Comic

my comic will not be uploaded onto my blog because of a "bad error" according to the site. instead i will stick it under inada's door, i guess

New artist: Takashi Murakami

Check out the YouTube video on Murakami here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWup2H5wb-Y

"Drowning Girl"

Artistic father: Roy Lichtenstein

This is Roy Lichtenstein's "The Kiss", an oil painting done in 1962. This was the first of many comic strip style paintings he is now famous for, including "Drowning Girl". Lichtenstein described his pop art as "actually industrial painting" referring to his trademark use of techniques and images taken from comics, especially in the use of Benday dots. His lines are thick and defined, and the backgrounds often are nothing more than large bold colors.

New artist: Alphonse Mucha

I've seen some of Alphonse Mucha's work before, but I never had a name to attach to the works. The pieces he made are fantastic poster images of mainly women in almost tarot like settings. Like Gustav Klimt, his females have fine, delicate faces against patterned backgrounds.

Artistic father: Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt paintings and drawings are beautiful in their depictions of the female body and frank eroticism. He's known for his gold techniques and Byzantine images with lovely patterns and intriguing subject matter.
I love the mix of flat colors and dark shades, with blurry outlines and finely lined faces.

Project Proposal

Project Proposal

0.) Project Title : Other Realm

1.) My goal for Other Realm is come up with an interesting storyline, and draw it up in a lively manner to the best of my abilities.

2.) Other Realm is going to be the story of a boy and his search for meaning in a world of dreams and false realities. He sets out on a journey of self-awakening in a place where being alive means looking with one's eyes closed.

3.)The sort of references I'm going to need are basically pictures of everything that will be drawn in the entire comic. Not to worry; that's what the internet is for.

4.)Other artists I might draw inspiration from are the inhabitants or Professor Inada's comic cabinet.

5.)Visuals for Other Realm will not be appearing online but in my folder, because I hate using computers.

6.)I'm working with marker and watercolor pencil, the first being not very forgiving and the latter being much more inclined to forgive mistakes. Between the two I will eventually develop some sort of style, I guess.

7.)Timeline for Other Realm:

October 7th- Decision making
October 21st- First chapter made up
Nov. 18th- Second chapter made up
Nov.30th- Third chapter made up
December 4th- Finished?...

New Artist: Gustaf Tenggren

Gustaf Tenggren I've just only realized is the mastermind behind the cover art of Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth", a personal favorite book. His other illustrations are not so graphic but much more realistic, though still maintaining the universal clean lines that Tennggren is known for. His images are romantic and heroic in their subject manner, reading back to a time long ago.

Artistic father: Harry Clarke

I first discovered Harry Clarke and his beautiful illustrations in Tales of Mystery and Imagination by E. A. Poe. An illustrator and stained glass artist, Clarke's use of negative space to create interesting and but not too busy patterns is a fascinating take on the pen. Though his illustrations came second to his stained glass, the pictures he made for contemporary writers of his day to me are more beautiful than any window he ever could have made. A particular favorite of mine is the illustration of the doomed men upon a seafaring vessel. He uses a number of techniques - hatching, stipple, graphic - to create a crazy image.

Treatment for project

Plot outline: Adventurous boy cannot keep reality and dreams seperate, must go on journey to right the wrongs in the dream world.
Main chars: Boy, fellow traveller, villian.
World:
Boy's world- reality: dorms, school, town
Dream world- other realm: mythological and imagined scenarios/legends sort of setting

Page analysis

3) On your blog, visually analyze a page of a book that you like. Look at type choice and size, use of white space, relation of pictures to images and the like. If you're doing a comic, note the lettering and gutter choices, panel breakdown, etc. Approach this not as a critic, but on a functional "how does this tick?" level.

This is a page from the online comic, Directions of Destiny. I'm not particularly interested in the lettering (it's a simple computer font, no handwriting) but in the page design shown here. The artist is very careful to keep the page balanced. Note the larger character drawing counteracted by the speach bubbles, leaving not one side too heavy or bare. The bubbles also provide a smooth flow for the reader's eyes to follow. Here there are no blank gutters but a continuous background filling in all parts of the page- visually there are no empty, boring spaces. I admire this artists concepts of harmony within his drawings.

