Finale of Life is where Love is

So, today is the finale of my WCN piece Life is where Love is. This was a very special piece for me. Throughout high school, I had been working on a massive cyberpunk "maxi-series" that was somewhat more in the vien of traditional mainstream comics. (and when I say massive, I'm not kidding: In three years I had plotted all 50 issues, did thumbnails for 30, and fully finished 7, with each issue at 25 pages).

Then along came a crazy experience that led to writing this piece, which fully defied what I'd worked on before. While drawing it, I began to realize it was essentially a "narrative essay" in visual form. There's an introduction, body, and conclusion to it. My whole perspective on comics changed. Out was my traditional sense of narrative and structure, in was... something different.

It led to my other artsy/poetic/experimental works, which in turn led to more formalism. The piece was made even more special when my friend did something totally unheard of and turned it into a ballet at Cal Arts — using the comic as the script (which I'm still perplexed about).

So, in many ways this piece directly led to where I'm at now: figuring out ways to measure people's brainwaves when reading comics.

Relatedly, I think this is going to be the last Meditations post for awhile. With classes weighing down on me, my head is in other places and I've lost the drive to consistently post. I'll resume again eventually I'm sure... but for now, enjoy this one in full.

LiwLi updated, links

I probably won't continue commenting for every post of my new Meditations piece "Life is where Love is," but I've always loved today's page for some reason. Maybe I just got the blacks right or something... I don't know. Anyhow, the "visual essay" now enters its body...

Also, in taking a procrastination break from devising stimuli for my ERP experiment, I've updated my links listing to the side. So, a few more comics, blogs, etc. for people to click through if they too are procrastinating doing something. Enjoy!

More on LiwLi

So, with this latest post of my new Meditations story "Life is where Love is," I figured I should fill in a bit more info about it. The piece was the first of my more "conceptual" approaches to structuring comic stories. If you can even call it a story. Or a narrative. I've always thought of it more as an "artistic visual essay." You'll see why after a few more posts.

In any case, I drew it right at the end of high school in 1998, and to be honest, given the quality of my drawing back then, you can kinda tell that's when it was done. I do quite enjoy the heavy black/white contrast style still though.

A friend of mine from high school at the time was a director at Cal Arts and decided that he wanted to turn it into a ballet. This was just a couple months after I finished it actually. So, the school shelled out several thousand dollars, (he built a full cliffside among other sets), and they used the comic as the direct script for the show. The ballet was set to go on tour a year later, but complications lent it towards never making out and about. Nevertheless, it was essentially finished and ready to go from all I've heard.

Enjoy!

New Comic: Life is where Love is

At long last since the start of grad school, I've got a new (old) comic up at my Webcomicsnation Meditations series. Despite the somewhat corny title, this is actually the oldest piece I'm putting up there, originally drawn waaaay back in 1998 (hence the more "raw" look to it stylistically). This is actually the story that got me drawing artsy type works, which then led towards my work in theory. I'll try to talk more about it in a later post, but for now I'm too tired and too stressed to add more. Enjoy the start!

La Pluie

At long last, my Meditations have returned. Here's the latest called "La Pluie".

The use of French was largely intended for the melancholy mood it gives, and I took into account that readers might not actually be able to read it. My own French is rather poor (which actual French speakers will probably notice), as I only took two years in high school which were promptly replaced by Japanese. The understanding of the words wasn't meant to be entirely necessary, though they do naturally add another level. The style of the person’s face was inspired from some French comic books as well.

The piece is only three pages long, and was done entirely in one night while on summer break after my freshman year at Berkeley, if I recall, while listening to an Annie Lennox CD of my parents (odd how details like that pop out). The rain was a mixture of pen and dabbing/swiping of a tissue paper dipped in ink. Otherwise it was inked with a nib (if I remember correctly).

Ballerina

Today's Meditation is "Ballerina", a piece written as a companion to Autumn.... It was partially based on a girl I dated whose face reminded me of a porcelain doll. It was also one of my first computer attempts, again just to letter, but also to fill in blacks and to make the repeating panels at the end.

Autumn...

