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Dragon Comics 33

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I suspected this would become a problem early on, no matter how great Dragon looks in profile.

Professional comic artists, people who draw better than I do but perhaps not quite as well as they’d like, typically maintain massive clip files of art, so that they always have references for whatever pose or setting they’d like to draw. Fine artists usually spend a lot of time with live models, again providing them with extensive data on which they can depend when sketching. At the very least, many artists make use of articulated wooden models, which help them understand how the human body is put together and able to move. Barring that, today, if you’ve got a good connection and basic Google-fu, there’s a decent chance that you can find a photographic example of whatever’s inside your mind, if what you want is a fairly common thing from a fairly ordinary perspective.

Even so, you can’t find everything. Certain angles are just not represented in GIS. For example, in Dragon Comic 29, panel 3, I knew that I wanted to draw The Man squatting as he picked Dragon, and I was easily able to find many visual examples of this pose online, but most of them were intended as instruction for athletes, and for educational purposes shot either straight on from the front, or slightly angled from the side. There weren’t as many direct shots from the side, which is what I needed, so I had to extrapolate. And even so, The Man still curves his back in a non-ergonomic fashion. I image that he straightened out before he began lifting, so as not to hurt himself. He’s bigger than Dragon, but Dragon’s no featherweight, either.

Sometimes, I take pictures of myself in certain poses to help me see how to draw them. The more comics I draw, the less I have to do this.

The thing I couldn’t imagine, or Google, or photograph, of course, was my main character’s head. I could guess how it might look straight on, but I couldn’t be certain because there’s no frame of reference and my relationship with perspective is tricky. When I had the idea for comic 33, I needed a way to double check that what existed in my mind made sense in the reality of the comic, which I will discuss in tomorrow’s post. Like the smashing of the fourth wall, I think this new technique in my arsenal will help add more dimension to what the rabbit correctly asserted is a rather two-dimensional set of illustrations.

 

 

 

Dragon Comics 32

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If we’re using the Andy Kaufman metric, this comic is a complete success because it amuses me.

The danger of time travel is not that you might become your own grandpa. It's that you might have to clean up your own mess.

The danger of time travel is not that you might become your own grandpa. It’s that you might have to clean up your own mess.

We’re just taking our meta experiment as far as it can go. The 4-panel layout has some particular limitations in terms of what you can do horizontally and vertically, but it also allows for this perfect setup mocking the passage of time.

Personally, I find time travel to be primarily comedic. I’ve never seen a time travel story that actually made sense, and while I was a big fan of Quantum Leap in its time, a lot of what was going on there was more fantasy than science fiction. There’s an X-Files episode that covers time travel as well, but the storyline has a guy from the future returning to the past to kill the people responsible for discovering time travel, because the knowledge of how to conquer time has made the world a horrible place. Generally speaking, though, time travel stories are ridiculous. Looper, for instance. If you can send people back in time, wouldn’t it made more sense to just send them farther back? Instead of sending back assassins and paying them in precious metal and then forcing them to assassinate themselves and run the risk of them balking at that task, why not just send your targets directly to the Jurassic era and let them be eaten by dinosaurs for free? I know people loved that movie, but I found it completely nonsensical. If I were a criminal and going to break the time travel law anyway, I can think of a million better things to do in the past than kill people.

As for the comic, originally the gag was just going to be that Dragon goes to all this trouble to see the future, only to learn that the future holds no surprises: Dragon will be drawing. But I think having the kids in there adds another dimension: Dragon realizes that jumping ahead to the future means that certain things have been left undone in the interim, and then we get a final zinger when the girl references traveling back in time.

I also like some of the poses I’ve gotten the different characters into. In reality, The Man cannot kneel like that, on account of a sudden and unplanned high-velocity meeting of his knee with a guardrail, which resulted in the metal volume of his patella being somewhat higher than that of a normal human. The rabbit really would wrap her ears around her eyes, if she could, to unsee anxiety producing activity. In panel 2, I guess the fox is jumping off the otter’s back to whack the remains of the shattered 4th wall with the broom. That is what is happening. And I also like the way the otter’s tail wraps around the panel frame for balance. And I’m glad the animals in panel 3 have taken it upon themselves to clean up the mess, so that panel 4 Dragon can draw in a clean environment.

