enter the wonderful world I have created...

My idea is for a 20-30 page story about a depressed college student who has just gone through a hard breakup and must deal with the emotions that the split brings out in him. It will presented in a traditional comic book one shot format and will, most likely, be black and white. The main character of the story is named Matt, he's an average college art major but recently seems to be slipping do to personal problems. We meet Matt for the first time the morning after he has broken up with his girlfriend, Susan. Our main character seems to have lost a lot of enthusiasm for school work, interacting with friends and classmates, and life in general. Matt is pretty self absorbed during this period in his life and what I hope to do with this in the project is show a intimate and realistic look into the thoughts and emotions of this character as he comes to grips with himself. Matt is a average looking young guy but doesn't view himself positively at all. According to Matt he's out of shape and over weight, and has a large hang up about his hair which he is started to lose even though he's in his mid twenties. Since all of the spot light is on Matt, side characters are going to be regulated to less substantial roles. We will never see what they are thinking, unlike with Matt with whom we have full disclosure. I did this on purpose because to me the focus of the book is how Matt currently perceives his world, and to be honest no one besides himself is of any real importance to him right now. Matt's ex girlfriend Susan will have an ongoing presence throughout the story, though I decided to wait on taking full use of her using her until the book's climax. She could be looked at as the secondary main character, but I have a feeling that's not how the reader will see her, its really more of a one man show. This project will be a venture into unknown territory for me as Ive never tried to do a simple character examination piece before. The setting is common place and unrealistic which may also be difficult for me. Ill be trying to raise the bar on my inking techniques as well and hopefully utilize a new art style which will be effective for this type of book. My work ethic will be about around 10 hours of work a week and as much time as I can realistically fit in during the weekends. I typically come up short on these types of commitments but I feel strongly about sticking to it this time (hope I don't end up eating those words)

boop.Page Analysis Complete.beep

(that's a weird post title)

any way the page I'll be writing a massive love fest to is from Jin & Jam #1 from Hellen Jo and sparkplug books, which is a small independent comics publisher from portland OR. First off I like this entire book, from the Taiyou Matsumoto quote at the start to its back cover doodles, its good stuff. I picked this page to showcase because the book's fight is where I feel Jo's artistic and design prowess really start to move up. What grabs me most for the fight scenes is Jo's choice to switch over to heavy black for all backgrounds. Until this point of action we've had very open clean white backgrounds, so the switch makes the scene feel very enclosed and gives it a different emotion. As opposed to normal manga fight sequences which are very decompressed whne it comes to action (and story), this one moves very quickly and lacks a lot of conscious choreography. On the other hand over half the page's panels are diagonaly layed out which is typical of manga, but this is the first time we see them in the book. I wouldnt nessecarily call this manga either, the books feels a lot like the hybrids you find of american authors whose work pulls from their cultural heritage but only as tools to work with. My favorite thing about the page has to be the text in panel two, the design of the "yes" which is coming out of Jin's mouth is fantastic. The technique is used a few other times in the book but this one really jumped out at me (I imagine Jin really stretching the sound out as she says it for some reason, yeessss!!!) If we have to get critical at all the bottom right corner is the only place I would tighten up or rethink. I love the explosion of material and detail, but I cant seem to get past the fact I feel a little left out on exactly what action is happening. It may appear more obvious to other readers but it looks to me like Jin is throwing the girl through the "floor" of the panel, or she's just wrecking shop into a random box that we as the reader had no previous indication was even there. Still, the brilliance of the "yes" and design of the page's top right panel makes up for anything else the page may do wrong for me. The book runs for about 5 bucks and if you're in portland I recommend heading to Cosmic Monkey on sandy blvd and snagging a copy for yourself, side note: the book also has what may be one of my favorite characters, a cop straight out of Reno 911 who lassos and beats teenagers for quote " being fucking annoying!"

