McCay Pastiche

The Assignment had to do with mimicry, so I chose to appropriate Windsor McCay's formula for The Dream Of The Rarebit Fiend

Infosales: PG. 1-2

This is Infosales! It was what I came up with for a "final project" in the first semester of the IPRC Comix Class. The first page is cut off a little at the bottom; that's because I didn't get the margins right on that page. The problem is corrected in subsequent pages. I wanted to put all fourteen pages in one post but I had trouble doing that and getting all of them in sequence, so I settled on two at a time. I had the benefit of getting a lot of feedback from various people during this process which affected the end result and hopefully improved it. A few days ago my neighbor said that the story was "goofy." That's what I get for trying to use the comix idiom to comment on the nature of truth. Oh, well, enjoy.

Infosales: PG. 3-4

Infosales: PG. 5-6

Infosales: PG. 7-8

Infosales: PG. 9-10

Infosales: PG. 11-12

Infosales: PG. 13-14

IPRC Comix Class Homework

Here's a batch of last semester's homework for the IPRC Comics Certificate Program, finally. I want to start posting things up here more regularly. We'll see how it goes. What a fucking mess!

Gag Panel

I am in a class now at the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC). It is a Certificate Program in Comics and/or Graphic Novels. So every week there is a new homework assignment. It seems so far that the content of our comics assignments are generated semi-automatically, with a lot of the angst of decision making removed. For instance, the first assignment was to create a gag panel. The way this was arrived at was to draw panels from a series of prompts (ex: Draw something funny, draw something sad, etc.) We did the same with captions (write down something you overheard today, write down a popular catch phrase or slogan, etc.) When we had generated a certain number of captions and panels, we then had to exercise our editorial acumen by mixing, matching, choosing and producing a finished panel based on the exercise. I was happy to develop the gag by this means because I am lousy at inventing jokes. Punchlines just aren't my style. Here is the result:



Got some comments back from the instructor: "The one thing that throws me is the trash cans and junk..... they seem to blend into the dog's back. Maybe spotting some black there would help? Or leave off the shading?"

I'm not good at using contrast to differentiate objects. I always make the mistake of using too many lines, confusing and compromising the readability of the image. I found this helpful hint in How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way :





Dowp! I suppose that's why I need to be in a comics class, in order to practice economy in visual representation. Thanks, Jack.