Worked some more on the Green Monk print I started last week. Still some things I’ll want to tweak, but I feel like the print is about 90% there. You can watch the full artcast here:

Here’s the final art:

If you watched this artcast the other day, you probably saw me working on this a bit. Anyway, here’s some of the ink work I’ve done for page 1 of Rainmagic. I’ve got the majority of pages 2 and 3 inked as well, but I want o finish them up a bit more before I post them. Still have to add in word bubbles and the title. I’ll probably also do some touch up. The figure in the mid-ground isn’t showing up enough (see if you can spot her!).

The other day I watched Tim Burton’s adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and while there was much I enjoyed about the film (particularly Deep Roy) something just didn’t sit well. Although the visuals were stunning, it didn’t have the same feeling of awe and mystery that the book had. I think there were a handful of reasons for this, but the thing that stood out to me most was this: Willy Wonka was too human.

This is an odd thing to complain about. Some of my favorite stories are about complex, dynamic and fallible characters. That’s one reason I’ve raved ad nauseam on this blog about The Song of Ice and Fire.  It’s also been the hallmark of the best television of the last several years. Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, Avatar TLAB and The Wire have all found success by populating their worlds with interesting, human characters.

So why didn’t I like Willy Wonka? It makes me want to look back at one of the first characters I ever fell in love with: Judge Dredd. He was perhaps the first comic book character I was exposed to and I’ve always been fascinated by him. He lives by a code of honor that never wavers. He has an iron will, and he is totally dedicated to upholding the law.

TMI

In time, I was fortunate enough to have had some really good English classes in high school, that laid the foundation for my love of critical analysis and story theory. One of the first principles I learned was the idea of a dynamic character. The idea was that a good character will grow and change during the course of a story. This is what is meant by a character arc. I also learned from Robert McKee that the most interesting characters are full of contradictions. This is a brilliant tool for telling stories because it allows you to create climactic and epiphanic moments from the changes and growth of characters.

But it presented a problem: Judge Dredd was not a dynamic character. Nor was he complex, or full of contradictions. He was static, unchanging and simple. And that’s what I loved about him. So what role does a character like Judge Dredd play in storytelling?

I love this guy!

The Epic Character

Later, in college I was introduced to Bertol Brecht. While I was never crazy about any of his plays, he had some theories on storytelling that made sense to me, and helped to solve my character quandary. Much of what Brecht wanted, had to do with erasing escapism; knocking down the fourth wall so that the audience had no illusions that what they were seeing was in any way real. Part of this meant creating characters that were archetypes. They were pulled right out of folktales. They were larger than life, symbolic and simple.

Discovering Tarkovsky gave me further insight into this idea. In Sculpting in Time he says this: “For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static,  but inwardly charged with energy by an overriding passion.”

Aha, Judge Dredd. So this is what makes an Epic character:

1. They are a symbolic representations of a specific part of the human experience

2. The are super-human

3. They are static

4. They are passionate in their simplicity

Judge Dredd fits this description perfectly. He is a symbol of justice. He has a super-human will power. He is completely unchanging, and he is passionate in his dedication to justice.There are many other characters that fit this model too: Superman, Batman, Obi Wan Kenobi and yes, Willy Wonka.

We Just Like ‘Em!

So why do we like these types of characters? First, their simplicity gives them power. They have no back story, and thus are charged with mystery. In addition, their simplicity means that the traits they do have are amplified. Think of Darth Vader’s unbending pursuit of Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back or the Terminator’s single minded destruction in The Terminator.  Second, they are ideals. They have the traits that we desire, and they are the people that we aspire to be. Last, they are easy to understand and judge. Their value is clear. We like Superman, because we know he is perfectly good.

"You've failed me for the last time..."

The Moral Question

While epic characters are powerful, they are also problematic. In past articles I’ve discussed the importance of empathy in storytelling, and one thing is clear: you don’t empathize with epic characters. They are also terrible models for how to think about other real human beings. In the real world these are called stereotypes and lead to bigotry, division and war. And yet we’ve created epic characters out of many real people: Ghandi, Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Stalin and0 Picasso to name a few.

