Savage Disassembly
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The Swift Savage Disassembly of your Self-Esteem's LiveJournal:
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| Friday, October 26th, 2007 | 3:41 am
[williamgeorge]
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Despite the dead looks of this joint:Hey guys, just a quick dropping of a concept image for a comic idea. I'm interested in thoughts on the character designs. I'm having second thoughts on the second from the left.  Current Mood:  sleepy | | Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 | 1:25 am
[williamgeorge]
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I have discovered... "Demographics"
Last week I did a little test to confirm what everyone kind of knows already. I sketched out a character at various ages: 5, 10, 15, 20, 40, and 80, on a piece of loose-leaf. Sorry, my scanner is collecting dust right now and I'm too lazy to haul it out of the closet. Also, the page is sitting in my desk at work, so I can't show it to you. Then I asked two groups of Korean students what character they liked the most and why. The middle school students all preferred the 15 year old, the high school students preferred the 20 year old. The similarity in ages was the main reason they stated for their choices. I should have asked elementary students as well, but it's not like this was a scientific study or something. But it was the other traits they saw in the character that I found interesting. Both age groups felt that the 15 year old was deemed to be the most "pure" character. That, as a hero, he would fight for noble reasons such as helping someone, or for justice, or to rescue a girl. They felt the 20 year old would fight for pride, or revenge. However, the twenty year old did look more "heroic" to them because he was taller, stronger and more handsome. A couple of students did pick the 10 year old because he was cute. But his cuteness was a problem at five years old because at that age they see him as someone to be rescued by the hero. Forty was seen as being a more sinister character, and eighty was a joke character. Now, the thing I'm wondering is do they feel this way because it fits the archetypes of the comics they read and they've been trained to feel this way, or do the archetypes exist because that's how people feel naturally? Also, is it simply the similar age of the characters to the audience that made hits of such things like Naruto, and back in the day, Spider-Man? The whole thing does make me more aware of something I've always been bitching about in regards to comics: Most creators make comics for themselves and people like them. If they're lucky, there are a lot of people just like them. But I don't think too many (In North American comics, anyway) actually do this sort of focusing and asking what people not like them want to see. Should I ever start making again after I step away from the scene, I'm wondering if I should do a pseudo focus group thing before putting it out there. something to keep in mind. Anyway, heroic ages by preference: 20 years, 15 years, 10 years. 80 and 5 were seen as supporting characters, and 40 as an antagonist. Thoughts? Current Mood:  contemplativeCurrent Music: Cocaine Blues - Hank Williams III | | Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 | 11:20 am
[fabricari]
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| | Friday, April 20th, 2007 | 1:46 am
[williamgeorge]
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Eisners
Hey guys. Someone we all know is up for an Eisner this year. Best Digital Comic
Bee, in “Motel Art Improvement Service,” by Jason Little, http://beecomix.com
Girl Genius, by Phil Foglio, http://www.girlgeniusonline.com
Minus, by Ryan Armand, http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus1.html
Phables, by Brad Guigar, http://www.phables.com
Sam and Max, by Steve Purcell, http://telltalegames.com/community/c...andmax/issue-3
Shooting War, by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman, http://www.shootingwar.com Current Mood:  pleasedCurrent Music: Spoon - I Turn My Camera On | | Thursday, March 29th, 2007 | 6:59 pm
[pvenables]
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Tit for tat: My 22 Panels
Recently, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) williamgeorge posted his submission for my little challenge to redraw Wally Wood's 22 panels that always work. The crit given to him by mister_wolf and myself are here: http://community.livejournal.com/savgedisassmbly/32191.htmlI'm sure William would enjoy hearing what other people think of his work if you're so inclined. However, I felt that if I was going to critique William's work in terms of fulfilling the challenge that I ought to submit my work likewise. So, as a result, my version of the 22 panels is here: http://www.petervenables.com/22p/my22.htmlThings that are important to note about this work: -I drew all of these panels in crayon -I drew all of these panels while doodling with my toddlers after supper over a period of several weeks. I'm not really looking for comments, therefore, with regards to whether the work is sloppy or lacking polish. The intent when I made these panels was simply to have something to put on my wall that was bigger than the tiny printout of Wood's panels that I had on my wall, and to have some fun while doing it. I submit them, therefore, as my interpretation of Wood's panels. Perhaps they capture the essence of the originals, perhaps they don't. What do you think? Wood's original panels, by the way, are here: http://www.petervenables.com/22p/images/WallyWoods.jpg | 12:05 pm
[pvenables]
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What's in your portfolio?
