Some Bill Mauldin finds.

Bill Mauldin(1921-2003) was a cartoonist during and after World War II, most famous for his creations "Willie and Joe", which first appeared in the 45th
I'm not qualified to speak of Mauldin's life history as others have done , but I have found a vintage magazine, showcasing his work.

Mauldin insisted on drawing his wartime cartoons in the field.  Unlike many domestically produced cartoons or propaganda pieces, there is very little depiction of the enemy, silly, threatening or otherwise such as in the Disney film "Education for Death".  Nor is there a lot of "wacky" humor, a-la the "Private Snafu" shorts, or "New Yorker" style drollery.

     In fact, the life of a soldier comes off as depressing and mundane.

 Rumor has it that Mauldin's gags ticked off more than a few officers, but the army saw fit to publish them, anyway.

   War, the soldier's plight and lifestyle have been examined and depicted for as long as human history, but more often than not, from the outside, with an editorial perspective. 
  Perhaps the reason that Mauldin's wartime work has endured is the simple honesty. 

  In the afterward to the magazine, Mauldin wrote of his fellow soldiers:
     "They've aged 15 to 20 years, have beards, their eyes have bags underneath, and they wear a dopey expression because they need a lot of sleep . Some of them are getting bowlegged and flatfooted from hiking too much. The poor guys have changed so much that I hardly recognize them". 

  I guess that's why he drew the pictures, because sometimes, there are no words.

Academic Discourse

So here's a thing I learned in early 2009 from the late Professor Jeremy "Sweetwater" Mullins, the "Sweetwater System for Academic Discourse".

In what terms do we talk about art? That's like listening to two fanboys (and for sake of argument, let's call them Joe  and Paul ) argue about which movie was better: Dark Knight Rises or the Avengers.

Joe : The Avengers is the best movie of all time

Paul:  Nuh-Uhh, the Dark Knight Rises is

Joe: The Dark Knight Rises is filled with poo and so's your mom!

Paul: Well, the Avengers is Lame, because people who like Firefly are Lame

Joe: Nuh Uh

Paul: Uh huh

 etc. This conversation isn't going anywhere. on what grounds do we base this?

Isn't art just subjective anyway? 

"I don't know much about Art, but I know what I like."

Oh yeah, well There's no accounting for taste. My favorite movie is "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist".

When critics and scholars speak of comedies, either if it's Shakespeare or the Simpsons: they aren't talking about how funny they are(i.e.: how much they like it personally), but about three different (and variable) factors like:

Profficientcy of Craft

  This is the simpliest measuring stick. Every craft, profession (and sub styles and movements) have their own rules and standards.

  For instance, in Architecture, one of the requirements of a structure is that it's stable, and not liable to fall down in the environment in which it's built, or in auto design, that the car run, and not explode.

.

There is a little homework involved with applying the rules of the correct school of design.

 "How to Draw Comic Books the Marvel Way" by John Buscema with Stan Lee's name slapped on the cover to sell copies, has a chapter on 'Storytelling'. Which maintains the BEST way to draw comic books is with exaggerated, heroic poses, exciting compositions with large depth of field and plenty of dutch angles !!

 A comic book page that uses dynamic, changing camera angles and compositions doesn't have to be a fight scene, either. Like this David Mazzucchelli page from Daredevil.

  It's a good sample from a great comic book, and if you read through "Daredevil: Born Again" you'll find that it is indeed drawn "the Marvel Way'.

 But that's no the only way to make a comic.Would this Calvin and Hobbes strip really be improved by "the Marvel Way"? No, because Calvin and Hobbes is crafted due to a different set of rules, a different school if you will.

Profundity of Meaning in (and out) of  Context

  In an earlier post, I ranted about the insistence of meaning and depth for 'legitimate' works of art verses sequences designed just for "pure entertainment". 

