How to Write & Draw Comics
“I find that art is 90 percent fear!”
Artist, teacher and CEO of MakingComics.com, Patrick Yurick, visited Copenhagen and I got to show him the better parts of the city. We also managed to record a podcast on his view on the craft, career, his experiences with teaching comics to teens, his zombie buddy comedy Hipster Picnic and the future of making comics.
Links to stuff mentioned on this episode:
My video on lessons I learned from working on Thomas Alsop
I talk to artist Ben Dewey about art, music and the Faustian aspect of working crappy jobs while pursuing a carreer in comics creation. Besides being the artist and writer of his own Tragedy Series (http://www.tradegyseries.tumblr.com), he is the artist on Tooth and Claw with writer Kurt Busiek, released this week from Image Comics. Luckily Ben is not just incredibly talented but also very articulate about the craft and the life of a creative person. Really good advice in this episode!
For a preview of Tooth and Claw, go here.
Related podcast: Episode 25 – Periscope Studio with Steve Lieber
1: Word balloons that come directly out of people’s mouths.
I’ve noticed this a lot in independent comics. It looks like someone is blowing smoke or bubble gum, and that really ruins the reading experience for me.
2: That hair.
A couple of loose strands of hair is generally a good idea. But for the slicked back hair to stay slicked, it’s probably a lot longer than the lock in front here. Did the hairstylist make a blunder? What? It doesn’t make sense. Yet I see this hair in A LOT of comics.
3: Talking during a fight.
Come on, really? I’ve never been in a fight, but I’m pretty sure I would be focused on not getting killed rather than what my next snappy comeback line would be. Long and clever dialogue during a fight scene is unbeliavable and takes the danger out of the scene.
4: Balloon shaped breasts.
How many women do you know who have breast that are completely circular? Not only is it anatomically incorrect, is also gives me the impression the artist is a 12-year old boy who is afraid to even Google for reference. I’m SURE there are pictures of real breasts out there.
5: Evil, evil, evil-doers.
I happen to believe people do things for a reason. Going up against the law or a team of superheroes takes a lot of nerve and effort. I don’t believe anybody would risk their lives doing evil, unless they had a clear motive – however faulty and twisted that motive may be! – or no other option. At least try to come of with a reasoning behind the bad guy’s evil plans to take over the world.
But hey, these are just my personal pet peeves. What are yours?
For many years I suffered from the delussion that “real” writers worked from page 1 until the book was finished. This resulted in many a stranded story for me. When I finally gave myself permission to go ahead and skip to the ending or the middle, if I had an idea for that, my creative juices really started flowing.
These days I’ve also allowed myself the luxury of jumping from one project to the other, and I find it works the same way for me. Instead of standing still, I go in another direction, keeping the forward momentum.
Every project is a learning experience, every story brings new ideas. I can skip from one story to another, using what I just learned for something else, perhaps as a way to get unstuck on a story problem or motivational issue.
The downside of working on multiple things at once, is that you can get the feeling you’re not going anywhere. That you are just spinning wheels when in fact you are moving forward.
The need to focus in certain phases can be neccessary
Jumping around is fun, but to finish something, you need some crunch time. I always seem to forget that stories and projects don’t push themselves into my work day. I have to put them there, block out time to work on them. If I wait until I get some free time or get “inspired”, I will take all these projects with me to my grave. Unfinished.
As Stephen King once says in his book On Writing:
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
My method of jumping from one project to another might not be for you. But as long as you finish them eventually, (see this post on finishing) I see no problem with working on five things at once. It might just spark that creative energy that keeps the creativity flowing instead of running dry…
Do you work best with one thing at a time or are you a scatterbrain like me? Let’s hear your story!
Jules Rivera is a Los Angeles-based sequential illustrator and animator. She has worked in small press publishing and TV animation, and has self-published several graphic novels including Misfortune High and webcomic Valkyrie Squadron.A quick recommendation of three books to read for a better grasp on storytelling, structure and sequential art.