With the completion of my second visual adaptation of the John Keats poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci, I'm going to start posting a few of my smaller works. I did a couple series of shorts, including this next run of Meditations.

This one is called Autumn..., and it was done in the Fall of 1998, shortly after I graduated high school. A friend of mine had been doing a zine in which she wrote a similarly themed poem, and had kind of issued a challenge for me to match it. This single page is the result of that, and the girl in it is meant to look somewhat like her. I believe this was the first piece I ever used the computer on, in this case merely to letter it. I had done an "alternate" version where I used a "cloud" filter to make the sky dusky looking, but ended up not using it for anything.

Incidentally on a theory note, several years after I had drawn it, the sequence with the leaf falling was one of the first which sponsered me to start rejecting the idea of linear transitions between panels. Can you spot why?

La Belle Dame Sans Merci... no Part Tres I swear!

I've posted the concluding installment to my second visual adaptation of the John Keats poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Now that it's done, I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the comparison between the two.

Version One ..... Version Two

As those who read my Comixpedia piece on visual rhyming will note, I tried to maintain a lot of similar structure between them. By the time I did the second one, I started intending for them to be read as a pair.


So, I now need to decide which "Mediation" to post next. What with the Fourth being next week, and then flying to Boston to do house hunting, I may just take the week off. We'll see...

"Comic" Theory 101: Seeing Rhymes

At long last, I finally have a new "Comic" Theory 101 article up at Comixpedia. This one delves into the possibilities of "visual rhyming" and how we can play with it in practice, particularly in visual poetry.

For those who are curious, the first two examples come from a piece I did waaaaay back in 1998 called "Life is where Love is" that has yet to be posted online (though its in the Meditations book already). The large pages, of course, are from my La Belle Dame Sans Merci adaptations, the second version of which is being serialized twice a week. The final poem is brand new for the article.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Part Deux!

So, today begins the posting of another version of the John Keats poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci. After I had done the initial version, I was reading through and old poetry book of my father and aunt's which featured the poem, and along the margins I saw notes interpreting the poem in a different way than I had. So, I thought it would provide the perfect opportunity to draw another version in contrast and relation to the first.

I particularly like how having two versions shows the ambiguity of words and the power that images can have towards an overall expression of meaning. I think making two versions of the same verbal work provides a nice creative experiment too.



Aside: My wrist pains continue to pester, so blog posts will continue only sporadically. :-(

The Glass of Water Debate

Today's brand spankin' new update to my Meditations is "The Glass of Water Debate", a two-page musing on the classic idiom. So, the conclusion to this one will be online Thursday.

Technically speaking, this was an experiment in how much I could make with very little — still in the early days of my playing with digital creation (circa Spring 2000). This first page was only made from one drawing (half of each panel). In all, both pages combined took only about two and a half hours to do.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, concluded

I've posted today's conclusion of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". Next week I'll be posting something a bit different, then following that up with a second visual adaptation of "La Belle" with a slightly different interpretation. So... stay tuned.

Matilda's Dream on WCN

So, its not exactly new to the web, but I've added my 24-hour from 1999 (!!) Matilda's Dream to my webcomicsnation site. The story is still in the same place, now just with more sites aiming to it. Perhaps more people will read it now?

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, continued

I've posted today's update of the new comic "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". This piece was drawn throughout the spring of 1999, my first semester at UC Berkeley, right after finishing Reminiscence. This poem was a favorite of mine from high school lit, and I'd often pictured adapting it into visual form.

Around the time of most of the Meditations stories, I was reading a lot of short vignette works by P. Craig Russell, Barry Winsor Smith, and old issues of Epic Illustrated. The visual style of this one is especially influenced by Russell's Magic Flute, in line with the sentiment of adapting a traditional piece into graphic form. To a smaller degree, the visual style was also influenced by Zander Cannon's most excellent Replacement God, or at least the chinks in the knight's armor.

I spent a fair amount of time doing photo references for this piece, as well as very carefully toying with the linework. Among the pieces in the Meditations stories, it's certainly one of the more clean and "elegant" pieces visually (if such a word can describe my work).