That’s the shocking revelation of adulthood. Whatever it is that you do, you will most likely keep doing it.

Dragon Comics 31

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This is something I’ve been looking forward to doing for weeks and weeks, almost since I started drawing Dragon Comics. Are you not amused?

In my defense, the rabbit is definitely getting cuter. And cut and paste is easier than trying to make the characters looks like the same characters every time.

In my defense, the rabbit is definitely getting cuter. And cut and paste is easier than trying to make the characters looks like the same characters every time.

More or less, I was basically able to recreate what appeared in my mind when the idea came to me, which is progress. Still not perfect, but the main idea is communicated by the illustration, I think. I’m fairly pleased with the shattered glass effect in panel 4. It could use some more work, but, once again, the witching hour is at hand and the terms of my agreement with myself say that the comic goes up, perfection be damned.

This kind of playing with meta perspective pleases me greatly, and it’s so well-suited to comics and cartoons. Probably the most extreme and well-known example of 4th wall breaking in animation would be the 1953 Chuck Jones Looney Tunes classic, “Duck Amuck,” in which the animator spends 7 minutes torturing Daffy Duck with inappropriate scenery changes, repeatedly erases him with a giant pencil wielded by an unseen hand, and, since this cartoon relies heavily on the viewer’s knowledge of trope, replaces an (open, functioning) parachute with an anvil. There’s always got to be an anvil. For an added bonus, the sketch ends by doubling the self-referential nature of the narrative while pushing it firmly back into place by revealing that the sadistic cartoonist is actually Bugs Bunny, screwing with his old nemesis Daffy. After establishing a refreshing commentary that reflects the separate world (reality) influencing the cartoon, the end sequence encloses the entire story back in the cartoon world.

I could never be so cruel to my characters who, as you may realize, represent my actual loved ones, none of whom have even tried to convince a hunter that it was Dragon season. I just like to play. In fact, as I get older, that kind of classic cartoon violence-for-the-sake-of-violence makes me more and more uncomfortable. Apparently, some of us become gentler with age. That kid of cartoon violence is funny. It’s just not fair. I would rather wait 3 seasons to watch Aang spend 8 minutes fighting Firelord  Ozai before defeating him with compassionate nonviolence than see any number of falling anvils. Don’t get me wrong; falling anvils are still hilarious. Epic storytelling is just more fun.

Please note that even after the fourth wall has been completely shattered, The Man goes right on breaking it. He’s funny like that.

 

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Not that I precisely understand Facebook’s algorithms, but it seems pretty likely to me that Facebook doesn’t like it when you link to the same blog every single day. When I first started blogging, it seems like I actually got a lot more traffic, and a lot more Facebook likes. Now it’s leveled off, so my assumption is that Facebook isn’t showing my updates to as many people, which means fewer people are liking them, which means fewer people are seeing them. A vicious circle.

Lacking a publicity budget and not being overly active on any other forums, it’s hard to see how to increase my reach. Unless my work is so great that everyone who reads it just naturally and organically shares it. OK: generate better work so that people just naturally like and share it.

I *can* get better with practice. But do I?

I *can* get better with practice. But do I?

For most of my life, I was the type of person who either took immediately to a new skill, or gave up immediately on a new skill. It’s fortunate (or, possibly, the cause of this behavior) that I found myself naturally good at enough things that it was not immediately apparent that I was a quitter, or that I wasn’t learning certain important skills. (Seriously, I don’t think I knew my 12 times tables until college.) Not until my 30s did it ever seem imperative to me that subpar skills should be honed, that time should be spent doing things I wasn’t good at. So the Dragon “I can get better with practice” comic still amuses me, and guides me. It can guide you too, if you carry it around with you at all times and refer to it for guidance in times of need.

I stand by this princess.

I stand by this princess.

Getting better still isn’t a guarantee of success, which is another life lesson for me. Take Princess Sealestia of Aquastria. Although she’s a simple drawing, she took me about a month to complete, primarily because I had no idea what I was doing and had to learn the skills as I went. She still cracks me up. She still seems like a great idea to me. She gets more page views than any other design in my RedBubble shop. She gets compliments, too. But no one seems to want to take her home. Why not? She’s adorable. She’s available as a sticker for $2.32. That makes her versatile. She could be a smartphone case, or a notebook cover, or a window decal.

