Austin Kleon – Page 566

KEY TO A MAN’S HEART, PT. 2

Monday, September 11, 2006

“I want my stories to feel like memories in a certain way. The uniform panel size is a way of giving equal “emotional” space to each moment.”

– Sammy Harkham, interview

Yesterday I got really lucky at Half Price, and found a perfect copy of the massive 300+ page Kramer’s Ergot 4 selling for eight bucks! (Check out these really cool scans of the original artwork for David Heatley’s contribution, complete with no-repro blue pencilling.) When I took it up to the cashier, he looked at it and said, “So what is that, man? I had no idea where to shelve that thing.”

What is it about getting great deals that’s so damned satisfying? We’ve got some amazing bargains there over the years (best I think was a near-mint copy of Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy on LP for 98 cents–found by Meg, of course–she has the eagle eye).

So in between that, Kramer’s 6, and Scott McCloud’s (outstandingly good) Making Comics, I’m on comic candy overload.

If you’re like me, you’ve got a big week coming, but before you write that long To-Do list, check out our man Tufte on “Lists: Theory and Practice.”

IT’S EDUCATIONAL!

Friday, September 8, 2006

This is a couple-of-months-old page from the first draft of Calamity, when I really didn’t know where I was going (as opposed to now — HA!), and there were twin brothers in the story. I like the background a lot, but the layout is pretty boring: a lot of cut-and-paste and stage-like monologuing. The good news, as we all know, is that you learn just as much by failing as you do by succeeding, and considering that I’ve already thrown out a couple dozen finished pages of artwork, I’m learning a hell of a lot…

There’s something about this time of year, when that fall breeze starts creeping into the air, I immediately think: time to go back to school! But last September, after 17 years, that butterfly in my belly was pinched by the disappointing fact: you’re no longer a student.

Or at least a student who pays tuition.

So, today I’m going to post a couple of quotes by different comic artists about teaching yourself how to do this thing.

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“A comics-art curriculum is interdisciplinary. As comics-art students learn to become literate and visually literate, they need to develop a vast array of skills. They need classes in drawing, writing, computer art, literature, storyboard, and character design. They need research skills, so they can make their stories convincing and make their characters behave and look real enough to come alive on the page or screen.”

– James Sturm, “Comics In The Classroom“

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“…[he] discovered Dickens and Lewis Carroll and Thackeray, superb story-tellers whose tales were often co-created with the most gifted comic artists of their time. Dickens would toil over the drawing board with cartooon illustrators like Cruikshank and Browne (Phiz) to get the graphic portrayal of a character like Sairey Gamp or Mr Pecksniff exactly right, considering his novel illustrations an integral part of his books. (In our desolate time, publishers have no knowledge of this and routinely repting Dickens sans the crucial cartoon art.) George reveled over these novel combinations of art and text and longed to tell stories involving his own comic characters developed in depth over time…”

– Bill Blackbeard on George Herriman, creator of Krazy Kat, in his introduction to Krazy & Ignatz 1931-1932: A Kat a’Lilt with Song

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“This book was created on a lark. Actually, it was never even intended to be a book at all — merely an exercise in one of my sketchbooks. Around the time I began doodling it out, I had been particularly interested in a certain kind of storytelling I had noticed several other cartoonists working with — specifically Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, and David Heatley. It’s an approach wherein you tell a longer story through a series of shorter, unconnected comic strips. Cumulatively they add up to a bigger picture….I went in knowing very little about where the story was going. I made it up page by page as I drew it out….The whole thing was just meant to be fun.”

– Seth, “The Origin of Wimbledon Green”

THE KEY TO A MAN’S HEART

Thursday, September 7, 2006

This is the first four panels of what I hope becomes a 10-page or so comic.

Last night before Project Runway (good riddance, Vincent) we caught this program about the The American Pie Council’s Crisco National Pie Championships–it was pure torture. All the pies looked amazing, and i guess if you win the thing, it could mean thousands and thousands of dollars worth of pie sales. So there were all these grandmotherly types divulging their secrets, and I got to thinking about my dad (who happens to be a great cook in his own right), and his love for pies, and how after my parents got divorced, he was always trying to get me to learn how to bake pies from grandma (Mom’s mom) so that I could teach him.

Then, after reading Maureen’s blog this morning, I started on this.

I’m still really obsessed with the idea of writing long comic stories as a sequence of serialized gag strips. Last week I read through Lynda Barry’s The Freddie Stories, and it really blew my mind the way that the individual pieces of Freddy’s story were contained in these four-panel comics, but by stringing them together (the book is laid out in a horizontal format, so the two-page spread contains the four panels of each of the original comics), Lynda built this moving narrative. (I’ve harped about this technique before.)

Anyways, with this comic I’m trying to do Lynda’s “auto-bifictional-ography.”

