Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

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ProFile: Aaron Alexovich

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ProFile-Aaron-Alexovich

AARON ALEXOVICH’S first professional art job was drawing deformed children on Nickelodeon’s Invader Zim. Since then he’s been deforming children for various animation and comic projects, including Avatar: The Last Airbender, SLG’s Haunted Mansion, DC’s Fables, Kimmie66, Confessions of a Blabbermouth, and three volumes of his own horror/comedy witch series, Serenity Rose. Aaron currently lives in Southern California, where the bright light makes him sneeze
for mysterious reasons.

What made you decide to work in the medium of comics?

There’s something incredibly personal about making comics, you know? It’s just you sitting there alone building a whole world up on a page. Almost like making an entire feature film single-handedly. Not every art form can compete with that kind of control. I love it. Kind of feels like dreaming when I’m really into it.

What part of the process is the most challenging or frustrating to you?

Every part feels frustrating most of the time. I sort of live for those little moments when things seem to come together. If I had to pick one especially tough part I’d have to choose inking. Still trying to find a way to ink stuff without killing all the energy in my roughs…

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comics creator, what would that be?

Always be working on something you love. Even if you have to take iffy jobs just for the money, it’s important to have a project you love on the side. Otherwise you’ll forget why you got into comics in the first place!

Aaron Alexovich’s site is heartshapedskull.com

Seth Kushner and Nathan Schreiber – Comics for Beginners podcast episode 18

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Seth Kushner (http://www.sethkushner.com/) is a photographer and writer, known for his awesome portraits in Leaping Tall Buildings: The Origins of American Comics and his Schmuck series and photocomics on Trip City. Nathan Schreiber (http://www.nathanschreiber.com/) is an Eisner and Harvey Awards nominated artist, whose own book Power Out won a Xeric award in 2009.

I talked to both Seth and Nathan about the art and craft while I was in New York this fall, only later realizing what a great double feature the two interviews would make, as they worked together on Seth Kushners Schmuck! Their collaboration on the Schmuck series can be found at http://welcometotripcity.com/2013/10/schmuck-14-size-11/

Seth Kushner and Nathan Schreiber's collaboration on Schmuck : Size 11
Seth Kushner and Nathan Schreiber’s collaboration on Schmuck : Size 11

ProFile: Jeff Parker

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ProFile-Jeff-Parker

Jeff Parker is a writer for comics currently on titles Batman ’66 and Aquaman for DC Comics, as well as Rovio’s Angry Birds. The past decade he worked mostly at Marvel, with acclaimed runs on Hulk, Thunderbolts, Agents of Atlas, and X-Men: First Class. Jeff drew comics for several years and worked in television animation (The Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot) and live storyboarding, ultimately returning to comics with his graphic novel adventure The Interman.  Among his other original creations are the cave thriller Underground with Steve Lieber, the supernatural Mysterius the Unfathomable, and the webcomic Bucko with Erika Moen. He is a member of Periscope Studio and lives in Portland, Oregon.

What made you decide to work in the medium of comics?

I liked writing and drawing, and nothing else brings those disciplines together better for storytelling than comics. Ultimately it’s telling stories that I like to do, and comics lets me tell a lot of them where other media would limit that amount.

What part of the process is the most challenging or frustrating to you?

Good names or series titles are tougher than you’d think, at least for me. I’d rather build a whole story around a good name than start with the concept, it’s actually easier.

I don’t find much about building a story hard, it mainly requires enough time and I’ll get there. What’s much harder is raising awareness of a new project and bringing readers to that. Creating a book and selling it are two different things altogether.

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comics creator, what would that be?

My advice would be, if you want to be employable on a number of projects and have longevity, adopt a very zen approach to your assignments. Curves will be thrown at you by the publishers, the readership, everyone involved; it’s unavoidable. You can either grouse about it and become known as difficult to work with, or you can ride the wave instead of fighting it. I usually take it as a challenge that I can make almost any editorial note or change work and still get a good story from it.

There have been cases when the requested changes seem arbitrary and start coming way too often to make the job profitable, and I’ve had to bow out, so it’s not like I can always zen my way through. But I give it my best try before I resort to that.

Can I only give one piece of advice? I would also say to do whatever you can to make your collaborators’ jobs easier. If they’re happy with the process, it will just reflect well on you and make the story work that much better. Like, don’t ask for crowd scenes repeatedly, for instance. Do a lot of the visual research for the artist already and save that creator some time by including reference. Don’t try to push them to be other artists that they aren’t, work with who they are. As the saying goes, you go into battle with the army you have.

More at parkerspace.com

ProFile: Gabriel Bautista

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ProFile-Gabriel-Bautista

GABO is an illustrator based out of Chicago. He’s worked for DC Comics, Image Comics, Oni Press and Thrillbent. He is an Eisner and Harvey Award winning colorist. http://yogabogabo.com

What made you decide to work in the medium of comics?