That cat is never going to get tired of that fish.

That cat is never going to get tired of that fish.

And finally, being worse isn’t an indicator of failure. It is certain that my writing is objectively better than that of Stephanie Meyers, but it isn’t more successful. I don’t think “Kitty Sees 3 Fishes” is a masterpiece; it’s the oldest drawing in the shop, and it’s actually something I dashed out in a few minutes. In fact, I think I spent more time converting it to a digital format than I did painting it. But it’s one of my most successful designs. How? Why? Should I be doing more in this vein? The idea of the picture still amuses me. But as an older, more accomplished artist, I look at this image and think, “Where are kitty’s feet?”

Anyway, this is a blog post, and these are 3 items in my shop. Do with them as you will. (I hope what you will do is like and share them with your social networks and expose more people to the magic of QWERTYvsDvorak.)

Dragon Comics 30

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It's true. He does smell delightful.

It’s true. He does smell delightful.

When I showed him the illustrations, before I added the text, he said, “I’m so glad you got outside.” Figuring out how to draw the Milky Way was the fun part of this drawing. Getting the silhouettes right was also something of a challenge, but not as much as it would have been 29 comics ago.

In case you’re wondering where Dragon’s tail is, it is flat and limp without the cave’s magic, and therefore spilling down the hill with no curl whatsoever.

In reality, I spend far too much time outside the cave. Why, just yesterday I went to 2 parties and 3 stores, and later found out that I missed an old friend passing through town due to my own busy-ness. And today I attended a Girl Scouts Brownies meeting for the first time since 1981. Fascinating. Getting the comic written is getting harder as the frantic part of the year encroaches, but I’m committed to at least 100 of them before I reevaluate.

Like what you see? Why not support the artist by clicking on the blogroll links to your right?

 

 

Dragon Comics 29

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Of all the work for hire I’ve done in my life, I’m perhaps most proud of the 30 entries I wrote for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature in the mid 2000s, including the entry on cartooning legend Tex Avery, whose 1949 cartoon short “Bad Luck Blackie” basically ushered the concept of cartoon violence into modernity. In retaliation for his torture of a kitten, a sadistic bulldog is cursed with bad luck, in the form of a variety of hilarious and increasingly unlikely objects that fall on his head whenever a black cat crosses his path.

The first 2 items to fall on the dog’s head are flowerpots; these are city creatures, and flowerpots falling from windowsills are explainable, even if 2 in 1 minute strain plausibility. Then comes the steamer trunk, followed, of course, by a piano. There is some explanation for the falling bricks at a construction site, but little logic behind the live bomb and the now expected, if not completely unlikely, anvil.

In the cartoon’s final moments, as the dog’s bad luck is sealed in seeming perpetuity, three final object fall from the sky onto his head as he runs off into a distance: a plane (OK), a bus (what? Did it fall off a bridge?), and then, for the punchline, a ship. A large ocean liner falls out of the sky, onto the dog. His luck is indeed bad.

In 7 minutes, Avery’s cartoon communicates an absurd logic, one without which we cannot truly enjoy cartoons. It’s the same logic explained in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Roger, the animated rabbit, and Eddie, the live action human, have been handcuffed together. As Eddie furiously saws at the handcuffs he snaps at Roger to stand still. In a good faith effort to help, Roger slips out of his bonds and leaves Eddie to his task. Eddie notices that Roger is no longer chained to him, and snarls, “Do you mean to tell me you could have taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?”

“No, not at any time,” Roger explains. “Only when it was funny.”

That is the essence of cartoon logic. Anything can happen. But only when it’s funny.

This is a lot of what I love about cartoons.

The Animaniacs summarized the boundaries and possibilities of cartoon logic in the 1993 short, “I Am the Very Model of a Cartoon Individual,” jamming a maximum number of tropes into 75 seconds of music. An illustration of an anvil falls from the pages of a book, manifesting with a heavy clang onto the head of a pirate. Yakko Warner sings, “From this bag here why I can pull most anything imaginable, like office desks and lava lights and Burt who is a cannibal.”

Anything imaginable, as long as it’s funny.

