Travis Walton

One thing I took out of Travis Walton's discussion was how there are so many different approaches in comics, that there isn't one way to pencil or one way to ink, that within a single job your creativity can shine through and you can make your mark.

Sorry this one's so short, I kept forgetting to write this. >_<

Beta Comic - Final Treatment - Aileen

Making Comics - Tout Seul - Aileen Thomas

(Pronounced "Too Sell.")

In Making Comics this week I read several chapters in order to finish it so I plowed through a lot of really great information. But I want to talk about the tools an artist uses. Armed with the basic information given by the writer I tried to guess what kind of tool Chaboute used in Tout Seul. Judging by the coarseness of the drawings, the little thickness variety and the fierceness of the detail I guessed he used nib pens of different sizes.



Then I saw this video where Chaboute himself was talking about the inspiration behind Tout Seul and you see a shot of him using those tools. I made a lucky guess.

As for the video, it's all in French, so I'm sad about that.

Tout Seul - Aileen Thomas

(Pronounced "Too Sell" with a French inflection.)

1. EVENT: Primarily Secondary... although only somewhat. The event is when the younger sailor decides to leave a note for Tout Seul. He asks "What would make you happy?" Until this point all of the scenes we've had with Teut Seul were somewhat light hearted, albeit naive. As he reads his dictionary he imagined a great battle stalled by a butterfly, he envisioned his tiny lighthouse as a labyrinth and even tried to envision what an oboe might look like. Upon receiving this note he looks after where the sailors have gone and stands motionless. This idea sticks with him and begins to change him. Soon he finds himself reading words like "solitude" which strikes at his heart and "monocotyledon" whose definition he cannot begin to fathom. On and on he thinks about this simple question until finally he acts and his whole world is changed.

2. PG and a half, for brief language (unless you're French and these words are more common to you).

3. Springboard - The author had to know French. Just kidding, um...The artist must have studied a lot of boats and learned at least some basics on boating in order to get the images to be convincing. I decided to learn boat terms since they're mentioned and I found these nifty diagrams.










4. Well, my story takes place in a desert, so no boats. However I am using a tree ... I could learn correct terms for the tree and for the freeway nearby...?

Hellboy, Aileen Thomas

1. Rising Action: Hellboy is faced with the cold, hard fact that the people for whom he works find that Roger, the homunculous, is expendable. He poses a dangerous threat should he decide to turn against them for, after all, he isn't human. Hellboy asks if there will be a time that they decide he too is expendable. As he faces an alien threat this theme of human vs inhuman beats heads until the point where Hellboy has to make a decision on whether or not destroy Roger.

2. Rating: PG-13 for language, dark themes and mild violence.

3. Springboard: World War II, design and poetry. People have already talked about WWII and Nazis so I'm going to talk a little about this conqueror worm from Edgar Allen Poe's poem.

There are many interpretations and analyses that people have made about this poem. The average man (at least those who post responses on the internet which may or may not be average people, perhaps less) seem to all find it as the story of how Heaven stands idly by while men are destroyed. Another popular belief is that it speaks of how our dead bodies are food for the worm.

But according to GradeSaver, ("GradeSaver(TM) ClassicNotes are the most comprehensive study guides on the market, written by Harvard students for students!" - Amazon.com) it says that people are controlled, that there are "unseen forces," such as emotion, that push and pull man. Then as man is controlled angels cannot help them as they destroy themselves. Then, as it is read in the context of the story Ligeia (for which it was originally ended) the girl who reads it interprets that man die because of their lack of will and so with her strong will she later comes back from the grave by taking over another woman's body after she leaves her own.

This plays in really well with Mignola's story in that there is an alien force without body or form that comes into the world by way of a dead host and everything it breathes on become a different creature and are then consumed.

(Go here to read The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe.)

