Jake Wyatt - Kevin Merriman

trying my best to add, not repeat anything that's been covered already.. was thinking a little bit -- got some Kung Fu Panda/Bruce Lee Philosophy to throw down in relation to comics and stuff. makes sense to me, hope it makes sense to somebody else. here we go:

-i thought it was fun how when asked if Jake followed any template or something when dividing up panels and stuff in his comics, he said he just made it up as he went along.

this taught me of a couple things and how they relate to comics:
"there is no secret ingredient."
when making comics, you're responsible for the information you present or don't present in a story.. no amount of templates or style guides can tell your story for you. Jake talked about doing "what's best for the story." some compositions/drawings may be "cooler" choices, but hurt your story telling. likewise, following "cool templates" or other processes you find will do the exact same thing if you're not thinking about what you're trying to say, and how you're saying it in the language of comics.

this leads into something else i was reminded of, never really thinking how it applied to comics before.

"using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation"
this was a personal motto Bruce Lee had, and it was written on the back of a medallion he wore. the idea was basically that anything is possible. there are no limits - but as soon as you develop a routine or style for doing things, you're endangering yourself from progression and create your own limitations on what you're capable of doing or expressing.

this is really cool to me in the aspect of making comics and drawing in general. there are many different "styles" or "ways" of creating a comic or drawing. we can learn from these different ways others have already found, but as soon as we adopt one of these ways, the possibilities of creating our own unique expressions are limited to that one way.

so basically, as we speak the language of comics - it takes good old fashioned hard work and practice to use that language and have the unique expression that is yourself come from that.