   Generally artwork has meaning, sometimes this is very literal

  Such as the clear labels on the objects and elements in this March 2013 Stuart Carlson Political Cartoon.

 and often, that meaning is something different, and more universal than the subject matter. Say you're watching "Finding Nemo". And you see a bunch of full grown adults crying.

 

Here, adults crying.

  "Gosh" thinks you "All these folks are way into Fish".

 

Here, not so much crying.

Were that the case, all of these viewers would get misty eyed every time they saw an aquarium: "Fiding Nemo" may feature fish: but it's not about fish...more like parent/child relationships and stuff.

 Let's go back to that Political Cartoon...

 ...pretty easy to understand, huh? I mean, the events are common knowledge, I know what the Boy Scouts are, and I'm familiar with the BSA's reputed and disputed tolerance policies. I even know that the Boy Scouts' motto is "Be Prepared", so I get a bit of the wordplay. I can evaluate not only where this cartoon is coming from,  but also if the viewpoint is better expressed than others: a unique observation, rather than a common slogan.

Let's look at a different political illustration, this one from 1909...

 

 What the hell is exactly going on? Who are these people? It looks like a midget bellhop with a giant dildo is escorting a forest ranger out of a nondescript building while they leave behind a small clone with a cross-dressing fat maid-man. 

  It helps to know that these are specific likenesses to William Loeb, Jr. Theodore Roosevelt and  William Taft.  It also helps to know that in 1909, that Taft succeeded Roosevelt as President of the United States. Knowing about Roosevelts' public image as an outdoorsman helps explain the forest-ranger type outfit, and  his famous "big stick" policies explains why William Loeb is literally carrying a big stick.
  Like Carlson's 'Boy Scouts' gag, the Roosevelt cartoon personifies an event, and through metaphor, gives an opinion on what transacts. For instance, it seems that the editors of Puck think that Roosevelt's relationship with Taft is agreeable, but moreso on Roosevelt's terms, imagine an alternative magazine cover where william Taft is kicking Roosevelt out of the doorway...it changes the meaning.

It helps to do some homework, because simple context of "Who was President of the United States in 1909 and what did he look like", changes the image from  some kind of 'WTF' meme, to an understandable period opinion piece.

Pure Emotional Reaction on the part of the viewer

This isn't about whether the viewer particularly likes the piece, but if it elicits a reaction.

 Along with awe, arousal, laughter, warm fuzzies and excitement, there's also horror, revulsion, sadness, and disgust.

So it's a safe bet that a picture of a bunch of puppies will evoke a reaction.

d'awwwwww

And a picture of dead babies will definitely evoke an  emotional reaction.

picture not available

Neither Puppies or dead babies alone will make Art with a capital A... but taken alone, neither will well-crafted, but meaningless technical excersise, or a meaningfully clear, but perhaps sterile political observation.

 For Art to take hold, enlighten minds and do all that cool stuff that Art needs to do, stuff's gotta have a combination of all three.


So back to the earlier argument.

   Now, Paul and Joe may still argue about their favorite movies,  but it will be about terms like whether "The Avengers" is a well-crafted action movie according to screen tradition, or if "the Dark Knight Rises" has relevance to the Occupy generation. Is Robert Downey Jr. sillier than Tom Hardy? Does Tom Hardy's silliness run contrary to "Dark Knight Rises"  otherwise serious presentation? Does Chris Evans' seriousness run contrary to "the Avengers" otherwise silly presentation? 

 I doubt this would actually change anybody's mind about their favorite movie,  but Paul may find out stuff about "The Avengers" he hasn't thought about before,  and Joe might agree that although he doesn't like "Dark Knight Rises" personally, that the film does have merit.

 Which is the difference between a whining competition and Academic Discourse.

Kick'n November with some sketchbook exerpts

  Not much to say with this sketch dump, really.

 

This is  a variation on Niccolaides' "Daily composition" exercise from "The Natural Way to Draw" (kickass book, by the way), albeit in comic strip form. 