My creative process

4) Blog a bit about your creative process. How are you going to get this project done? Some things you might think about: Where do you like to work? Do you have a ritual? A schedule? What distracts you? How can you deal with those distractions?

Who/how: I work best from refrences: pictures, models, that sort of thing. This is why I'm so pleased to have a boy toy at home who I can pose for my comic.
What: What distracts me? My kitty. How can I deal? Catnip for the kitty.
Where: I have a studio at home, but somehow I usually end up sitting on the floor in the living room. It's what I've always done and having a set workspace doesn't seem to be changing this any.
When: Whenever inspiration strikes. This is usually from late afternoon to early evening.
Why: What am I getting out of this comic book? I'm hoping to develop some discipline and a better scheduling habit.

Some place new

A long, grey raincloud rolled sluggishly overhead, and in higher altitudes smudges of white broke up the cold blue sky. Standing tall was an assortment of mountainous trees: oak, madrone, pine- the wind raking through their leafy manes like a tugging comb. The rain fell with decreasing persistence, and when staunched finally to a light drip, fell silent on the dewy grass.
A pair of dark, wet birds perched nearby on the black cables of a power line. They passed back and forth in a soft chatter of clicking and squawking as they gossiped together the latest fowl news. The two payed no mind to the trained eye of a neighboring cat. He seemed too lazy to be capable of more than a fierce stare, and the bird pair were quite aware of this fact. They began to sing.
Unobserved, the cat slinks away.

Someone new: Miss Van

I discovered Miss Van in my favorite magazine, Juxtapoz. Doll like figures meet happy forest critters just before being stranded in a dark corner to fend for themselves. Brooding, seductive and (yes), even charming in their very own special way, Miss Van's paintings are fallen angels making their own in the world, and I love it.
One thing I find particularly interesting about Miss Van's work is the way she casts her shadows, contrasting focal points on top of a washed out background. It makes for an impression that something else could be happening just outside of sight, lurking and hidden. I never thought myself much of a macabre fan, but a fan of Miss Van I am.

My "artistic father": Heinrich Kley

Heinrich Kley has a fabulously loopy style, scribbling and slashing his way into my heart. Uninhibited by traditional standards, his illustrations depict fantastic scenes of common place people doing not so common place things. His imagination seems to root from either a wonderful drug trip or a bad dream: either way, this artist steps outside the boundaries of normal ink drawing and into another realm of its own.
I draw alot of inspiration Kley because I too have a very loose style of drawing, though I'm light years away from the technical genius Kley has developed. The world he depicts is one I hope to incorporate into my own: a reality of playful lines and comic actions. Kudos to Kley, master of the pen.

Project

0. Working title: Other Realm
1. Project goals: Exploratory. It's my first time trying to make a serious comic!
2. A project description: I first wanted to do an online comic, but considering my classical training in the non digital medias, I have decided to keep it to a hard copy version of an adventure comic.
3. Specific products of study or deliverables that you will be creating for your project: In regard to media, I'd like to try out photo shop but my fallback is what I'm familiar with- namely ink, acrylic, watercolor, maybe some sharpies. I enjoy mixing medias and am not sure which format I am going to use consistently.
4. Visual and/or written research for your project: So far I found actually a lot of inspiration from the art of the movie 300. I've also found the art of Ukiyo-e prints to be fascinating, and hope to incorporate the lovely landscapes somehow into my own art. We will see!
5. Treatment visuals for your project: None yet so far, but coming soon I expect!
6. A written description of specific technical and research issues you will need to address during the course of your project: I'm looking to make a comic with a dark atmosphere and fantasy environment. I'm particularly interested in drawing ideas from mythology and dream analysis, so one of my specific research goals is to find a good source for both these components that ideally will encompass the main of my story.
7. Timeline:
Monday, Sept. 4th: First page completed
Monday, Sept. 11th: Second and third page completed
So on and so forth until I have more of an idea where I'm going with this