It pays to read the entirety of something. Someone who misuses a quote can be considered a great fool. Take for instance the story of the man who when looking for inspiration opened the Bible to any page and read of the suicide of Judas. Stupidly the man takes that as a sign and goes and kills himself. When trying to find true depth and inspiration one should actually try to learn what their source is saying. Mignola obviously did an actual study of the poem from which he based Hellboy: The Conqueror Worm and was neatly inspired. Had he just read the short poem and gone off his first instincts of the meaning we may have ended up reading a story about zombies and fallen angels instead of the more clever tale of nazis, an alien race, humanity, control, the will of man and the madness of man.


4: Apply: So often I'll go onto the internet, find a little fact and go running with it. Other times I'll actually spend time studying and learn a great deal more as well as eliminate falsehoods. But never have I tried to study a poem further than reading it and talking to peers about it. Even in highschool I'd just come up with ideas, which is good, then I'd let it rest at that. Now I see that such studies can actually become the basis of great inspiration and stories. So, I'm going to just learn everything I can whenever I can and see what brilliance shines.

Blue Pills - Aileen Thomas

Blue Pills.

1. Event: Secondary - Although the story starts with Frederik and Caiti already together the event that set the ball rolling was when he first met her. At that time he was impressed with her and recognized her at the later times they saw each other. As they started to date his feelings for her had grown immensely allowing him to be more able to handle the fact that she had HIV. At the moment she told him, though that was also an event, the ball had already been rolling so I didn't pick that. Kind of like how the Event in Macbeth was when he met the weird sisters and the idea to become king was first place in his head.

2. R For Nudity, Sexual Themes and Language. (Although all meaningfully used in relation to HIV, nonetheless they're there.) This is definitely meant for mature audiences.

3. Well the specific knowledge needed was an understanding of the disease. Frederik, the main character, learned from Caiti, doctors and so on. I frankly learned about it more in depth just from this book. I was concerned with life expectancy and according to a report on About.com studies show that those with medication can expect 2/3rds of a normal life expectancy. The average French life expectancy in 2011 is 81.19 years according to www.indexmundi.com/france. So someone born with it and medicated can likely live to be about 54 which makes me happy since I was really concerned with their son. Granted these are just numbers and one cannot really expect anything but sometimes it's nice to know and hope.

4. Uh, well I'm going to be having a character whose life is tied to a tree, and her life expectancy is about 3000 years. I studied bristlecone pines, which is what she is, and the oldest one is estimated to be 4760 some odd years old. If I wanted I could give her a tree disease and I could do numbers as to how long she'd be able to survive, but that seems rather morbid at the moment.

Making Comics - Blue Pills - Aileen Thomas

This week in Making Comics there was a lot of discussion on emotions and how to portray them. With the use of body language, facial cues, dialogue and symbolism you can communicate to the reader what the character is feeling.




In blue pills a lot of the emotion was helped by symbolism and juxtoposition. For these two panels they were neither on a raft nor in a hairy darkness, but this was how the artist depicted their feelings. One doesn't have to read what is going on to get the gist that in one they are happy and carefree and in the other she is feeling surrounded and frightened.

Jake Parker's Presentation

First I really liked how organized Jake's lecture was. It was also really helpful in teaching about the layouts of comics. I was one of those people who found word bubbles as a problem that covered art or got in the way of what you wanted to draw, but now I see it as an indispensable to forcefully guide the reader's eye where you want it to go. I also learned about the sizing of comics which will be helpful for when I want to make page layouts. Oh and I found his talk about grouping thoughts and ideas as a great tool to make my own comics flow better. Very cool!

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind: Vol 2, Aileen Thomas

!. Character: Primary. Nausicaa herself is a main driving force of the story. She lived a peaceful life but because of war and impending destruction she learns love for all living things and fights to change the road the world is taking.

@. Rated E10 - for cartoon violence

#. Springboard: A lot of bug study must have gone into this to inspire the creatures in the Sea of Corruption. Turns out that the Roly Poly or the Pill Bug is actually called an Armadillidiidae! (No wonder we gave it a nickname.) And it's a "terrestrial crustacean" meaning a shrimp that walks on land. Owners of tarantulas often have some armadillidiidae in the cage with it because they clean - eating feces, mold and stuff. Others try to feed it to pet iguanas but it's not a good idea since they can sometimes poison them. I bet a study of these bugs was an incredible benefit to the process of creating this story. Also they can live for 3 years which as far as I've learned is really good for a bug. Amazing!