One of the other things about this piece is the care with which I did the lettering. I took a lot of time developing the font style, and it was all hand done. Shortly after this, I began doing most of my lettering by computer, so it was a nice "last hurrah" in that regard.

Books Galore

I got my first shipment of Meditations books the other day (outside of my proof copy), and I must say, I am quite pleased. The printing turned out awesome. The blacks are very black and the greys are very grey. Sa-tis-fac-tion!

So, I'll confirm it again: for graphic novels wanting to do print-on-demand, BookSurge is a good way to go.

While it isn't necessarily tearing up the charts, I'd like to say thanks to those people who have bought copies already (…and for those who haven't… at $16 for 258 pages, its quite a deal!) The amazon site is still a bit sparse though. From people who have read either the book or the works online, reviews are always welcomed…(hint hint)…

Meditations available now!

A couple days ago, my proof copy of my new Mediations book arrived, and it was a cathartic experience if I've ever had one. This has been a long journey for these works.

In 1999, my high school friend, Dan Czypinski, was a director at CalArts and had turned the oldest piece in this book into a ballet. Yes, and he used the comic as the script for the ballet. So, I had originally intended to self-publish them as a book back in 2000 to coincide with the ballet's tour. Unfortunately, the funding I had hoped for fell through for self-publishing it, and then the ballet's tour kept getting postponed until it didn't happen. Oh, and I left to live in Japan for half a year right at that point.

So, the works just sat in my computer. I added to them by completing A Love Story, but right after that my "artsy period" ended, and on to theoretical things I went (and lots of fiction that’s still being written). I've looked into various self-publishing options, but none seemed all that viable.

Until I found Booksurge, an amazon.com company that does print on demand books. It was extremely easy, and I highly recommend it. If you're able to simplify the process to where all you have to do is submit pdf. files, it costs only about $100 (which includes an ISBN and being sold by all amazon sites). If you need more help with things, it costs more. Authors get a fairly large royalty on all booksales, buy books at a discount, and are promoted by Booksurge to larger publishers.

So, for people who want to self-publish books, and can do a bunch of the process themselves, Booksurge is a good way to go. My rep was Whitney Strachan, and you should definitely email her if you're interested (email: her firstname.lastname@booksurge.com).

If you're wondering what I was like as a creator before I got deeply entrenched in the theory, these works trace most of it. While I'll continue to put these works online (upping the updates to twice a week), as a book is really how I've always intended them to be presented. Its great to finally see/hold it.

Meditations book

I'm pleased to announce that my Meditations series of shorts and vignettes is now available as a 258 page book! It includes all of my artistic work that is posted online (as well as lots more to come), a commentary section, and a sketchbook section. The book is available print-on-demand through Booksurge Publishing, and is currently for sale via their site (amazon should carry it soon too). I'll post a little more on Booksurge sometime soon.

So, the book also includes the full version of the freshly updated Karuna. Just for the hell of it, I'm now trying to make the WCN advertising blurbs as cheesy as possible each week. If you catch one on a WCN site, let me know what you think!

Happy Valentine's!

Hope love fills your day, no matter what kind it is. Last year to the day I finished posting my "A Love Story". Maybe now would be an appropriate day to (re)read it?

Update: While you're at it, also check out Joe Zabel's short review of "A Love Story" in this week's Webcomics Examiner. Joe is very kind in his praise. I disagree that the peak of the story is at the begining though. It might be a fairly rich scene visually, but definitely not the "peak" to the story itself – which only comes out when you focus on the philosophical subtext that the characters are indeed "mouthpieces" for. Thanks Joe!

Digital Creation

As evidenced by my work in A Love Story and the Meditations series (like the now updated "Karuna" story), I have embraced digital tools with open arms. Though, I have some thoughts on their use, especially integrating them with line art and, shall we say, “techniques from the hand” (i.e. non-CGI produced).

Essentially, I think that digital tools should be embraced, but used in careful moderation. Often, digital graphics are extremely pristine, smooth, and uniform. Comparatively, “hand done” works are messy, imprecise, fallible, random. And I think that at least some level of inherent "mistakes" are important.