  The Daily composition is a 15 minute sketch from memory of any scene seen during the past 24 hours. Nothing fancy, nothing precious, nothing to be shared: just do it and move on to the next.

  So Why not a daily 3 panel strip, and train that old brain to think visually and sequentially? Unlike autobiographic strips like James Kochalka's American Elf, the daily strip is not really for sharing (not yet, anyway), more of a variation on a theme. *

  

 

I can't say I'm really happy with what I'm turning out right now, BUT

 to paraphrase Fredrick Nietzsche: "Art is something to be surpassed".

*For those of you curious as to what the strip is portraying, a co-worker had come in that day in a dirty T-shirt, claiming somebody stole his laundry. Since the Michaels' hit squad comes out of the walls if you aren't to dress code, I hiked over to Macy's and got him an $8 work shirt from the clearance rack. 

   If I ever get hired at Dreamworks I hope I don't have to buy people clothes.

mouse out of context

 

As my read through old Mickey Mouse newspaper comics continues, I find myself imbued with a new moral purpose: I will not show out of context images with the notion of corrupting or deconstructing an American institution(besides, "Air Pirates Funnies" did, and they got sued to Hellenbach)

   So if anybody out there has any comments about Minnie and spanking, say them within your own company, for I am obviously too noble to do so.

  

See, here's a beloved children's character reading a book about guns. Which is ridiculous, because Mickey never uses guns. 

 

  Here it may appear that Mickey is torturing a  sickly horse for his own twisted amusement, but the larger context reveals that this is the famous "Tanglefoot' storyline, in which Mickey buys a sickly horse, enters him in a race and nearly destroys all his assets betting on his own race.

 

...I have no explanation for this whatsoever.

A visit from Gregory

Here's my Christmas Card/minicomic for 2011. For reasons I'll detail in a later post, this didn't make it to print this year. (It was fully intended for print, check out the centerfold spread for page three). But in the meantime, Merry Christmas!

a short thought.

Here are some kittens for no particular reason

Continuing with the theme of stage Improv informing storytelling, I’d like to talk about how the game “Half-life” (the stage game, not the video game) can be useful as a focusing tool in the early drafts of a scenario, script or storyboard. The stage game goes that the players improvise a 2 minute scene, then play the same scene at 1 minute, 30 seconds, fifteen seconds, 7, 3 and 1, wherein the scene gets wilder and wilder as people fly into position and scream plot points at the top of their lungs. This is useful in visual storytelling, as Scott McCloud pointed out in page 84 of Understanding comics with an ever-shortening scenario from one full page of panels to merely two. Although in the bare minimum of space, narrative clarity can be lost, I find “half life” to be very valuable as a focusing tool, drawing my attention to the essence of the story spine, which beats need to be hammered, and what is truly extraneous.

(Game proper starts at 50 second mark)

Let’s talk improv. In “Half-Life”, players improvise a 2 minute scene, then replay the same scene, halved, and halved again until it’s one second long.. This is useful in visual storytelling, as Scott McCloud pointed out in page 84 of Understanding comics with a scenario progressively trimmed from one full page of panels to merely two. I find “half life” to be valuable in focusing my attention to which beats need to be hammered, and what can be cut.

In “Half-Life”, players improvise a scene, then replay it, until it’s one second long.. This is useful in visual storytelling, as Scott McCloud pointed out in “Understanding Comics”. “Half Life” focuses attention on what’s importand, and what can be cut.

Improvise a scene. Replay it until it’s one second long.. This is useful in storytelling. You focus on what’s vital.

Improvise until the scene’s one second long! Essence of storytelling!

One second long! Essence! Storytelling!

SHORTEN! ESSENSE! STORYTELING!

SHRESSENSYTELLING!

So comic con San Diego came and went with thunderous noise and many blistered feet. But like always, It was a blast. A mighty blast, complete with....

COSPLAY

MOVIE PEOPLE IN GREAT BIG HALLS!

Rick Baker


Kevin Altieri, staring into your very soul.

