Eskimo_Nell
08-17-2007, 10:08 PM
Jennie has encouraged me, by e-mail, to start doing comics again. I last wrote in the International Times and in OZ, underground London magazines, in the early 70s.
I've put some ideas together, but I want to have at least twenty strips ready before I publish, because unlike Jennie I don't have a good idea every day.
And I've bought boy and girl mannequins! I can't draw without mannequins. I do try very hard to make all my characters distinct, as Jennie does, rather than just generic-male, generic-female with some kind of label (e.g., animé-girls who all look the same but have different hair colours).
Having gone away from drawing for so long, and having seen what masters like Jaime Hernandez and Robert Crumb can do, I've sharpened up my art a bit. It's not what it ought to be, but I want to do faces, hands, and perspective like Jaime Hernadez did, and still does. The first few might be a bit shaky, but I hope to improve with practice.
The general idea of what I intend to write is about my frustration about how little has changed over my (fairly long) life. Just to give you a clue, the first one will show me drawing a comic as a 14 year old, and in the background, "Isle of Wight Festival - The Who, Pink Floyd" and next frame me as a 50 year old, in the background "Live 8 - The Who, Pink Floyd". This is not historically correct, but you get the gist. The title of the strip is taken from this frustration - there is so much we could have done, why have we achieved so little?
---
Now, some questions.
If I put up big graphics on my own website, my domainhost is going to get upset fairly quickly, because of the traffic. How do you host a webcomic? How do keenspot and keenhost work?
What I've drawn so far, I've drawn on 120 gsm A4 paper with a rapidograph (0.3, 0.5) shading in with pencil (I've never been able to draw hair except with pencil). I draw every frame mostly in HB, go over it with ink, and rub out. Then I scan it and play around with it in the GIMP. Is there some 21st century way of doing this better?
This is pretty much the way I drew when I was bored in English lessons when I was 10, surely there has been progress since.
r
I've put some ideas together, but I want to have at least twenty strips ready before I publish, because unlike Jennie I don't have a good idea every day.
And I've bought boy and girl mannequins! I can't draw without mannequins. I do try very hard to make all my characters distinct, as Jennie does, rather than just generic-male, generic-female with some kind of label (e.g., animé-girls who all look the same but have different hair colours).
Having gone away from drawing for so long, and having seen what masters like Jaime Hernandez and Robert Crumb can do, I've sharpened up my art a bit. It's not what it ought to be, but I want to do faces, hands, and perspective like Jaime Hernadez did, and still does. The first few might be a bit shaky, but I hope to improve with practice.
The general idea of what I intend to write is about my frustration about how little has changed over my (fairly long) life. Just to give you a clue, the first one will show me drawing a comic as a 14 year old, and in the background, "Isle of Wight Festival - The Who, Pink Floyd" and next frame me as a 50 year old, in the background "Live 8 - The Who, Pink Floyd". This is not historically correct, but you get the gist. The title of the strip is taken from this frustration - there is so much we could have done, why have we achieved so little?
---
Now, some questions.
If I put up big graphics on my own website, my domainhost is going to get upset fairly quickly, because of the traffic. How do you host a webcomic? How do keenspot and keenhost work?
What I've drawn so far, I've drawn on 120 gsm A4 paper with a rapidograph (0.3, 0.5) shading in with pencil (I've never been able to draw hair except with pencil). I draw every frame mostly in HB, go over it with ink, and rub out. Then I scan it and play around with it in the GIMP. Is there some 21st century way of doing this better?
This is pretty much the way I drew when I was bored in English lessons when I was 10, surely there has been progress since.
r