At 10/28/23 02:48 PM, RKarlto wrote:
Struggling with this... is it worthwhile to put significant time and focus into making comics when Herge already did it better? Making comic books professionally would take significant motivation, and that motivation would only come from the belief that it's a valuable thing to do. Maybe the highest value of the medium has already been made, between Tintin and Asterix. They are funny, admirably drawn, and cleverly written without being self-serious.

I'm not asking for you to tell me what I'm doing has value, I have to decide that for myself. I'm trying to think through it. If it's truly worth doing, the full-hearted motivation will come.

The dark side is that I'm 29.5 and this thread is deeply unprofessional. Making comics has been more than a hobby for me but I've never even really thought about it as business. It could be this is ultimately a cautionary tale.

I had a dream once that I was Charles Crumb, trying to escape the house, with Robert way ahead of me. Charles failed to make into adulthood, while Robert spun a career out of his talent for drawing. Professionalism is the answer - reliably providing value - but you can't full-heartedly sell your work if it's an imitation of a greater creator.

If Tintin is the stronger work, my attempts to distinguish my own - stealing Alan Moore's formal panelling, using photos to boost the drawings like Alex Ross, using a Joycean steam-of-consciousness narrative style, and plotting the panels to popular song lyrics - are pathetic.

In the arrogance of my inspiration for my book, I figured the ultimate test of its worth is that women like it.

We'll see. It has to get finished first.

At 3/10/24 09:11 PM, Template88 wrote:

At 10/28/23 02:48 PM, RKarlto wrote:
Struggling with this... is it worthwhile to put significant time and focus into making comics when Herge already did it better? Making comic books professionally would take significant motivation, and that motivation would only come from the belief that it's a valuable thing to do. Maybe the highest value of the medium has already been made, between Tintin and Asterix. They are funny, admirably drawn, and cleverly written without being self-serious.

I'm not asking for you to tell me what I'm doing has value, I have to decide that for myself. I'm trying to think through it. If it's truly worth doing, the full-hearted motivation will come.

The dark side is that I'm 29.5 and this thread is deeply unprofessional. Making comics has been more than a hobby for me but I've never even really thought about it as business. It could be this is ultimately a cautionary tale.

I had a dream once that I was Charles Crumb, trying to escape the house, with Robert way ahead of me. Charles failed to make into adulthood, while Robert spun a career out of his talent for drawing. Professionalism is the answer - reliably providing value - but you can't full-heartedly sell your work if it's an imitation of a greater creator.

If Tintin is the stronger work, my attempts to distinguish my own - stealing Alan Moore's formal panelling, using photos to boost the drawings like Alex Ross, using a Joycean steam-of-consciousness narrative style, and plotting the panels to popular song lyrics - are pathetic.

In the arrogance of my inspiration for my book, I figured the ultimate test of its worth is that women like it.

We'll see. It has to get finished first.

Not sure how well this notion has aged, but from my perspective the way your art looks is interesting but theres this disturbing energy behind it as though the creator/content is unwholesome in some way. People who want to be done with it as quickly as possible might describe it as 'creepy' but thats lazy.

I sense loneliness, a desire to capture and connect with people. The content is always about reaching out and being in and around people, but the tone is not warm despite the characters imitating pleasant actions. It feels cold and unnatural, artificial, and the discrepancy between the characters and the backgrounds just makes me feel even more isolation and disconnect. It is as though an alien (from outer space) is parsing human interaction and society, nearly perfectly rendering the environment around them in great detail but misunderstanding and misplacing the human element.

The backgrounds distract from and outpace the people, but even beyond that what the people are doing and saying makes them seem like simulacrums more than humans. Perhaps the thing to focus on isnt making the most detailed and accurate backgrounds possible but making people seem relatable and natural (in context). Make people in backgrounds instead of backgrounds that happen to have people in them.

