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Wednesday: [weds] Will Write Drivel For Deleter Pads
Okay, so I'm working on this thing. (It's a thing. It does stuff.)
Running Photoshop CS on a contemporary eMac with only half of its max memory allotment is an experience best described by comparing it with the consistency of golden syrup, four years expired. (If you have no golden syrup, then consider the treacle.) Ideally, you want to dilute the whole thing with whiskey, drink deeply, then go to bed. So, since the gods are capricious and like to release all the free things for Windows, I find myself using Expression a bunch.
Do not get me wrong. I am quite fond of Expression, and have been for some time. I love it to death for inking and colouring things; it makes me happy. It has a bit of a learning curve, but everything worthwhile does. vi. Roasting beef. Reading Achewood. Writing CSS2. You know. Normal stuff that everyone does.
The problem is, I have yet to ascend the bit of the learning curve which lets me pencil there, too. I keep sliding down.
The net result: I delineate a bunch of panels. They sit there, empty. I make faces.
Have you ever seen 8mm? It's a horrible film. (Downright insulting to the viewer's intelligence, let alone to anyone who might enjoy an old spanking loop, but I digress.) The redeeming feature -- hilarious enough to at least merit watching it when it runs on the movie channel of your choice, if you're plastered -- is Nicholas Cage, who spends the entire film making faces at offscreen pornography. They're not even normal faces. The man must be capable of dislocating his lower jaw, one hinge at a time, and wrapping his mouth around his head about half a dozen times. I do believe his eyebrow was extended not merely up or down, but about forty-five degrees and ten inches away from his own forehead.
Yeah. Like that.
Yes, I know. "Shut the fuck up and draw something, woman." I am trying. (At some point soon, something I drew will come out, so I can prove it to you!) I keep deploying paper. And, shamefully, ballpoint pens. Something will happen. But I am dislocating my jaw, slowly but surely, in the process.
At what point does "ah" happen? When do I go "click"? Should I just, like, stick up a cam and offer to not pose in front of it in exchange for donations? DDR memory can't be that bad.
I need a glass of wine. There's no wine in the house.
Dammit.
Posted by Wednesday White at March 10, 2005 9:18 PM
Comments
Comment from: Kate Sith posted at March 10, 2005 10:21 PM
The following works for me, so it may help you (who knows?):
Do something else.
Sit and watch TV, go to a park and people-watch, sit in the food court at the mall or a coffeeshop or whatever, just... go somewhere that is not The Place Where Art Gets Done. Bring the sketchpad, bring pencils.
Don't Draw, just doodle. Bullshit around. I've found that this approach produces far better results than when I sit down and say Now I Am Going To Draw. (Not that I haven't been attempting a fair bit of the latter approach lately, but I don't get stuck anywhere that often these days.)
Comment from: Bob Stevenson posted at March 10, 2005 10:38 PM
I like the advice in the last comment. I'll be using it myself. I'm just coming off a productive spurt (80 panels in four days). It feels almost as bad. I want to keep that kind of productivity up. So somewhere else I'll head in the morning. Thanks.
Comment from: Bob Stevenson posted at March 10, 2005 10:39 PM
Oops. Forgot to mention I've drawn not one panel in the past 36 hours, nothing. Forgot how, I think.
Comment from: Joshua Holbrook posted at March 11, 2005 2:28 AM
For me it sometimes helps to just draw if I use notebook paper. I think this is because I've always sketched stuff in the corners of my schoolwork, but have only used clean paper for "serious stuff"--something I'd want to display. So, drawing on notebook paper makes me feel like I'm not being held to any standard. Sure, you won't be able to do much with it (definitely not display it) and it might not look too nice, but better that than ending up with no drawings. This sort of goes along the lines of Kate Sith's posting, I guess. That's what I think, anyway.
What's this "Expressions" thing? That lost me. :(
Comment from: Ben G. posted at March 11, 2005 3:20 AM
I've pretty much the same setup! We should start a club! With a snazzy acronym and everything.
Like, "The Society of Tenacious eMac-using Webcartoonists", a.k.a. "S.T.E.W.".
Comment from: Wednesday posted at March 11, 2005 7:37 AM
I am a moron. I cannot spell. Expression, singular.
Comment from: SteveC86 posted at March 11, 2005 11:38 AM
I'm assuming (having never used Expression) that it has an eraser tool as well as a drawing tool of some type. So draw and draw and draw and then erase if you have to. Eventually you won't have to erase much. But you still have that option. So draw.
The thing that I see happening (with you as well as other cartoonists that I know, Larry!) is the penchant for grinding out "comics." You draw frames and that expect your brain to fill those voids. Try it the opposite way. Draw the comic and then split it with frames.
The comic IMHO, should come first, and it should errupt out of your brain like an errupty thing. If it is not, if you are staring at empty frames yelling at your brain to fill them up, then maybe you're not "there" yet. Or maybe the comic you HAVE to draw has not cooked enough. Or maybe that comic is being pushed back because you are putting too much pressure on it to be "funny" or "funny enough to get Snarked." The comic should come out on it's own and exist purely for your enjoyment. Chances are if it makes you laugh/cry/chuckle/hurl it will make someone else do that thing to.
Sorry for the long winded discussion of "being creative." I have this conversation with people all the time.
I am reminded of Caddyshack (of all things) when Chevy Chase does his zen golf thing about "being" the ball. Don't draw the comic, BE the comic. But when it is all said AND done DRAW THE DAMN COMIC. No matter what.
Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at March 11, 2005 11:42 AM
Don't feel too bad. Sequential art is in some ways harder (on a creative level) than most other kinds, because you not only have to write and draw, you have to make the two go together more or less.
I mean, in the past year, I've averaged a fully colored (and sometimes painted) drawing a week, and a 4000 or so word serial fiction installment each month. But I doubt I could manage even a monthly webcomic, because I'd have to get my drawings and writings to synch up. And I would definitely have to script and draw on different occasions, almost like collaborating with myself (the Writer-Me collaborating with the Artist-Me).
Comment from: Wednesday posted at March 11, 2005 12:17 PM
Steve: Er. Gosh. It hadn't occurred to me to do the thing without the delineations, since I've been near-obsessively convincing myself that the melange of everything in a blob was Not How It Was Meant To Be. (Being the comic is not the problem. I'm arguably doing too much of that.)
'Scuse me. I need to sit here and make the baffled look. Thanks.
Comment from: Ray Radlein posted at March 12, 2005 7:23 AM
You draw frames and that expect your brain to fill those voids. Try it the opposite way. Draw the comic and then split it with frames.
Back in the longago, before gnomes stole my life, I used to make whole sentences, even paragraphs, appear at will (still couldn't Finish The Damn Novel, but that's a different thing than this is). These days, when my brain stays full of cotton and my head stays full of bees, I often find myself laboring mightily for what used to come easily; but one thing I've noticed recently that has helped is very much like what you just said: If I'm trying to figure out how to put N ideas into M sentences split across L paragraphs, it does help me if I just splodge them all out there first, and then try to figure out where to put the downbeats.
I guess it's just that I used to be able to buffer it all in my brain before; now I have to use the paper as my pagefile.
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