So it was suggested recently here that another nice thing to have in the community would be hints a tips from one creator to another. To give that set a tires a test drive, I want to pose the following question: What makes up a good portfolio? I don't even have a portfolio myself, not being in a position to look for professional work as an illustrator, but for those of you who are, what's in yours? What should be in it? To stave off all those "it depends" answers, let's assume you are are building a portfolio to show to a comics professional. That you want to show off your work to someone who could give you a job as an illustrator for comics, animation (excluding a demo reel), and comic-style illustration. Go! | | Friday, March 23rd, 2007 | 1:42 pm
[pvenables]
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Have your say!
Ok, I'd really like to see this community add value to its member's lives. To that end, I'm asking you to submit your opinion so I can figure out whether I need to crack the whip or loosen up on things. If you have any suggestions on what we can do to make this community work better for you, have a say in the comments and we'll figure out how to make it happen. Poll #952424
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllI would like to see more ___ in this community. I am willing/able to spend this much time to review/critique... On the subject of full-reviews versus drive-by comments... On the subject of iron-fist rule... | 1:20 pm
[williamgeorge]
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| | Friday, February 16th, 2007 | 10:05 am
[pvenables]
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| | Thursday, February 15th, 2007 | 3:12 am
[williamgeorge]
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| | Thursday, February 8th, 2007 | 10:18 am
[pvenables]
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| | Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 | 1:51 pm
[pvenables]
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Some art to disassemble
This is, perhaps, not so timely a request for critique seeing as how it was a year ago that I completed this artwork and it saw the light of the Internet. The timing has never been really right for our group, however, for me to put this work up. Now I feel like it'd be good to put my work on Gossamer Commons up for review so I can hopefully learn some lessons as I head into some of my current projects. Some background: Gossamer Commons is a collaborative project that I worked on with Eric Burns and took over the art duties from Greg Holkan at the end of Chapter 2. So everything from the beginning of Chapter 3 to the premature end of the comic is mine. Of course, when I say "everything" I mean the art. This is a collaborative project as I mentioned previously and the writing --including some very detailed panel layouts in places -- was provided by the writer. The main comic URL is: http://gossamercommons.miercoles.org/The first page of my work is: http://gossamercommons.miercoles.org/2006/01/02/chapter-3-prologue-yawn-2/There are 27 pages all said on the site that are mine. There are 3 pages you'll have to skip over that have nothing to do with my work in the run from the above link to the last page. You'll know which ones they are. I should also point out that this comic has received some attention for a particularly bad page at the hands of our own Phil Kahn here. If you want to examine that page in depth, that's fine but I think we can all agree that it's a problematic page. Other than that, have at 'er! | | Thursday, January 18th, 2007 | 6:45 am
[rezo]
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Socks.
I started up this comic last September. I'm at just below 100 pages now, so I think it's probably a good time for a critique? So here is the comic.Pointless Trivia - The comic is called Socks which was taken from a scene that was to be in the story. Except that since I made that the title, I became way too conscious of the scene and will probably never use it so now the comic's title will probably never make sense ever. | | Monday, January 15th, 2007 | 10:57 pm
[cavemonster]
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Back
Howdy, Mr. PVenables let me know that this shindig was starting up again. I don't have all the time I wish I had to, but I'm eager to see what's going on. | | Saturday, January 13th, 2007 | 11:45 am
[williamgeorge]
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Stepping Up To Bat
