I guess it’s as good a reason as any.
First let’s establish that I don’t think there was widespread cheating going on in the recent election that would change outcomes. That being said, is it really necessary to continue to hold elections in the most ridiculous way possible? Seriously, come on guys. If my kid has a guilty look on his face with his hands behind his back and I ask him what he’s hiding behind his back then he says “there’s nothing behind my back… why would you even think that?!” and he continues to refuse to show me his hands, chances are I’m gonna be skeptical. It is a bit funny that from now on whichever side loses will claim fraud no matte what. But of course maybe that’s the point? Look, politicians will tell you whatever they think will get you to hold your nose and vote for them. It’s the old saying about running away from a bear. I don’t have to be faster than the bear… I just have to be faster than the other guy running from the bear. They don’t care if you like them. They only care that you like them slightly more than the other guy and what better way to get you to hate the other guy than consistently tell you that he doesn’t even want to count your vote. So putting all of that aside and assuming that our politicians absolutely, 100%, have our best interests at heart, I guess this reason is as good as any other as to why it takes days or weeks to count votes? I’m honestly pretty sick of politics but when they keep giving me this much material I have to keep making fun of them. It is what it is, but I’ll leave it with a quote that has been bouncing around my head a lot lately…
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos. - Homer J Simpson
Visual Storytelling in Comics
Ok, let’s move on to a topic that’s way more fun. I’ve been slowly putting together notes on my process of making comics, specifically around the concept of Visual Storytelling, so I wanted to bring up another one today… designing a page.
I’ve often said that your ability to draw a nice looking character, prop, or setting has very little to do with making good comic art. I’ll die on that hill. When I look at a lot of inexperienced or indie comic artists, the consistent problem that I see is visual storytelling. One aspect of that is that they don’t use design principles in their work. The Gestalt principles (fancy design nerd term, look it up) are more relevant than most people realize in visual storytelling. I’ll talk more about them in the future but for now I wanted to focus on the principle of Continuity. This is the concept that elements that are on a line or a curve have relevance to each other or the overall flow of a scene or page. Occasionally this is a literal line but more often it’s an abstract curve that a good storyteller will use in the design of the page or panel to move the reader’s eye to the most important things. It especially helps in a scene with a lot of detail or visual clutter. There are a lot of ways to bring about that abstract curve. In animation (and cartooning) there’s a concept with characters called the line of action that is usually an “S” or curve shape in the pose that makes the character more interesting to look at. Here’s a drawing a did a while back of the character Metalhead from the ninja turtles:
You can see the line of action that makes the post more dynamic. Similarly, in designing a comic page or scene, you can create an abstract line or path of important forms and elements that guides your eye through the page to make it easier to follow the flow and more pleasing to look at. Here’s a penciled page from my upcoming book The Atlantean followed by the same page with the continuity line that I was going for.
Using the continuity principle in the page design along with other composition techniques within each panel will add a lot to a page. It’s a subtle thing that, until you know about it, you might not even think about, but it definitely enhances the storytelling much more than fancy rendering will.
Let me know if you enjoyed this little tip/lesson, I definitely want to do more of these in the future. If there’s any other aspect of visual storytelling you’d like to see me cover, feel free to drop it in the comments.
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Have a great week!
-Brad