$. Over and over again I learn that you should study reference and it will inspire you more. Perhaps Miyazaki knew that he wanted to do a story about Nausicaa and bugs and studied the Armadillidiidae and decided that the cleaning and poison aspects would really add to the story, who knows? So I plan on studying more about trees so that I can know what kind of tree I want and maybe learn something new that will affect the story itself.

The Ohmu are coming for your children...

Final Project Treatments by Aileen

1. Idea

• I've always wanted to sit on a tree in the median of a highway.
  *Idea from: Sitting in class doodling and throwing ideas around in my head during conversation, but originally there's an on-ramp onto a free way where as the road curves around there's a patch of grass and a tree perfect for sitting on that I really wanted to sit on as a kid.*
  

• What if time travel kept your current age? (...So you can't travel further than your own life span. You travel nine years into the past and you are your 9 year younger self, or at least a duplicate of yourself...)
  *Idea from: That's something I've thought of a lot when watching any story with a time travel plot.*

PART DOS:

1. In ancient times trees were able to personify their spirits allowing them to wander short distances from their roots and protect their tree selves, but very few have this ability now. 2. A girl tree spirit watches as the world grows and as roads are built surrounding her making her home the median of a freeway. 3. She decides she has been watching long enough and wishes to venture farther from her roots. 4. She finds a group of trees who are all lifeless (in the spiritual sense) and feels lonelier than when she was on the freeway median. 5. She returns to her tree and is content to watch the world go by, or 5. A car hits her tree ending her long life.

TOI:

3 "panels"... I'll fix these.










Redo:

Making Comics - Nausicaa - Aileen Thomas

In Making Comics, chapter 2, there was a lot of discussion on characters - making them, giving them life, giving them emotion, etc. In Nausicaa the characters were widely varied and easily distinguished from each other (except Asbel, but he generally introduced himself when needed and he stands out in personality so it wasn't too hard to pick him out).

Making Comics (2) "Moving Pictures"

INTENSITY vs Clarity

Before reading this chapter of Making Comics I never would have said Moving Pictures was at all an intense comic. However, after learning that intensity could be expressed through "virtuoso drawing technique" and such, not just extreme poses, I would definitely say that on the teeter-totter of comics this weighs heavily on Intense. Now not all of the images are like that Mona Lisa, but many are heavily shadowed and play on many shots of extreme lighting. Despite all of the text found in characters' conversations rarely is anything actually revealed in the story or the characters, there is little clarity and much mystery.

Moving Pictures - Aileen Thomas

1. Idea - Secondary. *Spoilers* As the story begins we are introduced to a girl who is being brought into some kind of investigation concerning art. She knows her investigator who is demanding but although she refuses to answer questions straight or at all. But what is their relationship? As the story continues we go to different times and places in her life, piecing together the puzzle that is she. However she lies and evades questions most of the time making this puzzle difficult to decipher. Nonetheless we come to discover that this man is more of a mystery than she is. We learn about their relationship finding that they are lovers but she refuses to love him, yet must want to please him somewhat by bringing him the art he requested and by showing up to be questioned at all and thereby that mystery is solved...ish. (Note - this is not the guy in the picture, but it sums up her attitude.)


2. Rating - PG. It has some paintings drawn in it which are nudes, so it's tasteful but requires maturity. Also, starting on page 83 there's a scene where the fact that these two are sleeping together but nothing more is shown. The F word is somewhere in there, but its use is odd and when I tried I couldn't find it again. The fact that it is used at all merits a 13 but it was used so oddly that I hesitate...

3. Springboard - A lot of art history had to be known. It was necessary to know little known works of art held in basements as well as famous works that were originally held in this museum in France and where they were moved to. I did some research on what the Chateau du Loc Dieu and the Chauvigny which are said to maybe hold a copy of the Mona Lisa, but the former I could only find information in French (google translate made it sound like a dump) and the latter is a popular tourist location.