Speed. I’ve always loved telling stories, building new worlds with only a pencil, paper and the thoughts in my head. I had always imagined myself working in animation, creating cartoons to tell the stories I wanted to share, but as I got older I started to realize that animation, even though it’s an amazing medium, it was just way too time consuming. The idea that I could sit in a cramped corner of my little room and just draw an entire story in just a few days on paper was sheer brilliance to me, and then being able to share this new world with others by making photocopies of each, well I was sold.

What part of the process is the most challenging or frustrating to you?

FRUSTRATION = FLATTING. GOD I HATE FLATTING. (Flatting for those who don’t know is the first step in coloring where you lay down the basic colors on the page before adding shadows, tones, lighting, effects etc.) It is so time consuming, and well you know how much I love speed – I just need this thing to be done so I can present it to the world! So when I can, I find someone to do that for me.

The most challenging part of comics I feel is layouts. Figuring out how to put down on paper what the writer wants to see, and doing it in fresh and innovative ways. Layouts are the foundation of any comic. There have been times when I don’t draw them out first, but they still exist in my mind, you can’t get away from it!

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comics creator, what would that be?

You can’t be a comic book artist if you don’t make comics. And you WILL NOT GET BETTER if you don’t do them. Learn to live with your work, the things you draw in 5-10 years will look so much better than most of the work you do now, so just have fun! LET GO OF PERFECTION. JUST DO.

ProFile: Ed Brisson

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ProFile-Ed-Brisson

Ed Brisson is a comic book writer who’s has been published by Image, Marvel, BOOM! and IDW. Before getting being published by others, Ed spent nearly two decades creating and self-publishing his own comics.

What made you decide to work in the medium of comics?

I don’t remember a time where I didn’t want to work in comics. I’ve been reading comics since I could read and probably started drawing my own not long after. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.

Initially I wanted to be a comic artist and only started writing them because I didn’t know anyone else who could. This was before the internet was around, so I didn’t have access to scripts either. Slowly, and over a long period of time, I realized that I enjoyed the writing more than I did the illustrating and gave up the latter to focus in solely on writing.

What part of the process is the most challenging or frustrating to you?

I’m not sure. I tend to be pretty scatter brained and have a lot of trouble focusing in when the time comes. I takes a lot of effort and is thoroughly exhausting. I need a nap after I’ve written four or five pages.

Another thing I have trouble with, something that I rarely hear people talking about to aspiring creators, is making sure that I have downtime. I mean, you work hard for a long time to “break into” comics, to have people notice you and when they finally do, the offers will come flooding in and you have to be aware of how much you can handle and making sure that you leave some time for you. Otherwise you’re going to burn out.

I *try* to leave my weekends free for me time (which means mostly spending time with my wife and daughter), but still generally end up working through them. I’m working on it though.

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comics creator, what would that be?

My advice would be to jump in, head first, and just start creating comics. Stop talking and start doing. I know too many people who have a “great” story they want to do, but never put rubber to road. Just start. Now. Start with 5-10 page stories. Build to single issues and then focus on doing longer stories once you have that down – once you’ve discovered your voice. Scrap your idea for a 200 issue epic. Start small and grow.

Follow Ed’s work at http://edbrisson.com/

Shia Labeouf rips off comics creator Daniel Clowes – then continues to rip off everyone else

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"It's all good, man. It's art"
“It’s all good, man. It’s art”

I’m sure you’ve heard of Lawless and Transformers star Shia Labeouf digging a hole for himself by now – the hole just keeps getting bigger!

27-year old Labeouf’s short film Howard Cantour.com which premiered at Cannes last year, was later revealed to include uncredited dialogue from Daniel Clowes’ comic Justin M Damiano. Labeouf apologized on Twitter in a seemingly heartfelt and eloquent fashion, which appears to have been lifted from Yahoo! Answers. When he apologized online to Alec Baldwin over a dispute on Broadway, he blatantly copy/pasted bits from an Esquire article, and in a recent e-mail exchange with Bleeding Cool’s Rich Johnston, Labeouf continues his rant against copyright and continues to plagiarize, quoting Picasso, Lawrence Lessig and Kenneth Goldsmith – all without mentioning the source.

His bizarro defense for stealing from Clowes include nuggets of wisdom such as:

Authorship is censorship
Should God sue me if I paint a river?
Should we give people the death sentence for parking violations-
You’ll not only have less parking violations but less DRIVERS.

Er…

As an artist and a writer, I find the discussion of inspiration versus stealing interesting. But honestly, the man who was the son of Dr. Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls seems to have finally lost it. Or maybe he never had it in the first place.

Or as @FadedYouthBlog wrote in reply to Labeouf’s tweeted apology in the sky (see below): How do you manage to out-douche yourself each and every time?  It’s like a talent!

PS: I hope I have quoted and credited everyone correctly in this article. If not, let me know and I’ll fire up my skywriting plane.