For instance, I generally can’t stand 3D CGI art in comics when its used dominatingly. I think it just looks wrong, mainly because it lacks a sense of randomness. It is too clean. Human beings make mistakes, and those mistakes are part of what make us human. Without those elements reflected in our “art,” the results seem cold and artificial (unless that’s the aim of course).

More so, on a level of theory, using a completely CGI creation lacks the cultural conventionality inherent in a “drawing style.” It is the epitome of striving for iconicity, though here at the expense of rooting graphic creation in cognitive structure.

Personally, given the available tools, I strive for a balance of these elements. Context dependent, I want the randomness of line art, the precision and naturalness of photography, and the clean smooth uniformity of digital graphics.

Karuna

Starting today I've got a new story running on my Webcomics nation site, called "Karuna".

This is actually a true story, about something that happened to me while I was walking around the UC Berkeley campus as a sophomore in college. It was such a bizarre experience that I felt I should draw it as a story. It also had a kind of story-arc feel to it, and the way I draw it is pretty much the way I remember it happening (minus the passers-by).

Because it transpired in a real place nearby where I lived, I thought it would be interesting to photograph the site and only draw the characters. Besides the added significance in terms of the story, I think it achieves a sort of heightened masking effect. The graininess of most of the pictures was accidental. I had borrowed a digital camera from a friend, and he had uploaded them as 72dpi for me, which meant the quality wasn't quite as good. I think this turned out for the better in many ways though, since having it be too crisp would contrast the line art overly much I think.

Reminiscence

I've posted another segment of Permutations today. Here's some background on the piece "Reminiscence":

The first page for this one sat on my desk for about a month before I wrote the rest of it in one sitting in a sort of stream-of-consciousness method. I think that writing in this way makes authors connect to a very “pure” part of their mind, and thus creates a very genuine and sincere product. There's a lot in this one that I just love, and it remains one of my favorite pieces that I’ve done.

Cupid Du Coeur

I've posted another segment of Permutations today. Here's some background on the piece "Cupid Du Coeur":

I greatly enjoyed the mixing of visual styles in this piece. Much of the computer work was done without much planning and with a large amount of trial and error to see what worked. The photo from the first page was found with some friends while looking through old papers in the recesses of my fraternity house in college. On the back was written "San Francisco 1895." It was such a striking shot that I figured I should use it for something, and so here I did.

I had toyed with the idea for this piece for a while before writing it, inspired partly from a chapter of Michael Crichton’s Travels. Its been one of my favorite books since I first read it when I was 12. Lately I've been musing how I've been taking on a lot of interesting experiences of my own, just as Crichton mused he was following in the footsteps of Arthur Conan Doyle. Its amusing to think that we can somehow be influenced enough by our favorite books to become similar to them... Of course, it could just be that that's why we liked them in the first place.

Time

I've posted another segment of Permutations today. Here's some background on the piece "Time" in that collection:

Inspired by a chapter of the book Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, the crosshatching was done with various sizes of technical pens and literally took several days to do. After I finished it, I made my roommate at the time promise to smack me if I ever decided to do anything with that much crosshatching ever again! (…he gladly accepted the burden)

Permutations

Today, like all Wednesdays, I've posted another segment of my ongoing "Meditations" at my webcomicsnation site. Since those works were all done awhile ago, I'll try to give some background to them here as I go along.

The current ongoing piece is a visual poem entitled "Permutations," that I wrote in college — gosh — six years ago now (!). It grew out of a journal entry that blended lots of drawings with words into a sort of collage, which I then transformed into a more linear form. At the time I'd been reading a lot of David Mack's Kabuki, so the mixed material nature of it all is reminiscent of that. I was playing a lot with the relationship of the graphic form and phonetics, while trying to dance around the message rather than directly express it. I'd say the finished version became one of my most emotionally driven and experimental pieces of graphic writing.

Besides using just about every artistic implement on my desk at the time (from technical pens to a bamboo "fountain pen"), it was the first major project where I used the computer to put together my pages. Since then I do nearly everything on the computer. We the People started with most line art being scanned, though the further it got the more I drew directly in the computer with my penpad. Now that I have a cintiq, my new stuff is drawn almost 100% on the computer.