So there is a danger of using epic characters to understand real people, but they can play a worthwhile function in other ways, as long as we are conscious up-front that they are just characters. First, they play an important role in fiction in creating obstacles and foils for other characters.  Second, in our real lives they can serve as symbols for our own inner struggles and victories. We need not see them as models of the totality of human, but rather as representations of parts of our inner lives. Lastly, they are true to human psychology. We make epic characters out of real people, because that’s how real people see the world. Whether you want to make your audience aware of the shortcomings of this viewpoint is up to you.

Epic Characters Can Change

Ok, I know I just said that epic characters are static, but if you do decide to make them change, they can make for some of the most explosive moments in storytelling. To continue quoting for Tarkovsky: “In a non-developing state of tension, passions reach the highest possible pitch, and manifest themselves more vividly and convincingly than in a gradual process of change.” Primarily, this happens with villains, but it can happen with protagonists too. Think of Darth Vader grabbing the Emperor and tossing him down an exhaust shaft, or Javert throwing himself to his death after seeing his world of justice torn to pieces, or my favorite, Gandalf the Grey transforming into Gandalf the White on the peak of Zirakzigil. Because their character is epic, their transformations are equally immense.

Because of their simplicity, passion and mystery, epic characters make for some of the most enthralling characters in any narrative. And there’s no reason they can’t be a powerful part of a narrative that is otherwise full of rich, complex characters. While Lost is a great character drama, it’s primarily driven by the epic character of the island.  In the end, the best narratives are driven by point-of-view and epic characters embody an essential aspect of the human experience. If you want to tell a story with epic power, then make your characters epic.

I continued the work form last week, designing and painting an exclusive Green Monk print for the upcoming MoCCA festival. We also had a visit from fellow concept artist Xavier Garcia and had a chance to talk about art, comics and all sorts of stuff.

Here’s the beginning sketch followed by the in-progress painting. Still much work to do to figure this thing out.

Live TV : Ustream

Stuff mentioned in the show:

The Visual Story, Second Edition: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV and Digital Media

Project Waldo

Bernie Fuchs

As promised, this week we’ll be continuing our discussion on what makes a good action story. Last week we talked about the fundamentals: grounding the story, raising the stakes, and giving characters urgency. This week we’ll be talking a bit more about choice, as well as spectacle and slowing down.

Let’s start with choice:

5. Every Choice Has a Cost

There should be price to paid for every choice your characters make. Even the little choices. If a character has to move from point A to point B, show that it costs time and energy. If they have to lift something up, it takes effort. As the the story progresses make the choices more and more costly.

The Abyss is a great example of film that’s chock full of tough choices. From the beginning, there’s a price to be paid for every choice. When Bud tosses his wedding ring in the toilet, he has to retrieve it — staining his hand blue for the rest of the film. Later when Bud decides to try and stop Lt. Coffey, he must pay the price of holding his breath for an insane amount of time, while trying to swim to the Moon Pool, through near freezing water, to try and disarm a trained killer. By the end the costs get even bigger: Lindsey drowns and must be resuscitated; Bud has to dive to depths that are impossible for humans to survive in.

This gets to the heart of what makes a hero: they overcome obstacles.  That’s the whole point of an inciting incident. Make sure that for everything your characters do, they pay a price.

This is another fine mess you've gotten us into.

6. Complicate Action Through Choices

If you follow the previous suggestion, you should be okay on this. Choices are the best vehicle for raising the stakes. The best action stories begins with a choice that complicates things. This sets off a chain reaction that continues to escalate until a final resolution is reached.

There is the temptation to complicate the drama by throwing in challenges unrelated to choice.  Mission to Mars does this on several occasions. At one particular moment, a micro meteorite storm comes out of nowhere and punctures the hull, causing all sorts of emergency. It had nothing to do with the any choices the characters made, it was just a random bad thing that was chucked in to try and add drama.

