Monthly Archives: January 2009

Geek art

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One of my sorry excuses for not blogging is usually that I’m fiddling around with the blog software. When I’m not doing that, I’m likely scouring the web for other applications that may help making my daily life easier – or more fun.

For obvious reasons I take a special interest in graphic software, and although the Adobe Creative Suite is the prime choice when working with digital graphics, comicking is a craft so specialized (and marginal) that there doesn’t exist a toolbox for it in Adobe software. Then there’s Comic Life but seriously, who needs it? I’ve seen people use it for webcomics, but it just screams “SHORTCUT!” to high heaven. Enter Manga Studio EX.

The fundamental functions needed for comic creation in Manga Studio are the same as in Photoshop (basic image editing, drawing, cleanup, etc.) and InDesign (layout, text handling, multiple page documents) but Manga Studio packs a lot more than that:

[Now might be a good time to note that I am not getting any fringe benefits from the manufacturer. I'm just performing a public service to technology-hungry comics people]

Since this software was originally published for manga creation, it comes with 3,000+ screen tones, one-click speedline and focus line function, and optional left-to-right or right-to-left reading direction (for multipage comics). There are also several different drawing tools, and loads of brush settings for each, making the program a virtual studio for the Wacom-savvy, but the real eye-opener to me was the dynamic way the user can draw page layouts.

Tutorial time! First, let’s start a new document from a page template. Never mind all the settings, Dojinshi B5 sounds good and Japanese; let’s try that ;)

MS_EX-tut-1.jpg

Here we are then. This is our blank document, warts and all. I took the liberty of closing the panels that aren’t needed for marking up panels. Now let’s make a new layer (Click the “New Layer” icon in the “Layers” panel or “Layer” menu>”New Layer”)

MS_EX-tut-2.jpg

Uh-Oh, now tjis dialog appears! What do we do?!

MS_EX-tut-3.jpg

As you can see, I have selected Panel Ruler Layer in the drop-down menu. That’s an example of my superior GUI navigation. And reading the manual. Moving on to the next picture, you will note that there is now a fat, highlighted blue line around the inner margin of the page: That’s the basic panel border.

MS_EX-tut-4.jpg

GAAH! Don’t worry, the screen doesn’t actually look like this. There are three things we need to do before we go about turning the big, single panel into several small ones, and they are at opposite sides of a very wide screen, with nothing happening in between, so I compacted the action a bit.

  1. Select the Panel Ruler Cutter from the floating toolbar
  2. Make sure the Tool Options are set to your satisfaction. You can set individual values for horizontal and vertical gutters! Isn’t that neat?
  3. Be very, very sure that the Panel Ruler Layer we just created is selected. If it isn’t, the next steps won’t work and you’ll feel like a git.

Now look beneath, it’s click’n'drag like most other programs you’d be familiar with:

“>MS_EX-tut-5.jpg

… then release the mouse and voilà!

MS_EX-tut-6.jpg

Then go nuts and keep cutting the larger pieces into smaller ones until you blackout, wake up in a puddle with a tattoo of a man’s name on your arm, and the neighbours change sidewalks to avoid you. It’s what the pros do! QED:

MS_EX-tut-7.jpg

Each of these panels are of course ready to draw your story into. If you came this far and realised you can’t draw to save your life, don’t despair (but don’t make me read the results). Manga Studio imports almost any image format imaginable (though only monochrome eps, for the sake of convenience perhaps?) AND 3D objects that can afterwards be converted to line art. That should not be an encouragement to remake Ulysses in wireframes, however.

As always with sofisticated, feature-packed software, there are pitfalls galore (I purposefully didn’t mention the HUGE MANGA CLIPART LIBRARY. Oops!) and speaking for myself, I would probably only use a few of the available functions but the panel layout tool alone is worth, well …

If we must get into pricing, that’s the real nag. The newest version 4.0 of Mange Studio EX sells at $299.99 at the manufacturer’s site. A more light-weight version, Manga Studio Debut is more reasonably priced at $49.99. Personally, I downloaded a shareware version of the previous 3.0 version for $0.00, but with limited features.

The temptation to actually buy the software is quite … tempting, really. All I need is a big fat paycheck, preferably from a job that requires I buy Manga Studio ;)

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Naruto, you rascal, you!

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Right, I think I’m getting into the routine of blogging, but that may be premature. I’m really just forcing myself to type up whatever comes to mind, hoping vainly that it will have some meaning to my readers.

So what say you we try and introduce some purpose to it? A bit ambitious, you say?

I’m not sure if I’m reading Dirk Deppey’s ¡Journalista! right, maybe there’s a layer of apprehension that’s not coming across in print. On Jan 26th he writes in a brief note:

[Publishing] BookScan’s top-20 graphic novels of 2008
Link: ICv2

Three weren’t manga, eleven weren’t Naruto.