Bang Barstal. I can see plenty of fuck-ups and areas that I need to improve in. But do you see the same ones I do? 1) Pointy Eared BastardsThe first tale designed to establish the character and setting. Also, I was forcing myself to get a bit more into my environments, which is something I always half-assed with It's About Girls. (Now that's Sahsha's problem. heh heh heh...) 2) Racing Towards HomeMore character, and environment work. As well as some design practice 3) The Dead pt.1I decided to post a twelve page comic every month. That required that I do three pages a week, and since I have a full time job, I needed to cut corners, so out went the color. It was a good bit of exercise to try and learn to use design elements to replace the tonality of color or grayscale. 4) The Dead pt.2This one didn't work as well as I would have hoped art wise. There are two pages I hate with a passion, and wished I used a different approach with them. Can you guess which ones? 5) Red, White, and BlueEDIT: Hey guys, I've decided to add the first four pages of the new Bang story since earlier I mentioned that I'm trying to apply the art lessons I learned in previous installments. http://www.thewilliamg.com/bang5p1.gif http://www.thewilliamg.com/bang5p2.gif http://www.thewilliamg.com/bang5p3.gif http://www.thewilliamg.com/bang5p4.gif Personally, I think my art and use of color has improved immensely. But I may be just wanking my ego. Okay, get disassembling. Let me know if there's a problem with links and all that. I don't use livejournal that much. Current Mood:  bouncyCurrent Music: Reefer Man - Cab Calloway | | Thursday, January 11th, 2007 | 4:39 pm
[spiffystuff]
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Pimp Thy Comic
Heya folks. I too have been lax as a maintainer... I thought we might add another element to this community, "tips and tricks", to keep things going between crits. This includes discussion of "how do I....?" or "I've got X comic pet-peve", etc. I think it'd be good if we used LJ's handy little "tag" feature on these, too, for easy access in the future. Recently I've started dabbling in the world of marketing/promotions. If you're like me, you're pretty shy about promoting your comic. On the other hand, I know I greatly enjoy reading some comics, but I can only read them if I can find them! So, my goal in advertising is to let people who'd like my comic know about it, and have as much fun as possible while still breaking even on expenses. Pretty simple. (As opposed to a plan where the goal is to make money, for example. Nothing wrong with that, just I already have a job I like and don't intend for comics to be my income source) Anyway, what I'm saying is that you should pimp your comic too :D Get the word out there, so that people who will enjoy your comic can find it, even if you're shy/unconfident/etc. ericadams, maker of Lackluster World, made a series of articles for newsarama, Sequential Smarts, as both a promotional tool for himself and a tutorial for other creators. Crafty! His articles are perhaps more geared for print comics, and people who want to make some actual funds off them. But they still have a lot of good info and food for thought for anyone interested in marketing anything, plus they're just fun to read. :) ... topics for future posts/discussions: dead tree versions of webcomics, conventions, writing "the other" (LOL feminism!!!), domain names and web programming... | 11:28 am
[pvenables]
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ComicSpace and Inactivity
Since joining ComicSpace I have been reminded that SavDis has been wallowing in inactivity for some time. I think a big part of why this community has faltered is because I tried to exert too much control over how it functioned and between me not having time to manage the process and other people offput by the beaurocracy of applying for crits, I think it stifled the process altogether. I never imagined this thing would have gotten as big as it did in the beginning as I really only figured on having a few close friends involved. I'm glad all you other folks thought enough of the idea to join up. At any rate, I'd like to see critiques happening again. I think we as artists owe it to ourselves to benefit from peer review and we should kick this thing back into high gear. To that end, I'm opening the doors to new submissions and new critiques. The process is completely open. Use this community to request a critique the only rule I'd like to maintain is that if you ask for a review, I ask that you give feedback and vice versa. I don't want a lot of armchair critics voicing their opinion without putting their own work on the line and I don't want gloryhounds posting their work, getting valuable feedback and then buggering off without returning the favour. Also, if you're on ComicSpace, add 'savage disassembly' to your taglist and we'll have an impromptu grouping there! Find me on comic space here: http://www.comicspace.com/peter_venables/other members I've seen are: http://www.comicspace.com/charlessnow/http://www.comicspace.com/philkahn/http://www.comicspace.com/victor_von/http://www.comicspace.com/cavemonster/http://www.comicspace.com/the_william_g/http://www.comicspace.com/mattb/So let's do this thing! | | Friday, August 25th, 2006 | 1:22 pm
[williamgeorge]
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Hey guys
Forgive my brashness, but since it seems there's been no movement here for a while, I figured I wouldnt be stepping on anyone's toes looking for a report card on the following page: http://www.thewilliamg.com/bang2p10.gifDoes the layout work for you? Ill be playing more with paneless pages so I wanted to make sure that what I got here is followable. | | Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 | 10:33 am
[pvenables]
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The "Power 19" of Comics?