In good action stories there may be moments that appear to be random, but pay close attention. Is it a random occurrence that happened as they were going about their regular business, or did the choices they make increase the risk of something bad happening? As I mentioned in the previous post, action stories are about choice and power. Complications are more meaningful when they are the direct result of a character’s choices.

7. Make Spectacle Matter

One of the great things I’ve learned from working in the game industry is the importance of using spectacle correctly. In gaming, visuals always support game-play. The character design should communicate what a player can expect from a character and spectacle should be used to emphasis a player’s status in the game. When a player does well, they get some sort of visual payoff. That could be a cool death animation of a bad-guy, a burst of confetti for solving a puzzle or breathtaking vista after passing through a difficult challenge. Spectacle can also be used in the same way to show danger, and failure. It’s all about enhancing the natural experience of game-play.

Spectacle can be used in the same way in action storytelling, but instead of supporting game-play it supports point of view. Use your biggest spectacle at the most important points of your story.  Kick off your inciting incident with a cool fight scene. Reveal your monster at the climax. Show all the new weapons right before you get ready for the final battle. Think about the point of view of the characters, what they are experiencing and how you can heighten that experience with the flashy details.

Victory!

8. Slow Down

This is the key to telling a really interesting action story. You don’t need to be going full bore the whole time. The slow moments create a contrast with the action moments, making the action more compelling. They also help build up to the action by creating anticipation, and mystery. As I mentioned in the previous article, the regrouping or planning moments are an essential part of the action film. If you were to ask anyone to name the most memorable moments of the A-Team, chances are they will choose the planning montages where the A-team welded together some awesome contraptions to use in the final battle. It creates anticipation for what’s to come, and it also creates a template for understanding the final action; you’ve explained the plan, so going into the final action there will be greater clarity about what’s going on, and extra drama when things don’t go according to plan (which always happens).

There is also something that happens when you just have non-stop action: you get sick of it. The explosions stop being so awesome, and the monsters get old. Take a break from the cool stuff for just a couple of minutes. Let your characters laugh a bit, or plan a bit. Then when you come back to the flashy stuff it’ll feel fresh again.

Please Don’t Be Stupid

At the end of the day, I want to be giving high-fives and pumping fists as much as any other fella when the credits roll. And it doesn’t take some sort of complex artistic back flips for a storyteller to do this, it just takes common sense. Take at least as much time to make the story understandable as you do designing the gears in Bumblebee’s elbow and you’ll be well on you way.

Really, it shouldn’t be that hard.

What better way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day then dropping the price of Green Monk to 2.99? If you’ve been thinking of getting a copy, now’s the time to do it. The only other place you’ll get a copy at this price is directly from me at a convention.

The price only lasts through this weekend, so don’t wait!

Action stories don’t get proper respect. In academic circles they’re sometimes treated as a step above pornography, and even among the groundlings, the assumption is that action should be crappy. Inevitably, I find myself in the situation where I’m the party pooper at the movies because I can’t just sit back and enjoy a “mindless action film”. I don’t enjoy it, so I try to figure out why I don’t enjoy it, and then I make the mistake of talking about it, and soon I’ve ruined the experience for everyone.

But there’s a reason I criticize bad action films: I think action can be good.

I’ll go a step further. Action stories are the most archetypal stories out there. Maybe they aren’t profound (although they can be) but when done correctly, good action resonates with us in the purest Campbellian* sense. At their core they are about a hero striking out to take control of a world in chaos. They are all about choice, power, conflict and victory.

* Joseph or Bruce

So I’ve spent many of my waking hours thinking about what makes a good action story. This post is an attempt to organize some of thoughts into a handful of concrete elements that I think get the job done. As always, there is a big component of creating art that is instinctive. My hope is that these elements reinforce that instinct, and can be helpful in solving problems.

