Webcomics

(I know I promised Brandon I'd blog about something else. Sorry, I'll get to that. Eventually.)

I am a Webcomic Person.

Here's a list of what I follow:
El Goonish Shive
Questionable Content
Misfile
Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Oglaf
XKCD
Venus Envy
Johnny Wander

And those are just the ones I keep up with on a daily basis. There are many others outside of that list that don't update regularly enough to warrant regular checking. Outside of that I follow One Piece, Bleach, and Hourou Musuko as they come out scanlated online as well. But they're professional comics and don't count towards this topic.

I love comics. For me it's more than just a juvenile form of entertainment, comics are an art form and a window to story telling, a unique way to spread creativity and enjoy a good story. You see people obsessed with good novels all the time, they pick 'em up and just can't put them back down; they may even write their own. I'm that way with comic books.

Wecomics are special. Webcomics are a raw and often first attempt at entertainment; most webcomic artists who made it big never expected to make it. The beginning of webcomics often suck.

Webcomics are an over-time thing. Reading through any large archive you can see the vast improvement these improvised artists and story-tellers undergo. The updating schedule of a webcomic forces the artist/author to draw and write consistently, they are a MINE of practice. So it's only natural that over time such growth occurs.

I'm really bad at explaining all this. But Webcomics are pure magic to me. Fascinating magic.

Anyone can write a webcomic. That's the biggest part. Every successful Webcomic artist out there started as a Nobody With Too Much Spare Time, but then, their comic became them. It became a huge part of their life that they cared about, and then it became something really, really good.

The web is the new indie platform that anyone can handle. Since the comic book artists have discovered publishing online, the field has opened up for countless talented individuals to shine. It doesn't have to be a full-time job any more; artists can reach an audience without professional publishing.

I love being that audience. I love becoming completely enthralled with their story. I love the pure love these comicers put into their work.

I never would have given many of my webcomics a chance if I held them to the same standards I hold professional works, but I don't. I don't need to - this is the internet, these people are not proffessionals, and because of these facts I've learned to give the beginning strips of webcomics the slack they deserve. By rolling out this slack in the beginning I've been able to meet many beautifully fleshed-out characters I would never have given a chance.

Again, I love Webcomics.

Every artist has a story to tell, and the Grand ol' World Wide Web gives them that chance.

I Write Like An Artist

Let's talk about sensory description.

You know the basics, there are five senses: touch, sight, taste, smell, and hearing. Each of these senses is unique and important on it's own, but they work in tandem with each other. The age old example: Scientists say that roughly 80-90% of what we taste is actually derived from smell.

As a writer it is extremely important to pay attention to all of the senses in order to envelope the reader in the world you have created. For living in a world where no one ever feels what it's like to touch something feels surreal, just sort of 'off'.

Now lets back up a little bit and talk about how artists (of the visual sort) create sensory experiences.

An artist uses images, and thus they get one sense: Sight. That cuts them down to 30% efficiency right off the bat. They learn how to bend and play with sight to create illusions of other senses, and even more powerfully, they learn how to connect images with emotion. Thats the big one: Creating an emotional cognitive response from the viewer, that's what an artist does.

They get very good at this, and essentially are attempting to master the sense of sight.

Now, hand that artist a word processor and a keyboard. Tell them to describe something. I guarantee you that they will primarily focus on the visuals, they will try to explain every intricate detail of what this item or place looks like. They will likely forget about the other senses, or at least pay far less attention to them. It's in their nature, it's how they experience the world.

What happens when this artist decides to write a book?

You can see the problem. An artist who is arting is all just fine and dandy, but an artist who is writing is at a disadvantage. It takes extra attention to remember to describe things in their whole, combining the senses takes more work.

I write like an artist.

Damn.

How to NOT Draw!

Meet my new character, B. A. Draxton.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h120/oncooolc/ba.jpg
According to my best bud Pawky, he's a Matrix Reject and a mar on the face of the planet as far as character design goes, which is probably true. However, I don't particularly care and love him dearly anyways. <3

But she brings up an excellent point.

Draxton is the direct product of me reading far too many "How To Draw..." books, the current one being Drawing Cutting Edge Comics by Christopher Heart. Reading these books will greatly diminish any individual's ability to work through proper character design.

Why? The steriotype pages. Every single one of these books I have read has had a section describing how to make characters look cool, snappy, and interesting. Every single one of these sections has merely been several murals to the world of underdeveloped steriotypes. They are baaaaad things that should be skipped over.

In fact, one should just skip over these books entirely. They suck.

They encourage step-by-step drawing instead of creatively analyzing a subject and drawing from the mind. They enforce bad art habbits. Many of them purposefully sway the reader into improper proportions. They're just bad, bad, bad, bad, and don't teach the reader what they really need to know. These things are TRAPS that suck in ametuer artists and shackle them, creating bad habits that are hard to rid oneself of later in life.

So why do I keep reading them?

Why?