Peter does it in Family Guy and Pinky Pie does it in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

And this is what Dragon is doing today. I love cartoons. I love drawing cartoons. It’s unlikely that I’ll get any worse at it. This strip gives me hope that I might be getting better.

But I wanted to examine the Horsehead Nebula! And shoot the fun size trebuchet. And maybe eat a banana, or some other piece of fruit off the Carmen Miranda hat.

But I wanted to examine the Horsehead Nebula! And shoot the fun size trebuchet. And maybe eat a banana, or some other piece of fruit off the Carmen Miranda hat.

I Gots Nuffin’

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O my god I am so very very tired.

O my god I am so very very tired.

We drove with the kids to the north rim of the Grand Canyon and back, stopping at every culturally significant landmark along the way, and my brain is sort of a humming white noise wrapped in a fine network of red pain. We ate up the state of Arizona, and it was delicious, but a meal that big is bound to give a dragon indigestion. Anyway, the idea of drawing or writing anything more complicated than what you’re seeing here is simply laughable.

Look how committed I am! Updating the blog even though I may actually be asleep who even knows what is going on. This is for you, my beloved Internet. Love me! I love you! Please don’t reject me even though my drawing skills are questionable and ability to budget my time compromised.

We did see bison at the north rim, a hundred of them, up close, maybe a couple of feet away from our open car windows (attempt at your own risk). We could hear them grunting and snuffling. We did not attempt to pet them. Although we were tempted.

It’s comically dragonalicious

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Frantically uploading blog pages while my horrible cat (not to be confused with the amusing cats in my comics–this cat is truly a trial) tries to sneak her little furry foot onto the keyboard. She’s sort of languid and lackadaisical about it, as if she either doesn’t notice she’s doing it, or somehow thinks that I won’t notice she’s doing it, even though I’ve removed her foot from the keyboard 20 times in 5 minutes. She knows very well what she’s doing. Now she’s purring atop a mountain of junk mail.

Good grief.

As an antidote to all that, here is a humorous dragon, whose sole purpose in life is allowing me to gratuitously use the word “flocculent.” Look it up.

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Capricorn, a flocculent dragon

Beyond dragons and mandalas, I’m at a bit of a crossroad here. I have tons of T-shirt ideas, but I’m spending 10 or 15 hours a week on the comics, and my tendonitis can’t take that much more time on the table. I’ve got about a month to get the shop in order for the holidays. I don’t want to give up anything. But I can’t do everything.

I may try cartooning with pencil and paper on vacation and see if I like the results. It might be a little faster, if less impressive and less colorful. Anyway, just going where the road takes me.

Dragon Comics 26

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Sigh…optimistically, I’d like to believe that writing a sizable number of comics (let’s say 100, in which case we are 25% of the way there) should help develop my cartooning skills to a somewhat higher level. And yes, they are improving, but realistically, I think I need some more formalized instruction, if only through some kind of web module.

What I’m saying is that Dragon jumping up on down on the snake’s corpse is not quite right. There’s something missing from my depiction, both in terms of accurately portraying the act of jumping up and down in a recognizable form, as well as in terms of the comedic value that such a drawing should communicate to the reader.

Not funny enough?

Not funny enough?

However, The Man asks a perfectly cromulent question. How long has Dragon been sitting inside that magical cave, drawing? Also, the expression on The Man’s face, and the way he’s desperately trying not to look, maybe are kind of funny.

In panel 3, the way the snake is lolling on its back, it’s sort of asking for a beatdown.

Dragon Comics 24

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The Man is the one with the real vendetta against the Kindles, they're a convenient focus for Dragon's rage.

The Man is the one with the real vendetta against the Kindles; they’re a convenient focus for Dragon’s rage.

This was a fun one to draw. I’m particularly enamored of the Godzilla stuff going on in panel 3, and I was pleased to figure out how to draw the second panel without using a source image or looking at myself in the mirror. My only sorrow is the SFX words in panel 4, which are OK, but didn’t seem quite right.

In case anyone gets the wrong idea, I never take my aggression out on the children. That stuff is reserved for The Man. Don’t worry; he can take it. But the thing is, when dragons get angry, you don’t want to get in their way. Fortunately for the world, Dragons are slow to true anger.