I think! I don't have much to say about it directly. It was a lot of work to draw but I think the visuals serve to the textual flow here pretty well. I'm not much of a writer (or at least I don't feel like one) and, let me be candid here, I don't feel like much of an illustrator either. This is a reason I am a comic artist. My drawings might not be stellar or my writing sublime, but I'm an okay combinatorial artist between the two. That's what most comic creators have going for them, being reasonably decent at two different crafts.

Enough about me, how about that robot boy. Have you noticed what a sad image it is, a vacant playground? An even sadder one is a playground with just one child there, alone. Steel yourself for the cruelty that follows is immeasurable, child.

For the lovers of comic art theory, note the open background panel that pervades the whole picture and on which the comic finally culminates on. The whole page is a cubist painting in this way, different viewpoints at the same time. Not so much literal time passes as spatial dislocation, until the end panel pulls it all together with a final symbolist reference.

A word about the robot symbol. This is a variation of the popular DESTROY ALL HUMANS! Red Robot. I think it was popularized by Diesel Sweeties, I am just now searching on Wikipedia about it. When I adopted it there was no Wikipedia. Usually it's portrayed like an emotionless destructobot bent on total human devastation (besides Bob Ross, who gets to live) but when I looked at its big red face with huge yellow eyes I just see a little kid so there you go. I've drawn this red robot a million times, it's not a pop culture reference anymore. It is mine, but in the interest of disclosure, I thought I'd mention it.

On other news, process post soon. Ptoing helped me with this wonderful little banner for the blog:



which I've attached as my signature in the forums I frequent. I don't know what else to do, so I've reverted to 1930 marketing practices "USE BRIGHT COLORS TO CATCH THE ATTENTION OF THE VIEWER" heh.

-Helm

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Intergalactic Infidelity

That was the second piece I did for the gig, it was made a couple of days after the first but before I made my pitch to the paper, so both of these were not informed of the proper size of the paper's... uh, paper. From the next piece you'll see me adopt a more 'squareish' aspect ratio for the pages to accommodate for the shape of the printed edition.

I have a soft spot for this one though it also suffers from slight untranslatability. For example in the line about M'nnrgh the dodecapus where Kostas threatens to mop the floor with him... the Greek pun is lost as there's an expression we have that literally translates to 'I will beat him like an octopus'. The expression comes from the common fisherman practice of actually beating an octopus against a wall or floor to soften the tissue up before letting it dry. So that doesn't work, sadly.

Also the Ano Liosia location funny is probably lost to non-greeks. Ano Liosia is a very slummy location in downtown Athens, very dirty and cramped and generally an exhibit of all the worst aspects of urban decay. Not the place where you'd expect a spaceport to be built in the heavily 70's affected future that the comic goes for. The Ano Liosia joke is a recurring one as you'll eventually see. For American audiences one could substitute naturally, for New Jersey and have that joke work.

Which brings me to a small discussion of what I had in mind when I was making these: I had the notion that a many-panel comic such as this shouldn't serve just as support for the end-panel punchline, but that every individual vertical strip of this should be a smaller tiered joke in itself. Hence the octopus pun, the 'he's had his eyes on her' for the Yogsothothian entity and the Ano Liosia pun in the third strip. And yes, these were supposed to be 'so bad that they're good' as puns, heh.

Three years from then I find the actual drawing technique quite weak, but I am happy about the conceptual design. Since then I have made many full-page 'funny comics' and I have not strayed from the 'tiered jokes' approach. It seems a waste of space to do a huge setup for a joke that can essentially be told in 3-4 panels without losing any momentum, so why not actually use every 3-4 panels for a smaller joke that builds the atmosphere cumulatively?

The only panel I like in terms of drawing technique is the cross-hatched distraught spaceman one in the beginning of the third strip. It's a good idea to use ink rendering to express emotion rather than just to convey texture and naturalism.

Again, I am indebted to Johnny for putting in the effort in the lettering, like the 'WIFE WHAT are y--' bit or the shaky 'Heelp'. Believe me, if I were to do the new lettering I'd probably have flaked out and just slapped Comics Sans on these and called it a day.

-Helm

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