AND COMICS PEOPLE IN VERY SMALL HALLS

The Hernandez Brothers, creators of Love and Rockets.

The Nicole Brothers, Ethan (art) and Malachai (story), creators of Axe Cop.

Extra Bonus: the panel was moderated by Kevin Murphy.

Extra-Extra Bonus: Malachai Nicole showed Baby Man how to do the Baby Man Dance!

Extra-Extra- Extra Bonus: somebody asked to take my picture, complimenting me on my "Hunter S. Thomson" Costume.

... The Hell?

Tr!ckster: bringing comics back to CCI?

The complaint: modern comic conventions, particularliry the massive Comic Con International in San Diego, have less and less to do with comics.
Sure, there's a hell of a lot of Anime, CCGs, Cartoons, Console Gaming, Cosplay, Disney fandom, Fanfics, LARP-ing, MMORPGs,Movies, MUDs, PC gaming, TV shows, and several metric tons of Toys... but in such a widespread frenzy , many of these Cons have lost sight of their namesake intent and focus: comic books.
So now there's Tr!ckster : a creator-driven project that includes an expo with seminars right across the street from CCI.
I doubt tr!ckster -style expos are going to supplant the modern fandom-driven convention from it's place in the public eye, but I sure as hell wish there will be more of them.

Stupid, Stupid Fan art

Hey I'm doing a process post. Isn't It lovely that I'm not whining about movies?

Comic Con International places fan art submissions in their Souvenir Book each year corresponding to anniversaries of significant comics creators and characters.

My Submission: The 20th anniversery of Jeff Smith's Bone.

The Method: Ink drawing colored in photoshop. With several concepts and techniques (i.e. "everything that follows") lifted from James Gurney's tutorials and instructional materials. Be forewarned, I don't like color, and it scares me.

It's probably the cheapest shot in any painting demo to start with the line art and say "Here is the lineart I started with", as if Mr or Ms. famous guy scribbled down a masterpiece five minutes before the show.

I'm not a Haute-Schitt famous guy(well, not yet). This line art took me 8-12 hours from thumbnail to final inks to produce. I'm really slow and I don't have work-flow samples to post so you'll just have to live with that.

Here's a value study using only black and white, without any outlines. I did this as a separate layer to serve as more of a guide for value distribution, so as to avoid middle value mumbling.

Gurney-lift #2: Determining a palette for the piece through a color wheel(in this case, a "Yurmby Wheel" consisting of both additive primaries and printers' ink primaries), color scheme ( split complimentary) and a gamut mask. In theory, everything outside the borders of the triangle is off limits, everything inside is okay for beautiful color harmony.
From that mask and wheel, I extrapolated the palette below.

I f I were tech savvy, I'd save that as a swatch set, But I don't like the linear fashion that Photoshop organizes swatches in, which makes it difficult for me to switch between value and hue easily and intuitively as I would a real palette, so this is just another boring old layer, which I switched on and off to sample from. Also, I double-checked my darker tones to make sure there was no "K" (black ink) in their makeup. Black ink muddies colors on the printed page.
The gamut mask and the palette creation are my lifts from James Gurney's book "Color and Light", a pretty engrossing read.

Here's the flats, another grossly overlooked step in famous-dude painter demos(and pretty downplayed, too). I think 80% of the colorists' work is in choosing flats: In which you have the color scheme and "natural" tone and hue of the forms. With flats, you can determine focus, separation of foreground, midground and background (which is why my rocks are purple, but the sky green), all before you lay down a single gradient.
You'll notice I didn't put any white in the flats either(explaining why Phone Bone is sort of pink). I was planning on using pure white, but for emphasis, like painters and stuff.

Aaaand, the final! (Yaaaaay). Possibly, my thoughts on flats come from my shortcomings in rendering. So far the only trick I can boast is using a hard-edged low-flow brush+ a lot of re-sampling to show directional brushstrokes. Plus the old standards of fuzzy+low opacity brushing with a lot of grads.