I'm breaking with tradition here in a move that, I hope, will spark a little more discussion in this community. The last round of crits was really good. I saw a good number of comments made and I hope the people who received crits got everything that they were looking for. The reason I'm posting here today is rather selfish. It's a selfishness, however, that can benefit others too. Let me begin this way: I spend a certain amount of time thinking about comics and another portion of my time thinking about game design. I love both and I can no more put one down as put both of them down. During my research into good principles of game design I came across a rather clever article called "The Power 19" ( http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/2006/01/what-are-power-19-pt-1.html). In a nutshell, this "Power 19" list is the product of a communities collective knowledge about the questions one needs to have answered BEFORE they begin writing the game. It got me thinking about if there's a similar process that a comic writer/artist could/should go through in the process of designing a new comic. This has relevance to me as I've toyed with a couple of new comic concepts in the last two years and found that a structured approach is often best. The added bonus to having an approach means that you have a map to follow as you begin writing the comic and something that you can go back to to help keep on track with your stated objectives for the comic as a project. So I thought I'd put the question to you folks. What are the Essential questions that must/should be answered prior to penning the first script? The output of this discussion could very well become helpful to everybody in this group and beyond. I'll throw a few that I think are very important: 1) What is the mood of your comic? (i.e. comedic, dramatic, surreal, cerebral, etc) One should have a solid idea of whether their comic is going to be funny or serious or a mix of the two, for example. One thing that can create a schism in your comic is to radically shift from one mode to another. I've heard this phenomenon referred to as "The Cerebus Syndrome" by Eric Burns and, while a valid approach, can also bring ruination on an otherwise good comic. At the very least, one should have an idea how the comic is going to begin and if you intend on mixing moods, do so in a consistent and controlled manner. 2) What is the genre of your comic? (i.e. slice-of-life, madcap, action, mystery, fantasy, etc) This one is tricky because some comics span several genres and sometimes cannot be easily defined in terms of the traditional genres available. Nonetheless, it's good to figure out what setting your comic will take place in (likely this will be answered by the time you come to this list although after some development you may find that changing the genre is a good idea. 3) What is/are your target medium/media? This is more important than you know. Would you like to see your comic in traditional print media one day? Do you only want it to be seen on the iPod? Must is use flash? Should it use colour or animation or reader-interactive components? Thinking about this ahead of time will ensure you don't use things that won't translate into your eventual target medium one day. 4) What style will you use? This depends on what artist you use (or your own capabilities as an artist) but you should have an idea of what you want the comic to look like. Gritty realism? Stick-figure simple? Highly stylized cartoon characters? Photoshopped yearbook photos? Even if you aren't doing the art, you should know what the end product should look like. 5) Who is your target audience? Are you writing for adults? Children? Young adults? People exactly like yourself? What language or level of sophistocation will you use? Is profanity ok in the comic? How about nudity and explicit adult content? Should you discuss the vagueries of Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle? Is it kosher to delve into Abramic law? Figure out who you are writing for (aside from, perhaps, yourself) and set some rules that you will follow. 6) What is your format? Standard newspaper four-panel strip? Traditional comic book page? Infinite canvas? Something more or less random? While it's fine to change format to suit the story telling, it's often a good idea to pick a format and stick with it. 7) What is the duration of this comic? Starting a comic without writing the end is common practice especially among those who envisioned working in the syndicated comic circuit. This is not always the best strategy, however. Writing a complete story and planning to write it from beginning to end is sometimes the right course of action. I compare writing a comic to writing a TV show with each year like an individual season. Even if you plan to write this comic forever, it's probably a good idea to have some idea of what the ups and downs are going to be. Unless, of course, you are writing a non-sequential gag-a-day comic where the plan is to write a new joke, day after day until you die. I've gotten this far and I've hardly scratched the surface of what the subject matter of the comic is going to be about... 8) What is your setting? Will your comic take place inside the confines of a prairie school-house? On the dark side of the moon? On the rough streets of New York circa 1938? Will the setting change from strip to strip? 9) Who or what is the comic about? While you may have a large or small cast, you may or may not focus on one individual or a small group of characters. Figure out who these characters are and who your principle is (if applicable). 10) Who are your antagonists? If applicable, you should have some idea who or what will oppose your protagonist(s). In a humour comic, this may or may not apply but it's always a good idea to have an opposing or opposite viewpoint in your story to add balance and to create conflict. So there's ten to start with. I know there are more. Please feel free to dicuss, add, suggest modification to this list based on your experience as a writer. Then we will have the "Power X of Comics" (where X is how many we come up with.) | | Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 | 10:31 am
[pvenables]
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More Press and more memebers
Greetings to those that are just joining us here at SavDis. We got a mention on comixpedia today so we might be seeing some new faces around here. I'd like to remind people that kevinforbes has offered up his work earlier this week for a crit and has only gotten a few short comments so far. I'd like to encourage people (even those that are new) to hop in a give some good crit. I'd like to point out that both long and short critiques are welcome. If you only have time to give a quick impression, please do so. If you have time to write 5000+ words, more power to you. The important thing is that people get a variety of feedback and that feedback is constructive. Thanks everybody! Edit: kevinforbes's crit is going on here. |
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