Halloween - Barber'ism

Area 5.1 Comic - Barber'ism

It's a daft play on words I know, but that's the sort of thing to expect from me. Coming up with the title is something that I've always considered to be worth a bit of thought.

My level of work has dropped considerably while my life is in crisis mode, but I still have the drawing bug and work *has* to get out there. I started this a couple of weeks ago aiming for a topical event, but this time I gave myself plenty of time to finish it (rather than thinking of an idea that day).

Monsters -vs- Aliens

Yeah it sounds like a video game franchise, but it occured to me that who's to know what's alien and what's monster! I guess it comes down to point of view and level of fright/fear. So this cartoon revolves around the notion of something that appears to be harmless which then turns into a monster when our LGM's they make the wrong assumption.

Area 5.1 - Barber-ism (18th Oct 2016)

I chose a barber shop because I wanted it to look like a jack-o-lantern had been placed on a false torso as a halloween gag. It made sense that much of the detail should be covered over and I couldn't think of anywhere better.

This comic page link is here --- http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/53/

Mirror Mirror

One of my challenges here was the mirror behind the barbers chair. I ended up taking a copy of the main image, reversing the order of the pumpkin and chair, altering the chair so it looked like the back, and then copying it back into the mirror frame.

I'm not sure I did myself any favours, it was a bit of extra work, but I didnt see how I could show a barber shop without attempting at least one mirror.

Two-Tone Shading

I had a few issues with differing shading styles at first, I've not long since moved from flat colour to two tone shading, and I had a fair amount of graduation shading in the mix (too much in fact). I reworked a lot of it, but there are still elements where the styles don't quite match.

It's still a learning game for me - figuring out how to "two tone" was enough of a problem, and I'm still not confident that I'm doing it right. I imagined a point on all surfaces where a line can be thought of sitting at least 45 degrees to the right of dead front. And then I went over areas where shadows might be cast from arms etc. (But the LGM's still seem a little too flat)

Falling leaves

While watching leaves falling yesterday it was pretty easy to imagine them piling up, covering the ground, thus making it difficult for our sheepy friends to graze. More difficult was coming up with just the right form of words, but this is what I decided on.

As R1ck knows, I'm pretty keen on using pen & paper. But when I started drawing the leaves, I realised that this would have been impossible without copy and paste! (or at least I wouldn't have had the patience).

A greetings card

I decided to make a 'well done' card for a couple of people and came up with this drawing

I'm really pleased with the drawing, it was under pressure and done in a few minutes; it's better than what I was doing even a few months ago.

It works very well for the card (and I may publish it as it is on the Cafepress site as a greetings card), but I'm not sure whether I can publish it as it is on Yvonne's page.

The style is exactly as I was drawing in the very early days - some incongruous objects and a short caption. But I do feel I've moved on from that now, I nearly always use speech balloons and a verbal exchange between characters.

The caption was originally 'Overachiever' which was perhaps funnier, but not suitable for the card as that word has negative connotations. I changed it to Above and Beyond which means the same thing but in a much more positive way. Maybe 'Overachiever' works better as a cartoon for the site? Or maybe a funny comment or better caption will occur to me. Feel free to make suggestions.

Casting

I probably shouldn't post the actual image here, it's the first time I've had to use Tapastic's NSFW filter, which I'm quite pleased about.  (cartoon is here)

It looks scribbled - there are two reasons. I had the idea after watching the particular scene in Game of Thrones, grabbed the nearest scrap of paper and scribbled it in pencil (in order to send to a friend and amuse her). Last night I scanned that into the computer and inked it in. But rather than use the tools I'm becoming familiar with, Im running the trial of Clip Studio and took the opportunity to try using that. It doesn't have SBP's 'steady stroke' tool (which I've come to rely heavily upon) which forced me to draw in a less careful way. My drawing skills still have a long way to go but I like the effect.

As far as the idea goes, after seeing the scene and referring to the book, it amused me that the character's manhood was probably more important to the casting than his face or ability to speak lines (the character is famous for getting by on a single word).

looking back, looking forward

Looking back over some previous posts on this blog, things have moved on considerably in a remarkably short time.

