La A(h)ogada

you will love your rough drawings more than your clean

if you don’t flip your drawings your teachers will know. oh they will know.

you will draw an insane amount of detail at first in hopes to impress your teachers. don’t. they’ll get you to inbetween that shit and it’s not fun. trust me, there’s a reason successful cartoon shows have nice, simple, clean designs.

line weight is hella important. as is colour theory.

storyboarding is not easy. it’s actually in demand rn because of how time consuming/difficult it is. lots of fun though especially if you’re a creative person.

the animator’s survival kit is your bible. doesn’t matter that thing weighs as much as a small child. take that shit with you everywhere. it is now your baby.

glen keane is considered a deity amongst animators.

your teachers will likely look hella young but irl be much much older. this seems to be a side effect of working in kid’s shows for over 10 years. it is a good thing.

every animator knows the impending dread of deadlines. yes, this includes your teachers. it is likely many of them will be working at studios/their own projects the same time as teaching. that is why they are immortal and their wisdom incomparable.

 speaking of deadlines, say goodbye to a regular sleeping pattern and balanced lifestyle

if your wrist starts to ache like a bitch then start drawing more with your shoulder. loosey goosey baby. loosey goosey.

life drawing is essential. don’t skip that shit. anatomy is important. even if your character has six arms and five eyes you still need to be able to make them move.

you are regarded as a dying breed amongst the 3d kids. that’s ok. give them a pencil and paper and ask them to animate a 4 legged walk cycle traditionally. see what happens.

however if you’re anything like me, maya will look like a foreign language to you.

srsly wtf is maya? what sacrifice to the animation gods must i make to understand this program?

watching your favourite cartoons and animated movies regularly is important not only to motivate but is essential bonding time with your classmates. only now everyone wants to talk about how beautiful the backgrounds in steven universe are as well as cry over the character designs.

perspective is hard. period.

there is always that one kid in class who’s already done their 10,000 drawings and are untouchable. those are the ones to sit near in the hopes you can try and get some of that raw talent to rub off onto you.

coffee/energy drinks/sugar will rise to the top of your already crumbling food pyramid.

you improve lots. and some days something will just click and all of a sudden you’re firing out 40 frames an hour. 

One of the reasons that I love comics so much is that there are many valid ways to approach the medium. When I make comics, the parts I’m most concerned with are character and story. Everything I draw on the comic page is in service to character and story. Because of my focus on those two elements over, say, experimenting with my art and page structure, I will sometimes get criticism that my work is safe or boring. This is probably fair criticism! I don’t do a lot of experimenting with paneling or challenging storytelling or explicitly challenging artwork in my comics, because right now that’s what I’m not interested in. Maybe I will be more experimental someday, but not right now, with the kind of stories I want to tell. :)

When I make a comic, my goal is for my readers to be engaged with the story I’m telling, and the characters in that story. That’s also what I look for when I want to read a good comic. I want characters to love, I want a story to be engaged with.

For the most part, I struggle with drawing comics (most artists do, if we’re honest ;)), but there are some parts of comics I think I have a good handle on. I feel like I’m strongest when portraying emotion on the page, and I’m good at drawing those scenes out and making the reader feel what my characters are going through. Some of the techniques I use to convey emotion came from being obsessed with movies when I was a teenager, and some techniques are stolen from my holy trinity of influences: Jeff Smith (Bone), Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist) and Naoki Urasawa (Monster, Pluto, 20th Century Boys). 

Of the three artists I’ve mentioned, I consider Urasawa especially to be a master of emotion and pacing. When I first started reading his comics, it was like light struck my brain; finally I saw what I’d been trying to do for years right there on the comic page in front of me! I like the way he lays out his emotional scenes a lot. Here’s an example (read right to left): 

Urasawa uses repeating panels and decompression to draw out the emotions of a scene. In this single page there isn’t a lot of movement. It’s literally just two characters staring at each other, but the tension rises going from panel 1 to panel five. Gesicht (the man)’s expression doesn’t change between panels two and five, but we literally feel his anger rising off-panel, concluding in the close up in panel 5.

There’s an excellent You Tube channel called Every Frame a Painting (I’m sure you’ve heard of it, but if you haven’t, please go watch all the videos! There aren’t many, and they’re all really informative). My favourite video is this one, about editing:

This video hit on something that I strive for in my comics: emotion takes time. When I draw a scene that is emotional, when characters are struggling with something, or celebrating something, or being challenged, I want my readers to feel what the character is feeling, and one of the best ways to do that, for me, is to take my time. To give that emotion time to breathe on the page. 

I’m going to use some scenes in The Nameless City to illustrate how I use decompression and pacing to underscore the emotion in my comics. To avoid spoilers and because this is getting a little long, I’m going to put it under a cut. Please read on! :)