At 3/10/24 09:11 PM, Template88 wrote:

At 10/28/23 02:48 PM, RKarlto wrote:
Struggling with this... is it worthwhile to put significant time and focus into making comics when Herge already did it better? Making comic books professionally would take significant motivation, and that motivation would only come from the belief that it's a valuable thing to do. Maybe the highest value of the medium has already been made, between Tintin and Asterix. They are funny, admirably drawn, and cleverly written without being self-serious.

I'm not asking for you to tell me what I'm doing has value, I have to decide that for myself. I'm trying to think through it. If it's truly worth doing, the full-hearted motivation will come.

The dark side is that I'm 29.5 and this thread is deeply unprofessional. Making comics has been more than a hobby for me but I've never even really thought about it as business. It could be this is ultimately a cautionary tale.

I had a dream once that I was Charles Crumb, trying to escape the house, with Robert way ahead of me. Charles failed to make into adulthood, while Robert spun a career out of his talent for drawing. Professionalism is the answer - reliably providing value - but you can't full-heartedly sell your work if it's an imitation of a greater creator.

If Tintin is the stronger work, my attempts to distinguish my own - stealing Alan Moore's formal panelling, using photos to boost the drawings like Alex Ross, using a Joycean steam-of-consciousness narrative style, and plotting the panels to popular song lyrics - are pathetic.

In the arrogance of my inspiration for my book, I figured the ultimate test of its worth is that women like it.

We'll see. It has to get finished first.

Not sure how well this notion has aged, but from my perspective the way your art looks is interesting but theres this disturbing energy behind it as though the creator/content is unwholesome in some way. People who want to be done with it as quickly as possible might describe it as 'creepy' but thats lazy.

I sense loneliness, a desire to capture and connect with people. The content is always about reaching out and being in and around people, but the tone is not warm despite the characters imitating pleasant actions. It feels cold and unnatural, artificial, and the discrepancy between the characters and the backgrounds just makes me feel even more isolation and disconnect. It is as though an alien (from outer space) is parsing human interaction and society, nearly perfectly rendering the environment around them in great detail but misunderstanding and misplacing the human element.

The backgrounds distract from and outpace the people, but even beyond that what the people are doing and saying makes them seem like simulacrums more than humans. Perhaps the thing to focus on isnt making the most detailed and accurate backgrounds possible but making people seem relatable and natural (in context). Make people in backgrounds instead of backgrounds that happen to have people in them.

At 3/10/24 10:10 PM, Template88 wrote: I'd like to reiterate that the art is interesting enough on its own to be worth looking at and appreciating, but it is not successfully telling a story in a non distracting fashion, and again its not because the art is bad, its because elements are being misapplied, or the order of operations/priority is wrong. Backgrounds should only overtake priority in a comic to establish mood or setting, and yours completely overtake and distract from the characters in the way they are drawn, colored and composed.

but of course this is ignoring the writing of the characters entirely which is out of my purview of advice to give
I could only picture myself writing comedy, slice of life or reality isnt really my thing.

At 5/18/24 08:20 PM, RKarlto wrote: I'm listening to Harry Potter while coloring in these stupid backgrounds. Harry Potter has all the emotion, absurdity, and brilliance you could ever want in a comic. Listening to it makes me aspire to draw it all. A lifetime's work. But requiring exponentially more skill than I have.

At 5/18/24 08:33 PM, Template88 wrote:

At 5/18/24 08:20 PM, RKarlto wrote: I'm listening to Harry Potter while coloring in these stupid backgrounds. Harry Potter has all the emotion, absurdity, and brilliance you could ever want in a comic. Listening to it makes me aspire to draw it all. A lifetime's work. But requiring exponentially more skill than I have.

Try Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationalty sometime. I'm not a fanfic person, even calling this a fanfic doesnt feel fair. Its too good to be a fanfic. This is harry potter if Harry was questioning the things that are happening to him in the wizarding world, and its quite funny. I hope you enjoy it.