A year ago I was only just setting out on my Yvonne journey, and I've just published #108

Sometimes I've set out wanting to express some kind of message (read: have a rant). This one is unusual in that since drawing it I've been struggling to find my position on the matters within. It started out as a skit on the old sexist 'make us a cup of tea, love' and I suppose for comedy value I looked for the unexpected turn.

I'm not saying that being submissive to bad behaviour should be rewarded, and I'm not having a go at the feminist.

If anything, I suppose my position is that it's good to have principles, but sometimes sticking to them can be counter-productive.

It was very quick to produce; largely a 'copy and paste' job, with a bit of rubbing out and an extra few lines (the heart and the tails).

Building a Web Comic (Part 1)

This is my first post of the year, so happy belated new year. I've been pretty busy putting together a new comic, which has taken a lot of time and mind-space. But it's been an interesting experience, so I thought it would be good to blog about it.

Coming up with an Idea

The whole thing was inspired by Shiela's Yvonne comic, which is always a single frame with a simple sheep drawing. It goes a long was to show that simple doesn't mean less.

It got me thinking that I should try something similar, and came up with the idea to parody or lampoon the idiocy and non-sense of modern life using aliens. I started out by making a list of the things that annoy me, things I find stupid, or things that I think are just wrong. But it's funny,.. at first I couldn't think of anything for my list. It was as though I was suddenly the most content person in the world. (and I knew that wasn't the case!!)

So I did a few google searches to find what other people find annoying, and all those repressed irritations came flooding back to me. Now when something that happens that makes me angry I make a note it on my phone for later.

Designing the Characters

Initially I set about drawing possible alien designs and we blogged about this last month...

My blog from 23rd Dec
Shiela's blog from 26th Dec

We came up with a few good ideas, but nothing really hit my remit of being really simple to draw. After-all Yvonne was just a cloud shape, with a few lines for legs, and a T shaped head. If I couldn't keep the design as simple as possible the drawing overhead would be too high to sustain.

A week or so later (after a bit more thought), I came up with a really simple design which was really just a face with arms and legs with eyes on stalks. This would enable me to focus on facial expression, dialogue and minimal props.

My initial alien design I drew on my iPad

Developing the Character

At this stage it seemed like I had everything in place to make a start, but it's best to spend a little time re-drawing your character, using different mouths and eyes (because it's mainly these two things that carry the expressions). My idea was that if I put together a "kit" of body parts then either of us could build comics using as standard file and they're look pretty consistent.

Not having done much cartoon work I found some facial expression cheat sheets on Pinterest that really helped. Soon I had half a dozen mouths and eyes which I thought would be a good start.

A selection of eyes

A selection of mouths

And then I added all of the other body parts to see the completed alien, and to check that it all works together.

The completed alien

Developing an Idea

The next bit requires quite a bit of thought... how do you turn a simple list of things you hate into something funny? We found in practice that the existence of the list started ideas bouncing back and forth, initially by email. But ideas were then scattered about emails, so I moved the list to a shared folder in google drive and we started entering comments and counter-ideas directly. (It really helps to have somebody to discuss your ideas with)

For example we'd start out with a simple bullet point...

• dog poo on the paths 

I then came up with an idea for a series of frames..

2 Aliens walking dog like things - one is clearly huge (you only see the lead running upwards)

1st Alien (with big dog) “Do you ever not clear up afterwards?”

2nd Alien “Well, if nobody’s watching I just leave it”

1st Alien “I find somebody always notices” - Picture a huge dump with legs towering above it. 

Shiela then added her comments in purple..

This is really funny. But the laugh for me was at the start when you described the lead going up in the air implying a massive dog. The line about clearing up is very funny, but then it lost me - I don’t think it needs any more because it’s implied, or people have already jumped to their own conclusion

And then I replied in blue.. 
Yeah, you’re right, it doesn’t need that last picture.

I now had the basis for my first cartoon strip which would consist of 3 frames and the dialogue listed in my original idea. In the next part I will take you through how to pull the idea together, and finalising the design as a comic strip.

copying to learn?

I thought the best way to become better at this was to copy characters that I spot and like. Now I'm getting the urge to pick up a pen when I see a nicely-drawn character.

Almost immediately I felt the need for a wider pen. The widest one I have is 0.8 which seems pretty thick but in these examples the thickest (single) lines look pretty thin. Plus colouring in Mickey's ears was laborious. Actually not in a bad way - I started to see what these people are getting out of the adult colouring books!