You told me what to draw!

And I drew it.

The two ideas are "I request an alternate cover to ZX, in the style of pulpy fantasy novel covers and Frazetta in general, wherein ZX is battling a dragon." by Mr. Sterling and "Iphigenia being sacrificed" by Casey.

Click and click again for bigger and better.

These are just pencils though, you have to decide which of the two I should ink this week!

Also! Also! Please, kind readers, do not read too much into the selection of the first two comments for drawing. It will not be a recurring effect. I kinda started the ZX dragon one the moment I got my first comment because I was scared that I wouldn't get any more and then the Iphigenia idea was too good to pass up so I started that the day after. Next time I'll be more patient.

But you people kept posting wonderful ideas and I kinda want to draw them all. So! I will (kinda). I'll do pencil sketches, at least, for a couple of more ideas from your first suggestion thread. Then, when we have the second suggestion thread, I'll get results from that and pencil more and post all the penciled ideas together to choose which one to ink. The idea is to make a repository of pencil sketches so there's always more to ink if I feel like it and I'm never out of wonderful reader-submitted ideas.

So, make your choice for this week, if you have further ideas-for-pencil-sketches, never hesitate. I keep a little notebook with the best ones, I won't forget.

It was refreshing to do more labored pencil work, I must say. It's been a while. Doing the ZX pencils was completely different to this because there was practically no shading, just contours and space definition. I did all the shading in the inks, digitally, but here I can't afford to mess around I'll need to know where my lights are well before I put ink to paper, there's no undo.

For the Iphigenia picture, I tried to capture her self-sacrifice, the reticence of the priest and the stoic resolution of her father, Agamemnon, in the distance.

For the ZX versus the dragon picture I was mainly going for a good composition and trying to think where I'll put the pulp-fantasy wordage in the top left corner. The unfinished pencil parts in the background is just cloud shapes that I was pretty certain I could do straight in ink.





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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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