Making Comics, Aileen

I read through exactly page 25 and it was about how to use the images to tell your story.
Although a Superhero Comic and thereby prone to a lot of action I noticed much of the story telling was done Moment to Moment, which was discussed in this chapter as a way to tell stories by what you put in each frame. (Here are some examples just from the first chapter.)

"All Star Superman" A Review by Axman13 . . . I mean Aileen

(To understand the "Axman13 . . . " joke search for Dot Dot Dot on Youtube.)


1. Analyze: Character

The character of Superman has gone through many forms and evolutions but in essence when people speak of him we are generally on the same page. As a kid I revered Superman, though I'd never seen his movies nor read any of his comic books. Frankly I didn't even really watch the 1940's cartoon regularly. Yet I knew who he was and thought he was the coolest superhero ever.

To me Superman was more of an ideal than a character, and I felt like his movies were too...how do you spell hokey? Well, that's what they were. The 1940's and the1990's cartoon series were, as far as I'm concerned, some of the best representations of this hero. Nonetheless I've never delved into the comics from which he was born (that doesn't mean I haven't wanted to). I'd always been overwhelmed by the number of them and so I've kept myself out of the tangled mass. That is until All Star Superman.

All Star Superman works under the assumption that you are already familiar with the characters of superman's world, such as Jimmy Olsen, and does not bother to delve into background stories or origins. To remind you of the story of Superman himself we have a quick page with four panels and very little text. (See image 1.) But this series is more concerned with the future, the legacy and character of superman, than it is about anything else.

The character of Superman himself is that of the small town good guy with a true heart, which is difficult for many writers to handle and keep interesting. In the old days just leaving the good guy as is was enough thereby making him a role model for others to follow. However the formula generally used since the sixties for audiences to keep interest is by giving our good guy a weakness or insecurity to which we can relate. (In Disney's Hercules we were introduced to a kid stronger than he could handle and later unsure in love and Marvel's Spiderman had all sorts of issues of growing up and unpopularity.)

***Spoiler***In All Star Superman a close call allows Superman to become stronger than ever, insomuch that his body itself begins to breakdown. (A far cry better than having him be a grossly irresponsible bleep.) So in short - yay!

2. Rating: PG, because of cartoon violence, mild language and large, jiggly, parasite men.

3. Springboard:

Identify: The writer obviously had to know his Superman history. Heck, he even has Krypto, aka Superdog (whose existence is still a mystery to me and therefore will be a point of study on a slow day) make an appearance in a flashback. Many other characters from several Superman stories make appearances, some of which I don't know since they were probably comic book only creations. As far as the science involve, I think it wasn't so much a study of physics so much as a review of old college notes and some review of Superman science that was made by previous writers to make up reasons for his being.

So it turns out, after some Superman studying, that Krypto was a test subject of Kal-el's to test his escape pods from Krypton. Krypto's ship was knocked off course but eventually found its way to Earth where he was reunited with the now teenage Clark Kent. Ta da!

Syllabus Subtitled with my name - Aileen

As I was sitting in class allowing my mind to casually think about what it Is that I Want, the conclusion was very clear : I want to know what to read.

I have tried on a few occasions to read comics but when I would read the issue I would realize I was halfway through the series or that it was simply not as interesting as the cover. Where and how do I find what I would enjoy? I have read several manga simply because they are easy to browse through but I want to see what kind of stuff do we make? What's superman's story? I love Superman, always have, but which series would I not be angry with the portrayal of my hero? And which one would not be too corny and dull? (A very delicate balance is needed here.) So how do I judge one comic from another? That's the main question I think.

Also, I want to learn the processes of making a comic. Are there teams or do people usually work alone? What's the job aspect like? (Now after I have written this we learned a little from Jack Wyatt - very cool.) Does it have to be ink?

Let's not forget history, I really enjoy learning about the evolution of genres, styles and characters.

To top all of that off I would also like little homework. >_< I'm just so tired all of the time now...

Best Coolest and Aileen!

http://artanimated.blogspot.com/

Tada! It's brand new, and very ... dull.