Huzzah

research folder and early treatment are forming nice, I just pulled them fresh out of the oven. and they are tasty!

my creative secrets (take notes)

I find my creative process is usually faulty but also fluid once it gets going. To begin, my work progresses mostly off of ambient thoughts or impulses I have over subjects i like or feelings I have at the time (like 90% of everybody else) Its never too thought out as say "I want to do a sci fi mystery with a team based character set" or something, it often comes off more randomly. I find the biggest fault in this because is that it leaves the projects easy to abandon because I came into them so whimsically. I usually flesh out all principal plot points and story elements in my head first, as I notice i rarely put anything down on paper until late in the game. I think I get nervous about putting anything down because as soon as I do I feel immediate obligation and guilt to make sure and complete the work, and normally I'm just too lazy for that. The concrete evidence of the ideas on paper usually support that they are never going to look as good as I want them to either. One sees the classic case of "as long as ideas stay in my mind they also stay perfect" (its a very pussy cop out/thought pattern) Anyway, getting to the fluid part, once I've saturated a standard notebook with a healthy dose of ian patented story notes i leave time to go through and edit myself three to four times OR I sometimes skip all this and go straight to the boards and start drawing rough pages immediately adding story as pictures appear OR I just combo the two like a wendy's meal (no tomatoes). I have no hang ups about beginning in any particular fashion, so a plus for me is that its helpful that i don't have patterns I have to adhere to (though I dont know if that is a popular problem or not for cartoonists). Once you put anything down on paper and accumulate some momentum there's always an increasing chance it will keep going until its complete ( unless it shows itself to be unsalvageable and an affront to the art world) For environment i tend to work off my kitchen table (editors note: ian no longer owns a kitchen or the aforementioned kitchen table) or drawing board. I also prefer to head to my long boxes for research. It seems to be popular to google on the spot these days, but its distracting and takes me longer as I lose the artistic zen and slow down, so I like to rely on m' comics. Ive gone through a couple projects now and one thing I think that does teach you is time management (maybe), especially if its centered towards getting it done for class (kinda maybe). I find I don't even need to write down my time table much anymore, my instincts can mostly tell me when to put turbines to speed or tighten up asneeded (mostly) So you could say my instincts are like a well trained wild bearded bear trapper of the woods, except the bears I'M trapping are a proper creative comic book work schedule and time managment. dig it. (editors note: I don't where the post went there at the end)

New Artist

I don't know if this is still in line with miles' intent for the assignment, but my new artist of choice is Errol Flynn the actor. I was stalking about in the library's the DVD section looking for Errol Flynn movies at least three times this week, and earlier this past weekend I already went through blockbuster's entire stock of his work. If you don't know the greatest of the "Baron" then my heart knows only pity for you, as Flynny is the rock star of the early golden age of film making. One of his best known film legacies is that he is the greatest sword fighter/swashbuckler (in movie land) of all time. If that's not a sexy enough title to get you hot for the pencil thin mustache then try this: after getting thrown out of every school he attended he left to find adventure as both a ship master, soldier for hire, professional treasure hunter, and police constable (to be snippy none of this is actually proven as fact or Flynn's own awesome bs) just before being discovered and becoming the most popular movie star of his day. During his prime he supposedly put more movie goer asses in seats than classics like Humphrey Bogart, all the while drinking himself to near death and wooing more lovely ladies than he could keep up with. He had a infamous reputation to fight, abuse drugs and booze, boat, and triumphantly enjoy life as much as he possibly could (when he died at the age of 50 the presiding doctors made the statement that he had the body of man of nearly 80). The best of Flynn I've watched so far is the sea hawk (personal favorite), adventures of robin hood (f$%@ing classic), and dodge city. The entire time period of Hollywood during Flynn's era is just fascinating to visit as it carries such a honest joyful love of movie making and entertainment. All the plots are happily recycled, flynn's supporting actors are exactly the same people in almost EVERY film, and its always fun to watch somehow. You cant fight the charisma of Flynn, its too glorious I tell you!