Here’s the raw ink work on Rainmagic pages 2 and 3. I’m working a bit more on page 4 tonight.
I’m trying a couple of new things on these pages:
I’m trying to use more blacks. If you’ve seen Green Monk, you’ll know that it’s mostly linear. I want to create more shapes out of lights and darks. I’m finding I need to plan things out much more carefully in the penciling stage to get the lights and darks to balance out correctly.
I’m trying to figure out how to draw a dang forest. The most difficult stuff is the stuff in the mid-ground. It’s not close enough that I want to draw every little detail, but it’s not far away enough that I can just create a big mass and call it leaves.
I’m using a brush pen for all of this. The brush creates beautiful lines, but it requires more page turning to get the right angle. You also have to wait for it to dry, and oddly enough it puts more strain on my hand than using a micron. I think that because it does not have a rigid tip, I have to use my hand more for stability, and thus: hand-strain.
For last night’s artcast I did a little bit or digital painting again. This time a bit of concept art for a friend. I spent a bit too much time setting up a perspective grid that I never used, and I’d like to spend a couple more hours on this to refine the shapes and add detail, but all in all, it turned out okay.
I’m happy to announce there are 3 new prints in the store, starting at 4.99 per print (plus shipping and handling). You even see video of me designing and painting one of the prints.
Check out the new stuff and let me know what you think.
6” x 9″ inked drawing of whatever you want with a couple of exceptions. I don’t do nudity, or anything that’s overtly suggestive (my call) and I don’t do gore. I also don’t do caricature or portraits. $20.00 plus shipping and handling. I may ask for a bit higher of a price if [...]
9″ x 12″ inked drawing of whatever you want with a couple of exceptions. I don’t do nudity, or anything that’s overtly suggestive (my call) and I don’t do gore. I also don’t do caricature or portraits. $40.00 plus shipping and handling. I may ask for a bit higher of a price if the [...]
This week I experimented with sketching with color. No pencil sketch to start with, I just jumped into Photoshop and started exploring shapes. You can see the full video here:
And here is the finished art. I could certainly spend some more time adding details, but the most important stuff is here.
So I’ve been a pretty faithful listener to Art and Story. The discussion is thought provoking, the personalities are interesting and the hosts are dedicated to forwarding the art of comics.
This is evident the Kids Read Comics convention that they help to organize and carry-out every year at no financial benefit to themselves. They do it because they care deeply about the potential for comics as a storytelling medium.
This year, I’m planning on attending for the first time, and taking full advantage of the huge support they give to artists attending the show (i.e. no table fees). In short, these guys are losing money so I can get a great deal on a convention. So, I figure the least I can do is contribute to the yearly art auction that helps to fund the costs of running Kids Read Comics.
This is the piece I’ve been working on today:
Click to Enlarge
I went back to microns on this one. I’m finding that brush takes more time, is more strain on my hand, and doesn’t give me as much flexibility. This was also an interesting practice, since the intent is to sell the finished piece, so I had to do everything on paper. The actual original piece still had the original pencil lines underneath the drawing.
Hope it help raise a couple of bucks. If you’re interested in owning the piece, stay tuned and I’ll post information on how to participate in the auction.
Although I don’t have a good citation for it, Carl Dreyer is supposed to have said that the primary role of a director it to engage the audience. What does it mean to engage the audience? It means to give them something that makes them want sit on the edge of their seat and keep watching. Over the next several posts, I’d like to explore some of the ways a storyteller can do this. Personally, I believe the most fundamental way to engage the audience is to create mystery. So I thought it’d be the best place to start.
What is Mystery?
First of all, mysteries are not secrets. If you have some sort of information about your world or characters, and you give your audience no hint of those secrets, then they might as well not exist. To steal a title of a great C.S. Lewis short story, mystery is The Form of Things Unknown. What does this mean? It means you know a little bit. You have a clue, but the details are unclear. There is a form and a shape, but it’s hazy, dark and obscured by clouds. So to set up any mystery, you must show something. You must show enough to know that there’s more there. What you choose to show must also be compelling. It can’t make sense on its own, and it should challenge the audience and make them uncomfortable.
This creates two great responses. First, if you see part of an image that doesn’t quite make sense, you want to see the rest. Second, mystery inspires fear. The hulking form in the dark corridor could be anything, and in your mind it becomes everything. It’s transcendent, terrifying and sublime.
J.J. Abrams has some interesting things to say about this:
Mystery as drama
Every good story poses a question. The answer to that question is the mystery that will keep your audience engaged. The more compelling the question, the more they’ll be glued to their seats. The Usual Suspects is a naked example of this. The whole movie is built upon the question: Who is Keyser Soze? But you don’t have to pose such an enormous question – the question can be as simple as: Will Conan avenge his parents’ death? Will Frodo reach Mount Doom? It’s basically the question you pose in the inciting incident. The mystery can even be in the how, not necessarily in the end result. In the Godfather, it’s pretty clear that Michael Corleone is going to end up changing from a nice-guy to a mob boss, but the compelling question posed is: How?
Mystery in characters
I touched on this briefly last week in my post about epic characters. Mystery is great way to make a character compelling. What you don’t know about a character you fill in with infinite possibilities, or simply accept that it’s beyond human comprehension. The G-man in the Half Life series is a great example of a character who is compelling because of the mystery that shrouds him. Again, what you do know about him makes the mystery interesting. He’s a man in a suit, who wanders effortlessly through a maze of dangers that you’ve been fighting tooth-and-nail to survive.
Mystery in the world
Using mystery is great way to make a world seem far more vast than you’ve actually thought out. By making references to small details in far flung corners of your world, you create a framework that your audience will assume is filled in as richly as the world you present in detail before them.
Keep it Mysterious
Lastly, you don’t have to give an answer to every mystery. One of the problems of creating a really compelling mystery, is that it’s often hard to deliver an answer that’s as powerful as the original mystery. J.J. Abrams is a master at using mystery to draw you in, but tends to get stuck trying to figure out where to go from there. Usual Suspects is one of the few stories that successfully figured out how to do this, but to make it work, Bryan Singer had to go BIG on the conclusion. As an alternative, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is built around a compelling mystery that is never answered. And the power of the movie is wholly dependent on maintaining that mystery. You can do this with characters, worlds and plot points. Just be careful. Mystery creates tension, and if you choose not to answer the mystery, you must find another way to release the dramatic tension or plan on having your audience carry that tension with them after the story ends (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
What really happened at Hanging Rock?
There’s truth to old show biz adage: “Give ‘em what they want.” Just remember, once you give it away, there’s not much left to stick around for. So, if you really want to hold on to your audience, give ‘em mystery first, then give ‘em what they want.
