@haverholm Everyone says to keep working, but that shit is hard! xD How the bloody hell do you do it?

November 26, 2011 15:38 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@FrauLizling

Lizling Claire

My reply was rather glib (“It’s all I know how to do”) but sitting down with my sketchbook this morning, the question was still churning in my mind. How do you keep working and improving yourself, especially when the world seems to be struggling against you? My answer:

Note: This post has undergone a series of makeovers. This is the final, and presumably best presentation of Nov 1′s comic.

“>

“>

“>

“>

This week and three weeks on I’m back at Holbæk school of arts teaching comics.

Today was the first of our recurrent music interpretation assignment: students make comics from a given tune, today with the added challenge to only use clippings from discarded encyclopedias and art books.

This found footage approach lets the students work with storytelling and graphic representation without being inhibited by their (perceived) drawing abilities.

Using ready-made imagery allows them to focus on the layouts, and the “lyrical” nature of the assignment relieves them of linear narrative concerns. Every time I give this task to a class I’m blown away by the powerful results.

The music interpreted here is “Making of Cyborg” from the Ghost in the Shell movie. Enjoy the snapshots, I’m mighty proud of this day’s work!

A clipping from the opening chapter to Ivan Brunetti’s Cartooning, Philosophy and Practice. The first paragraph I just happen to disagree with in every possible way, but the food metaphor that follows is just wonderful!

Side note: this and previous “Thought about Comics” snapshots are taken with my phone, and I apologise for the image quality. Consider it an incentive to buy the books I quote!

From Dave McKean”s preface to Pictures That Tick.

As I made it to the authors bio section, I was struck by Mark Badger‘s lengthy description. Basically, he recounts his travails from art school, through becoming a “comics pro”, to eventually falling out of that business.

Here’s an excerpt I found especially poignant:

You know the guy. If you have ever in any social context tried discussing comics on more than a “Lil’ Abner was a durn good strip” level, chances are he was in the crowd. He’s a pretty nondescript guy, could be anybody really, but you’ll recognise him when he chips in and goes “Yeah, comics and movies are similar in a lot of ways.” And then the conversation takes a turn towards film, and it turns out he’s in cinema studies and really needs the attention. And sometimes he’s a woman. Look, I just made him up to prove a point, okay?

And there’s really no connection between comics and film, either. For one thing, comics don’t necessarily move (although some webcomics do); for another, movies very rarely work with plastic framing (since the silver screen doesn’t change its shape). Certain compositional analyses apply to both media, simply because they are both related to art theory, in which the analyses originate.

Film is the vision of a director (and a producer, and a board of CEO’s, and their daughter, and the pony she rode in on) filtered through a cameraman, a cast of actors, a sound designer, an editor, and, ultimately, a projector. Comics are the vision of a cartoonist, filtered through anything that might leave a mark on paper; the cartoonist sends her work to C’est Bon Anthology, you read it, end of line.

But there’s more: Comics are sequences of images composed and arranged to convey the passing of time graphically, and/or by juxtaposition transcend the meaning of the individual images. Which is quite exactly what the sequential images of a filmstrip can’t do without the projector, and, incidentally, in experiencing the time and space of the movie, we cease to perceive the sequence of the displayed images.

But the notion that film and comics are related on a deeper level is popular, and hard to lay to rest, much like Justin Bieber. What better way, I ask you, than to orchestrate an anthology of comics set to the tune of (no, wait, that’s our next volume!) – to the theme of Motion Picture? Read on, but be aware that we might be spoiling movies for you altogether!

Silly me, its Navy CIS.

Consider then how the first ten minutes or so of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia basically tells the entire movie in compressed, hyper-aesthetic, symbolic form. Also, how that intro affects your viewing of the film total.

I think that kind of hands-on is generally underused, and is love to try my hand at it. Or just see more of it.

Which isn’t so much a review as a towel being thrown -

“>Lost Girls,”>

I’ve tried and I’ve tried to write this review, but I just haven’t been able to gather the enthusiasm for it. The fact remains that as much as I want to like Moore and Gebbie’s Lost Girls, it seems to fall short of the expectations mounted by the pre-release controversy and massive coverage. The book has all the makings of a (in)decent Moore romp, and I openly admit to being touched in the right places (metaphorically) by the erotic pornographic material – somehow, the two parts are at odds, though. It’s like two people attempting to have sex with their backs turned to each other, which gives an oddly fitting picture of the reading experience.

It will take a sturdier reader or a more hardened porn fiend than me to identify which element gets in the way of the other, but there is a persistently unsatisfying feeling of “Goddammit, I was this close – !” in reading Lost Girls’ alternating takes of retelling the classic children’s books and the main characters engaging in rollicking threesomes. A good-humoured tease is fine and well, as is retardation, but what do I get for reading through 330 pages of it? A bomb crater with a dismembered penis next to it? In some ways I liked the Hyde/Invisible Man sex scene from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen better.

That was sarcasm; I don’t want to paint Lost Girls as a horrible turnoff. As mentioned above, there are genuine thrills of either kind to be had. However, the hype leading up to the publication of the book(s) was partly concerned with Moore and Gebbie’s aim to produce a) a pornographic work of literature and b) porn that isn’t degrading or obtuse. In my opinion, they only succeed in the latter – but one out of two isn’t half bad, really. The attention that Lost Girls garnered prior to its collected release may have been hyperbolic when it came to the use of established characters, but the critique for openly displaying imaginative, sexual intercourse actually just showed that in the 21st century there are still people among us who are afraid of sex. Moore’s the pity.

Sorry ’bout that one. I don’t have any conclusions to this, other than a faint hope that I’ll like the LoEG: Black Dossier more. And an encouragement to Top Shelf not to use the same Photoshop texture on the dustjackets of all three books next time? It cheapens the look on a quality publication.