Pulp Messenger

I think one of the things I’ve learned of most use is the separation between the amateur and the professional boils down to two things: practice and craftsmanship. Practice, I can’t help you with that, other than give you opportunities to apply yourselves (see below). But here’s a little tip on craftsmanship:

Chris Sprouse’s interview in the recent volume of MODERN MASTERS mentions his meticulous use of the lightbox in roughing in pages and playing with composition. So, make yourself one.
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It is my pleasure to present the work of Jay Fosgitt, easily the most brilliant and natural cartoonist I’ve ever met. He’s got a book coming out in November, which means it’s in September’s PREVIEWS catalog (the order code for Dead Duck in PREVIEWS: sept090577). Order yourself a copy and get your retailer to get behind this book.

I can’t recommend this guys work enough. It hilarious as well as sharply drawn, but you don’t have to take my word for it, just read the embedded comics below from an archive of previously drawn comics. The Dead Duck Original Graphic Novel is rated “M” for mature and is not suitable for all audiences parental desecration is advised.

Find out more about Dead Duck at JAYFOSGITT.COM

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AND Don’t forget about December Deadline ‘09!

From Stuart Immonen:

Here’s the deal. Remember the Typophile Album Cover Meme? This is much like that, requiring you to re-imagine a Marvel Comics cover from the last 70 years as an actual contemporary novel cover. Follow the steps below, and post the results on your own site or forum:

1) Click this link for a list of Marvel publications from a random month and year at Wikia.com: Random Marvel date*. Choose the 7th cover (if there are fewer than 7, choose the last one). Click over to Immonen’s post and follow his directions there.

2) Search for the first word appearing on the cover that jumps out at you (this may be the title itself) on Flickr. Select the 7th (or last) image (as with the album cover meme, it’s best to select an image with Creative Commons rights released).

3) Use your favourite image manipulation app to create a new 6×9 image, incorporating the original title (and as much other original text as you like) and the new image.

4) Share!

Here’s mine:

Stuart Immonen’s:

Steve Epting’s:

Double Feature!

If somehow, you didn’t see, the SPIDER-WOMAN motic came out on the 19th. It snuck up on me, but I have been looking forward to this for some time (actually, since I started writing this column way back when). There were early assertions that this would be the first motic that was made to be a comic and a motic at the same time, that it would be more than just “wiggling”. After giving episode 1 a few viewings, I’m confident in declaring SPIDER-WOMAN a success. I’m sure the proceeding episodes will be even better, as all parties involved became more adept at this relatively new media form.

On the surface, it may not really look too much different than other motics, like WATCHMEN. I think this is mostly because of all the exposition. But look closely at the environment, when you watch it a second time through. Because all elements in the shot were drawn separately, they could lens-blur out the background to achieve a more convincing sense of depth (sad, though, that all at Maleev art is getting blurred, but he has to draw it anyway.) The bus windows effect was a cool touch. Also, the sea on approach to (Spoilerburg) was really nice looking.  What really surprised me was the lack of the “paper doll” movement by letting the mind fill in the motion more like a comic would.  Thanks for giving the audience credit.

The best advances in this new story form that I noticed was the action at the end. The punches looked really great! And so did the power blast effects. It all goes by so quickly, but it really impressed me.

I look forward to comparing the comic version, seeing if the product stands up as in that media as well. At Chicago Comic Con, I attended a panel in which Maleev said something about if the comic doesn’t look indistinguishable from his other comics, that he didn’t do his job well. Hearing him talk about other aspects of the production of this material instills me with a trust for the quality of all products still to come through this brand. Motics may not be comics, but I still likes ‘em!

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December Deadline ‘09

It has been released that Diamond isn’t shipping any comics at all for the week of December 30th. It’s not just a delay of a day or two, the whole week.  No new comics. Fine, I say. It’s a five week month anyway, no huge crisis. But I see opportunity here! What if that week, grass-roots independent, local creators flooded the stores with original material? Think about it, a week where the racks were filled with comics nobody had seen before. No competition with WOLVERINE or BATMAN. It’s like a late Christmas gift, people!

So, I’m telling you now: get writing, get drawing, and get comics done for Dec 30th. You don’t have a better chance than this. The “whole week skip” hasn’t happened in the decade I’ve been reading comics, maybe ever.  You may never get a chance like this again! Send your stuff off to the printers and put them up for order on your websites in advance so your issues can be on the shelves in time for Dec 30th.  Come on folks, it’s go time!