So let’s get started:

1. Build from the Ground Up

Good action stories are grounded. This means establishing a world where there are believable threats and costs to your character’s actions. Brad Bird talks about this in the DVD commentary of Iron Giant. In the opening minutes, there is a scene where Hogarth is running through the forest. He inadvertently runs into a tree branch. The moment is shocking and violent, and a second later we see Hogarth get up and wipe blood from his nose. This moment is crucial in establishing that Hogarth lives in a world where people can get hurt. Establishing your setting is the best way to do this. Take time to show the dangers and costs of moving through the world.

Katsuhiro Otomo does this in Akira by setting his sci-fi story in a world based on naturalistic details. Technology isn’t all-powerful. There is trash in the streets, the schools are falling apart. There are holograms, but they look kitschy. Characters stub their toes, and their butts fall asleep when they sit too long. And of course, there is blood aplenty when things heat up. Then, when the really bizarre sci-fi stuff starts to happen, it feels much more terrifying. It’s part of the world, and lives by the same rules.  If a character can get a bloody nose from a punch in the face, you know that a genetically altered child, being kept at sub-zero temperatures in a massive subterranean compound is going to cause some serious damage when he gets free.

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

2. Raise the Stakes

In order for the audience to care about the action, something has to be at stake. Either there is something to gain or something to lose. Good action stories start with compelling stakes and continue to complicate them. With each scene there is more to lose or more to gain. Good action stories tend to have really big stakes. Typically, all of humanity, or life, or existence is at risk. In Ghostbusters, crossing the streams risks all of reality blinking out of existence. In Terminator, it’s not just John Conner’s life that’s at stake, but the survival of humans against the robots. Make sure there is plenty at stake, and make sure to increase the load as the story continues.

3. Give Characters Urgency
In a good action story the good guys and bad guys alike wear t-shirts that say, “Git’r Done”. They know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and they will follow that path with brutal efficiency. Nothing irks me more than action stories where villains delay achieving their objectives so the story can last longer. Think of the James Bond cliche where the villain explains his master plan before attempting to have Bond put to death in the most complicated way possible. It can also happen in smaller ways: villains gloating before they finish the act, or heroes trying to get one last answer before justice is served.

For a good example of what to do, look at Terminator and Terminator 2. The Terminators don’t care about asking questions or gloating over their kill, they just run straight at you and do their job. The moment that the T-1000 has John Conner in his sight, his gun is out of his holster and he is sprinting at him in that way that only liquid metal assassins run.

One of the benefits of giving your characters urgency is that it forces you to use action to counter action.

Thus:

4. Fight or Flight

If you give your characters urgency, they will either be running away from danger, struggling against opposition or chasing after an objective.  Fight-or-flight increases in proportion to the complication of the stakes. As the stakes are raised, characters spend more time in fight-or-flight mode. There is another type of moment that is not action oriented that is still totally appropriate, and even essential for action: the regrouping or planning scene. While it’s not high energy, it still plays an important role, but more on that later.

These first four elements establish a solid foundation to motivate a good action story. Next week will discuss more about the importance of choices and how to tune spectacle and breaks-in-action to the benefit of the story.

Well I finally decided to sit down and start inking Rainmagic. It was my first time inking a comic page with a brush, so I was a little nervous. I think it turned out okay. A couple of spots that were sketchy, but for the most part things went well. You can watch the full video below.

Stuff mentioned in the show:

Claire Wendling’s awesome art.

The Pentel Color Brush.

Tonight I started on a project for my wife and her two sisters. They run a blog called wabisabi mama that’s all about being a mothers and celebrating their Japanese heritage. They’re redesigning the blog and they asked me to illustrate a couple of Kokeshi doll versions of themselves to go in the new header.

I started with these quick sketches.

Here’s the full video:

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

And here’s the still-in-process artwork. They asked me to put them into Kimonos instead of temporary clothing. I’ve still got to add one kokeshi and their kokeshi children.

You can download the PSD for you perusal here.