See, to my mind the term “graphic novel” signifies a story, not a book (or “retail unit”). Naruto is one story (graphic novel or not) spread across some fourty books. Speaking from that perspective, Naruto should figure once on a list like that. Same for any other serialized narrative; floppy comic, hardbound, European, Japanese, American …

And maybe that’s exactly what Deppey is getting at.

But that’s not the point, is it? The mere presence of Naruto (nine times!) on a list like that shows that it is entirely sales-based; there is no attempt at qualitative judgment. The point is that my definition of “graphic novel” is hopelessly outdated – a puritan, connoisseur distinction that lost any meaning about five minutes after Will Eisner popularized it.

The precise moment would be when the phrase was thrown across the advertising department of a larger comics publisher (I don’t know if the culprit is Marvel or DC but, since DC at least has the better track history in terms of targeting a matureR audience, my money is on the Whorehouse That Stan Built). From then onward, it became a tag to be hung on any old comic, or collection of comics, with a cardboard cover and a flat spine.

It doesn’t matter about the term, really. It was bound to be diluted at some point, and the purist definition actually made a comeback for a while just when media interest peaked, can’t moan about that (much as I’d like to). But the term is/was a heading for some kind of artistic vision, a willingness to align oneself with regular novelists, and I find that part missing in the “non-floppy” sense of “graphic novel”.

I’m not saying that comic book professionals, or “graphic novelists”, aren’t aware of the implication of etymology here. But the potential readers are more likely to hear Marvel’s hype than, say, Eddie Campbell’s, and think that graphic novels as such are just their daddy’s comics in a prettier package. Potential readers, and potential budding creators, then lost to superhero drivel.

But before I pitch my doomsayer tone too highly, I’d like to jump in the defence of Naruto. Sure, it’s no novel-like epic, more like a graphic martial-arts soap opera, but from my experience a) engaging and funny as hell and b) on a whole other artistic level than most of the shônen manga around. I am judging from the part of the Naruto I’ve read, the first ten volumes or so. For all I know the story may have made a nosedive since then.

See? Content comes easy from a small RSS clipping.

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Loss for Words

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As you can see from recent posts, I am trying to elaborate on the basic descriptions of songs in “abstracts” that should give a more in-depth sense of the individual concepts.

Without making excuses for myself or my general pace, I’m finding it very hard to put into words what I’m working on. Currently, I am in the middle of evolving the visuals and semantics of several installments at a time; Engine City is still a little unrefined, whereas Cerebration is more or less good to go, and Passion is more or less a shambles.

When I first started developing the Astoria project, I was taking almost entirely written notes, researching and conceptualizing as much as I could beforehand, as I wanted a sound basis for the work in advance of what I considered (an consider) the actual work. Over the last six months, the bucket has turned.

Since I started drafting on Astoria in September, I have gone on to work with thumbnails and sketches alone, adding new elements more intuitively (although based on my thorough conceptual documents) and all the time stretching myself to avoid repetition or derivation.

And often I stretch out of language. And then I sit down and try to write my abstract … So forgive me if I’m slow in typing up these abstracts; I will get through the pile, but I don’t speak words much anymore. It’s an occupational hazard, and one I can fortunately (?) only afford for a brief period while I finish Astoria.

Waking up

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Sitting on the train, there’re two birds on my desktop; Songbird singing sweet music in my ear, (Red Sparowes, no less!) and the Zoundry Raven on which I type this. Being offline right now, I’ll have to resort to the phone to give out a tweet myself. The hardships one has to endure!

I got on the train 15 mins early, which is just enough time for me to power up the computer, sip some coffee, and regret that I didn’t buy a larger cup. A couple minutes late (but not canceled) we rumble out of Malmö, onto the prairie that is the central Öresund region, literally bridging Sweden and Denmark.

Seen from the train, the area between Malmö and Copenhagen central stations is largely composed of gravel heaps, waste fields dotted by a few barren trees, and concrete armaments lining the tracks in an inperceivable pattern. The bridge is another matter.

If not for the massive construction of steel and concrete surrounding the trasin as we flash across the sound, it would be like flying. It’s hard to ignore what was the worlds largest hanging bridge when it was constructed, though. But I try. Looking out instead through the morning fog at the huge windmill park rising, by the looks of it, directly out of the water.

Swallow hard a few seconds later to unclog my ears as we drive through the tunnel that is the western half of the Öresund connection, the afterimage of the huge, distant propellers still on my retina (along with those burst blood vessels and scars from scratches that roll around my field of vision, coming into focus when I focus on nothing at all).