Oh, and another big inspiration these days is David Heatley. Check out the comic he’s currently working on, “Black History.“

THE HEROES IN THIS BATTLE ARE DUMPSTER DIVERS AND PACKRATS

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

$Esquire\'s Things a Man Should Know About Marriage: A Groom\'s Guide to the Wedding and Beyond$

I’ve been thinking lately about paper.

After the Great Powerbook Crash of ’06, I’m growing ever more skeptical of digital media. Even though I do a great deal of my drawing on the computer, I’m rediscovering the joy and permanence of filling notebooks.

And ever since we had to cancel our subscription to the New York Times, it’s been a real treat to head over to the future parents-in-law’s to dirty up my fingers with newsprint.

* * *

What else got me thinking about paper?

Cartoonist Kevin Huizenga (who has a new book coming out soon) had a great post a few days ago about Bill Blackbeard, the history of archiving Krazy Kat strips, and Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold. Here’s the jacket copy from Double Fold:

Since the 1950s, our country’s libraries have followed a policy of “destroying to preserve”: They have methodically dismantled their collections of original bound newspapers, cut up hundreds of thousands of so-called brittle books, and replaced them with microfilmed copies — copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age. Half a century on, the results of this policy are jarringly apparent: There are no longer any complete editions remaining of most of America’s great newspapers. The loss to historians and future generations is inestimable.

In my brief tenure working in a public library, I’ve witnessed this depressing phenomenon first-hand. Due to budget restrictions, libraries are increasingly being run as retail chains (like everything else in this country, the pull towards privatization is strong), and so, in a bid for more space, the mantra is if you can get it online, drop the paper copies (so we can make room to put in more computers for tax payers to check e-mail and look at porn.)

The problem is, the majority of online references include no layout or graphics. So yes, you can read that Plain Dealer article from 5 years ago, but you won’t see any photography or the graphics that went with it. (Some databases, like the New York Times Historical Database or say, The Complete New Yorker, remedy this problem beautifully by using PDF technology.)

The only reason Krazy Kat survived this coup was through the efforts of a dedicated fan who clipped each and every color strip and donated his run to a historical society in Wisconsin.

Otherwise, the strips would be rotting in a dumpster somewhere.

* * *

Cool fact: 2 hours away, the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State has six tractor-trailers worth of old newspapers that Bill Blackbeard sold to the university.

* * *

I’m researching a good deal of The Book through microfilm, and therefore, spending a lot of time squinting.

The nice thing about paper? It’s ridiculously high-resolution. No squinting required. And you can stick it in a big file folder to sift through later.

Edward Tufte, in his brilliant tirades against PowerPoint, has repeatedly championed this triumph over digital media:

Overhead projectors and PowerPoint tend to leave no traces; instead give people paper, which they can read, take away, show others, make copies, and come back to you in a month and say “Didn’t you say this last month? It’s right here in your handout.” The resolution of paper (being read by people in the audience) must be ten times the resolution of talk talk talk or reading aloud from bullet lists projected up on the wall. A paper record tells your audience that you are serious, responsible, exact, credible. For deep analysis of evidence and reasoning about complex matters, permanent high-resolution displays are an excellent start.

So yeah. Let’s hear it for paper!

ESTABLISHMENTS OF THE ILLEST REPUTE

Thursday, August 31, 2006

This is yet another page from CALAMITY and my own personal favorite so far.

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It’s my day off. I’m hanging out, playing with my re-animated laptop, and listening to the soundtrack from Jackie Brown.

I saw the movie a year or two ago, but I got the DVD set out from library last week, and I’ve watched it three times since then. The acting is fantastic, the soundtrack kicks ass, the characters are warm and living and breathing. Quentin Tarantino’s best movie, hands down.

It’s based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, and just like any Elmore Leonard plot, as Martin Amis has noted, there’s a big bag full of money and everybody’s trying to get at it. Within this framework, the characters come alive. It’s a simple, genius formula.

Here’s a bit from Elmore Leonard’s website:

When Quentin Tarantino was a kid, he stole a copy of Elmore Leonard’s The Switch and got caught. Unrepentent, he later went back to the same store and stole the book again. Elmore Leonard was a beacon in the direction that he would soon head in his films. He wrote a movie directed by Tony Scott called True Romance which he said was “an Elmore Leonard novel that he didn’t write.” It certainly is an homage; it even opens in Detroit. After Reservoir Dogs came out, Elmore wrote Rum Punch which reprises the three main characters from The Switch. Tarantino read it and wanted to buy it but didn’t have the money. Elmore and his agent Michael Siegel offered to hold it for him. When he did acquire the book, Tarantino did not contact Elmore Leonard for a long time. When he did he said he was afraid to call. Elmore said, “Why because you changed the name of my book and cast Pam Greir in the lead? He said, “That’s Ok, just make a good movie.”

Dutch has said that he thought it was by far the best adaptation of his work. The DVD set includes some great interview with Leonard. (It also includes the hilarious, “Chicks Who Love Guns,” which QT wrote and directed specifically for the film.)

Anyways, if you haven’t seen Jackie Brown or read Leonard, you’re in for a treat.