Sanders

... that I'm gonna evacuate this DA account.
It's tied to a lot of things I either prefer to not remember or have moved on from.
Was considering making a different DA, but maybe not. 

Thanks for watching. Take care.

The great men of Webcomics Weekly have posted a new podcast. After more than a year of waiting, WW has continued. To share, I still even today listen back through their podcasts very frequently. Listening to these good friends talk shop on comicking (and heavy miscellany) is the most compelling and inspirational content I've ever found for creatives. I'm often worried I rely on external influences for being productive, myself. And this podcast is honestly one of them. So I was even more pleased that I opted to revisit my devart with a new spark, and WW *thereafter* releases a new episode. Karma reward for self-starting? That's how I'm going to take it.

This show was primarily about strip that been controversially around for quite a long time, Crtl-Alt-Del, by Tim Buckley. I've only purposefully ever read this strip very fleetingly and usually for reasons of scorn. From the hollow gag-a-days to the poor-taste miscarriage from over a year ago... to even now, where the strip is ending(?), CAD has swung and missed a lot, for me at least. Supposedly this latest development is toward a reboot, but I don't think it'll be a worthwhile read. Very similarly to how Buckley had a jarring (non-existant) transition between the miscarriage arc and the mundane and unrelated slapstick strips that followed, the most recent brutal demise of his characters is immediately succeeded by a unimaginative MLP bit about the new tablet game. The joke was meh, the art personally really bothers me, but the lack of tact in transitions is drives me nuts.

And as I needlessly go on describing CAD's shortcomings, head over and give a listen to WW's far more entertaining take on it. So fking glad to see these guys back.

This comic is the primary reason my art suffocated for nearly three months. It seems like when I write myself into a corner, despite confidence in subsequent plot, my immediate motivation dies. Other personal things do play in, and this time they had really brought me down. Everyone has rotten periods of time, but subjecting myself this kind of stagnation hurts. The mantra "draw every day" is to me such a powerful one, because it purveys such potential. I can't imagine a more effective way to improve than pushing toward an ultimate 10,000 hours of practice and experience. To thereafter completely deconstruct that head of steam with anxiety or procrastination, there's nothing more self-defeating. I think once you've put in the effort, you can afford the luxury of time and produce good work, because now you know how to do it with planning. But before then (especially for me), I feel quantity begets quality.

Sloppily segueing into someone who has swapped quantity for quality (not in the most drastic sense, mind you); Kristopher Straub, since putting the kibosh on his formerly daily feature, Starslip, has now been working on a new strip called Broodhollow (M-W-F). I wanted to note this because Straub mentions this new comic is working more toward a book and less a perpetually updating rigmarole. It's a fond read, and I'm really looking forward to where he takes it.

Unrelated thought: Working for Verizon, I've been pouring over phones for the past few months. At this point, I'm really excited for the Galaxy Note II. That stylus has wacom tech in it... and that gets me antsy to try it hands on. Gonna eyeball some Black Friday deals and see if I can selfish my way into a new phone. Swapping from iPhone 3GS. It's probably about time.

I'm really jealous of those people who are just compelled to draw. Not just the folks who doodled in class back in high school. Class was boring, everyone did that. I mean the people who have two minutes of idle time at their desk and opt to scribble something down. The ones who give random drawings to their friends and exhibit almost no anxiety about it.

I feel like this idea leads into a discussion of the "there are two types of people in the world" variety. If the above is one type, then I fall square into the other. The one who never picked up a pen unless the thing was completely fleshed out or idealized in my imagination. The person who also can't start a drawing unless it's to be finished and worries about letting other people know about it. I used to dread drawing something to give to another person regardless of how much I really wanted to do it. I'm fairly certain this two-type generalization realistically breaks up into an entire spectrum of creative sensibilities with those types I named holding up the polar ends... since I know people are more complex than that.

Explanation brought to anecdote, there's a cute girl in the workplace who occupies her downtime by illustrating the most random subjects in paint. MS. Paint. And it's good. I've found myself watching her screen from across the way, just impressed and jealous. Moreover, because despite working in a pen/paper-free environment (dealing with lots of private client information), she isn't nailed down. While I briefly considered quitting because I had to permanently pocket my moleskine.

So I sit here after having drawn a random series of panel'd somethings, waiting for the next something I can panel together... and feel better about things for a day or so. Even though I don't doodle and sketch, drawing helps. It's the most genuinely comforting thing I've ever found.

"... As cartoonists, aren't we all weird?" - Scott R. Kurtz

I feel sort of like there are three ways to look at handling a plot idea. There could be more, but for the sake of example, I'm going to refer to what I see in PvP, Penny Arcade, and Johnny Wander. PvP has developed over the years generally into a plot-and-character-driven feature, while Penny-Arcade is sort of gag-a-day, and then Johnny Wander covers the journal comic sort. A really convenient (not necessarily effective) way to write is to expound from the crap that happens in your every day conversations or events. I see a big difference in how each 'type' of comic would take advantage of that low-effort idea generation.

So today, you had a talk with your buddy about the office coffee maker being the single most untouched region for the custodial staff. A gag-a-day might be the most cut and dry. I can imagine Penny Arcade taking the most withdrawn approach and morph the literal conversation into a witty dialogue. Whereas, PvP could very likely consider stretching that concept over a few strips, diving in deeper, plotting how to set up for the idea, and maybe also knock out some character development at the same time. Lastly, the journal comic would likely be an abstraction of the conversation, where the author witnesses the grunge of the coffee maker with great artistic exposition.

When I'm thinking about how to interpret something into four panels, I end up leaning toward at least two of these at once- usually a different two from the previous comic. It's really interesting being in the position of not knowing how you yourself does things. I've always been heavily influenced by whatever I've read/discovered most recently. This month I'll go perspective/format heavy and next month I'll want to write my characters into bleeding hearts. I guess I'm not worried about rushing to 'find my voice,' but it doesn't save the experimentation from being a bit embarrassing~

tl;dr these last few comics have been awful~<3
(more on the way..)

-Sanders