The CPH airport is a bustling centre of self-important suits traveling through and blue-collars waitiing to get home from the night shift; trolley drivers, baggage handlers, char men and women, a few red-eye pilots and stewards in transit to their hotels. Sip the last coffee, now cold.

Bustling in that sluggish, always waiting for the next plane, airport kind of way, it is of course just another bunker in the middle of a field. More gravel, more angular, massive concrete blocks. Which brings us to Ørestad station, an excuse to build a shopping mall smack in the middle of anothe field. That’s what they named it, too. “Field’s.”

More fields, a shooting range, Tårnby station that is the redneck capital of Copenhagen. Ensuring that the Öresund trains have a representative social span for passengers, balancing the posh coastal stations north of the city. Thank your gods for Tårnby, as long as you don’t have to sit next to the natives.

Copenhagen Central, a bit of a wait, then shut down the computer and get off at Nørreport (a hole in the ground, and one of the most used stations in Denmark). Then a ten min stroll to work, brew some more coffee and graphic the day away. Thank you for traveling public today ;)

The cookery blogging attempt

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So, I realised I am spending my time in an altogether inconstructive way. Between payjob, commuting, family, and finally the comicking, I’ve had precious little time to blog about anything.

How did I find the time now? I’m preparing dinner for wifey and the kids, laptop sitting on the sidetable ;)

The Astoria site as nearing a point where I don’t feel too uncomfortable publishing it. I’m figuring it will go online February 1st or so. Keep your eyes peeled on this space for the announcement!

The “Resistansen” installment of Astoria is undergoing a demo treatment for publication in Danish (if that makes any sense talking about a pantomime comic). I’ll tell you more as things are confirmed.

Oh, and we’re just eating sandwiches tonight, with sausages and scrambled eggs in a bizarre confusion of meals.

Interesting Times

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I won’t even bother commenting on the situation in the Middle East. Apparently, the Israeli have agreed to a one-sided ceasefire, but that’ll just hold until the first rock is thrown by a Palestinean, of course. It’s terrifying to know that peace lies at the mercy of warmakers on both sides.

Forward 11x17 Download.jpgWhat caught my eye  in the news today was another analysis of Barack Obama’s coming tenure as president. The journalist argued that rather than comparing Obama to JFKennedy as representing a new (Democratic) hope, Franklin D Roosevelt would be a more likely yardstick, in that the president in waiting will have to steer th US out of a dire economic strait much like FDR did during the Depression.

Although eloquent, since we don’t know how Obama will fare against the current crisis, the scope of the analysis only goes as far as the circumstances into which the presidents are inaugurated. Many have seen likenesses with Martin Luther Kiing, and Obama himself points to Abraham Lincoln as his role model. Personally, I’ll be measuring his accomplishments by the atrocity that was the W administration.

Obama will really have to make an ass of himself to fail me!

Economicon, Jan. '09

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Throughout 2008 I have been trying to get my head around the site you’re looking at now. Being a newcomer to blogging, I have spent a lot of time fine-tuning the page design, but the end result is evidently cluttered and a bit carried away with all the plug-in possibilities available. In the very near future I will change to a simpler, leaner design and try to focus on the content instead.

Oh, the content you say? Apart from the autoblogging devices (“Daily” Sketchbook pages and Twitter updates) I haven’t been blogging much at all. I’d say it all comes down to two things: Time and routine, or rather, the lack of both. And the less I’ve updated the blog, the bigger the ambition to write substantial posts, meaning that by mid-summer, I was breaking my mind to come up with ingenious subjects instead of posting daily asides about the Swedish summer weather.

That’s somehting to work on, but really, if I’m not blogging it’s because work is eating at my spare time. Astoria has gotten off to a slow start, and I haven’t touched pencil or pen at all over the holidays – but now that I’m back at the studio, things are beginnning to move at a breakneck pace. There will be a b/w demo of Resistansen out this spring, and I have started looking for venues to exhibit the original drawings. I’m thinking one show per song, but then, who’s to say what might show up?

Astoria is getting its own production blog, and I’m basically dealing with the same issue as on this one: Getting the content out in a steady flow. Thankfully, the subject criteria for the Astoria blog is pretty clear (write about the project, its progress, and all things related, as opposed to the quite self-important Change the World-attitude that I’d developed for this here blog) so that should go down pretty well.

I’m getting ready for MoCCA ArtFest this year, but am a bit sad to hear that the festival has outgrown the Puck building, which added a great deal of atmosphere and charm to the event. I’ll be going with a bunch of Astoria samplers for publishers, agents, and everybody who cares to leaf through them, and basically just spreading the Good News … that you don’t need to play an instrument to get down and RAWK!