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending Chicago Comic Con. It was a very profitable show for me, not monetarily, but cognitively. I talked to some wonderful artists and attended some art panels to see what I could glean from the masters. Some interesting stuff came up, but the greatest benefit was having my portfolio ripped apart critically by two amazing artists in particular: Howard Chaykin and  Mitch Breitweiser. I was honored to have them take the time to fill me in, in gory detail, about everything from the very basics of the mistakes I made in my pages. It was all constructive, though I’ll admit, sometimes hard to listen to. Still, I can imagine no better way to learn how to improve. A heart-felt thanks to both of you, Mr. Chaykin and Mr. Breitweiser.

Well, all the information I’d learned at the con got me thinking about how to properly distil it into something I can reference and pass on to others. Thus I have created the below: PRINCIPIA STRONG TOMICA. By diagraming all that I learned over the expertly drawn panels of three consecutive pages from Chris Sprouse’s and Alan Moore’s TOM STRONG #1.

Here is a text summary:
‘Who, What, Where, When, Why,’ must all be explained in the art. ‘How’ is the story itself.
Compositions are Three-fold with Background, MIDGROUND, and Foreground. (Newspaper strips often only have Back and Foregrounds)

Background:

‘where, when’
context of the action
shows the movement
shows essential textures for continuity

Midground:

‘who, what’
subjects and actors
action happens here

Foreground:

‘why, what’
what the subjects in the midground react to or ignore
frames the panel with black to create guide the eye

FIVE SHOTS OF COMICS:
Establishing Shots:

‘where, when’
man vs god, man vs nature, man vs society
extra background, extra midground, foreground
embellished background
draw the feet
frame heavily with black foreground

Wide Shots:

‘where, when, what’
man vs god, man vs nature, man vs society
background, midground, foreground
draw the feetvdraw background
frame well with foreground
important, physical action

Mid Shots:

‘who, what, why’
man vs nature, man vs man
background, midground, foreground
may need feet
action and acting against the foreground
all character equal players in midground
subjects vs environment
important, physical action

Close Shots:

‘who, what’
man vs man
background, midground
no feet, textures for
background
characters unequal
subtlety, facial acting
relationships between subjects

Extreme Close Shots:

‘who’
man vs himself
midground
just face
often no background needed
externalize the internal
drama, irony, surprise

Agree, disagree? Questions, comments? Love poems, hate limericks? Want to paypal me wads of digital cash for my brilliance? Email: latino.kyle (at) gmail (dot) com.
-
Kyle Latino

Folks, it’s time to dig out your copies of SUPERMAN BEYOND, because this trash is in 3D! (It’s like I want to alienate readers, ha!) And, NO, I will never stop re-purposing this image of Amazing Man lobbing a bull into the stratosphere…

I work a day job at a used book store, where I gleefully run the comic section. This task affords me an interesting perspective on comics, but also I get cool crap from unopened quarter bin fodder! Trading cards, mini posters, pogs, death of Superman armbands, and even 3D glasses. I had an urge to start a collection of all the different glasses when it hit me that an intelligent man with Adobe Photoshop, like myself, could probably figure out a way to make comics look three dimensional. Turns out it took all of 30 minutes to Google up some info an churn out the images you see above.

It’s pretty simple. Just copy the stuff you want in front on the top layer, remove the foreground items from the background with the stamp tool, copy the background ’screen’ a cyan layer over one background (red over the other), merge the respective backgrounds with each color, set them to ‘multiply’, then just nudge the cyan layer left a few and the red layer right a few. BOOM. 3D.

The applications of this kind of thing can be pretty cool. Not only can you achieve depth in your composition, you can use the lenses to filter out one color or the other to create twice the content in half the space (like the trick I pulled in the corner of the logo at the top). None of this is new technology, and this really isn’t even a super creative idea anymore, but it’s something I haven’t seen a lot of in digital comics. Really, digital comic making can take even greater advantage of this simple 3D technique than comics and movies of old. I’m not saying every comic should be in 3D, use it tastefully. It’s like breaking the gutters of a panel, use it only when you need to and when it serves the story and composition best so it can maintain it’s visual potency.

Just for fun, I’ve adapted one of my favorite chapters of Winsor McCay’s LITTLE NEMO to 3D. Enjoy the comic as never before, and I’ll yell at you next week.

Agree, disagree? Questions, comments? Love poems, hate limericks? Want to paypal me wads of digital cash for my brilliance? Email: latino.kyle (at) gmail (dot) com.

-Kyle Latino